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Well if we're Confessing Controversial Doctor Who Opinons, here's my greatest apostasy: The 4th Doctor is one of my least favorite Doctors How can it be that I, an American who got into the show in the 80s would feel that way? Well it's simple. The first episodes I ever saw were Pertwees on PBS, when I was like 8 or so. When I was a few years older, I caught Old Sixie in Timelash of all things, and got hooked. It just so happened that on all the PBS stations I could see, over a few years, a move to another state, and visit's for summers at my grandmother's, the runs of Doctor Who rarely hit 4. I saw the back half of 6's run, McCoy's on their first US airings, and cycling back I got through 1, 2, and 3. I caught a lot of 5 on another station and nearly got back to Timelash. But I never saw a lot of 4, and what I did was kinda meh, like The Key To Time. With the Audios I gained a great appreciation for 8, and I always liked 10 and 11. But 9, with his short run, and 4, who's episodes I've seen the least of, don't do it for me. This despite the fact that Tom Baker is a treasure and larger than life and is almost the Platonic Form of The Doctor, both on screen and IRL. That said, after much heming and hawing I started in on the 4/Leela audios and I love them, and 4 is in my regular rotation now with the other Doctors.
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Aug 2, 2015 05:21
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I'm also not particularly fussed about the Fourth Doctor. Or, if I'm honest, the Third. Troughton, C.Bakes, McCoy, and McGann, they are my classic series jam. Edit - Nine is amazing, though, and still juuust about my favourite new series Doctor, followed infinitesimally closely by Smith, then the other two rather distantly from that. Barry Foster fucked around with this message at 08:51 on Aug 2, 2015 |
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Aug 2, 2015 08:49
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I have seen a rather large chunk of classic Who, but I mostly stick to the stuff that's highly rated. Among those serials, I think, Tom Baker doesn't stand out too much. In a great story he's as good as any of the other actors to play the Doctor. The Tom Baker era was one of the writing high points of the series; I'd bet Davison would be a whole lot more well-regarded if he'd gotten a couple of those scripts. But I think where Baker shines is in his ability to spin poo poo into gold. Give him a guy in a lovely monster costume and he makes it fun. Give him terrible dialogue and he'll compensate with mugging for the camera. I really do think it's the way that he makes bad stuff, if not good, at least passable, that makes him the favorite of a lot of people. The "have I the right" speech from Genesis of the Daleks doesn't really have anything Baker-specific about it; I'd bet Pertwee or McCoy would do just as good a job with it. But when you have a cardboard monster falling apart while you're shooting, you want Tom Baker.
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Aug 2, 2015 14:32
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I just re-watched "Vincent and the Doctor" and am more sure then i was before that it will go down as an all time classic. Despite the wanky "vincent in the gallery" bit and it being the best example of "Why did we need an alien"? I miss matt smith 
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Aug 2, 2015 15:25
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I was very happy to see smith leave tbh
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Aug 2, 2015 16:48
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What I just recently noticed about the Fourth Doctor is that there's an element of Groucho Marx to him. He has this tendency to come into a situation and completely blow it up and deflate the people who are worried about irrelevant things. The previous Doctors did that in sort of a subtle way, the Fourth just strides right in and mocks everyone.
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Aug 2, 2015 18:33
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Maxwell Lord posted:What I just recently noticed about the Fourth Doctor is that there's an element of Groucho Marx to him. He has this tendency to come into a situation and completely blow it up and deflate the people who are worried about irrelevant things. The previous Doctors did that in sort of a subtle way, the Fourth just strides right in and mocks everyone. From "Underworld" (a story about a space ship that's been trapped in the center of a planet for thousands of years) The Doctor strolls in Man (shocked): How did you get in here?!? The Doctor (pointing over his shoulder): Through the door.
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Aug 2, 2015 20:47
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Maxwell Lord posted:What I just recently noticed about the Fourth Doctor is that there's an element of Groucho Marx to him. He has this tendency to come into a situation and completely blow it up and deflate the people who are worried about irrelevant things. The previous Doctors did that in sort of a subtle way, the Fourth just strides right in and mocks everyone. I can see this, especially with The Ark in Space how the Doctor changes it from "opening the pods" to "getting rid of the Wyrrn" in a few short minutes.
