kieran
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Post by kieran on Dec 14, 2023 21:48:10 GMT
There seems to be a few stories restored as either stills or animation since I did my reviews of the Hartnell/Troughton years from what I can see. I do mean to go back and review them (if I can find them relatively cheaply) once I come to the end of the classic series.
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Post by scouserob on Dec 14, 2023 22:07:48 GMT
I think they are all free, well free if you have a UK TV licence, on BBC iPlayer. I've just looked and confirmed these are on there:
Reign of Terror (Only episodes 4 and 5 are animated.) Galaxy 4 The Tenth Planet (Only episode 4 is animated.) The Power of the Daleks The Moonbase (Only episodes 2 and 3 are animated.) The Macra Terror The Faceless Ones The Evil of the Daleks The Ice Warriors (Only episodes 2 and 3 are animated.) The Web of Fear (Only episode 3 is animated.) Fury from the Deep The Invasion (Only episodes 1 and 4 are animated.) Shada (Part animated, part live action.)
The Underwater Menace only came out last month and isn't on there yet. There is a version with stills on there but I wouldn't recommend that. I would recommend the animated version.
The Abominable Snowmen isn't on either. I'm guessing that is also too recent a release.
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Post by kieran on Dec 14, 2023 22:12:32 GMT
I think they are all free, well free if you have a UK TV licence, on BBC iPlayer. Ah cool, I do indeed. It seems Britbox got a few of these but not all of them - The Faceless Ones seems the most recent one on there. I get the impression Britbox is on its last legs.
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Post by a moderator on Dec 14, 2023 23:25:21 GMT
Making animations is expensive and takes time.
The soundtracks of all missing episodes have been preserved (and released on CD with narration to cover the visuals), so in theory every incomplete story could get an animation, but ultimately it will come down to resources and profitability. There's little likelihood that animations of low-ranking stories such as The Smugglers and The Space Pirates would sell enough to cover the cost of creating them.
When it comes to The Daleks' Master Plan, even if they only animated the missing episodes (and since they started on stories with more than half of the episodes gone, they've been animating the surviving episodes as well), cursory research suggests that it'd take over a year and a half, which is probably a risky venture in the current economic climate.
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Post by kieran on Dec 14, 2023 23:53:46 GMT
Now, I acknowledge that it's possible that, if the video footage of the episode were ever recovered, the end of the scene might show them picking up the unconscious body and dragging it to safety on their way out. Now there's an animated version of The Underwater Menace, has the fate of the hapless technician been addressed?
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Post by CharlesX on Dec 15, 2023 14:06:14 GMT
I think they are all free, well free if you have a UK TV licence, on BBC iPlayer. Ah cool, I do indeed. It seems Britbox got a few of these but not all of them - The Faceless Ones seems the most recent one on there. I get the impression Britbox is on its last legs. I would have only got Britbox to watch old Doctor Who, Red Dwarf and a few other sitcoms. I have not heard of Britbox hits (even though I've heard of some from Apple TV and Youtube Premium) except Spitting Image, which looks like a pale imitation of the classic '80s & '90s series.
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Post by kieran on Dec 15, 2023 15:34:00 GMT
Ah cool, I do indeed. It seems Britbox got a few of these but not all of them - The Faceless Ones seems the most recent one on there. I get the impression Britbox is on its last legs. I would have only got Britbox to watch old Doctor Who, Red Dwarf and a few other sitcoms. I have not heard of Britbox hits (even though I've heard of some from Apple TV and Youtube Premium) except Spitting Image, which looks like a pale imitation of the classic '80s & '90s series. They haven't even had Red Dwarf for ages! They used to have nearly every British sitcom going but the number has reduced significantly. I don't think they have any Channel 4 content at all anymore and BBC and ITV definitely seem to be supporting it less. Original content seems to have dried up too. It still has a few good things I like, it's less than half the price of Netflix and their customer service is great, so I don't resent paying for it but it's a shame because it used to be much better. Now that Doctor Who, which I understand is their Number 1 show, is all on the iPlayer, I doubt it will last much longer. Still, signing up to their free trial to watch Box of Delights three Christmasses ago made me a Doctor Who fan so that will always be in its favour in my book.
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Post by CharlesX on Dec 17, 2023 13:38:35 GMT
Making animations is expensive and takes time. The soundtracks of all missing episodes have been preserved (and released on CD with narration to cover the visuals), so in theory every incomplete story could get an animation, but ultimately it will come down to resources and profitability. There's little likelihood that animations of low-ranking stories such as The Smugglers and The Space Pirates would sell enough to cover the cost of creating them. That has to be true. but it's still a shame. As a Whovian I prefer Doctor Who on a so-called bad day than Star Trek or Lost In Space. At least BBC have been kind enough to release particular episodes they still have of stories like Space Pirates.
