Last Classic Who Story you watched

[jaime]

I fell asleep, just before the end, but I watched The Horns of Nimon for the first time ever. I missed it on broadcast, on account of not being born yet. Which raises an interesting technicality as a thought, since Sophie Ellis-Bextor — of Murder on the Dance Floor fame — technically predates Kylie as a pop singer in Who, on the grounds that her mum is in it. (Janet Ellis, introduced in the Blue Peter annual — a contemporary of the Who one — with the headline ‘Janet Jumps In!’ No I don’t know why that’s stuck with me either) Everything has been said about Nimon before, but you know what? It wasn’t so bad. Nor was Nightmare of Eden, which I finished watching just before.
I do have them on Blu, but used iPlayer as it’s just easier.

It’s interesting to see the just-before-I-started-watching Who, because it’s more obviously similar to how I knew the show, and is for some reason an era I either accidentally avoided or just didn’t get that much exposure for a while. Everything sort of begins and ends with Sarah-Jane and Tom for some people, with Romana and Leela almost being folk memory in the early nineties. When there’s a repeat, it’s Genesis.
Might explain my relative antipathy to the Tom years, as he cast such a long shadow by the time I was really getting into Who that rejecting the long scarf was almost a punk act.

I will likely skip Shada, as the animation is ugly to be honest. I’ve already watched season eighteen, and find it too funerary. Leela and Romana were about the last interesting companions really… everything after this is basically contemporary or a little dull (with the exception of Ace, naturally) and Nyssa an Turlough are basically the whimpering end of a tradition that started back with Steven Taylor.

I doubt Rusty D will have the creativity to give us an alien/non-contemporary companion. The closest he got was Captain Jack, and that was a group effort really… and a bit ersatz, as you never really got a huge sense of the character in that way in the main show. He’s sort of… a gay/bisexual Romana. Well. More so.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

You should watch Shada, though.

 

[Christopher]

You should watch Shada, though.

Which version? Aren't there three or four by now?

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Which version? Aren't there three or four by now?

How many are there on bbc's iplayer?

 

[jaime]

I’ve already seen the VHS version.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

The VHS version is not iplayer.

 

[jaime]

The VHS version is not iplayer.

The sparrow is not a wildebeest.

 

[Turtletrekker]

The owls are not what they seem.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

The Celestial Toymaker - despite the likenesses of the main characters, I genuinely enjoyed the animation. It is revisionist, but judging by the surviving episode, I think I much prefer what they did compared to what was shot. The fourth episode, up until Hartnell re-appears, is shoddily shot and poorly staged and blocked, basically lacking in any of the imagination the story itself projects. So the animation actually enhances and matches the story's intentions, I feel, and all the better for it. Its in rare cases like these that animation could actually help (I could even see this team doing something similar to the Web Planet, another imaginative story hampered by the visuals). So I definitely enjoyed it, particularly the trippy sequence in episode 3, pure psychedelia that fits the story. Overall, I really liked what I saw, despite the rather offputting and frankly terrible character designs for the Doctor, Stephen and Dodo.

 

[JD]

I watched The Daemons (not sure how to do the combined a/e thing), yesterday and today. I can see why it was such a classic, it was pretty good.
I know a lot of people joke about the cheesy special effects and costumes in these older episodes, but the thing the bothers me more, is the cheap synthesized music. I've gotten so used to kind of modern fully orchestrated, music, or music composed on a computer that sounds fully orchestrated, that we get on shows like this now, that it really bugs me. I can laugh at the cheap effects and costumes, but I just cringe every time the music starts.

 

[Qonundrum]

The Celestial Toymaker - despite the likenesses of the main characters, I genuinely enjoyed the animation. It is revisionist, but judging by the surviving episode, I think I much prefer what they did compared to what was shot. The fourth episode, up until Hartnell re-appears, is shoddily shot and poorly staged and blocked, basically lacking in any of the imagination the story itself projects. So the animation actually enhances and matches the story's intentions, I feel, and all the better for it. Its in rare cases like these that animation could actually help (I could even see this team doing something similar to the Web Planet, another imaginative story hampered by the visuals). So I definitely enjoyed it, particularly the trippy sequence in episode 3, pure psychedelia that fits the story. Overall, I really liked what I saw, despite the rather offputting and frankly terrible character designs for the Doctor, Stephen and Dodo.

^^this

The story ideas (Hayles's vs script editor Tosh's prevailing) are often really neat, but the presentation was... I can't even use the word "bland". Possibly due to the budget having been used in 'The Ark' and "Daleks Masterplan', of course.

The animation is simply wonderful, with your saying "matches the story's intentions" being an understatement. The facial features were definitely unexpected, but they grew on me.

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Didn't realize that the one Donald Tosh photo makes him look a little like Philip Madoc's stunt double!

 

[jaime]

I watched The Daemons (not sure how to do the combined a/e thing), yesterday and today. I can see why it was such a classic, it was pretty good.
I know a lot of people joke about the cheesy special effects and costumes in these older episodes, but the thing the bothers me more, is the cheap synthesized music. I've gotten so used to kind of modern fully orchestrated, music, or music composed on a computer that sounds fully orchestrated, that we get on shows like this now, that it really bugs me. I can laugh at the cheap effects and costumes, but I just cringe every time the music starts.

