Last Classic Who Story you watched

Discussion in 'Doctor Who' started by Pindar, Aug 29, 2012.

  1. Nagisa Furukawa

    Nagisa Furukawa Commander Red Shirt

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    The implication is supposed to be that Davros was once a human-looking Kaled like the rest, but whatever accident put him in the chair and took away his arm also left his face scarred and charred with sunken, unusable eyes (hence the electronic eye).
     
  2. diankra

    diankra Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    His later TV appearances don't really fill in on his earlier history (the closest is that there was reportedly a flashback scene to his early life scripted, but not shot, for the most recent one), but there are plenty semi-canonical takes on it.
    In particular, there's a four part CD series, I Davros, covering his childhood and early life, with Peter Miles reprising his Genesis role as Nyder. But personally I prefer the version that was printed (in wildly inconsistent versions) in Annuals and other tie-in books during the late '70s, before the character had even reappeared on TV, because there's a tragic simplicity to it. It runs something like this...

    Davros was born on the day the war began.
    He never knew his father, who was killed leading an attack on a Thal base when Davros was still a baby. Davros's earliest memory is being presented with the award for valour that was posthumously awarded to his father.
    Davros's mother was killed by a Thal air-raid when he was six. (which is not the way I Davros tells it, by the way).
    By this time, Davros has one ambition: once he's old enough, he wants to be a soldier and fight the Thals (after all, they killed his parents).But his natural genius has already been spotted, and he's hothoused through the school system and college.
    By the time he's 12, Davros is already a genius, a key member of an elite unit developing weapons to use against the Thals. But he still sees this only as his way of fighting until he's old enough to be a proper soldier: he intends to join up on his 16th birthday.
    A few days before that, however, he's crippled by a massive explosion. Reports as to the cause vary... a lab accident. A random hit on his lab by a Thal shell. Thal sabotage designed to kill the Kaled boy genius. Kaled sabotage to ensure Davros remained in the lab, rather than getting himself sent to the front and killed with a week. Could be any of them... but the end result is the same: Davros is horrifically hurt, but saved by intensive life support. Eventually he builds a mobile life support chair for himself. This keeps him alive for so long that as the war drags on for centuries, generations of Kaleds grow up in awe of Davros, the man who will not allow himself to die until the war is won...
     
  3. Captain Crow

    Captain Crow Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Which is funny since he mumbles the name of the medicine and then tells Jo it's raw metabolism just before the "It probably... probably kill me Jo" line. It's a metabolism booster, not an aspirin. The reason why it's deadly for him to take is because at that point in the story he's trying to slow down his metabolism and enter a hibernation state to heal himself, taking a booster would have the opposite effect.
     
  4. Lonemagpie

    Lonemagpie Writer Admiral

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    Since it snowed yesterday, The Ice Warriors (2 & 3 on audio)
     
  5. Iamnotspock

    Iamnotspock Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Had a DVD night with some friends on Saturday; The Caves of Androzani and Pyramids of Mars (with The Doctor's Wife in between).
     
  6. Sindatur

    Sindatur The Gray Owl Wizard Admiral

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    Web of Fear - Much better reconstruction then I experienced with Abominable Snowmen. It was good to get some back story on the Great intelligence (Still need to circle back around to Abominable Snowmen when I find good audio for Ep 3 - 6, though might as well finish the Troughton era now and do it last)

    Fury From the Deep - This was an excellent Reconstruction, telesnaps changed quite often, good clear pictures and good audio. I enjoyed the story too.

    The Wheel in Space - Another Cybermen story I never knew about, so this was fun

    All complete stories left now, except for The Space Pirates (I count The Invasion as complete, since it's animated)
     
  7. Pindar

    Pindar Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Where are you watching the reconstructions.

    I haven't had much luck finding them.
     
  8. Sindatur

    Sindatur The Gray Owl Wizard Admiral

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    The Dominators - Stupid name for Invaders to be called, LOL. Interesting story that they are so so passive and peaceful, they can't even understand Aggression. I like what the Doctor did at the end to get rid of the bomb :bolian:

    The Mind Robber - This was an awesome little acid trip of a story. Having the main Antagonist called "The Master" made me think of his Time Lord Nemesis The Master, and the way he kept cackling really seemed like it could be Ainley's Master, kept expecting him to say "No, you never do Doctor, you never do..."

    Pindar, check your IMs
     
  9. FalTorPan

    FalTorPan Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Last weekend I watched "The Romans." I love the era of the first Doctor.
     