Dalek Master Plan is both regarded as a classic and very large, so whether the BBC will get round to them in the future when the economy is finally doing well and Doctor Who is popular with critics and audiences alike, I don't know. Perhaps by that point the BBC will be a different entity that is subscription only instead of paid for by license fee.
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Post by CharlesX on Dec 17, 2023 13:41:52 GMT
I agree about Victoria, she never really grows beyond her Character in Evil of the Daleks unfortunately. I did enjoy The Evil of the Daleks, though not as much as The Power of the Daleks.
The Celestial Toymaker will be the next missing story to be animated. 😀 The animation style has changed from the previous releases. It looks like it may take some getting used to: The new animation style looks good. I've just been watching The Invasion and it's great to have something modern and 21st century instead of black-and-white animation and stills.
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Post by CharlesX on Dec 21, 2023 19:00:31 GMT
Well, Series 4 was a lot better than Series 3 thankfully. The Tenth Planet - The Cybermen were great villains. I love their sing-song voice, the way they place emphasis in quite the wrong places really gives them an inhuman feeling. Their origin, cold dispassionate logic and their 'resistance is useless' makes me think a lot of Star Trek's Borg - I wonder if they were an influence? My sincere apologies for 'doing a Razaak' by resurrecting a multi-year-old comment but I wanted to reply to the point I've underlined. If anything many would reckon Star Trek's The Borg were more influenced by the Daleks than the Cybermen, for example the Daleks say "resistance is useless" (as does Adams in his Hitchhikers Guide, I wonder if that was an influence? Nah). The Daleks aside from being more famous are at least as devoted as Cybermen to logic and perhaps more so to conquest (Edit: Watching The Tenth Planet the Cybermen even mention at one point their construction is designed for survival, which contrasts with what is heavy ambitious rhetoric in developed Dalek stories). OTOH I put the Cybermen's borderline emotional and irrational, gloating hatred of the Doctor, noticeable from Davison episodes on, down to non-canonical dubious writing. I never liked The Borg because such a powerful race that could learn so fast seemed grossly imbalanced. I prefer cheap UK sf where enemies have vulnerabilities to these brash US shows where enemies have to be super-aggressive and strong.
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kieran
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Post by kieran on Dec 22, 2023 12:50:46 GMT
I never liked The Borg because such a powerful race that could learn so fast seemed grossly imbalanced. I always figured The Borg would be much more of a threat if their drones were able to react to intruders.
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Post by kieran on Jan 9, 2024 11:58:13 GMT
Series 24 definitely ramped up the wackiness quotient. I like wacky but sadly most of the plots weren't very good.
Time and the Rani After an unnecessarily frantic opening which serves as a poor introduction to McCoy's Doctor, things settle into quite an amusing comedy with the Rani pretending to be Mel. I love how hard it is for her to contain her disdain while imitating the perky Mel - she even gets away with slapping the Doctor at one stage. Doctor Number 7 adds to the comedy by being very frustrating between mixing up his words and being generally discombobulated about his regeneration (as an aside, I love how ruthless the Rani is about killing the previous incarnation - she doesn't even bother with a triumphal gloat, just straight down to business). There's also some fun with Mel crossing an island littered with deadly bubble traps. Unfortunately, the second half flagged badly. There's only so many times one can watch people crossing the same stretch of island and the bubbles cease to be frightening once it becomes clear that Mel is well protected by plot armour. A lot of the third episode in particular feels like filler - why does Beyus not just tell the Doctor that the Rani will kill his people if he doesn't collaborate rather than giving the Doctor some cryptic message which he needs to put himself in danger to investigate and whose meaning is only made clear because the Rani chooses that moment to teach the Lakertyans a lesson? Especially as Beyus just tells Mel outright later. I liked the idea of a super brain made of renowned intellects but it seems a bit silly that only the Doctor is able to confuse matters. Also, why does he help the brain at the end? I thought this was a ruse, but apparently not. Why doesn't the Rani suspect it's a ruse too? It would have made more sense for the brain to work it all out while the Doctor was still a part of it. Also, could the Rani not have been dealt with in a way where she couldn't escape easily? Apart from this, I did like the look of the Lakertyans but didn't like the Tetraps who looked more cute than scary. The ending where they're waiting in the Rani's Tardis was quite amusing however. An ok story all-in-all, and I didn't mind Mel so much this time, but I hope this opener won't represent the quality of the series as a whole.
