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Plavski posted:Goddamn Storm Warning is shite. Storm Warning is one of my favorite stories, and I will admit there are some flaws. I hate the voice modulation on the aliens as it grated on my ears. I hate how most of the first episode is the Doctor talking to himself as he describes the Vortisaur attack. There’s a good bit of padding in Episodes 2 and 3 with “the mysterious stranger” and outlining the backstory of the aliens. But McGann sparkles and so does India Fisher, and aside from the human “villain” the supporting cast is solid. What don’t you care for about it?
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Sep 3, 2014 14:00
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My favorite villains that the Doctor can't defeat, that I probably mention ad nauseum, are the Megara, who he goes to great lengths to play logic games with and in the end they still roll their nonexistent eyes and find him guilty, and the only way he saves himself is by grabbing the bad guy and using her as a shield so that they realize who she is and spend their time arresting her. I could swear that they only postpone his sentence for an absurdly long time and leave (although I don't see anything about that in the summary for the serial, The Stones of Blood), and I've always wanted him to pop into the future somewhere and have a set of Tinkerbell-looking Kafka trial lights materialize and tell him that his time is up. e: I thought Storm Warning was fun. Not the best Big Finish by any stretch of the imagination, but McGann really seems to enjoy himself 
Bicyclops fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Sep 3, 2014 |
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Sep 3, 2014 14:02
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Bicyclops posted:I could swear that they only postpone his sentence for an absurdly long time and leave (although I don't see anything about that in the summary for the serial, The Stones of Blood), and I've always wanted him to pop into the future somewhere and have a set of Tinkerbell-looking Kafka trial lights materialize and tell him that his time is up. Just had a flick over to it and first thought is jesus that dress that Cessair wears is a bit risque isn't it? "You have been tried and found guilty on the following crimes: Impersonation of a religious personage, to whit a celtic goddess, for which the penalty is imprisonment for 1,500 years. Theft of the great seal of Diplos, for which the penalty is perpetual imprisonment - the sentences to run consecutively."  And they say "There is still the matter of your delayed execution" before the Doctor sends them back to Diplos mid sentence.
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Sep 3, 2014 14:18
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Just had a flick over to it and first thought is jesus that dress that Cessair wears is a bit risque isn't it? It wasn't even comfortably revealing, either, because they just had to cover more of her with silver paint. I thought I'd remembered it, thank you! Return to Diplos for Season 8, where they can walk by a rock and the Doctor can offhandedly say "I wonder..."
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Sep 3, 2014 14:21
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CobiWann posted:Storm Warning is one of my favorite stories, and I will admit there are some flaws. I hate the voice modulation on the aliens as it grated on my ears. I hate how most of the first episode is the Doctor talking to himself as he describes the Vortisaur attack. There’s a good bit of padding in Episodes 2 and 3 with “the mysterious stranger” and outlining the backstory of the aliens. But McGann sparkles and so does India Fisher, and aside from the human “villain” the supporting cast is solid. The Doctor and Charley are performed wonderfully, no doubt about it, but it's so loving boring. It's full of waffle and padding and a horrible "Doctor talks to himself because he has no companion" contrivance that really grates. The rest of the crew aren't particularly memorable either, and the aliens are weak and sound terrible. The ending is a damp squib too and they spend ages setting up the aliens, only for it to all come crashing down in a bloody fist fight with an alien in a headlock! The writing is just generally inane: "hear that beating in your chest... this is what it feels like to be ALIVE!!!" etc. And the masses of exposition the Doctor spouts is stunning, you'd barely know he has a character at all. Most galling of all is the lack of understanding of radio shorthand. Instead of saying:" Doctor, watch out!" and then hearing the clink of an axe hitting a metal bar, you get: "Oh no, he has a large, red fire axe with a smooth, slightly worn handle and blade as sharp as the wit of a man I once met in Marrakesh! And look behind you Doctor, it's something else it will take me ages to describe for no reason!" It just drags the flimsy story out and gets really tiresome. I'm quite annoyed by it, especially after just listening to The Holy Terror and Invaders From Mars. It's Chimes of Midnight up next though, and I've heard very good things...