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Aug 2, 2015 20:49
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Maxwell Lord posted:What I just recently noticed about the Fourth Doctor is that there's an element of Groucho Marx to him. He has this tendency to come into a situation and completely blow it up and deflate the people who are worried about irrelevant things. The previous Doctors did that in sort of a subtle way, the Fourth just strides right in and mocks everyone. It's quoted a lot, but there's that great scene in City of Death where the Count's henchman physically tosses the Doctor into the room, the Doctor pops up and declares with great glee to the Count,"What a wonderful butler, he's so violent!"
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Aug 2, 2015 22:27
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I watched it years ago but the main thing I remember from City Of Death is a scene where a sinister man is following them and the Doctor suddenly yelling out something to the effect of "that sinister man is following us!" in an excited voice.
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Aug 2, 2015 22:42
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Broton :You admire our technology, human? The Doctor: Well, I'm not human; and I've seen better. 
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Aug 3, 2015 01:00
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On the controversial opinions topic: neither Pertwee or McCoy has ever really done it for me.
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Aug 3, 2015 01:08
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I'm working my way through the Third Doctor stuff now, I'm currently up to Colony in Space. The pacing has gotten better over the last couple serials, does this hold up till the Fourth years, and how's his for pacing? Does it ever get as bad as the Ambassadors twaaang of Death because as much as I liked it the pacing was goddamn diabolical
Autisanal Cheese fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 09:49
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Pacing issues were a continuous presence throughout the 3rd Doctor's era, it's one of the few negatives I think Pertwee's run has. When Tom Baker came in, the new showrunners (for want of a better term) made a conscious decision to cut down the average episode number from 6 to 4, and things improved immensely because of it.
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Aug 3, 2015 10:13
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There are five (finished) 6-parters in Baker's run, and they're either classics or flabby messes, with no middle ground. E: I really can't see how Shada could have sustained a 6-part story either.
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Aug 3, 2015 10:36
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Doctor Spaceman posted:There are five (finished) 6-parters in Baker's run, and they're either classics or flabby messes, with no middle ground. There's no way, had it been finished it would definitely have continued the tradition of season-ending flabby messes they had going. It's honestly for the best they never really went back to the six-parters after Tom. As much as they were a fixture of the Pertwee era and worked perfectly well for Hartnell and Troughton, I can't imagine any of the Davison stories holding up for six parts, for example (and from Season 23 onwards a six-parter would've taken up almost half the season, so making one wouldn't really be possible). I guess they sort of tried that with The Two Doctors and its three longer episodes, but the extended runtime didn't do that one any favours, either. EDIT: vvv I take everything back, give me this instead Forktoss fucked around with this message at 11:46 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 11:22
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Curse of Fenric as a six-parter. 
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Aug 3, 2015 11:43
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Famously, Holmes would try and "dog leg" the 6 parters they couldn't avoid doing, e.g. in the Seeds of Doom, the first two episodes are a basically self-contained story in the Antarctic, with the remaining four episodes set on Harrison Chase's country estate, which keeps the viewer's interest up. And as has been discussed recently, The Ark in Space and The Sontaran Experiment are technically one six part story with the location/studio production time split equally between two different scripts. It's an elegant solution to a tricky budget problem, the tradeoff being that 6 parters are boring, but cheaper than doing two smaller stories instead. I do think Shada might have had a chance at being a decent 6 parter, if only because Tom Baker delivering Douglas Adams dialogue lends itself to a fun time more than, say, sitting through the latter episodes of The Invasion of Time. Then again, it's a low bar.