Paradise Towers One of the weirdest stories so far - semi-feral tribes of 80s pop princesses vie against cannibalistic old ladies, death-dealing vacuum cleaners and caretakers who blindly follow an incredibly complex rulebook led by a odd fellow who feeds people to a robot in the basement who he makes call him 'Daddy'. Meanwhile, a well-meaning eejit goes around kicking doors down in case there are any people who need saving (why didn't the cannibals just eat him?). There's a lot of nice little details here - I love how the Kangs have evolved their own way of language based on adolescent playground chatter. Unfortunately, while the writers did a lot of hard work with the setting, the plot is pretty terrible. It consists of Mel and the Doctor blundering backwards and forth, occasionally getting captured and then escaping again. So many plot points are ludicrous too - why would the caretakers not think to check the rulebook when the Doctor tells them it says ridiculous stuff? It would have been far more believable and cleverer if the Doctor was able to use some genuine loopholes in the rules to escape rather than that nonsense. And why would Mel use the pool without checking it first? Tablecloths make for surprisingly effective weaponry. And was the Doctor's cunning plan really just pushing the Architect out the door? Speaking of the Architect, that was one bit of weirdness that didn't really work for me, he came across too silly once he takes over the Chief Caretaker's body. A lot of the performances are kinda bad but they work in the weird context of the setting - which means Bonnie Langford's odd delivery serves her well here while the Doctor comes off as quite bland by comparison. This story is kinda like the opposite of the Pertwee era - there the Doctor was an oddball surrounded by serious military types, here the Doctor seems the only sane person in an asylum. Overall, switch your brain off and enjoy the weirdness and this story is pretty ice-hot. Plus I checked another box in Keeping Up Appearances bingo.
Delta and the Bannermen Is this title meant to sound like 'Echo and the Bunnymen' or am I overthinking it? Anyway, this is like Doctor Who meets Hi-De-Hi with a liberal sprinkling of Heartbeat yet somehow much more terrible than that sounds. Nothing much about this works: it's not funny, the acting is terrible, the script is leaden, the plot is dull, the action is limp and no amount of Rockabilly music or blasting Devil's Galop can make scenes of people opening gates exciting. It doesn't even work as a light-hearted romp as the brutality of Ken Dodd and the tourists' deaths just kills that vibe. As for the characters, Delta is a bland space princess, I couldn't care less about her romance with Billy or the latter's decision to become an alien and I especially didn't care about Ray's unrequited feelings for him. Gavrok is an ok villain and the actor is at least actually trying, but this isn't the right story for him and those two Americans served no purpose whatsoever other than to be quite annoying - at least the bee farmer came in useful. Is there anything redeemable? Well, using the camp's intercom system to amplify the child's screams was quite clever. That's about it. Why on earth stuff like The Twin Dilemma is considered worse than this boggles my mind.
Dragonfire Yay, Glitz is back! Despite selling his crew to slavery for a negligible sum, he's still treated as a lovable rascal. Indeed, the Doctor gives him a harder time for planning to welch on his debt to the clearly evil Kane than he does for this. Whatever, he's still an incredibly entertaining character who lifts an otherwise ho-hum story. There are other good elements in the story - the dragon itself is quite cool and I liked the subplot of Kane's self-serving second-in-command ably played by Patricia Quinn. Unfortunately, not enough is made of them. The dragon gets killed off too easily and I didn't really get the point of him befriending the little girl (or indeed, any of the scenes with the little girl which never seemed to build to any significance). Quinn's character is killed off halfway through, her only impact on the plot being saving Glitz's ship which doesn't turn out to be all that important anyway. Kane himself is an ok villain - his method of killing people was quite cool (no pun intended), but his evil speeches to the camera are a bit much. I also can't fathom how it took him 3000 years to get the treasure. Even if he didn't work out it was in the dragon's head, he had plenty of mercenaries who could kill the dragon for him (as two of them manage to do fairly easily) and then he could have searched for the dragonfire at his leisure. The whole treasure hunt felt a pretty damp squib to be honest like the writers couldn't be bothered following through with the concept. I also felt more could have been made of the whole 'taking the sovereign' thing - did it actually give Kane control over those who joined him? I'm not clear. As for Kane killing himself in the end - cool effect but weak deux ex machina. Mel announces her departure - I'm not really sure why she has to go but then it was never explained why she joined in the first place so fair enough. Unfortunately, her replacement, Grange Hill reject Ace, feels like she's going to try my patience. The Doctor still seems a bit bland though I absolutely loved the scene where he tries to bamboozle a guard with philosophical musings only to find the guard is more than a match for him.
