Finished up through Warrior's Gate last night. Sad to see Romana's run come to an end again. Everytime I watch this Serial, I think I like it more (It doesn't make any more sense than it ever did, but, maybe I just appreciate the individual scenes more). Romana really comes into her own in this story finally, and you can totally buy into the fact that she is ready to branch out on her own as The Hero and become the Woman she is in the Gallifrey Audio Series
Just finished "Time & the Rani." It was torture. Literally torture. Apparently I got off lucky, in missing most of "The Twin Dilemma"--a story reputed to be even worse. I got home late and then I was having problems with reception so I spent most of the first two episodes troubleshooting my antenna. Apparently the plan by JNT at this point was to just throw everything you could at the screen and hope something sticks. There's so much going on that none of it makes sense. And I'm sure a lot of it was because the storytellers didn't bother explaining it. Hint, writers and directors: the audience doesn't know what is going on in a character's head unless you put it on the screen. And there's no space for that if you've got your villain disguised as the companion, 4 eyed man-sized bats with guns, "The Prisoner" style balloon mines, giant brains, green aliens with glitter guns, and the Doctor playing the spoons. [Edit: I left out the Earth's geniuses in suspended animation and the asteroid of unobtainium.]
They're equally bad. Whats more, they're both the starting point for both 6 and 7 respectively, so you can't really avoid them.
I think the spoon thing was McCoy's idea, I think he used it in his act. It actually appears a few more times, even in the somewhat more serious stories from the next season.
I like The Twin Dilemma, but I agree that Time and the Rani is horrible. Its far from the worst 7th Doctor story in my opinion, but its still very, very bad.
Pip and Jane Baker wrote it and in something of a hurry, JNT wanted Colin Baker to come back for the regeneration story but he refused. Personally I like Time and The Rani, IMO it's much better than The Twin Dilemna.
Doctor Who revisited, The Aztecs and The Tomb Of The Cybermen. The Aztecs is a great story, nicely researched and I loved Tlotoxl he was a great villain. And it was pretty cold blooded of Ian to outrightly kill Ixta. The Tomb Of The Cybermen another great classic story with a great cast and I loved Troughton as the Doctor, it's a shame taht so much of his era is till missing.
Ian was a bad ass in that one. A classic of the classic series, with the First Doctor involved in something of a romantic plotline.
Halfway through "Paradise Towers." It is infuriating. The Doctor is much better here. And the plot actually makes sense and kind of holds together. The only truly painful to watch bit of writing is where The Doctor escapes from the guards--who live literally "by the book"--by making up increasingly incredible rules that he "read" in the book. The guards do NOT say anything like "That's not in the book," or "Show me where it says that," or "Let me see that, they just blindly stand up, walk away, put their hands on their heads, close their eyes, and let him go through their pockets. Stupid, stupid writing! But the production choices are more bewildering. I guess the bit with the coins from the pay phone and the vending machine kind of explains The Doctor, winning the trust of the gang, but it is clunky and poorly done. As his his magically winding up in their "Brainquarters." And head Caretaker looks like Hitler. Why does the head Caretaker look like Hitler?! He doesn't act at all like Hitler. Does it get explained later? Probably not. But every time he's onscreen I'm not focusing on what is going on, I'm going "Yep. Grey and black military uniform. Little moustache. He looks like Hitler. Why does he look like Hitler?" Or the Cleaners. I mean, I'll allow Dr. Who rubber monster completely non-menacing robot production values, but the best they could do to show that it has killed a character is having *one* leg in the appropriately colored pantleg, poking out of its trailer? Have you *ever* seen a body neatly loaded into a hopper with just one leg happening to poke out--from the knee down? It is sketchy the first time they show it, but by the third time it is just painfully bad. I guess they didn't think it through when they built the prop and by the time they were shooting, it was too late to do anything about it. It would have worked far better to have an open hopper with the actor "dead" in it. Or at least have an arm and another leg so they can mix it up a bit what stray bit happens to be poking out. It is frustrating because this is the first story I've seen in awhile that actually has a plot you can follow; to see it bungled by inept production is maddening.
