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Toxxupation posted:*EVERY SINGLE POST ON THIS PAGE FROM THIS POST FORWARD MUST ALSO CONTAIN A DISTINCT REASON WHY THE DALEKS TOTALLY RULE THE CYBERMENS STUPID FUCKIN, KNOCK OFF OF A lovely DALEK, BORING STOMPY FACES* Daleks rule because they're the only Doctor Who villain to get a televised story of their own, without the Doctor or any companions in it. I always had problems with the Cybermen back when I was watching the old series. Back then there were only about three surviving Cybermen stories and I didn't like any of them. The thing is that Cybermen never seemed to live up to their premise. The Daleks got to go around being homocidal tanks so even in bad Dalek stories (and there are a lot of them) you still got the amusement of watching war machines throw temper tantrums. I'm in the middle of rewatching the old series and the Cybermen were the primary antagonists in Troughton's era. Even there they seem to play off other characters better than actually being interesting themselves. I remember getting to the cliffhanger for Army of Ghosts and going, "Yes! There's totally going to be some Dalek/Cybermen smack-talk next episode!" And there was. And it was glorious. 30.5 Days posted:Yessss! Christmas came! gently caress cybermen forever. I thought they weren't doing Torchwood. 
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Sep 7, 2014 14:18
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mind the walrus posted:Has there ever been as "quick" a turnaround on bit actors getting into major Who roles? I mean yeah we have Karen Gillian and Peter Capaldi and of course Colin Baker, but seriously Agyeman goes from one part to another literally from episode to episode. Sure there was a season break between but I still think that has to be a record. Peter Purves played a "comical" American bystander in episode 3 of The Chase and was introduced as a new character that would become a companion in episode 6. So one month would be the record. As for season three, may god have mercy on your souls.
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Sep 11, 2014 15:18
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Regy Rusty posted:drat what even happens in this episode? I barely remember it. Your brain repressed it to protect you. It might not have anything quite as singularly bad as the blowjob cinderblock, but it is more continuously, amazingly awful.
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Sep 14, 2014 02:15
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Burkion posted:Claws of Axos' baddies come to mind. [as looking better than some monsters]  
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Sep 15, 2014 17:07
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Bicyclops posted:Someone for the love of everything replace his avatar with the Face of Boe. You're just asking for something like this: 
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Sep 16, 2014 15:44
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Jurgan posted:I thought the whole thing was pretty good- I like that the Doctor was self-centered at first and Ian and Barbara had to force him to help. I also like that they did a story about cavemen who were smart and didn't use the broken English normally would. The Aztecs was a lot of fun, too, especially the hammy villain, who was basically the villain from Manos: The Hands of Fate. On the other hand, I started watching "The Daleks," and it's pretty slow. I'll finish it eventually, but I can't imagine there's enough story to be worth seven whole episodes. Unless you're enjoying a story, give up and walk away. I mean, if you're a big fan you might want to come back to it later, but if you're just going, "I want to see what this old Doctor Who stuff was like," then don't subject yourself to the disagreeable stories. The Daleks in particular gets pretty clunky in the middle episodes. If you want to watch the old series and see a Dalek episode then the obvious recommendation is Genesis of the Daleks from the Tom Baker era. It's not without it's problems, but it's remembered as essentially the high point of the entire 26 year run for a reason.
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Sep 17, 2014 02:46
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BSam posted:I've been watching through a few older ones, currently on Genesis of the Daleks, and before this I watched The War Games which while being ten episodes long, almost didn't seem too long. The thing about The War Games is that when I was a kid and watching the show in the dead of night on PBS reruns, I started watching from very early in show's run. And as every fan of the classic show laments, there's a lot of missing episodes. Even more back then. So for a few months I had been watching Hartnell and had gotten used to the weird mad scientist alien who fought robots and monsters. Every other episode the companions would mysteriously change for reasons I didn't understand (I at least got to see Susan, Ian, and Barbara's departures), but I got used to that. Then one week, there was this different guy that they were calling "the Doctor" and I had no clue why they had changed the show. Soon enough (since there were only four surviving Troughton stories at that point), they got to The War Games and the last hour of it was mind blowing. All of the concepts in it are familiar to viewers of the show now, and I was probably the only kid since 1970 to get the full impact of the story. It was overwhelming to suddenly learn where the Doctor came from, why he traveled, and that he could change his face. And then next week the show completely changed. Going back to The War Games now, yeah, it's too long by a lot. But it was a hell of a ride to watch it as a kid.