Series 24 ranking: 1. Paradise Towers 2. Dragonfire 3. Time and the Rani 4. Delta and the Bannermen
Right, time to add Mel to the companion ranking. She was underdeveloped and initially very annoying. She was more bearable in Series 24 but I still never really got any sense of her character. Better than Dodo and Susan but not by much.
1. Jo 2. Leela 3. Ian 4. Sarah-Jane 5. Barbara 6. Romana 7. Ben 8. K-9 9. Liz 10. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart 11. Peri 12. Vikki 13. Steven 14. Tegan 15. Victoria 16. Nyssa 17. Harry 18. Zoe 19. Turlough 20. Adric 21. Jamie 22. Polly 23. Mel 24. Susan 25. Dodo
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Post by CharlesX on Jan 9, 2024 12:29:51 GMT
Great reviews as usual kieran . As you say mid '80s\7th Doctor scripts were often off with a number of exceptions you haven't reached. For some reason I really liked Dragonfire growing up, but as you say the story isn't brilliant. I believe befriending the girl was to make the audience warm to a Dragon. I was often mystified by the cliffhanger where the 7th Doctor seemingly has no reason to go down a steep drop other than the sort of curiosity that is like "I've never dropped a plugged in toaster in my bath before, I wonder what will happen if I do?". Sabalom Glitz and Ace both add to the episode. Ace does quite a lot which is a change from previous female companions who'd literally either make coffee or like Liz Shaw have to have a PhD (in other words, she was relatable).
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Post by kieran on Jan 9, 2024 12:34:41 GMT
I was often mystified by the cliffhanger where the 7th Doctor seemingly has no reason to go down a steep drop other than the sort of curiosity that is like "I've never dropped a plugged in toaster in my bath before, I wonder what will happen if I do?" Yes, that was weird. It was like he looked at his watch and was like 'Oops, time for the cliffhanger, better literally hang myself off a cliff.'
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Post by a moderator on Jan 9, 2024 13:43:24 GMT
I was often mystified by the cliffhanger where the 7th Doctor seemingly has no reason to go down a steep drop other than the sort of curiosity that is like "I've never dropped a plugged in toaster in my bath before, I wonder what will happen if I do?" Yes, that was weird. It was like he looked at his watch and was like 'Oops, time for the cliffhanger, better literally hang myself off a cliff.' The originally-scripted cliffhanger was Ace and Mel's first encounter with the dragon, but somebody thought that having a literally cliff-hanging cliffhanger was too meta an opportunity to pass up. Talking of meta, the query with which the unexpectedly philosophical guard bamboozles the Doctor is more or less a direct quotation from the first academic treatise on Doctor Who to be published, John Tulloch and Manuel Alvarado's Doctor Who - The Unfolding Text.
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Post by kieran on Jan 9, 2024 14:29:35 GMT
Talking of meta, the query with which the unexpectedly philosophical guard bamboozles the Doctor is more or less a direct quotation from the first academic treatise on Doctor Who to be published, John Tulloch and Manuel Alvarado's Doctor Who - The Unfolding Text. That certainly explains the randomness of it.
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Post by evilwizard on Jan 31, 2024 17:39:09 GMT
Was there an episode that ended with Bonnie Langford screaming because of a killer neon cabbage, or did the chippy drop acid in my supper that evening?
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Post by kieran on Feb 1, 2024 9:50:56 GMT
Was there an episode that ended with Bonnie Langford screaming because of a killer neon cabbage, or did the chippy drop acid in my supper that evening? Yes, that was Terror of the Vervoids. Bonnie sure did more than her fair share of screaming, possibly overtaking Susan in that regard.
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Post by CharlesX on Feb 1, 2024 12:13:03 GMT
Was there an episode that ended with Bonnie Langford screaming because of a killer neon cabbage, or did the chippy drop acid in my supper that evening? Yes, that was Terror of the Vervoids. Bonnie sure did more than her fair share of screaming, possibly overtaking Susan in that regard. Well, Victoria screamed more than some as well. My recollection is Bonnie's screams could be cheesy and inelegant (possibly by comparison - Victoria had a charming voice and personality, which was why it was so frustrating she was a demure also-ran), perhaps in spite of her background as an athletic dancer and singer.
