New to Who

[NightJim]

These aren't like Episodes these days. What we call 'The Daleks' is really "The Dead Planet", "The Survivors", "The Escape", "The Ambush", "The Expedition", "The Ordeal" and "The Rescue". It is all one story. You'd struggle to watch one by itself as it would make little sense without the surrounding parts.

Like Volpone says, they realise this themselves towards the end of the First Doctor's run (and the writers probably got annoyed a lot of good names were already gone) and switch to Part 1, Part 2 etc, but they make episodes in the exact same way.

 

[The Four Doctor]

We could have had a female baddie in Colony in Space but the Head of Serials said "Women can't be shown as evil! They are the mother figures!"

Even today, there's timidity in showing women as evil in things aimed at children on TV and a lot of parents are unwilling to see red flags when it comes to strange women.

 

[Nightowl1701]

^ Too bad the show already went there in Galaxy 4 (one of the missing episodes from 1965) then.

(And exactly what does this have to do with anything, btw?)

 

[Sparkle Fabulosa]

These aren't like Episodes these days. What we call 'The Daleks' is really "The Dead Planet", "The Survivors", "The Escape", "The Ambush", "The Expedition", "The Ordeal" and "The Rescue". It is all one story. You'd struggle to watch one by itself as it would make little sense without the surrounding parts.

Like Volpone says, they realise this themselves towards the end of the First Doctor's run (and the writers probably got annoyed a lot of good names were already gone) and switch to Part 1, Part 2 etc, but they make episodes in the exact same way.

Well that's confusing. Why couldn't they have had just episode titles? What was the purpose of spliting them into serials?

 

[Ithekro]

The show was made to fill in a 22-30 time slot between the sports scores and some other major programing. Basically for every week of the year (usually a month to six week gap between seasons). Thus you need more stories, and to do that you have one story spread out over several weeks, with cliffhangers. "An Unearthly Child" was the first of a four episode story, that continues with "The Cave of Skulls", "The Forest of Fear", and "The Firemakers" before the TARDIS leaves ending up leading directly into "The Dead Planet" which is the first of the seven The Dalek series episodes. Most of the stories lead into the next story every week for those years.

This heavy grouping of an episode a week lasted until 1970 (Third Doctor) when they shifted to episodes for half a year. This stays until the Fifth Doctor in 1982 where they shift to only three months of episodes a year, but two episodes a week. Then the Sixth Doctor onwards (1985) it is just one episode a week for three months a year until the series ends in 1989.

 

[Volpone]

As a sidebar, back in the mid '80s, I was fortunate to attend a convention with Colin Baker and Patrick Troughton as the guests. They were wonderful. But at the time the local PBS station had stopped showing episodes in a daily half hour format and edited them into "movies" that they'd show latenight on...Fridays(?) The two Doctors were bewildered by what we called "stories" or "episodes" compared to how they thought of them. Eventually someone sorted it out and we were no longer separated by a common language.

 

[mythme]

These aren't like Episodes these days. What we call 'The Daleks' is really "The Dead Planet", "The Survivors", "The Escape", "The Ambush", "The Expedition", "The Ordeal" and "The Rescue". It is all one story. You'd struggle to watch one by itself as it would make little sense without the surrounding parts.

Like Volpone says, they realise this themselves towards the end of the First Doctor's run (and the writers probably got annoyed a lot of good names were already gone) and switch to Part 1, Part 2 etc, but they make episodes in the exact same way.

Well that's confusing. Why couldn't they have had just episode titles? What was the purpose of spliting them into serials?

You're just too young to be familiar with serialized stories (I am too, for that matter). But this was commonplace back in the day; Britain just held on to the format longer than we did. But radio shows and cliffhangers in the cinema (like Flash Gordon) would always end with "Will our hero survive certain death?!?! Tune in next week..." However, recently there seems to be a swing back to this kind of format. Game of thrones, Orange is the New Black, Gotham, House of Cards - basically anything designed to "binge watch". (Later seasons of DS9 were probably among the first to get back to serialized TV).

Most people don't really refer to pre-War Games stories by their individual episode titles (The exception being "An Unearthly Child"/"100,000 BC", for reasons which I've already stated) - They all are considered one big, self-contained serial. But also as stated, you certainly cannot just pick random episodes within a serial, that will leave you more confused than skipping episodes in NuWHo.

For most under 40ish, watching classic Who takes a little patience and getting used to. It wasn't designed for today's short attention spans and instant gratification. On, the other hand, watching an entire serial straight through can have its own set of problems (especially if they are over 4 episodes long, which is most of Pertwee's era). Doctor Who was never meant to be seen this way.

I watched a video which gave a tip that might help. Pick a story, watch an episode, absorb it, then leave it be. If you want to move on to a new story or Doctor that day, that's fine, but the idea is to leave you hanging and wanting more. Return to your story the next day and watch another episode. I took this advice and found it works well (especially with older Doctors with more "talky" adventures).

