My sister's comment when the news broke: "Won't believe it till I see it."
Last Classic Who Story you watched
- Thread starter Pindar
- Start date
I watched the first two episodes of The Face of Evil this morning. I've seen two or three other serials with Leela and I was curious to see how she ended up with the doctor.
So far I'm really enjoying it, it's got Tom Baker at his best, and it's been a pretty nice introduction to Leela. The whole thing with everyone on thinking The Doctor is the evil one, but then his face being on the mountain, and Zoanan speaking with his voice was very interesting, and I'm very curious to find what exactly is going on with all of it.
So far I'm really enjoying it, it's got Tom Baker at his best, and it's been a pretty nice introduction to Leela. The whole thing with everyone on thinking The Doctor is the evil one, but then his face being on the mountain, and Zoanan speaking with his voice was very interesting, and I'm very curious to find what exactly is going on with all of it.
Well, yes and no. It's tricky to fit in, because it's supposed to be something the Doctor did during an unseen adventure, but all the previous Tom Baker serials pretty much flowed directly into each other without a lot of room to insert stories in between them. It would've made more sense if the face of Xoanon had been of an earlier Doctor, but then we wouldn't have had the Sevateem recognizing the Doctor as the evil one.
Terrance Dicks's novelization of "The Face of Evil" explained that it had happened during "Robot" -- one night during the story, the Doctor had slipped out to the TARDIS, taken a quick trip, reprogrammed Xoanon, and then come back to UNIT HQ before anyone knew he'd been gone, and he didn't remember it afterwards because his mind was still a bit erratic post-regeneration. Which wasn't very convincing, since the Doctor's ability to steer the TARDIS was quite iffy at that point. As far as the aired serial goes, it always felt to me like they were fudging things with regard to the Doctor's past, treating it as something that had happened so long ago the Doctor barely remembered, but using the face he'd only had for a couple of years at that point. That always bugged me about it until I read the novel, and even that was a tenuous fix.
Honestly, to me, its just between Robot and Ark in Space, where the Doctor and Sarah Jane went off on that very planet, while Harry bumped his head at the console after a hard landing, thus losing his "first trip" experience for Ark.
Another hypothesis I had was there's actually a very, very long gap between "The Deadly Assassin" and "The Face of Evil," despite us seeing them consecutively. He "fixed" Xoanon right after leaving Gallifrey, then went on a ton of unseen adventures (there are actually a bunch of short stories, novels, etc. set between them, since it's one of the only available gaps), then "The Face of Evil" happened subjective years later, long enough that he'd forgotten his first visit. Though I never found that a satisfying hypothesis.
I agree. It seems too late for him to be doing that, as the whole thing seems like one of his very, very early travels, thus why he wouldn't remember it as vividly.
To be perfectly honest, it might've been better if that had been Hartnell's face in the mountain, to drive home the point just how long ago it was for him.
To be perfectly honest, it might've been better if that had been Hartnell's face in the mountain, to drive home the point just how long ago it was for him.
I thought so too -- except, again, then you lose the plot point of the Sevateem recognizing the Doctor's face and voice as the Evil One.
And of course I understand the other reason they didn't do that. The show was aimed largely at children, who wouldn't have been around for Hartnell. So unless the story was specifically about the Doctor meeting his past incarnations, so that exposition about it could be provided in the story, it would've been confusing to younger/newer viewers to show the Doctor's face and have it not be the current Doctor. The digression to explain it would've been a needless distraction from the story being told.
I guess its yet another reason why its too bad Liz Sladen departed from this mortal coil so soon, as we could have had an audio story directly adressing this issue. As is, we'll have to settle with Dicks' closest-to-canon explanation.
I've jokingly said that his first visit to that world was during the "boot cupboard" scene with Harry all trussed up. The Doctor is in the TARDIS and we hear the start of a demat sequence. Sarah runs to the police box and pounds on the door. The "wheezing" grinds to a halt and the Doctor pokes out his head to address the young reporter. I've suggested it was during those few Planck time units that the TARDIS departed and returned (sheer luck, admittedly) from that entire adventure, but from our perception of time, it only seemed as though the capsule never departed.
One glaring hole with my idea. The Doctor had not yet donned his iconic scarf which was clearly depicted in that mountainside sculpt of the TimeLord.
One glaring hole with my idea. The Doctor had not yet donned his iconic scarf which was clearly depicted in that mountainside sculpt of the TimeLord.
I just meant within the story itself, that it was a reasonable explanation for why it looked and sounded just like him. I wasn't aware that it created so many continuity issues.
I guess I'm just used to the new series where the Doctors were constantly referring to unseen adventures like that.
The new series isn't serialized like the old one was; plus its showrunners have a history as fans of, and contributors to, the various tie-ins in audio and prose and comics, so I think they consciously leave room for new ones. It makes for a very different storytelling approach.
One thing I didn't care for in the Moffat era, and that Chibnall has pretty much kept, was the idea of the commuter companion -- someone who just goes off on the odd adventure with the Doctor, then comes back home to their everyday life. It feels less committed than the old companions who lived full-time aboard the TARDIS until the time came for them to leave (and of course in the early years they had no choice, since the Doctor couldn't control its destinations). Even in the Davies era, with the companions' families and home lives becoming major parts of the stories, the companions were still full-time TARDIS residents with only occasional visits home.
The trick that both Moffat and Chibndale missed was to have companion-free stories with the Doctor having an adventures of his/her own. I get why they didn't do that, but if you're going to utilize the companions so pathetically as they did in series 12, might as well have the Doctor on adventures on her own for an episode. Or two.
Moffat did a few that were mostly free of regular companions -- "The Lodger," "Closing Time," "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe."
And it doesn't make much sense to say they "missed" it, given that it was something the original series only did once, in "The Deadly Assassin." So it's not like there's anything unusual about not doing it.
Yeah, I always found that bit weird, I never understood why they went that way.
"The Faceless Ones" - a little slower in pace than I remembered but still engaging and even horrifying at times. Anyone who hates modern WHO's incidental would dislike the 60s incidental music since it's more tonal and not bombastic orchestral.
To some extent, it's a logical outgrowth of the fact that the Doctor now has perfect control over the TARDIS's navigation (unlike the Hartnell/Troughton years where he had no control at all, or the Pertwee-through-Davison era when his control was intermittent and unreliable), so that nobody ever gets stuck aboard the TARDIS longer than they wish to be. I was going to say it was also a function of the fact that the show focused more on the companions' home lives now, so they had more of an incentive to keep living at home; but then I realized that was only occasionally a factor in the Moffat years, with characters like Rory's dad and Danny Pink.
Maybe it's just the era we're in. We're used to being totally connected, to having both home and the larger world at our fingertips, so the idea of having to cut ourselves off from one to have the other is less familiar to our sensibilities.
I didn't realize The Doctor didn't always have full control over the TARDIS.
Thinking about it, I can see why Amy and Rory wouldn't be on the TARDIS full time after they were married and had a kid. Once you're in a situation like that, you're going to want more stability than a life on the TARDIS could give you.
Thinking about it, I can see why Amy and Rory wouldn't be on the TARDIS full time after they were married and had a kid. Once you're in a situation like that, you're going to want more stability than a life on the TARDIS could give you.
Similar threads