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Post by a moderator on Feb 1, 2024 17:11:33 GMT
Yes, that was Terror of the Vervoids. Bonnie sure did more than her fair share of screaming, possibly overtaking Susan in that regard. Well, Victoria screamed more than some as well. My recollection is Bonnie's screams could be cheesy and inelegant (possibly by comparison - Victoria had a charming voice and personality, which was why it was so frustrating she was a demure also-ran), perhaps in spite of her background as an athletic dancer and singer. For the Terror of the Vervoids cliffhanger in question, the director asked Bonnie to pitch her screams to harmonise with the theme music.
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Post by kieran on Feb 16, 2024 15:00:50 GMT
Series 25's tone was all over the place, but it was not without its highlights. And unfortunately, its lowlights.
Remembrance of the Daleks
After Series 24's wackiness, it's quite a shock to suddenly be in a rather gritty Earth-based story. Even the Doctor is more gritty, calmly destroying his foes and mocking them as he does so. With all the military and scientific types about, this feels like a return to the UNIT days though sadly none of them really have the charisma of the Brigadier or Liz (I did like the Doctor calling Gilmore 'Brigadier' though). There's also a couple of good firefights, Ace going nuts on a Dalek with a baseball bat, some cool Dalek artillery that we've never seen before, a very creepy schoolgirl Dalek, a few Nazi sympathisers, some nice references to the First Doctor, the return of Davros and the continuation of the Dalek Civil War (where Davros seems to have turned the tables significantly from when we last saw him). All good stuff, but there's just too much of it and it's not helped by things slowing down to a crawl in the second episode where the Doctor debates the impacts of time travel with Geoffrey Butler. Part of the slowdown is because the Doctor is trying to hoodwink just about everyone going so there is a feeling of 'why is he doing this rather than that?' throughout the early stages. And sadly the game is revealed too early, meaning there's no real excitement in the climax as we know Davros is being tricked. Another element that didn't really work for me is a sort of romance Ace has with a soldier who turns out to be an unwitting agent of the Daleks. The age gap seems a bit creepy and even if he didn't know he was helping the Daleks, he was quite clear he was a Neo-Nazi! Not sure if I was meant to feel sad when Creepy Schoolgirl went all Emperor Palpatine on him. And I really wasn't pleased to see the return of the long absent 'enemy blows up because it can't cope with a logical contradiction' trope. One thing that really did work for me however was the Episode 1 Cliffhanger - who knew a Dalek climbing stairs could be so terrifying?
The Happiness Patrol
After a more down to earth story, we're back to wackiness with a capital W. Way back when I reviewed The Sun Makers, I complained that such a repressive government would never last more than 5 minutes. Well, compared to the government here, that in the The Sun Makers is chilling realism. I can live with an unbelievable high concept when writers really commit to it, but that's not the case here. The sets should be more garishly cheerful; the methods of enforcing happiness should be more than blobs of bright paint, sweets and lift music; and the ways for capturing sad people should be more insidious than an undercover agent who doesn't really reveal anything that the culprits weren't doing already and seems unnecessary given the Happiness Patrol can just kill anyone who isn't smiling at anytime anyway. The Doctor shouldn't be able to get away with so much by just yelling at people and a lot of the events just seem to be the Doctor having the same conversation over and over intercut with Ace being nearly executed, captured then nearly executed again. The Doctor is extremely annoying throughout while Ace is utterly dull here. The villains are a mixed bag. I actually thought the Happiness Patrol grunts were pretty entertaining and had good costumes. Helen A was well-played but her character was all over the place - the script couldn't decide whether she genuinely wanted to force people to be happy or if it was an excuse to lower the population and neither really makes sense as presented here. Her crying over Fifi could have been interesting if it was her undoing, but she was already beaten by that stage. Fifi was at least pretty creepy. The Kandy Man was just ridiculous - a sort of demented Bertie Bassett, and also pretty pointless. All he did was yell, get stuck in lemonade twice then melt himself with his own trap. His inventor had his moments, but he felt underdeveloped and I don't really know why Helen's husband abandoned her to flee with him - it doesn't feel there was enough setup to this. Oh, there's also some goblin-y things who serve next to no purpose and seem a waste of a good costume and a guy who plays a harmonica in lieu of having a personality. To be honest, I was pretty much done with this one by the time the Doctor started singing 'As Time Goes By' - three episodes certainly seemed to drag on.