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Sep 17, 2014 04:21
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Jsor posted:Aren't there usually people in the Dalek suits? You're not spoiling anything to say that in terms of production, usually there's operators inside the Dalek outfits. In the old show, there were a few times that a normal person climbed inside a Dalek. The episode Dalek, however, and most other appearances make it clear that person should not able to fit inside them. (Inconsistency? In Doctor Who? Easily explained by the nature of television production? Never! Let me break out this four hundred page novel that explains everything.)
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Sep 17, 2014 14:27
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Jurgan posted:I don't know what this is, but it makes me laugh every time. I'd recommend watching The Web Planet, but it has been used in "enhanced interrogation techniques". It's probably the most bonkers of any Hartnell story, except one episode which was a one off Christmas special and that one has been definitely destroyed. I loved that they apparently forgot to set the brakes on the TARDIS console: 
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Sep 17, 2014 16:01
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Bicyclops posted:I still think The Chase is more bonkers. It's relevant to our discussion here because one segment of it takes place one of the few approved American Doctor Who locations, New York (specifically, the Statue of Liberty, hohoho), and has someone who will later play a companion doing an absolutely terrible American accent and playing some kind of a weird cowboy tourist. Actually, in The Chase they landed on the Empire State Building, not the Statue of Liberty. So we're back to this story after all. The Chase is weird since it was clearly intended to be a comedic script at least for the middle episodes, but the comedy falls flat. As opposed to The Web Planet which was completely serious and as a result completely insane: 
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Sep 17, 2014 17:48
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Clearly there were some people designing the monsters who had some issues.
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Sep 20, 2014 03:31
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Craptacular! posted:Isn't sitting on a treasure trove of Second Doctor episodes or whatever highly illegal? Is it just that the state's broadcaster doesn't care? No, it's not illegal. The BBC destroyed their copies of the episodes and they sold or disposed of the rest through various methods. If someone had found a giant crate of BBC film negatives in their attic, they're not legally obligated to give them back. They bought/were given those copies fair and square so all the BBC can do is ask nicely for the footage to be returned. Even the people who got episodes because their buddies grabbed the film cans on their way to the incinerator and handed them over aren't necessarily doing anything illegal, though the laws might be different in the UK than they are here. The BBC decided they were trash. And it's been forty years so there's a statute of limitations thing as well. Now morally, the idea of hoarding lost art is abhorrent. ("Art, sure. But what about Doctor Who?  ") It's just not illegal.FWIW, I strongly doubt there's anyone hoarding 60's Doctor Who episodes. Except Mugabe who sits back once a week to watch his privately remastered Power of the Daleks and laughs.
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Sep 20, 2014 19:18
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I really can't say much about the Saxon stuff at this point beyond that you're right that it isn't handled very well in this episode. I think letting it just be background color would have been better since it's so intrusive and awkward here.
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Sep 21, 2014 05:58
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Trin, poster of the Doctor Who thread proper, did a runthrough of the episode with a stopwatch and found it's dead on except for one bit where it skips 30 seconds or so. Given that it's the episode's gimmick, I'd assume that the 30 second skip was due to a scene being cut thanks to being unable to complete the effects or something like that.
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Sep 21, 2014 17:35
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DoctorWhat posted:Fandom still hasn't recovered from the scars of Tom Baker refusing to appear in The Five Doctors (or almost any other Who stuff until late 2011). I don't know what you're talking about. He's right there in the middle. 
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Sep 21, 2014 20:59
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MrL_JaKiri posted:And then only 600 odd to go for the original run, shouldn't take you too long at current rates although I'm not looking forward to the review of the Ice Warriors episode 2. It's a toxx, not a suicide attempt.
