Ongoing "Dr. Who" Thread of DOOM...

[Volpone]

OK. This will be nothing like the "How I Met Your Mother" thread. It won't even be on par with the "Battlestar Galactica" thread I spun the title off of. This thread is solely because the classic 20th Century version of "Dr. Who" that played on PBS during my childhood is now on RetroTV--and I have RetroTV in my area--and I need a place to talk about it a bit.

See, I'm also on a "Dr. Who" themed board. But the focus is on prop-building. It's an amazing resource for all things police box and Dr. Who. But it is a bit "Rainman." We've gotten a bit more relaxed of late. In the past if you weren't explicitly focused on building Dr. Who props, you would likely get a friendly warning to get on topic. That's relaxed a bit, but even so, it isn't a place to talk about the show. And any criticism of someone's favorite Doctor is likely to create a brouhaha. Also, JumpTheShark.com got bought out and killed long, long ago. So I'm here.

I'll likely talk about the show, RetroTV's licensing deal with the BBC and their broadcast rotation, my thoughts on the stories, actors, etc, and maybe even a tiny bit on the "new" 21st century series (that I've seen a few episodes of).

I start this because Retro is into the Tom Baker 4th Dr. "Key To Time" arc. "Androids of Tara." Terrible, Terrible episode. Sloppiest of stories. And by this point "Dr. Who" has firmly become "The Tom Baker Show (WITH K-9!)" Bad swordfights, sloppy costuming because they couldn't get Baker to button up his vest or wear a tie anymore, implausibly stupid reversals, MWUAHAHAHAHAHA! bad villain, Tom Baker being a ham. Just a terrible episode by all rights.

I grew up with Tom Baker as the Doctor and had a soft spot (at the time) for Peter Davison because I was young and blonde. I didn't realize how really, really terrible a lot of the 5th Doctor episodes were, but I'll get to that eventually. I quite like Hartnell (#1) because he's so much less heroic and a bit amoral--until his companions push him more towards becoming a hero. Haven't seen a lot of Troughton (#2). Wasn't a fan of Pertwee (#3) because he was a self-important arrogant blowhard, but as I get older (and deal with humans more and more) I increasingly appreciate his character and his stories.

Well, that's about it for now. More as it comes to me.

 

[whisky]

The 4th doctor is the one I grew up with, although I do remember the 3rd a little. I remember the key to time as being a bit of a let down towards the end.

I started to get annoyed with how they kept wrecking K9 to get him out of the stories.

My dad used to watch with me, one time when I complained about not enjoying it, he mentioned there was a new show starting on the other side that was also sci fi, so why didn't I give that a chance?

I turned the channel over and it was Buck Rogers, suddenly instead of a police box in a quarry, there was an hour of special FX on a par with star wars, proper spaceships, robots, space babes...

This was the last time I would watch who regularly, I would watch the last and first episodes of any new doctor, any multi doctor story, or episodes with daleks or cybermen.

As far as the classic doctors went I think I saw the most episodes from 7 after I stopped watching. I never really gelled with 5 and 6.

 

[CaptainWacky]

I think I watched some of the Sylvester McCoy stuff when I was a kid, then it got cancelled, then I didn't think about it again until the tv movie. Then I instantly forgot about that and didn't become a fan until the RTD revival.

 

[The Tomtrek]

The Android of Tara owns what the fuck

 

[Volpone]

For me (now) the Golden era is Tom Baker, up to basically where K-9 shows up. Sarah and the first season or so of Leela. When Tom Baker is really ACTING, he does a great job of playing a powerful alien. I've always liked the Hartnell episodes because his Doctor is also alien, a bit menacing, and (paradoxically) very human in his weaknesses. You've got to love the episodes where he shows up, finds out about the problem and is like "Well that's too bad for you. Best of luck. We've got to be going," until some problem strands him and ties him in with the story. [There are just so few surviving Troughton stories and I see them so rarely that it's really hard for me to form an opinion on him--although he's a lot of fun in "The Three Doctors."] Pertwee's Doctor is very good, but his arrogance, while justified, doesn't make him quite as likeable as Baker. The 4th Doctor would sometimes play the fool to disarm the situation. Pertwee always had this sense of certainty--which did make it entertaining on the rare instance when he was wrong or unsure.

Again, the show starts to go downhill after K-9 shows up. To be fair, the 70s tended toward camp anyway--look at the Roger Moore Bond films--but by this point Baker is so over-the-top and hammy that you lose all the strangeness that he managed to project in the earlier stories. And then you get into the John Nathan Turner as producer era. JNT is kind of like the "Star Wars" prequels. At the time it was neat to see higher production values. But over time the FX don't hold up. And the money for the better FX must have come from the writing budget because the stories increasingly suffer. He also had the tendency to turn the costumes into, well, costumes. Apart from Leela in her leathers, to that point the companions wore clothes. How long to Adric, Tegan, and Nyssa wear the same outfits day in and day out. Even the Doctors. With the exception of "The Web Planet," he pretty consistently wears the same clothes every episode. But Troughton's outfit changes subtly over the years. And Pertwee, with his smoking jackets and capes, is quite the clothes-horse. It's funny, how watching it without the benefits of recordings and screencaps you don't notice the changes, but apart from the plum monstrosity JNT shackled him in for the final season, Tom Baker's clothes change over his tenure. It is less a costume and more a style of dress. That all goes out the window with Davison. The Doctor has a uniform. A whacky, zany uniform. Davison's fancy dress cricket get-up is bad enough, but poor Colin Baker and the circus clown outfit they put him in. That guy really got a bum rap all around. McCoy's outfit isn't as horrible, but the "?" fetish is still a bit much.