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Sep 3, 2014 14:28
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Plavski posted:"hear that beating in your chest... this is what it feels like to be ALIVE!!!" Having not listened to it, I'll assume this is Eight talking, because that sounds like Eight. If so, it's pretty much eighth_doctor.txt, so I'd be okay with it. If it's not, welp.
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Sep 3, 2014 14:43
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I would love 8 to appear in a multi Doctor story this series and he just describes everything in too much detail.
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Sep 3, 2014 14:50
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PoshAlligator posted:I would love 8 to appear in a multi Doctor story this series and he just describes everything in too much detail. In a cruel joke, they unite all the Doctors together, but Paul McGann just has to talk through a radio the entire episode.
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Sep 3, 2014 14:57
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Chokes McGee posted:Having not listened to it, I'll assume this is Eight talking, because that sounds like Eight. Yeah, it's Eight. Normally you can get behind his sense of adventure, but it's so stupidly on the nose and goes on for a paragraph that it becomes corny rather than exciting.
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Sep 3, 2014 14:59
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Still hoping that they take advantage of David Bradley to make an episode with the first Doctor. Hell, go for broke and do one with Peter Capaldi, David Bradley AND Paul McGann. Beginning, middle and end.
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Sep 3, 2014 15:10
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Haha, I remember making fun of the axe thing when telling friends about it. I think I forgive a lot in Storm Warning since it was the first one I listened to and was unfamiliar with the format.
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Sep 3, 2014 16:22
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Re: State of Decay and it's high-tech-decayed-into-dark-age, I want to make a comparison with the Gormenghast series by Mervyn Peake. Set in the titular remote earldom the book describes a very stilted society where everything is run according to ancient tradition and it only takes the introduction of a single chaotic element - a kitchen boy called Steerpike, played very well by Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the BBC adaptation which you really should try and see - to completely destablise the entire society. The books sort of follow the life of Titus Groan, latest heir to the earldom, and him growing up in this chaos followed by, in the third book, him striking out on his own and finding out that Gormenghast is a unique backwater in an otherwise modern and industrialised world which is then also revealed to be awful for different reasons. There was a lot of this stuff going around when I grew up in the eighties (The Mysterious Cities of Gold, even The loving Gummi Bears managed to do this kind of story with maturity and style) but from the E-space Trilogy through to Logopolis and Castrovalva this era of Doctor Who really nails it. One thing it really brings is, as DoctorWhat says, hope. Gormenghast is very well written but the only agents of change in society are attempting to bring it down rather than raise it up. Learning being a weapon against tyranny isn't even subtext in State of Decay, it's explicitly stated.
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Sep 3, 2014 16:51
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So, State of Decay. What's this one then? In short: Doctor Who and the Vampires. This is the second story in the E-Space trilogy, slap bang half way through the final series of Tom Baker, which was also the first series of John Nathan-Turner (a big gay Doctor Who fan turned producer, like that'd ever work) replacing Williams and Christopher Bidmead replacing Adams as script editor. The story was written by Terrance Dicks and directed by Peter Moffatt (who went on to direct such things as The Five Doctors, The Two Doctors and The Twin Dilemma). (Looking up Terrance Dicks on the Tardispedia thing lead me to discover the existance of a Junior Doctor Who range of books. Unfortunately this isn't the Young Indiana Jones style thing I had hoped for but a rewriting of a couple of Doctor Who stories for younger audiences. For some reason the one that he chose to start with was The Brain of Morbius, which I find rather confusing. Anyway.) In many ways State of Decay is a throwback to the Hinchcliffe era of Doctor Who in that it's a fairly straight horror tale for the most part - in this case based on vampire stories like Dracula and Carmilla (for whom one of the Three Who Rule is named), or more directly things based on them ala Hammer Horror such as Vampire Circus (which also has Lalla Ward in it) - with some science fiction trappings. Romana and the Doctor land on a planet on which there's only one small village of uneducated peasants being ruled over by a group of three pale people who dislike sunlight and live in a big creepy tower who have control of bats and shockingly turn out to be vampires. There's a lot to like in this story but in my opinion the thing that really makes it work is that it introduces the science fiction elements early and hard. The peasants on the planet are descendents of the crew of a spaceship that got lost in E-space and landed on this planet. The vampires are the three commanding officers, still alive a thousand years later. The tower in which they live is the still working spaceship that they arrived on. Under normal circumstances these are twists that you could expect to be revealed in a very rushed part four, the previous three parts dropping hints but generally sticking within the traditional vampire