Silver Nemesis
This one feels quite similar to Remembrance of the Daleks with the slightly more gritty tone, the modern(ish) Earth setting, some Neo Nazis, dangerous Time Lord technology, and one of the Big Two villains. Even Ace points out that the climax is near identical. Is this a sign that the writers are running low on ideas and can't even be bothered hiding the fact? The most unique element and the most entertaining are a pair of time travellers from the 1600s. Every scene these two are in is really fun with their confusions about the modern world. I particularly liked Richard who was very funny and manages to be quite complex despite his limited screentime. And that's the real problem here, these two just don't get enough screentime because they have to share three episodes with the Cybermen and Neo Nazis. The latter feel very underwhelming and probably should have been saved for a different story. The Cybermen have their moments though and I particularly liked the action scenes of Ace slingshotting gold at them. I also liked that Ace got to show a bit more fragility. The Doctor though seemed a bit too laidback about such a massive threat. There's a few scenes that just didn't work for me like the Doctor almost meeting the Queen. The Mexican standoff finale also doesn't really work as the Cyberman leader could just blast everyone quite easily though I did like that Richard got to save the day in the end. Lady Peinforte merging with the Nemesis was quite odd. Before she dies, she tries to blackmail the Doctor about some secret she possesses about him. Not too sure what this could be or how on earth Lady Peinforte could have discovered it. I guess time will tell...
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy
It took a while, but the Seventh Doctor finally gets a stand out story here. This is surreal and creepy, every character feeling a bit off. Even the woman who wants nothing to do with the Psychic Circus is weird (and quite amusing too). I like that both she and the dilapidated robot end up coming back into the plot in the end rather than just being discarded by the writers. All the circus crew are memorable and I like that they all have varied motivations: the creepy clown who quite happily serves the Eye, the ringmaster who does so a bit more grudgingly, the fortune teller who does so out of terror but is more goodhearted, and those who have tried to break away and have been psychologically damaged in various ways as a result. The patrons are also interesting: a Mad Max wannabe, a nerd, a werewolf and one of the best Doctor Who characters so far, the utter scumbag that is Captain Cook, a perfect critique of the nineteenth century explorer - a hilarious bore who's much more dangerous than he first seems. The tension is kept high throughout the story and the plot is slowly revealed as it becomes more clear that the 'audience' is nothing of the sort. There are unfortunately a few bad action scenes - how on earth did the Doctor and Ace not see the car bearing down on them? The finale where the Gods of Ragnarok get their lasers reflected at them is also a bit weak. My biggest beef with the story though was the Doctor himself. He's a complete jerk to Ace at the start. Of course, earlier Doctors could also be quite unpleasant to their companions, but it's especially galling here where Ace is quite rightly trying to warn him he's blundering into danger. His capering for the gods at the end and excessive rolling of Rs were also trying my patience ('Rrragnarrrok'). Oh well, still a fantastic story.
Series 25 ranking: 1. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy 2. Remembrance of the Daleks 3. Silver Nemesis 4. The Happiness Patrol
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Post by CharlesX on Feb 16, 2024 18:07:32 GMT
Agree with kieran 's well-written remarks here. I didn't think much of\even like the trope of outsmarting two groups of bad guys after the same powerful thing at the same time the first time in Remembrance Of The Daleks let alone in Silver Nemesis (I hated Daleks and Cybermen 'competing' even more in the reboot series but that's very much another think). I liked Happiness Patrol for its originality in spite of its cheesiness, I would agree the execution wasn't brilliant. Greatest Show In The Galaxy - definitely not without flaws. Captain Cook and Whizzkid were believable but unreal and two-dimensional. The story felt very surreal and as you say the Ragnarok ending was perhaps unsatisfying. I like the way McCoy rolls his Rs, but I didn't like his cheery demeanour\tone and lack of surprise. I'd agree it was weak and felt more Lost In Space than Doctor Who. But overall GSITG was very entertaining and these flaws (definitely more noticeable to adult viewers than the target audience) don't alter its being one of the best Who stories.