  10. Iamnotspock

    Iamnotspock Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    The Curse of Fenric was as well.
     
  11. OmahaStar

    OmahaStar Disrespectful of his betters Admiral

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    Wasn't Spearhead from Space shot entirely on location as well?
     
  12. Sindatur

    Sindatur The Gray Owl Wizard Admiral

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    The Invasion - Wow, yet another Cybermen Story and it's complete (well, with the animated episodes, it's complete in my opinion). I really liked this one, and had no problem with it being 8 episodes long, it was well paced. A shame I am so familiar with seeing Kit Peddler with Cybermen stories only, as soon as I saw the name, I suspected it had to be a Cybermen Story, it would've been nice to be surprised, but, it was still a great story, and I really enjoyed Isobel and the Introduction of U.N.I.T., Corporal Benton and Col Lethbridge-Stewart's promotion to Brigadier

    The Krotons - This one was OK, definitely worth watching, but, probably my least favorite of the Troughton era so far (Other than The Highlanders, which pretty much bored me). The story premise was good enough, just something with the execution that didn't thrill me as much as most of the rest of the Trougton era.

    Sadly only 3 more stories left in the Troughton era (I've seen The War Games before, but, that was on youtube with 3 chunks per episode, so this'll be nice watching it straight through an episode at a time, rather than waiting every 10 minutes or 5 minutes for the next chunk to load up)
     
  13. diankra

    diankra Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Yes, due to a strike at television centre (over pay rates for using the new colour cameras. Something similar happened at ITV, which is why some episodes of Upstairs Downstairs, Budgie and Timeslip were shot with the old black and white cameras).

    In addition,there's Silver Nemesis and Survival. Delta and the Bannerman cheats with a single console room scene shot during Dragonfire, and the same goes for Greatest Show in the Galaxy (which was otherwise shot in a tent in a BBC car park).
     
  14. Iamnotspock

    Iamnotspock Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Not quite. It was shot entirely on film for those reasons, and almost entirely on location, but there was some studio work on it, the shots in the tent where Ransome is killed by an Auton for example.
     
  15. Lowdarzz

    Lowdarzz Captain Captain

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    Destiny of the Daleks (Fourth Doctor).

    The Fourth Doctor's only other confrontation with the Daleks, except for Genesis, and it doesn't hold up quite as well. The humor feels out of place and I get the feeling that Douglas Adams rewrote a good deal of Terry Nation's script which was unfortunately his last contribution to Doctor Who. I don't like the idea of making the Daleks entirely robotic, I think the Daleks as genetically engineered mutants is more interesting than them being straight robots, and I'm glad this idea was abandoned in the current series. I know that the 5th, 6th and 7th Doctors each got their own Dalek story so we'll see if they continue this new robot idea.

    Unfortunately Davros didn't seem to have much of a purpose in the story. True the Daleks needed him to reprogram their battle computer but that was it. The Doctor captures him first, the Daleks retake him and then he is captured by the Doctor again and put in suspended animation. I also think Michael Wisher's version of the character came off better than David Gooderson's. You could feel the malevolence in Wisher's interpretation whereas Gooderson's felt like he was just going through the motions.

    Romana's ability to regenerate into any form she wishes is interesting and begs the question of whether or not this action is possible for all Time Lords. Based solely on the Doctor you'd think not but then again Romana chose to regenerate whereas the Doctor was always on the verge of death. The only time he may have had a chance to decide was when his first incarnation was on the way out since he was dying of old age at that point.

    City of Death (Fourth Doctor).

    An excellent serial all around. As far as I know this serial was the first time Doctor Who ever filmed outside the UK and they used it to great effect. The Paris locations add well to the sequences where Duggan is following the Doctor and Romana. Although Douglas Adams and Tom Baker's humor is found throughout the serial, it does not feel out of place here as it did in Destiny of the Daleks. Duggan's need to thump people and the Doctor's exasperation at finding the people he wishes to interrogate unconscious led to several good laughs.

    Scaroth was a well realized villain whose goal is not actually a bad one, he is trying to save the remnants of his people. He just happens not to care that his people were extremely war-like and that saving them means erasing all of human history. The idea of a man, or Jagaroth in this case, living throughout the entirety of human history and effecting it is not new. Splitting him into fragments that live in different time periods simultaneously with a shared memory of events in each period was an excellent way to make the idea fresh.

    I also liked the idea of making the surviving copy of the Mona Lisa one of the supposed fakes. It would be interesting to see this referenced in the new series.
     