Traken was a lot better than a lot of the episodes from that season. (And I'd personally put it above Logopolis.) Anyway, finished up Paradise Towers tonight. And yeah, it is miles above so many Who eps of that era, in that it has a plot that can actually be explained in a sentence or two and actually makes sense. But the production... So Hitler guy gets turned into Tin Man Hitler. (And why was it that they decided that the villains in that era were scarier if you couldn't understand what they were saying? I'm watching the evil Architect computer gloat about something and I can't tell you what because I literally have no idea. I can only make out about every 5th word.) And if you were bewildered by why they decided the character should look like Hitler, they really don't explain that. I guess because he wants genocide against humans, but it is a pretty tenuous link. But once he is converted he acquires a coat of silver greasepaint and emotes like Emo Williams or something. But I digress. The real point I was getting to is how Mel has such an insane boner about how they're going to some estate complex because it has a...swimming pool. Yeah. Because apparently they didn't have swimming pools in England in the 1980s (not that we know Mel is from England in the 1980s, because they've screwed the pooch on introducing her character by burning Colin Baker (who is supposed to meet her) and can't be bothered to write in any exposition on her backstory apart from that she is a fitness freak and a computer whiz. But again, I'm getting sidetracked. The pool. We have to make a special trip halfway across time and space to find a pool in a fancy subsidized housing complex. Pretty dodgy premise. When you've got a premise this dodgy, you spend as little time on it as possible. "Screw it, I'm going to miss my deadline--they're looking for a pool. On to the story." Except they can't manage that. They've got to go on and on and on about this amazing, magnificent pool that is so much better than anything that you could find in a shitty Motel 6 in Dubuque Iowa and are dead set on showing us this spectacular, wonderful pool that they've traveled through time and space to get to. So at this point a competent producer would say "Well shit. I guess I'd better find a goddamn impressive pool. I'd better find on like they had for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and then have them make an exact replica of it out of solid gold and fill it with the tears of angels." But of course that isn't what they do. They find about the most unexceptional, forgettable motel pool that one of the crew probably had at their apartment complex and shoot it at night when no one else is using it. It makes me want to bang my head on something. Were they trying to get the show cancelled?! So anyway, the ending isn't completely terrible. And you're left wondering how good the story would have been if they'd had a producer and director that weren't completely inept.
I guess the Doctor hadn't had the TARDIS find the pool it use to have back into use. I'm pretty sure he had to dump it at some point, though I forget when. Probably Castrovalva.
The reason I enjoy this story is more to do with the guest stars than the story itself. The Caretaker is the same actor who played Tom Good in Good Neighbors. The actress who played one of the Rezzies was Daisy in Keeping Up Appearances. And Mark Strickson's wife played one of the Kangs. As for the plot... well, the whole "Great Pool in the Sky" became a running joke among the group of people with whom I used to go to science fiction conventions in the '80s and '90s. One of the hotels we stayed at several times had a swimming pool on the top floor, and if any of my friends intended to have a swim, they'd joke that they were going to the Great Pool in the Sky. Naturally the non-congoers who heard this exchange had no idea what we were talking about.
I never knew The Good Life got retitled in the States, truly you do learn something new every day! I've just finished watching The Web. It was ok, Troughton and Hines are always wonderful, and crikey I can see why they brought Courtney back, he just owns that role from the get go. Victoria is terrible though, the worst kind of companion, I much prefer Zoe. It was interesting to see The Great Intelligence after having watched the modern take on it, I pretty much did guess who the GI was inhabiting, but they did provide a lot of suspects at least. For a while I thought they were going to go with the professor's daughter.
I've stared the Third Doctor years in earnest now. Re-watched Spearhead from Space and just finished Doctor Who and the Silurians. I really enjoyed that one and the Doctor/Brigidier interaction in the latter is fascinating. Season 7 was a fascinating one for so many reasons.
The first I knew of it being called The Good Life was the episode in which Barbara gave a talk at a prison (about self-sufficiency), and they came back home to find the place absolutely trashed. That's the last episode KSPS (the PBS Spokane station) ever showed. I have no idea how the series actually ended - if that was it, or if there were more.