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Post by CharlesX on Feb 16, 2024 21:44:25 GMT
Series 25's tone was all over the place, but it was not without its highlights. And unfortunately, its lowlights. Silver Nemesis
This one feels quite similar to Remembrance of the Daleks with the slightly more gritty tone, the modern(ish) Earth setting, some Neo Nazis, dangerous Time Lord technology, and one of the Big Two villains. Even Ace points out that the climax is near identical. Is this a sign that the writers are running low on ideas and can't even be bothered hiding the fact? The most unique element and the most entertaining are a pair of time travellers from the 1600s. Every scene these two are in is really fun with their confusions about the modern world. I particularly liked Richard who was very funny and manages to be quite complex despite his limited screentime. And that's the real problem here, these two just don't get enough screentime because they have to share three episodes with the Cybermen and Neo Nazis. The latter feel very underwhelming and probably should have been saved for a different story. The Cybermen have their moments though and I particularly liked the action scenes of Ace slingshotting gold at them. I also liked that Ace got to show a bit more fragility. The Doctor though seemed a bit too laidback about such a massive threat. There's a few scenes that just didn't work for me like the Doctor almost meeting the Queen. The Mexican standoff finale also doesn't really work as the Cyberman leader could just blast everyone quite easily though I did like that Richard got to save the day in the end. Lady Peinforte merging with the Nemesis was quite odd. Before she dies, she tries to blackmail the Doctor about some secret she possesses about him. Not too sure what this could be or how on earth Lady Peinforte could have discovered it. I guess time will tell... My gut guess growing up was this secret was about the Doctor's name (his actual name, not just John Smith). There may have been a plan to reveal this secret that was abandoned when the show was put on long-term hiatus, or (as I suspect) it may have been something that was thrown in randomly because as you say, stories at this time could be illogical at times.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Feb 17, 2024 1:37:12 GMT
The Happiness Patrol
After a more down to earth story, we're back to wackiness with a capital W. Way back when I reviewed The Sun Makers, I complained that such a repressive government would never last more than 5 minutes. Well, compared to the government here, that in the The Sun Makers is chilling realism. I can live with an unbelievable high concept when writers really commit to it, but that's not the case here. The sets should be more garishly cheerful; the methods of enforcing happiness should be more than blobs of bright paint, sweets and lift music; and the ways for capturing sad people should be more insidious than an undercover agent who doesn't really reveal anything that the culprits weren't doing already and seems unnecessary given the Happiness Patrol can just kill anyone who isn't smiling at anytime anyway. The Doctor shouldn't be able to get away with so much by just yelling at people and a lot of the events just seem to be the Doctor having the same conversation over and over intercut with Ace being nearly executed, captured then nearly executed again. The Doctor is extremely annoying throughout while Ace is utterly dull here. The villains are a mixed bag. I actually thought the Happiness Patrol grunts were pretty entertaining and had good costumes. Helen A was well-played but her character was all over the place - the script couldn't decide whether she genuinely wanted to force people to be happy or if it was an excuse to lower the population and neither really makes sense as presented here. Her crying over Fifi could have been interesting if it was her undoing, but she was already beaten by that stage. Fifi was at least pretty creepy. The Kandy Man was just ridiculous - a sort of demented Bertie Bassett, and also pretty pointless. All he did was yell, get stuck in lemonade twice then melt himself with his own trap. His inventor had his moments, but he felt underdeveloped and I don't really know why Helen's husband abandoned her to flee with him - it doesn't feel there was enough setup to this. Oh, there's also some goblin-y things who serve next to no purpose and seem a waste of a good costume and a guy who plays a harmonica in lieu of having a personality. To be honest, I was pretty much done with this one by the time the Doctor started singing 'As Time Goes By' - three episodes certainly seemed to drag on. There's a common view that this is a political allegory though possibly not agreement on the details. People view Sheila Hancock's Helen A as very Margaret Thatcheresque.
I'd heard – and thought it was the standard interpretation – that this was specifically about Section 28. That is: Thatcher forcing people to repress their real feelings, except here instead of nobody being allowed to be gay, no one is allowed not to be gay. Gay meaning happy of course.
("I'm glad you're happy" – "I'm happy you're glad" is a close cousin of 'glad to be gay' after all.)
The idea of 'Don't tell people what's really going on. It's for their own good.' chimes with the condemned being allowed to think they've been pardoned before gunging execution by syrup smothering.
At the end they just decided: 'Sod the allegory, have her bloke fly off with another bloke'.
Regardless of the hidden meaning, the setup should lend itself to a sense of the sinister with overly nice things/people covering up real horror (with some nice philosophy and blues music in the background). I agree that they don't really nail it and the Kandy Man is very much a kids' birthday party level of threatening. It just never seems powerful or grotesque or even coordinated enough. Who's having nightmares about the Kandy Man the way they are about daleks, cybermen or, heck, even the cleaners in Paradise Towers? No one.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Feb 17, 2024 1:59:58 GMT
Before she dies, she tries to blackmail the Doctor about some secret she possesses about him. Not too sure what this could be or how on earth Lady Peinforte could have discovered it. I guess time will tell... I hadn't remembered this, but according to IMDB's trivia it was something that was supposed to be going somewhere but didn't.
