the answer: run into the dalek city, which is right next to the forest

so this story had a teaser episode earlier in the season - they cut away from the doctor and companions for a bit to show the daleks organising a meeting between a bunch of villans from across the universe.

Except between the teaser/cutaway and the actual episode, the actors for several of the villains in-explicably changed, so it's very confusing

one of the villains is a bunch of vines in a robe

I'm almost up to Katarina's death scene.

Not only is this the first time a companion of the doctor's dies, but it's also the first scene the actor recorded - the character was written and cast, but then they realised that they couldn't actually make her an interesting long term character, so they killed her off in her second story

holy frick that was way more intense than I expected it to be

The author of this story (Terry Nation) is one of the good authors.

But they also don't seem to know what the solar system is... they put a bunch of extra planets into it???

ah, we're up to the part where the author switched, because this story was so long they needed to get Dennis Spooner to write the second half

oh, I thought so!

one of the actors in the first part came back a few years later to play Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, one of the most famous characters from the classic series

I'm watching the christmas episode now...

what utter garbage

so much yelling...

hmm.... assuming the rest of The Dalek's Master Plan is good, I'm going to have to do a partial recommendation for this one..

as an aside: someone suggested that editing down the episodes would make people more likely to watch them. I'm sure that's true, but it's also a lot of work...

I'm starting to regret saying "maybe" for The Time Meddler - it's not a very exciting story, but it is very memorable.

*realises that the villain in this story is wearing dark makeup and some fake folds to make him look south east asian*

hmm....

looks like I really do need to add a content warnings section

episode 11 of The Dalek's Master Plan is interesting - the doctor goes missing right at the start, and isn't seen for the rest of the episode

I've updated the site to have a bunch of extra navigation buttons, which aren't super useful right now, but will be very useful when there are 38 seasons on the page

here's the link again, in case you want to see:

https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/

(I also rewrote the introduction a bit)

The War Machines is even better than I remembered it being.

(Although it is a bit weird that they write out Dodo, one of the Doctors companions, by hypnotising her and then just saying "she went to the country")

✨ Classic Doctor Who ✨
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Want to watch Classic Doctor Who, but don't want to slog through the boring episodes?

Check out my guide: https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/

Now with:
✨ updated recommendations for all of Seasons 1-3
✨ a much better introduction
✨ useful navigation buttons
✨ indicators of major plot changes

The first story of season 4 is so awful that it took me a week to build up the energy to watch it.

It's hard to even explain how it's bad, it's just... boring and predictable and nothing happens, and it has the same problem that almost all of the historical stories do: there's no energy. No-one seems to care all that much.

And it's made even worse by being a reconstruction, so you've only got stills of the actor's faces.

I'm so proud of myself for adding the navigation buttons to the webpage, tbh... it makes it a lot nicer, and I did a surprisingly good job designing them

Most of the titles of these stories start with "The"

In the first 4 seasons, there are 36 stories. Only 4 of them don't start with "The"

I'm watching "The Tenth Planet" (the last story starring the first doctor), and the doctor just... collapses unconcious for no reason at the start of episode 3

that was.... a much more intense regeneration scene than I was expecting

Despite many mediocre stories, the first doctor is still one of my favourites. His charm, his wit, his lovely laugh (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPlI1WpAwpU)... and his indescribable anger at human suffering.

He's a grandfather, who cares deeply about the world and those around him. None of the other doctors have that grandfather-ness to them, and it's part of what made the first doctor so special.

I knew something felt weird when watching Victory of the Daleks (an 11th Doctor story) - it's a story that's already been told, in the first 2nd Doctor Story (The Power of the Daleks)

I really wish the footage for Power of the Daleks still existed... the reconstruction is really hard to watch.

I was planning on watching the animated version of this story afterwards, but I think I'm going to be too drained to watch this same story over again, so maybe I'll try watching it after a long break.

nearly 2 weeks after starting, I finally got through The Power of the Daleks.

It's not a bad story, but it's just.... hard to watch something that's missing so much footage.

In my guide I gave it a maybe: https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/#doctor2

because (while I haven't watched all of it) the animated version would be a really good watch

I'm noticing that, in general, the stories that are completely missing are usually not worth watching at all

And now: The Highlanders, which is also completely missing.

Fun Trivia: The Highlanders is the last* of the "historical" stories – the show was originally conceived as having a mixture of historical stories (to teach kids history) and sci fi stories. But the historical stories were hated by the production team, and rarely were as engaging as the sci-fi stories, so they were abandoned - all subsequent stories set in the past also contained a sci-fi element.

footnote: while not intended to be an educational story, one of the 5th doctor stories was set in the past and contained no sci-fi element.

So there's a section in this story where the doctor dresses up as an old woman to get passed some guards. Should I make a note of this in my reccomendation, or should I just ignore it?

The highlanders was pretty good!

It's definitely one of the stories that I wish hadn't been destroyed, because even though it's a historical story, it's quite entertaining.

Next: The Underwater Menace.

It took me a while to track down a copy of Episode 2, which was thought to be destroyed until 2011.

Unfortunately, my source for all the other episodes seems to come from the mid 2000s, so it didn't include this episode

"They're going to carry out the fish operation on her!"

The Underwater Menace: finished

(see the site for a review: https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/ )

next up: The Moonbase

which is the second story about the Cybermen

I decided not to watch it today, and instead do something else for a bit

I watched some clips of "Inferno", a 3rd doctor story, and.... hmm.

I thought Inferno was terrible when I last watched it, but these clips are exciting, and interesting - quite a bit more than some of the 2nd doctor eps I've recommended.

I see 3 options:

* inferno is not as bad as I thought, and I was just unncessarily harsh to it
* inferno is bad, and I need to be harsher on the older episodes
* inferno is bad, but the badness is not reflected in the clips