myth. Not so here - right from the first scene with the peasants it's clear they have access to higher technology than the rest of their lifestyle would indicate, and that this technology is being hidden from the guards of the Three Who Rule who are deliberately keeping them stupid by banning education and science. That the population is descended from the spaceship's crew? Revealed halfway through episode one, at the same time saying that the officers and the vampires look very similar. I absolutely adore stories where "modern" society is built on the ruins of a barely understood hyper-technological past, and in State of Decay it's really given room to breathe. The audience is encouraged to look at things in the correct way on the first viewing. Instead of accepting the world building as simply that the early reveals make the watcher much more attuned to the line of thinking of why has society been set up like this, who benefits? We also get some wonderful lines out of the fall of the society - "Some of us could still read" is both depressing and efficient world building. Production Terrance Dicks originally wrote this to appear in Williams's first series under the title The Witch Lords, but that got pulled when they discovered that the BBC was making a (relatively) high budget adaptation of Dracula and replaced with the much more understated Dicks horror story The Horror of Fang Rock. A lot of failed Doctor Who stories were put on the back burner instead of abandoned and this one was brought back by Nathan-Turner as, unlike the others, it wasn't unproduced because it was shite. (Sidenote for fans of The Eight Doctors: the chapter in that that deals with the Fourth Doctor takes place during this story, and is called The Vampire Mutation, Dicks's preferred title which was abandoned in favour of the Bidmead suggested State of Decay) The main effect that this bringing back had on the story is that it fairly obviously has no place for Adric, who had stowed away at the end of the previous story. His entire contribution to episode one is to sneak out of the TARDIS and then try and fail to steal some bread. In general he makes very little contribution to the plot and is generally ignored by all and sundry. He does have quite an amusing conversation with K-9, but that's about it, and his characterisation is different from Full Circle where he was less of a self-absorbed nitwit - saying that joining the vampires is better than just being killed by them. As for the production itself we're lucky that it was made then and not a couple of years later. The enormously bright lighting that goes some way to ruining Warriors of the Deep is worlds away from State of Decay, which has to be one of the darkest TV programmes I've seen. The lighting is very low, all the clothing and set dressings are these dark browns and burgundies with the only bright colours the extremely pallid makeup of the Three Who Rule. The makeup in general is very good, with the scene where the vampires fade into dust a highlight, and arguably better "aging fast" makeup than in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - although as you don't see it animated it's easier to be more detailed. Moffatt is obviously trying to do something a bit different with the direction and most of the time it works very well. Having a superimposed image of a bat isn't exactly auteur level directing but for the normally straightforward Doctor Who it's a step into the modern. He is unfortunately occasionally let down by some of the tech - the special effects are themselves passable, but there's a few notable occasions where the focus is badly lost during zooming and it gives a couple of scenes a very amateurish feel. Tom Baker was ill during filming so his hair is permed rather than naturally curly. There's also a scene in episode 3 when someone opens a door into his face and he completely misses his cue so he's not having a good time of it. What doesn't work so well? The individual peasants (apart from the old bald one) have basically no characterisation and all exist to shout at the old bald one that they should go do something violent now. Adric, likewise, has no personality other than to exude approximately 75% of possible smarminess at any given situation. We need some Bob Holmes double acts to liven them up a bit. K9 got a new prop, but it's still rubbish. The bit where the rebel leader apologises to him is pretty embarrassing, although K9's line ("Your thanks are recorded") is read really well by Leeson. There's another splodge of random background-on-the-Time Lords here, talking about Rassillon destroying all but one of the vampires in a huge war with his magical new weapon: a spaceship with a big spike on the front. We get a reasonable couple of little moments with the Doctor, and Romana and K9 respectively, but there's no reason for this to be in here at all. Surprisingly little given that it's only two episodes after the complete disaster that is Meglos whose one redeeming feature was my Cactus Basiltar. Individual bits that I like A guy pretends to be a guard to try and sneak into the tower. This fails the second he meets a real guard. The Doctor sits down on the Lord's throne, immediately gets up and sits down on the Lady's throne instead and announces that it's much more comfortable. The Doctor surmises that the ship was from Earth because the computer started working after he thwacks it. The end of episode two with the giant heartbeat and the huge pipe of blood is really very creepy. Romana II had a very stilted, I'd almost describe it as autistic, way of talking and in straight science fiction stories it works really badly. Against the pseduo-Saxon backdrop of State of Decay it works a thousand times better than in something like Creature from the Pit. The two non-Orkon vampires are in it for the women and the money; when the great vampire is waking up one of them asks of the other "Why am I still afraid?" which is a nice little character moment. The old man who's researching