I'm surprised something as un-PC as an old copy of The Beano, no doubt featuring bullying, child abuse, gender stereotypes and violence as entertainment is allowed on the leftie BBC.
I might give new Doctor a chance and watch a couple of episodes. Capaldi lost me completely and I have no idea where the story has gone the last couple of years.
Friend of mine pointed out that old Sylvester McCoy Dr Who episodes are streaming on Twitch. Quite enjoying the low-rent Richard Briers Hitler episodes at the moment.
Friend of mine pointed out that old Sylvester McCoy Dr Who episodes are streaming on Twitch. Quite enjoying the low-rent Richard Briers Hitler episodes at the moment.
Some of those early Seventh Doctor adventures are a bit dodgy, but I see they're due to stream the last three ever serials from the 1963-89 series today (Monday): 'Ghost Light', 'The Curse of Fenric' and 'Survival'. All three of those are great stories – the McCoy era was on a definite upswing when the original series was cancelled, due to the coherent plan of its final script editor Andrew Cartmel and some of the writers from those last couple of years, who had decided to try to restore some darkness, depth and mystery to the Doctor's character.
Due to the cancellation not a lot of this ever made it explicitly to screen, but the "Cartmel Masterplan" certainly drove the direction of the Virgin New Adventures book series (and to a degree the subsequent BBC books series that took over after the 1996 TV movie happened), which kept the Who flame burning during the wilderness years of the 1990s and into the 21st century. And these in turn informed the new series to an extent when it returned in 2005 – several of the writers on modern Who, including Russell T. Davies, wrote for the books range. Stephen Moffat has acknowledged the spiritual/stylistic link direct from 'Survival' to the new series' opener 'Rose' 16 years later.
'The Curse of Fenric', meanwhile, is still my favourite ever Doctor Who story.
The Curse of Fenric really scared me when I saw it as a kid.
I quite like the McCoy Dalek story (first Dalek to float!) and there was one called Battlefield that had Arthurian stuff and a recall for the Brigadier.
Yes, 'Remembrance of the Daleks' and 'Fenric' are two of the few stories I dimly remember from the classic series from their original transmission – I retained an enduring scary memory of the latter's Haemovores, or "porridge monsters" as I thought of them, emerging from the sea and surrounding Nicholas Parsons' vicar outside his church:
My 10-year-old brain also held onto a scrambled recollection of the Russian forces' captain warding the vampiric Haemovores off with his hammer-and-sickle emblem, such was his faith in the Revolution – except I conflated these two scenes and ascribed the action to the vicar, in some impression of a priest who'd lost his own belief failing to repel the creatures with a cross, star of David, hammer and sickle or any other symbol he could scrabble for before they engulfed him. I always felt it was a rather nice sort of cogent commentary on the nature and/or merits of faith... only to discover years later when I saw the story again that I'd entirely made it up by accident.
This was after I got back into Doctor Who in university, as one of my best friends was an ardent fan. Curiously the video that he ended up showing me that kickstarted my own re-conversion was the aforementioned 'Battlefield' – one we agreed at the time was fairly terrible, but which I've come to regard more and more fondly in the intervening years. The parallel-dimension Arthurian stuff was an interesting idea and the Brigadier's return (and original-series bow) is a great thing. He for once gets to take down a monster, as well, in the shape of the Destroyer, an unusually magnificent piece of design and costume work:
Alas, the constraints of time and budget meant script rewrites that meant the monster didn't really get to do anything in the finished product, other than stand there and look threatening whilst rattling its chains.
Last edited by Various Artist; 04-08-2018, 22:54.
Reason: Parsons' vicar, not Parson's vicar. But parson's indeed Parsons, though.
It was the fingernails that got me most about the haemavores. Far too scary!
I'm pretty sure they re-used that monster name in a David Tennant episode - the one where he met Martha in a hospital that got transported to the moon.
I only stumbled across that latter image while googling for a suitable picture to put in my above post, and found there's all manner of intriguing Who artefacts there on the Prop Gallery website. Alas, most of them, including these hands, have already been sold.
Which "monster name" was it you're referring to: Haemovore? I don't recall it from 'Smith and Jones', Martha's introductory episode with the hospital on the moon, but then all I do really recall from that one is that it introduced the Judoon.
...
Heh – just looked the episode up on the Tardis Wikia, and found that it was indeed the similar-sounding (and etymologically identical) Plasmavore. Marvellously, the character was played by Anne Reid, who had previously appeared in old-school Doctor Who in... 'The Curse of Fenric'.
That is fantastic, I can’t stop saying it out loud in Whittaker’s accent and laughing. I wonder if she’ll reprise “Lots of planets have a north”?
Getting excited about Sunday’s broadcast now, sitting down with my teenage daughters and son to watch a female Doctor seems significant - hope the rest of the show lives up to it.
I get the feeling that they're going to go back to aiming for a younger audience - maybe not a kid's show, but away from some of the very involved plots of recent series. We don't need the Doctor to understand the motives of a Dalek or any other monster, if they're a baddy they're a baddy just blow them up.
Bradley Walsh was pretty funny I thought. I quite liked the subtlety, like when the Doctor says 'Deep breath' to herself and Ryan took a deep breath. In the past the humour has been a bit slapstick and trying too hard.
"It's a sonic ... swiss army knife. Only not a knife. Only idiots carry knives". Liked that.
The Doctor making her appearance by crashing through the roof of a train totally unharmed ... didn't like that so much. If apparent cliffhangers involving mortal danger are just going to be shrugged off without explanation because 'the Doctor can do that' it quickly renders the original peril redundant, like someone firing a missile at the Hulk.
All in all though I really enjoyed it. And yeah, the only bits that referenced her being female - like choosing her new outfit in a charity shop - were done for laughs, not to make some huge gender politics point.
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