That was cutting edge at the time, and not really cheap. It’d be many years before people had Casio keyboards and what have you for Christmas.

 

[JD]

Oh, I didn't realize it was that advanced at the time. I had assumed they used that kind of music because they couldn't afford anything else.

 

[jaime]

Oh, I didn't realize it was that advanced at the time. I had assumed they used that kind of music because they couldn't afford anything else.

They were basically inventing electronic music. The Radiophonic Workshop did all sorts, and some of its people went on to work in the pop music decades later.
Delia Derbyshire, who did the original theme arrangement in the sixties, was quite the pioneer. I have the CD from her band somewhere. (Though originally it was 3D Stereo Quadrophonic on vinyl.) Whole musical movement known as ‘Musique Concret’ to do with layering samples essentially.
This was electronic music pre-Vangelis, pre-Jean Michel Jarre, pre everything really.

It was basically the BBC Radiophonic workshop and the Transwoman (Wendy Carlos) who did the Clockwork Orange Soundtrack who kickstarted the whole electronic music lot into being.

 

[JD]

I was still in a Doctor Who mood today, so I decided to watch the next serial, Day of the Daleks, which I thought was great. All of the twists and turns with everybody jumping back and forth in time, and the reveals of what exactly was going on and how it tied back the modern day stuff was pretty good. And the whole big temporal paradox at the end was a classic time travel situation. The Controller was a great human villain to go along with the Ogrons and Daleks, and his turn at the end was a bit of a surprise, but made sense with what we'd already seen of him.
I was a little surprised that it actually was the enhanced version with the modern CGI effects and the expanded battle at the end. The whole series really seems to be knocking it out of the park at this point.
And if anyone was wondering it was completely coincidental that I watched it on Sept. 13, which is the same day most of the modern stuff takes place.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

^^^The speical features for this DVD is also a great watch, some cracking stuff from behind the senes and the modern reshoots for the speical edition effects.

 

[Steve Roby]

Oh, I didn't realize it was that advanced at the time. I had assumed they used that kind of music because they couldn't afford anything else.

Basically what Jaime said. There are whole record companies dedicated to reissuing a lot of Radiophonic and related music, or new music heavily influenced by early 1970s UK TV music, like the the Focus Group, Belbury Poly, and the Advisory Circle on their Ghost Box label, and artists like Pye Corner Audio, Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan, and many others. There's the Delaware Road project, with a graphic novel, albums, and live events about an alternate world equivalent of the Radiophonic Workshop.

And to keep this relevant to Doctor Who for more than just the Radiophonic connection, this whole scene has considerable overlap with a retro UK folk scene inspired by folk horror like The Wicker Man, so there are some projects that have electronic and folk elements, like A Year in the Country (blog, albums, books, etc) and the Black Meadow (albums, books). "The Daemons" is often mentioned among the key influences in this whole set of subgenres, which is sometimes called hauntology, though that includes other things as well.

 

[diankra]

Basically what Jaime said. There are whole record companies dedicated to reissuing a lot of Radiophonic and related music, or new music heavily influenced by early 1970s UK TV music, like the the Focus Group, Belbury Poly, and the Advisory Circle on their Ghost Box label, and artists like Pye Corner Audio, Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan, and many others. There's the Delaware Road project, with a graphic novel, albums, and live events about an alternate world equivalent of the Radiophonic Workshop.

And to keep this relevant to Doctor Who for more than just the Radiophonic connection, this whole scene has considerable overlap with a retro UK folk scene inspired by folk horror like The Wicker Man, so there are some projects that have electronic and folk elements, like A Year in the Country (blog, albums, books, etc) and the Black Meadow (albums, books). "The Daemons" is often mentioned among the key influences in this whole set of subgenres, which is sometimes called hauntology, though that includes other things as well.

In the 60s, Who was advanced. In the early 70s Dudley used a primitive syntheser till he was barred from te Radiophonic Workshop. Budget wasn't an issue, union rules were.

 

[JD]

^^^The speical features for this DVD is also a great watch, some cracking stuff from behind the senes and the modern reshoots for the speical edition effects.

I watched it on Britbox.

Basically what Jaime said. There are whole record companies dedicated to reissuing a lot of Radiophonic and related music, or new music heavily influenced by early 1970s UK TV music, like the the Focus Group, Belbury Poly, and the Advisory Circle on their Ghost Box label, and artists like Pye Corner Audio, Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan, and many others. There's the Delaware Road project, with a graphic novel, albums, and live events about an alternate world equivalent of the Radiophonic Workshop.

And to keep this relevant to Doctor Who for more than just the Radiophonic connection, this whole scene has considerable overlap with a retro UK folk scene inspired by folk horror like The Wicker Man, so there are some projects that have electronic and folk elements, like A Year in the Country (blog, albums, books, etc) and the Black Meadow (albums, books). "The Daemons" is often mentioned among the key influences in this whole set of subgenres, which is sometimes called hauntology, though that includes other things as well.

Interesting, I didn't realize that kind of music was that big of a deal.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Frontier In Space