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Aug 3, 2015 11:56
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Inferno was SEVEN episodes, and as much as it’s one of Pertwee’s best stories there is a lot of filler and “escape/capture/escape” moments. Even the six-episode Genesis of the Daleks, which had very little in the way of filler, had me glancing at the clock a time or two. Hinchcliffe mentioned that they wanted to save the six-episode format for “season finales” and I think that held true for most of Four’s run. Maybe I’m just conditioned as an American TV viewer, but personally I feel the 44-minute format works best for the show (same for the audios, with Paul “I’m incredibly busy reading scripts” McGann and an older Tom Baker) because there’s seemingly little filler, but still enough time to fit in a solid story (and the BBC seems to be more flexible with its start/end/run times than American television at least!). If it’s a good episode it’s a utter joy to go “wow, where the time go?” And if it’s a bad episode, you can go “eh, didn’t take up too much time.” Unless…guys, what if the 44-minute format is part of a nefarious Tory plot to force the BBC to give us LESS overall Doctor Who in our lives? 
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Aug 3, 2015 12:00
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CobiWann posted:personally I feel the 44-minute format works best for the show Have you seen much of season 22 yet?
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Aug 3, 2015 12:03
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I'd really like to watch old episodes re-edited to modern pacing and editing styles, but not to 44 minutes - just to whatever's natural for the older stories as-is to keep things rolling and to cut out those annoying bits where they'd spend 20 minutes running up a hill or recap things at the start of every week. I've seen a few done to 45 minutes and it's been an interesting experiment, but when you're working with a script not designed for it I think it's better to try out to whatever it turns out to be natural at.
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Aug 3, 2015 12:21
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MikeJF posted:I'd really like to watch old episodes re-edited to modern pacing and editing styles, but not to 44 minutes - just to whatever's natural for the older stories as-is to keep things rolling and to cut out those annoying bits where they'd spend 20 minutes running up a hill or recap things at the start of every week. I've seen a few done to 45 minutes and it's been an interesting experiment, but when you're working with a script not designed for it I think it's better to try out to whatever it turns out to be natural at. If you did that you'd have to cut out all those bits in Paradise Towers where a cleaner bot drivers around to the strains of dramatic Keff McCulloch synth orchestra stabs.
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Aug 3, 2015 12:27
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Fil5000 posted:If you did that you'd have to cut out all those bits in Paradise Towers where a cleaner bot drivers around to the strains of dramatic Keff McCulloch synth orchestra stabs. I would like to see New Who stories extended into four-parters by inserting additional Keff McCulloch garbage robot sequences between every scene.
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Aug 3, 2015 12:31
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Fil5000 posted:If you did that you'd have to cut out all those bits in Paradise Towers where a cleaner bot drivers around to the strains of dramatic Keff McCulloch synth orchestra stabs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFRo7o4FJqE
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Aug 3, 2015 12:33
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pinacotheca posted:Have you seen much of season 22 yet? Only Attack of the Cybermen. I meant 44 minutes for the whole story per the new series, not 44 minutes per episode. Why did they go from 25-30 minutes to 44-45 minutes anyway? Programming gaps? Budget cuts?
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Aug 3, 2015 12:43
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Forktoss posted:I would like to see New Who stories extended into four-parters by inserting additional Keff McCulloch garbage robot sequences between every scene. I'm currently crying laughing picturing this in any of the angel episodes, especially the bits where it cuts back and forth and the angel has got closer.
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Aug 3, 2015 12:44
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CobiWann posted:Why did they go from 25-30 minutes to 44-45 minutes anyway? Programming gaps? Budget cuts? To modernise the format, apparently. The programme had a lot of problems at that time, for sure, but frankly the last "improvement" it needed was to lose two cliffhangers out of every story, unless they were going to be replaced with appropriately exciting and dramatic material. Which they weren't.
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Aug 3, 2015 12:52
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I just spotted this on the Big Finish website: https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/doctor-who-lily-arwell-joins-the-churchill-yearsquote:But with the cast and storylines for these titles now revealed, could there any more New Series announcements in the pipeline?
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Aug 3, 2015 13:27
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cargohills posted:I just spotted this on the Big Finish website: https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/doctor-who-lily-arwell-joins-the-churchill-years My money's on Hitler.
