Lets look at it this way, 7,8,9 and 11 have never appeared in a story with another doctor so we at least need those 4. LOL Ecc is out so lets hope for McCoy and McGann!
Well, to be fair, the current incarnation of Doctor Who started with Eccelston, not Tennant. I'm quite sad that we'll never see more of Nine. As for the name drops of old villains, it couldn't matter in the least. I've never seen the stories that these big-bads originated from and I'm still able to enjoy the current series as presented. That's a good thing, because the old Doctor Who wasn't particularly good. Additionally, the fans of that show are such a vanishingly small group of people that they can be safely ignored, for the most part. Doctor Who is a children's show. It makes very little sense to craft an anniversary special that ignores the primary target audience and the vast majority of the viewers.
Fighting words. Ah, that old canard again. It's a family show. I've just seen an episode from 1964 where a jailer offers the female companion to go free if she sleeps with him, so I'd say it's always been made with a broad audience in mind.
Opinion invalidated. Hahaha, what? New Who has consistently milked its classic roots for publicity with the general public whether it be the return of the Daleks, Cybermen, Sarah-Jane, K9, Master, Sontarans, Davros, Silurians, Rassilon, Time Lords, Great Intelligence etc. It is one of the most beloved shows by the British public and even the lesser thought of Colin and Sylv eras will be remembered long after the vile Top Gear is forgotten. One of the reasons New Who hasn't alienated its fandom as much as JJ Abrams Trek has is that it has almost always gone out of its way to maintain continuity with and show respect the old show. There's no patronising "This isn't your daddy's Doctor Who!" attitude. The people making the show clearly love the classic series.
It's like Babylon 5. I'm a fan of sci-fi, studiously watched TNG and DS9 in my youth, endured the entire run of Enterprise out of some sort of misplaced sado-masochism (This season will be better, I'm sure of it!) and absolutely adored RDM's definitive take on BSG. But I can't get behind Babylon 5. Every time I sit down and say: "everyone says it's good. I just have to slog through the first season, and it'll get better." And every time, I stop watching a few episodes in. It's much the same for old Who. I remember watching Pertwee and both Baker's as a child on PBS with some enthusiasm, but I never get more than a few minutes into a given serial before I have the unrelenting urge to harm myself. It's stiff, uninteresting and abysmally produced. I understand that there is a certain cult following, much as there is a certain segment of fandom that enjoys enduring Babylon 5, but I don't understand why. As I grow older, it seems, I am far less willing to suffer through something simply because it's 'sci-fi.' It has to engage with me with more than just nostalgia. NuWho is kinetic, fun and occasionally touching. It brings me back to Saturday morning cartoons without pandering directly to the intended audience of 10-year-old boys. It's a joy and a treat. Old Who is just a slog and life's just too short.
Well, I'd say Classic Who is the best TV show ever made, Babylon 5 is the best American show I've ever seen behind only The Wire, and NuBSG became utterly retarded for its final season. So you managed to make a post that was wrong on every level. Impressive.
Why come on a Doctor Who fan site and post about how bad classic Who is? There was some bad in Classic Who but there's been some bad in the New Who too. When you create hundreds of shows in the classic era and close to 100 in the new series(I believe it'll be right at 100 somewhere mid series) you'll have some bad episodes here and there. That's with any show that lasts long. I don't see the point in despising the current series over the classic one and vice versa.
So you haven't watched a lot of Old Who and you didn't like it. Well, to each their own. Opinions are based on facts, if those facts are incorrect, even though the opinion itself is still just an opinion, it may lose most of its credibility.
I'd say Supernatural, The Walking Dead, American Horror Story, Torchwood, Black Adder, The Young Ones, Father Ted, American Dad, Family Guy, and Doctor Who are my top 10 shows (not in that order though).
Yeah, he watched some of the old stories and didn't like them. That is a matter of taste, not facts that he might have wrong. Just because someone has different tastes than you do doesn't make their opinion "wrong"
If this episode is going to feature multiple Doctors - and in having Tennant join the cast, then it is - then it is a waste and something of a cheat not to include any of the pre-revival Doctors. It is, after all, the 50th anniversary episode, not the 8th anniversary. Paul McGann could quite conceivably play 8 again and I don't think Sly McCoy looks particularly old; he has one of those faces that looked middle-aged in his 30s and now doesn't look a lot older than he did in the 1996 movie. So he could and should have some appearance. I personally would love to see Tom Baker or Peter Davison appear but I can see merit in the argument that they and Colin look too old to reprise the roles, Time Crash aside. I hope that at the least they'll be invited for voiceover work, or even to play non-Doctor roles. Of course, as I've said elsewhere, Matt Smith said to Jonathan Ross, when asked to describe this story in one word, 'pictures.' That could mean we'll see pictures of the older Doctors. But I can't help wondering if there'll be some sort of Dorian Gray aspect to the story. Portraits, probably holographic, of the earlier Doctors in the TARDIS, which age, even as the incumbent remains young and vital. Could this be a way of having Tom, Peter and Colin back on board? Beyond that, anything is a bonus and the other issue is how crowded a storyline is going to get with so many Doctors appearing. I suppose it's possible that the actors playing Hartnell and Troughton for the Adventures in Time and Space movie could also play the First and Second Doctors here too, though I know many of you don't like that idea (with it being a 50th special, I do think the First Doctor needs to be represented somehow).
Ooh I like that idea... Even if Ten/Eleven is all we get from an actual Doctor perspective, I'm still hoping we might get a classic companion. There'd certainly be no issues over them looking too old because most of them didn't die, they just left the Tardis, so it doesn't matter that Ace/Leela/Tegan/Turlough or whoever look older/fatter/thinner/greyer, whatever. I think it's a given that, were she still with us, Elisabeth Sladen would have been in this
^I was thinking the same thing. The companions idea is a good one. I believe the actors who played the First Doctor's companions are mostly still alive, no? And wasn't there a reference to his granddaughter in Saturday's episode? Might that have some significance?
Of the classic Doctors, McGann definitely looks near enough, and I do think Time Crash has shown that Davison can get away with it too. This is what McCoy looked like playing the Doctor 18 months ago: http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb416/planetmondas/Planet Mondas Forum/McCoy2.jpg Even if Colin and Tom are beyond the pale (and personally even if they are I would still want them to be in it), those others haven't changed beyond all recognition from their Doctor days...