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Sep 23, 2014 18:45
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Toxxupation posted:I'll finally understand what makes the internet so obsessed with this goddamn thing for literally almost a decade The only problem with it is that it's one of those things that has so saturated nerd culture that you're not going to get the full impact. But that was a hell of a preview.
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Sep 25, 2014 00:51
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Tempo 119 posted:Is Blink really the omnipresent phenomenon you're all making it out to be? I don't think I've ever heard anyone refer to it since it aired, unless they were asked like "what's a good Doctor Who episode" or something. In the sense that some people can't stop referencing it, pointing it out, talking about it, and so on. I mean, if you're a normal human being who'd never see Doctor Who you'd probably never encounter it, but nerds on the Internet mean that pretty much anyone who is going to sit down and watch it has at least some knowledge of it.
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Sep 25, 2014 02:03
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Bicyclops posted:It really depends on who's writing the episode or serial, classic or revival. Nine was big on guns, if you remember. Nonviolence is usually one of the Doctor's defining features, Ten's drowning adventures and Three vaporizing an Ogron notwithstanding. In rewatching the old series, I don't find that's really true at all. I mean, he'll try for non-violent solutions, but all of the Doctors get cheerfully violent once that has failed (and sometimes even before that). Even genocide if he's really annoyed. Which brings us neatly back to Family of Blood.
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Sep 25, 2014 04:03
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DoctorWhat posted:Well, he HAS become Human before... when he was previously chased by a sociopqthic Family of bodysnatchers and had to hide out as a teacher named John Smith and fall in love with Joan Redfern in story written by Paul Cornell. What do you mean before? He's half-human, after all. On his mother's side.
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Sep 25, 2014 06:40
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mind the walrus posted:Looms have shown up in this thread before. Much like Doctor Who canon itself they're at the heart of things, really. I can only imagine what Toxxupation makes of the references to the absurd pieces of Doctor Who lore that pepper the conversation (well, more absurd than Doctor Who usually is). Not that he should try to understand it, that way lies madness. There is knowledge that once you understand it, poisons you forever. You will never be clean, never be free, it will always lurk in the shadowed corners of your mind. When you are in your bed at night, drifting on the edge of sleep, you'll think of it. Alternatively, looms is the goatse.cx of Doctor Who.
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Sep 25, 2014 19:59
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Spatula City posted:worse than the Slitheen, Lumic, or Gangster Penis Head Dalek? Or worse than freezing space ceiling anus, the Olympics, or Doctor Who fans?
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Sep 26, 2014 19:04
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Toxxupation posted:and the fact that the very first scene of the episode begins with The Doctor urging Sally to duck because an Angel was going to throw a boulder at her doesn't make really, any loving sense whatsoever considering the Angels' modus operandi and method of killing people. That's a common complaint about the episode, but it assumes that an angel was the one that threw the rock. It's an old, boarded up house. I always assumed that it was just some rear end in a top hat kid who threw the rock and then got sucked back to fight in the Great War for his trouble.
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Sep 27, 2014 06:22
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MrAristocrates posted:Now the doors close and gas fills the room. No problem. At least one of us has to have a sonic screwdriver.
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Sep 27, 2014 15:13
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I think you've got your finger on the divide between Davies and Moffat, but the catch there is that nine times out of ten Davies fails at what he sets out to do while the majority of the time so far Moffat succeeds in telling a good story. Davies is big gestures, heavy handedness, ham fisted, and sometimes succeeds despite himself. As for the Master, I think I need to save most of my comments for the next review, but the Master was notable for his absence from the new series through this point. Every fan knew as soon as the show started up that the Daleks would be back ASAP, that the Cybermen would be arriving before long, and that the Master had to make a big return. At this point it felt long overdue. They definitely needed to build up to him a bit more, though, to let people not in on the old stories to follow it.
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Sep 29, 2014 04:39
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One thing to mention is that the Master is directly responsible for two regenerations, and possibly a third if you want to count it. He made Tom Baker fall from the top of There was an entire 26 episode season where the villain in every story was the Master. He was showing up as the villain once or twice a season in the 80's. He was a really big deal in the old series. Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Sep 29, 2014 |
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Sep 29, 2014 04:46
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Soothing Vapors posted:This is the first thing I've ever read that makes me want to watch old-Who. Terror of the Autons, the first story with the Master officially in it and the start of that season, is one of the better old Who stories and is pretty lively. I mean, if you wanted crazy Master stories I'd recommend The Sea Devils since it's everything in the Pertwee era cranked up to 11, but it's got the classic old Doctor Who problem of going on a bit too long.