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Aug 3, 2015 13:36
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cargohills posted:I just spotted this on the Big Finish website: https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/doctor-who-lily-arwell-joins-the-churchill-years I mean I trust Big Finish and everything, but "Eleventh Doctor, Winston Churchill and young Kazran Sardick go to ancient Britain, meet Julius Caesar and fight against a Dalek" sounds like some sort of fan fiction Mad Libs
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Aug 3, 2015 13:38
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cargohills posted:I just spotted this on the Big Finish website: https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/doctor-who-lily-arwell-joins-the-churchill-years Oh. Well, they worked wonders with Mel... Big Finish posted:‘There might be one more significant recurring character from 21st Century Doctor Who that is on the brink of announcement… Watch this space over the coming days!’" Forktoss posted:I mean I trust Big Finish and everything, but "Eleventh Doctor, Winston Churchill and young Kazran Sardick go to ancient Britain, meet Julius Caesar and fight against a Dalek" sounds like some sort of fan fiction Mad Libs
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Aug 3, 2015 13:56
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It's Rory. It's the only one that makes any sense that hasn't already been done. Well, Vastra and co would also make sense, but that's a trio, not an individual character. Plus Darvill's done stuff for them before.
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Aug 3, 2015 15:26
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Gaz-L posted:It's Rory. It's the only one that makes any sense that hasn't already been done. Well, Vastra and co would also make sense, but that's a trio, not an individual character. Plus Darvill's done stuff for them before. Oh man, what if it's Rory's dad?
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Aug 3, 2015 15:29
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pinacotheca posted:To modernise the format, apparently. The programme had a lot of problems at that time, for sure, but frankly the last "improvement" it needed was to lose two cliffhangers out of every story, unless they were going to be replaced with appropriately exciting and dramatic material. Which they weren't. They struggled with the format, but I think it was inevitable. When they were forced back into 25-minute episodes that was basically a sign that they were doomed- drama just wasn't being done like that anymore.
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Aug 3, 2015 15:49
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Yeah, that's true. One of the big problems of the show in the mid-80s was that it was more or less being made the same way as it was twenty years beforehand. While I have a huge amount of nostalgia for 80s Who, I think they got it half-right with the cancellation/hiatus after season 22, insofar as something desperately needed to change. But what they really needed to do was install a new production team and give the show a realistic 1980s sci-fi TV budget (as opposed to the "1963 budget adjusted for inflation" which it actually had), not just bump up each episode to the length of a Juliet Bravo, or whatever.
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Aug 3, 2015 16:02
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Gaz-L posted:It's Rory. It's the only one that makes any sense that hasn't already been done. Well, Vastra and co would also make sense, but that's a trio, not an individual character. Plus Darvill's done stuff for them before. gently caress I hope they can get permission to do Last Centurion World stuff.
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Aug 3, 2015 16:06
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pinacotheca posted:Yeah, that's true. One of the big problems of the show in the mid-80s was that it was more or less being made the same way as it was twenty years beforehand. While I have a huge amount of nostalgia for 80s Who, I think they got it half-right with the cancellation/hiatus after season 22, insofar as something desperately needed to change. But what they really needed to do was install a new production team and give the show a realistic 1980s sci-fi TV budget (as opposed to the "1963 budget adjusted for inflation" which it actually had), not just bump up each episode to the length of a Juliet Bravo, or whatever. Having serials of two or three parts with 45-minute episodes is such a weird format, as well. It just feels like a poorly thought-out compromise between the old serial structure and the more common drama format, and I certainly can't think of another show that did the same (are there any?). I wonder if mid-80s Who had been a bit more successful if they had just gone all-in in Season 22/23 and done 13 one-off episodes a season instead of relying on the more and more obsolete serial structure.
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Aug 3, 2015 16:24
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It's the Doctor, he's been in quite a few new series episodes
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Aug 3, 2015 16:25
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I bet it'll be Jenny. I mean, I guess she's not recurring but she did make an impression and her exit in the show sets her up better than any other character there is for BF audios.
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Aug 3, 2015 16:38
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| # ? May 20, 2024 16:51 |
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Barry Foster posted:It's the Doctor, he's been in quite a few new series episodes They'll get around BBC licensing problems by featuring The Doctor As Written By Peter Capaldi, Age 9. Prepare for the Chumbley Empire box set. 
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Aug 3, 2015 16:49
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