  16. The Borgified Corpse

    The Borgified Corpse Admiral Admiral

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    Ouch! Forgotten already? You were just down ther
    They're an odd, unconventional group of reluctant Doctor Who fans. Odd because they also like Sylvester McCoy's question mark jumper. Reluctant because they've had my copy of the 4th season of the new series for nearly a year now and have yet to watch any of it. (They keep getting caught in an endless loop of old DVDs of Murder She Wrote, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Scarecrow & Mrs. King, Scooby-Doo, and Soap.)

    Speaking of random actors reminding me of other random actors, for a long time, I was convinced that one of the craven bureaucrats from "The Silurians" was the same actor that played Lister's Paranoia in the Red Dwarf episode "Confidence & Paranoia."
    [​IMG][​IMG][​IMG]
    But they're different. Dr. Lawrence in "The Silurians" was played by Peter Miles, who also played Professor Whitaker in "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" & Nyder in "Genesis of the Daleks." Meanwhile, Lister's Paranoia was played by Lee Cornes, who made one of his earliest TV appearances on Doctor Who as the Trickster in "Kinda."
    [​IMG]

    As has been mentioned, they never really go into his backstory on the TV series. But the audios are fantastic. I'm particularly fond of Terry Molloy (Davros during the Davison, C. Baker, & McCoy years) in the Colin Baker audio "Davros." There's something very broken in that man's soul that makes him so evil. Ironically, that inability to be anything but pure evil makes me pity him somewhat.

    I love the whole thing about how the lead Dominator is always being foiled by his own henchman because his henchman is a sadistic idiot more interested in blowing up random shit than he is in actually completing their mission.

    Agreed. I was almost expecting some reference to this when we saw the Mona Lisa in the alien museum in "The Girl Who Waited." Like, the Doctor asks Rory to set the sonic screwdriver on x-ray scan. Rory reads, "This is a fake." The Doctor mutters, "Oh, I guess that means it's the real one." "Come again?" "Long story. Anyway..."

    I just finished the E-Space trilogy. I have very mixed feelings on it. Adric is kind of annoying. More annoying than Wesley Crusher but less annoying than Turlough. Romana is super sexy. Tom Baker seems obviously bored.

    "Full Circle."
    I like the design of the Marsh Men. And the ideas about evolution and that the ship has actually been fully operational this whole time are interesting ones. Tom Baker seems a bit more engaged in this story than he does for the rest of the trilogy.

    "State of Decay."
    It's an interesting premise but feels a bit too thin to be an entire 4-parter. And, considering it's a classic horror pastiche, where's Robert Holmes? :(

    "Warrior's Gate."
    I must confess I don't understand this one at all. Romana's decision to leave the TARDIS seems very abrupt. But at least it looks fantastic. The sets & models are very well done, as are the video effects, including superimposing the color actors on black & white backgrounds.
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2013
  17. Pindar

    Pindar Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Started the Ambassadors of Death. Interesting soundtrack, seems to be bit of a departure from the norm.

    It's a 7 parter which means I will need a few sittings to get through it.
     
  18. Count Zero

    Count Zero No nation but procrastination Moderator

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    Ah, the awesome space program the UK didn't actually have. ;)
     
  19. Anji

    Anji Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I watched "The Armageddon Factor" about a month ago.

    And what's this about Mary Tamm passing on????!!!! OMG I'm shocked!

    I had the most lovely conversation with her at convention back in the 1980s about her choice of Romana's costumes. We spent so much time talking about clothing (we were in an autograph line) that we annoyed Jon Pertwee and he told us to move along!

    She was so wonderful!!!!!
     
  20. diankra

    diankra Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    He commissioned it in the first place, while he was still script editor and was busy writing Talons of Weng-Chiang!
    It was going to be the first story of Tom Baker's fourth season, but the BBC was making a Big Important Version of Dracula, and insisted that Doctor Who couldn't do vampires that year as a result (Count Dracula starred Louis Jourdan, from Octopussy, and was written by Gerald Savory, who has a part in the tangled backstage history of The Celestial Toymaker).
    So The Horror of Fang Rock was written as a last minute replacement (or maybe pulled out of Terrance Dicks's unused scripts drawer, to judge by Louise Jameson's memories of getting a first draft that called her character 'Sarah').
    Three years later the unused script for The Vampire Mutations was in turn dug out of Terrance's filing cabinet, and rewritten for Romana, Adric and K9...