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Sep 29, 2014 14:48
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Oh, there's one thing that hasn't been brought up yet (for good reason): this episode is a crossover. There has been an spin-off series starring the undying Captain Jack having X-Files style adventures around Cardiff that when this aired had one complete season. They have a secret base below that plaza where the episode starts. Of course the reason no one wants to bring it up is Torchwood is awful. As bad as Doctor Who can get, Torchwood tops it. And now to give everyone who watched Torchwood traumatic flashbacks: 
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Sep 29, 2014 15:51
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Children of Earth is solid, partly thanks to the presence of one Peter Capaldi. They should really try and bring him back. Children of Earth is the "How the gently caress did they pull this gem out of all that poo poo?" moment. Hell, even Miracle Day isn't horrible, though it's not good either. But those two proper seasons they did... ugh. Doctor Spaceman posted:gently caress you. I'd call it the Torchwood equivalent of the concrete blowjob, but it seems like every other episode of Torchwood had a concrete blowjob.
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Sep 29, 2014 15:55
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I love how playful the show got with the Master. It didn't necessarily hit every time, but there were a lot of great moments.
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Sep 30, 2014 01:58
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Oxxidation posted:the relationship between the Master and the Doctor, during these episodes, is, in my opinion, too gay. I was going to bring this up if no one did. Well, not "too gay", but "the Master is totally gay for the Doctor and always has been". It's been subtext almost from the beginning and becomes just about crossed to literal text by the time you reach the end of the original series. Now, it can come back to RTD being really heavy handed, but the interactions in this episode aren't out of line for the history of the show. So, on the Saxon thing. I mentioned before that by season three the Master was notably absent from the show. Everyone with even a bit of knowledge about the old series was going, "So where's the Master?" The moment it became clear that Saxon was a running thread for the season (which was mostly by the end of episode one), we had all caught on that he was the Master and were waiting for the reveal. Which actually made the reveal in Utopia interesting because it came an episode early and with the wrong character.
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Sep 30, 2014 04:24
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Wheezle posted:I always loved how at the time of airing people made in-universe excuses for the fact RTD doesn't know what the term "President-elect" means. Fans making convoluted excuses for a simple error in production or script? I've never heard of such a thing!
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Sep 30, 2014 15:32
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DoctorWhat posted:I think RTD at one point stated publicly that Saxon's rise to political power and the "Vote Saxon" posters were a blatant bit of narrative conceit and artistic liscence - after all, he IS FROM the UK, and he knows how the political system ACTUALLY WORKS perfectly well. He just simplified it because A: it doesn't really matter and B: to make it more accessible to international audiences with more US-y electoral systems. Personally, I'm dubious that RTD knows anything about any kind of politics beyond superficial soundbites.
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Sep 30, 2014 18:03
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Whew boy did I hate Super Saiyan Jesus Doctor. And I still do. I'd call it an incredibly lazy way out of the corner they were painted into except it's absurdly audacious to even try to use that as a resolution.Toxxupation posted:Random Thoughts: Jack being the Face of Boe was a great idea, but the speech that he had to reveal it was painfully contrived. It was like RTD went, "Oh hey, I don't know of Barrowman is going to be available for any future episodes so I need to resolve this within ten seconds." Anyhoo, congratulations on surviving season three! You have seen the dizzying heights and the abominable lows, sometimes in the same episode! There was some massive whiplash going on there. Speaking of which, this is where the short Timecrash fits in.