the tech is great, although he seems to be very keen to get back to Earth given that he's never been there. The Doctor's attempts to explain scientists and foreigners to the villagers is amazing, and very similar to the bit from The Enemy of the World I mentioned last week. Final words Yeah, I like this one. Doctor Who Does Vampires seems to work very well when it happens. It's really dark and foreboding (literally in the case of being dark) in a way the programme would stop doing pretty shortly. Terrance Dicks had a huge positive influence on the programme and this is his last "proper" story (The Five Doctors is, for better or worse, a load of self-indulgencies piled higgledy piggledy together) and, like the Brain of Morbius and The Horror of Fang Rock he really nails the tone to the extent that when Moffatt was sent Bidmead's edited version of the story he demanded the original one back. The Doctor Who dynamic rankings website has it in 84th, which I think is about right when you take account of the fact that the list loves the revival and I don't. Maybe around 30-50th but not much higher than that. MrL_JaKiri fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Sep 3, 2014 |
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Sep 3, 2014 17:14
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State of Decay was really loving weird, but very cool. On another Gormenghast note, The Holy Terror was like if the Doctor just arrived in Prunesqualors living room one day and went about trying to discover who killed Nanny Slagg.
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Sep 3, 2014 17:25
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MrL_JaKiri posted:
I really love how often this sort of thing happened with Classic Who and how they just kind of rolled with it. It was often really obvious, with people falling unconscious at the beginning of stories or getting kidnapped and stowed away. It's often a few scribbled lines or just crossing out a name and touching up the dialogue a little. I like State of Decay the way it is, but it would have been interesting to see it with, say, Leela and a Tom Baker who was a bit healthier.
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Sep 3, 2014 17:36
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Huh I hardly remember any of that stuff. Which means that it is time for me to re-watch State of Decay.
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Sep 3, 2014 18:26
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It's really good and I just ordered the E-space DVDs to get the commentary
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Sep 3, 2014 18:29
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Also bring on another suggestion that I might ignore or I might not
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Sep 3, 2014 18:30
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MrL_JaKiri posted:It's really good and I just ordered the E-space DVDs to get the commentary I have the E-Space trilogy on DVD, but never got around to watching it, so it ended up on the bottom shelf of the DVD rack, hidden behind one of my fiancee's potted plants. Good enough reason to bring it out and watch now! Great review, MrL_Jakiri. I enjoyed the "behind the scenes" look and the "individual bits" section. MrL_JaKiri posted:Also bring on another suggestion that I might ignore or I might not The Visitation! Carnival of Monsters! Battlefield!
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Sep 3, 2014 18:34
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Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
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Sep 3, 2014 18:35
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Also bring on another suggestion that I might ignore or I might not The Time Meddler.
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Sep 3, 2014 18:42
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All of these are good suggestions so I'm going to start with The Visitation
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Sep 3, 2014 18:45
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Did you watch The Twin Dilemma yet?
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Sep 3, 2014 18:48
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Oh my god, I'd forgotten that the one with the Terileptils also has that wandering thespian guy. I've got to rewatch Classic Who at some point, maybe when I can stop being lazy and actually write a blog or something.
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Sep 3, 2014 18:50
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Potsticker posted:Did you watch The Twin Dilemma yet? Yes stop asking
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Sep 3, 2014 18:51
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Yes stop asking Did you dislike it that much? 
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Sep 3, 2014 18:53
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Potsticker posted:Did you dislike it that much? I'll get to it eventually but I've watched it relatively recently so I don't want to do it again right now
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Sep 3, 2014 18:58
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Good deal, I'll stop bugging you about it.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:00
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CobiWann posted:I have the E-Space trilogy on DVD, but never got around to watching it, so it ended up on the bottom shelf of the DVD rack, hidden behind one of my fiancee's potted plants. Good enough reason to bring it out and watch now! Are the commentaries good? Thanks to MrL_Jakiri I have something interesting of Four to watch and I was considering the Key To Time series on DVD but I'm up for any suggestion. I actually don't mind a less bubbly Fourth for a change. And why is it that I just noticed the terrible question marks on his collar after all this time?