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kieran
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Post by kieran on Feb 17, 2024 8:25:57 GMT
Before she dies, she tries to blackmail the Doctor about some secret she possesses about him. Not too sure what this could be or how on earth Lady Peinforte could have discovered it. I guess time will tell... I hadn't remembered this, but according to IMDB's trivia it was something that was supposed to be going somewhere but didn't. Ah, well that's annoying!
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Post by CharlesX on Mar 3, 2024 19:30:56 GMT
Series 17 was a decent enough series. Not quite as good as previous, but no real stinkers and some pretty good ones. Shada Mr. Loverman (Shada!). Sorry. Anyway, this is a bit of an oddity. A feature length episode where half the scenes are animated like we're suddenly back in the Troughton era. Except there they used the original soundtrack while here it seems lines have been re-recorded, meaning the actors sound older in the animated parts. And then old Tom Baker appears at the end for some reason (having now looked it up, apparently it was a story that could not be completed at the time due to a strike). Anyway, forgive it these oddities and it's very good. In some ways, the moves from animated to non-animated sequences actually improve things as the animated sequences are mostly confined to the outer space elements, making them seem more other-worldly. The feature length approach also helps the story build gradually as we don't get the easily-resolved cliffhangers the episodic stories can sometimes suffer from. We also get a very good, threatening villain with an interesting scheme and an amusing supporting character in Salyavin/Professor Chronotis (although, why would he join the Doctor in confronting Skagra if he knew the risk in doing so?). I was more indifferent to Clare and found Chris just plain annoying. There's also some limp action and weak plotting in places - that whole thing about the Doctor claiming to be dead was stupid for instance. But on the whole I really thought this created a sense of the epic. The music helps in this regard. It's noticeable without being distracting as in City of Death or <shudder> The Gunfighters. Again Romana comes across well too. I wasn't sure about the change of actresses, but I feel this second incarnation has much more of interest to do, between sparring with villains and outclassing the Doctor when it comes to machine tinkering. Finally, I liked the ending for Skagra - he goes from coming close to being the whole universe to stuck in a room with a computer with a Doctor fetish. 1. Nightmare of Eden 2. Shada 3. The Creature from the Pit 4. City of Death 5. The Horns of Nimon 6. Destiny of the Daleks I remember trying to watch Shada in the 2000s or something when Tom Baker narrated the missing footage. While Tom Baker is amazing at most things (I'd buy a Who DVD just to see Tom Baker Years as an extra, where he paints a picture of a cast enjoying most minutes they work, and committed activity in the Whoverse), the choice of either full animated episodes or Baker's narration (as it was between '92 and 2017) didn't work. I like the high-quality animation in the modern version. Not thinking its above criticism though, Adams's name-dropping and setting his stories in university cities capital cities etc. can come across as cliche.
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Post by CharlesX on Mar 20, 2024 17:27:26 GMT
With one exception, Series 5 was a bit by-the-numbers. Troughton seems to have lost most of his quirks and offbeat sense of humour from Series 4, leaving him a bit of a bland scientist, albeit a very capable one (except when it comes to working the Tardis of course!) Tomb of the Cybermen - So, Ben's gone which is a pity because despite my initial misgivings he was easily the best companion since Ian and Barbara. Polly has also gone, replaced by this Victoria character who seems to alternate between capable and useless. And speaking of useless, Jamie is still here! Anyway this story starts off pretty fun. Exploring the tomb and its traps was quite exciting as was the friction between the characters (though did they have to be such stereotypes? Stuffy Brits, Plucky Americans, Sneaky Eastern Europeans, Subservient Black Guy). Unfortunately when the Cybermen come into it, it falls apart a bit, relying on characters being easily distracted time and time again to move the plot along. The ending was quite touching though. Tomb Of The Cybermen was one of my favourites growing up, so I rewatched it recently. Like The War Games I have a semi-inexplicable liking for it, because it isn't actually the very best writing in Doctor Who. It's lifted by an original concept and some action. There are an entire number of heavy plot-holes, and some (for want of a better word) stupidity by the explorers is seemingly more than shared by the Cybermen, which is only annoying. I thought Eric Klieg was a great, excessive antagonist. As I say, rewatching it having grown up you notice plotholes which vary from eyeroll to irritation, which a primary kid audience wouldn't have seen as much of a deal. The story remains well-written in my now-adult view.
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Post by The Editor (Alex B) on Mar 23, 2024 1:11:08 GMT
Just dropping to say a few weeks ago I finally finished my series watch-in-order that I started way back in 2013.
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kieran
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Post by kieran on Mar 23, 2024 13:01:41 GMT
Just dropping to say a few weeks ago I finally finished my series watch-in-order that I started way back in 2013. Any final thoughts?
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