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Oct 2, 2014 04:42
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Pyroi posted:Yeah, and also, The Master is also a Time Lord and could likely figure out a way from Mirror-Tartarus Scarecrow Chain Pit Land. It would probably be safer to lock him up in the TARDIS than risk him being let loose upon the universe and the Doctor has no idea where or when he is. The Master has escaped from being burned alive by an erupting volcano and from being stranded on a planet that will explode in seconds. Frankly, all of the options mean that he's going to get out sooner rather than later. Which actually brings us to a point raised in the episode that hasn't been mentioned yet. It's a callback to the old show and isn't explained, but it's also a major part of the characterization of the Master in these episodes. See, originally the Master was played by Roger Delgado as a kind of scifi Bond villain. He was loads of fun and over-the-top and hammy and then he died in a car accident. So the show put the character away for about six years and when he returned it was a really big deal; one of the foundational cornerstones for backstory of the Doctor Who universe. The Master now looked like a skeletal burn victim and was trying to discover how to live forever. His attempts to permanently cheat death became the focus of the next few stories he was involved in and returned as a motivation in several more stories. Which makes this a really round about way to say, "That's what the Doctor was going on about when he was trying to talk the Master down after the Doctor did the Jesus thing."
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Oct 2, 2014 17:28
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Toxxupation posted:
That's not how I'd describe it, though the Doctors seemed to be getting younger every time. If you asked me which Doctor in the old series had "a sense of childlike enthusiasm and wonder", I'd say Tom Baker. I also wouldn't call Troughton or Pertwee "old fogies" though they were clearly well into middle age as characters. Troughton was defined for me by how he would act timid and then suddenly turn on a dime and the villains were screwed; he was also the first comedic Doctor. Pertwee was the man of action and stand-offish in his interactions. Honestly, I don't see a lot of Davison in Tennant myself, but that's because I feel like Davison's time as the Doctor was a period of blandness. He wore celery on his jacket and he was about as interesting as it. Which doesn't reflect on Davison himself, of course. The situation with Doctor Who production was the real problem at the time; the people behind the scenes with talent who were still around were long in the tooth and had run through their best ideas and the people in control were... well, awful. What it comes down to for me is I can't think of any really distinctive features of Davison's Doctor. The glasses thing? I don't remember him doing it at all. Same thing for speech mannerisms. He changed from script to script, but always riding in the middle. It's one thing to step down from the manic, child-like Tom Baker, but it felt like they just turned the energy of the character down from eleven to zero. Which doesn't mean that Tennant or anyone else is wrong when they say they love the Davison era. It's the nature of Doctor Who that for the people in the UK, their Doctor is how the show was when they were eight. I'm just a weirdo with a bit of an external perspective to the whole thing.
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Oct 3, 2014 03:44
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MrL_JaKiri posted:In The Five Doctors the Master says they were at the academy together so I don't know how you can use that as evidence that they didn't know each other growing up. But he regenerated that body and what about the time where the Master said, "Won't you show mercy to your own-" Oh god, we're doing this, aren't we.
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Oct 3, 2014 14:38
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MrL_JaKiri posted:After the Time Lords gave him more, He regenerated it about five seconds after he stole it!
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Oct 3, 2014 14:46
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Tiggum posted:And the Master had to have been in a Time Lord body because otherwise he couldn't operate a TARDIS. Even in the old show, non-Time Lords operated the TARDIS on occasion. The Concorde pilots in Timeflight being an obvious one. And the Daleks didn't actually appear in the TV movie. The opening narration just says that the Master was tried and executed on Skaro. So it might be a situation where he pissed off the Thals.
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Oct 3, 2014 16:23
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Burkion posted:.........I keep forgetting, I HONESTLY do, that the Daleks were ever in ANY serial after the First Doctor's era that didn't have their name plastered all over the place. In fairness, they're only in episode six and everyone would rather forget Frontier In Space anyway. That stuff from The Two Doctors has been contradicted by... well... everything. Bicyclops posted:And humans can and have been piloting the TARDIS, both in the TV serials and in the audio stories, since at least the Fifth Doctor. I'm pretty sure since Troughton, but I'm not positive. People other than Time Lords have definitely been operating the TARDIS controls since almost the beginning, but most of them only learn how to open and shut the doors. You might be thinking of The War Games, but those SIDRATs were run by remote control and didn't time travel. The first non-Time Lord we see actually pilot a TARDIS would be Adric, who might be piloting it under Baker's supervision and is definitely piloting it when you reach Davison.
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Oct 3, 2014 17:19
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