(of course, there are some really good stories you'll WANT to watch from beginning to end....that's ok too.)

 

[diankra]

Well that's confusing. Why couldn't they have had just episode titles? What was the purpose of spliting them into serials?

They did just have episode titles: the first few years or so were following in the tradition of radio serials like Dick Barton, where you knew that every two weeks an individual adventure would end and a new one would start the next Monday, but they didn't have on-air titles.
The early Doctor Who episodes didn't have story titles either, but Radio Times would run "A New Adventure for Doctor Who" box outs at the start of most stories, and behind the scenes the producers referred to each serial (meaning something written by the same writer and using the same sets) by a code numeral; it was only later that fans assigned titles to the early serials to match the later pattern, based on the production team's internal paperwork (which tend to drift to the Friends principle: the one with the Sensorites, the one about the Aztecs, etc).

 

[Sparkle Fabulosa]

Today I watched part 2, 3, and 4 of The Daleks. Had no interest in continuing, sorry. So then I started on Tomb Of The Cyberman. It feels more accessible. I'll finish the last two parts tomorrow because after six episodes, I need a break! I can see myself watching another one after. Two and his companions are more interesting to me.

 

[mythme]

If I may observe; you seem to have trouble when a series is just beginning (#1 & #9) and the kinks still need to be worked out.

That being said, #2 is probably more engaging as a Doctor, both in character and in the tone of his stories. After all, most subsequent Doctors owe a lot to Troughton.

 

[Turtletrekker]

"Tomb of the Cybermen" is, IMHO anyway, one of the best of not only Troughton, but of Classic Who in general. What struck me on first viewing is how much Star Trek and hte Borg owe to this serial.

 

[Sparkle Fabulosa]

If I may observe; you seem to have trouble when a series is just beginning (#1 & #9) and the kinks still need to be worked out.

That being said, #2 is probably more engaging as a Doctor, both in character and in the tone of his stories. After all, most subsequent Doctors owe a lot to Troughton.

That is definitely somewhat true. No disrespect to William Hartnell though. He just didn't pull me in but I can appreciate his Doctor for being the first. Same with Christopher Eccelston with Nine starting the reboot.

 

[Sparkle Fabulosa]

"Tomb of the Cybermen" is, IMHO anyway, one of the best of not only Troughton, but of Classic Who in general. What struck me on first viewing is how much Star Trek and hte Borg owe to this serial.

I never gave it much thought but yeah, the Borg are very similar to the Cybermen. Except that I find the Borg to be terrifying! It's the combination of their look and the creepy Collective voice.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Cough. Comics are cool. Cough.

 

[Sparkle Fabulosa]

Well those look... Interesting.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Walk down to your local comic book shop, and give a nerd $20.

 

[Skellington]

Well those look... Interesting.

I found them overly long-winded and a bit plodding, though not bad as such. Sometimes, less is more.

 

[Sparkle Fabulosa]

Walk down to your local comic book shop, and give a nerd $20.

$20? That's a bit expensive for a comic. I prefer novels.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Well, I'm sure if you explain that to the people working in the comic book shop, that they will instantly give you a massive discount.

Although... Wereghost is right, it's a shitty comic. Nice concept, good art, great covers, some fantastic moments, but it's %85 percent fluff.

 

[MacLeod]

These aren't like Episodes these days. What we call 'The Daleks' is really "The Dead Planet", "The Survivors", "The Escape", "The Ambush", "The Expedition", "The Ordeal" and "The Rescue". It is all one story. You'd struggle to watch one by itself as it would make little sense without the surrounding parts.

Like Volpone says, they realise this themselves towards the end of the First Doctor's run (and the writers probably got annoyed a lot of good names were already gone) and switch to Part 1, Part 2 etc, but they make episodes in the exact same way.

Well that's confusing. Why couldn't they have had just episode titles? What was the purpose of spliting them into serials?

You're just too young to be familiar with serialized stories (I am too, for that matter). But this was commonplace back in the day; Britain just held on to the format longer than we did. But radio shows and cliffhangers in the cinema (like Flash Gordon) would always end with "Will our hero survive certain death?!?! Tune in next week..." However, recently there seems to be a swing back to this kind of format. Game of thrones, Orange is the New Black, Gotham, House of Cards - basically anything designed to "binge watch". (Later seasons of DS9 were probably among the first to get back to serialized TV).

Whilst it might not be the case or always the case the fact that the UK was more used to serialised story tellling, that shows which were more serialsed took off in the UK such as B5, but lets also remember back in the early-mid 90's, we were still in the VHS era with maybe 2-3 episode of a series released once a month, no DVR's so you couldn't store up episodes and binge watch as easily as today.