And then there's the writing. The early Tom Baker stories are quite strong. Stuff like "Robots of Death," "Horror of Fang Rock," and "Talons of Weng Chiang." "Pyramids of Mars." Tight, zippy. Entertaining. By the time you get to Peter Davison the stories are all over the place--and just get worse as the series progresses. "Castrovalva." The Master has a MWUAHAHAHAHA! EEEVIL plan. But he has an unnecessarily complex backup plan that involves him wearing a disguise. "Timeflight." He's stuck in the ancient past and steals slaves from the present that he hypnotizes into zombies a la "The Time Warrior." But he does this elaborate disguise to fool...who? Nobody knows. The viewers, I guess. And compared to the Doctors before him, Davison is so sappy and wimpy. He comes across as an idiot--only there's no feel that it's just an act like with Tom Baker. I don't know if that's because the material was bad or Davison isn't the actor Tom Baker was but he's just underwhelming.

I'll touch on the writing in Colin Baker's stories and particularly McCoy's in a bit, but for now I should get going.

 

[Volpone]

Oh. Quick sidebar to get out of the way: The licensing people at the BBC are mindless greedheads. Or the people at RetroTV are cheapskates. Possibly both. I've been watching classic "Dr. Who" on RetroTV since I was in Portland, working a shitty night job. Key stories were missing from the rotation. The one where Susan leaves. The last 2nd Doctor story. The first 3rd Doctor story. "Pyramids of Mars" (which has to be one of my favorite stories). The death of Adric. At first I thought some of them were lost, but I know "Spearhead from Space" and "Pyramids of Mars" aren't. Turns out Retro and the BBC couldn't come to terms for all the stories, so some got held back. Eventually, with much ballyhoo, they announced a number of stories were being "retired" in exchange for different stories. I looked forward to this, but it turned out to be a rotten deal. They got "The War Games." But that seemed to be about it. No "Spearhead from Space." No "Earthshock." And in exchange they lost about half the early Tom Baker stories. I guess the show is streaming nonstop online on PlutoTV. But that isn't as tidy--and too tempting. It works to sit down and watch the evening local news, "Jeopardy!" and then 2 episodes of "Who." But I don't feel like getting up and moving to my computer for that. And it's going to be even more out of order than the Retro lineup--unless I binge. And I really don't even have time for an hour of "Who" a night, let alone getting sucked into a marathon.

 

[Volpone]

OK. Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy. I went to college just about the time our PBS station switched to Colin Baker and they didn't have "Dr. Who" on the air there. So I missed most of their episodes until catching them on Retro about 6-7 years ago. It's hard to form an opinion on Colin Baker's Doctor for much the same reason it's hard for me to have an opinion on Troughton's Doctor: There are just so few episodes. So many of the Troughton episodes were erased to reuse the tapes (an archive of a '60s kids sci-fi show was basically worthless to the BBC in the '70s--ironic, given how much they milk those reruns these days). Baker just didn't get to have very many episodes. And the material he was given to work with...

I like Colin Baker. I was at a convention with him and Patrick Troughton--even got to be in the same room with them to watch "The Two Doctors" (it was a big room). He was a team player who did what he was told and didn't complain about it--right up to when they screwed him in the end for the last time. Horrible, horrible JNT circus clown costume. Terrible decision on the character by JNT. And the scripts just kept getting worse and worse. Then he had to take a year off before his second (and last) season, which had his trial as a clunky and awkward framing device before he got booted. Refused to do a regeneration scene so they just put Sylvester McCoy in a wig and kept his back to the camera while he bumped his head on the TARDIS console during some turbulence (and really, if you're not going to show the face, why not use an actor that is at least a similar size and build?)

For decades I heard great things about the McCoy stories. But the ones I've seen? So disappointing. Such a missed opportunity. They (mostly) fixed the costume. And eventually got the character dialed in. But the scripts... Jeez, the scripts. So frustrating. They'd take a really interesting concept--sea monster vampires, outer space King Arthur (with the Brigadier!), you name it. The first act would be pretty interesting. Then they'd introduce a lot of stuff in the second act. Then they'd...completely throw everything out and just pull something random out of thin air for the last act. The King Arthur one, for example. You've got the Brigadier being called out of retirement for one last adventure. You've got a sunken spaceship that recognizes the Doctor--as Merlin. You've got Ace finding Excalibur. You've got the setup for a big grudge match showdown between Morgan Le Fay and the Brig...and then that all goes totally out the window when Morgan Le Fay summons some previously unmentioned demon of the Apocalypse and the Brig shoots it with a silver bullet. Huh?! Don't even get me going on Delta and the fucking Bannermen. Or the Greatest Show in the Galaxy. Or... OK, just forget it. Also, "Doctor Who" has always been a little left-leaning and preachy, but at least they used to hide their message in an interesting story. The show wasn't particularly big on warmongering, but they always played the UNIT soldiers as decent people, doing the best they could to protect the world. The show seemed to be a lot less subtle and much more badly executed toward the end of the run. Which is frustrating, because they had the kernel of some pretty interesting stories that were utterly wrecked by terrible production decisions.