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Sep 3, 2014 19:11
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ewe2 posted:I actually don't mind a less bubbly Fourth for a change. And why is it that I just noticed the terrible question marks on his collar after all this time? He only got those in the JNT Season. And they're great 
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Sep 3, 2014 19:13
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Plavski posted:The Doctor and Charley are performed wonderfully, no doubt about it, but it's so loving boring. It's full of waffle and padding... You're really not gonna like Zagreus then...
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Sep 3, 2014 19:24
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ewe2 posted:Are the commentaries good? They vary, but they tend to be very honest and not just a pile of luvvies.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:24
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ewe2 posted:Are the commentaries good? Thanks to MrL_Jakiri I have something interesting of Four to watch and I was considering the Key To Time series on DVD but I'm up for any suggestion. Key to Time is pretty great. It has a lot of Douglas Adams's influence, it sort of has a continuous story, Tom Baker's obvious crush on Mary Tamm is kind of hilarious. It does have moments that sort of make you feel like you're watching a Monty Python sketch about Doctor Who, particularly in the first serial, but it's loads of fun.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:33
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Tim Burns Effect posted:You're really not gonna like Zagreus then... Possibly... liking Chimes of Midnight though.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:47
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Further evidence that Tom Baker is Boris Johnson in a brown curly wig.
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Sep 3, 2014 20:17
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Myrddin_Emrys posted:Further evidence that Tom Baker is Boris Johnson in a brown curly wig. Wow, that's uncalled for. Someone who hates Tom Baker, now I've seen everything.
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Sep 3, 2014 20:42
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MrL_JaKiri posted:They vary, but they tend to be very honest and not just a pile of luvvies. I haven't listened to many commentaries (I enjoy the info text, mainly) but my favourite is probably the one McGann and McCoy did for the special edition release of the movie. There's this great bit where Eric Roberts comes out in Time Lord robes, does the, "I always... dreeeeeessssss for the occasion!" line, and McGann groans and says something like, "Do you think those stairs are gonna light up when he steps on them?"
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Sep 3, 2014 21:18
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In The Invasion Wendy Padbury (who spends the story wearing a shiny catsuit) is told she looks about ten; two episodes further on one of the minor actors comes into the commentary and announces how attractive Zoe is in this story.
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Sep 3, 2014 21:26
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Best commentary moment will always be Peter Davison on Resurrection of the Daleks, drawing attention to certain qualities of Mark Strickson's acting, although Colin, Nicola and Paul Darrow vs Timelash has plenty of great moments (I'm particularly fond of the "no advertising on the BBC!" riff).
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Sep 3, 2014 22:37
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State of Decay was one of my favorites as a kid and I think it still holds up pretty well, even with the fairly crummy special effects. As a kid I remember being struck by the bit where the Doctor is able to get the equipment running to see what is beneath the castle, and it brings up an image of the Great Vampire. Something about Baker's quietly disgusted reaction hit me hard, I remember feeling that if even the Doctor is revolted by what he is seeing, then that thing must be REALLY wrong. It didn't have quite the same impact on me as an adult, but I'll always remember that moment.ewe2 posted:Are the commentaries good? Thanks to MrL_Jakiri I have something interesting of Four to watch and I was considering the Key To Time series on DVD but I'm up for any suggestion. The DVD commentaries are generally very good, apart from some of the early releases (most of which have had Special Edition re-releases since then). You get a good range of actors, crew and the odd "expert" guest or moderator and they tell pretty fun stories (in the case of Brain of Morbius they frequently shut each other up so they can enjoy Philip Madoc's delivery of a particular line  )The commentary track for State of Decay is pretty good, I think this is the one where Terrance Dicks tells the story about how Tom and Lalla had a big argument and then made-up half way through shooting, and if you watch particular scenes you can tell when they were shot based on whether Tom will look at her during dialogue or not.
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Sep 3, 2014 23:18
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