Castrovalva - never gets old The Mark of the Rani - has a lovely atmosphere, the Doctor is on top form, and whenever multiple time lords are on screen, the entertainment level jumps from 7 to 11 (out of 10, go figure...) JNT ordered the Rani's TARDIS sets and props saved for recurring use (so she likely would have been in season 23 and let's face it, she as played by Kate O'Mara rocks the house), but that didn't survive the hiatus. Up next: Planet of Giants The Time Warrior
Just finished Sylvester McCoy. He was better than I remember the first time, though some of the stories seemed a bit more childish than usual. Paradise Towers is a good example. One thing I really liked was Ace. She was great. I rank her up with Jamie, Sarah Jane and Leela as among my favorite companions. I liked how even though she's supposed to be a teenager she keeps the doctor on his toes by frequently challenging him in a good way. Does the 1996 movie count as Classic Who? Well I watched that too. While it was entertaining, I didn't particularly like Paul McCann as the doctor. The tardis didn't look right inside. Have we seen "the Eye" of the Tardis before? I don't remember it. Also, they keep going on about the 13 regenerations, but we know that both the Master and the Doctor go beyond that so why keep emphasizing it? And as someone who lives near San Francisco, I seriously question that it was filmed there.
At the time, we didn't know that. The only indication that the Doctor might have had earlier lives was the ambiguous scene in "The Brain of Morbius" that contradicted every other statement (going back to "The Three Doctors") that Hartnell's Doctor was the earliest incarnation. (The faces that some fans interpreted as earlier Doctors were seen by other fans as Morbius's earlier lives.) The Doctor didn't canonically surpass a 13-life cycle until "The Time of the Doctor," 17 years after the movie, and the "Morbius Doctors" weren't affirmed as real until seven years after that. As for the Master, the 13-regeneration limit was invented for the Master story "The Deadly Assassin," to explain why he was willing to devastate Gallifrey and the universe to avoid death, because he'd reached the end of his natural cycle. He only managed to regenerate after that using the power of the Source of Traken. The modern series would reveal that he was given a new regeneration cycle by the Time Lords during the Great Time War, but the Great Time War wasn't introduced until nearly a decade after the McGann movie was made. It was filmed in Vancouver.
Thanks for the info! I didn't know the Master's story that well. As for the Doctor, it just seems to me they knew the show would be back some day and the 13 regenerations would come up. Oh well. I knew it wasn't SF.
Just ordered a bunch of the cheapo BBC DVDs (grey cover): Meglos Ghost Light Battlefield Planet of the Spiders Death to the Daleks The Brain of Morbius Terror of the Zygons Some I just haven't seen for a while, but I've never actually watched Meglos, Morbius or Spiders.
Death to the Daleks - This was just terrible. I've tried to watch it several times, but only finished it on this attempt. Its a bad story, and honestly the 3rd Doctor and Sarah Jane really don't have a great dynamic together, so I didn't even have The Doctor/Companion duo keep my attention. I really want to finish the 3rd Doctor's era, so next I'll power through The Monster of Peladon, which is a sequel to a story I despised, and eventually finish with Planet of Spiders.
Just curious, any particular reason you skipped part 1 of "Revenge..."? At least as written your last two posts suggest that.
Forgot to mention watching The Monster of Peladon awhile ago, I hated it as much as the first Peladon story, not much else to say. Anyway, today I watched The Planet of the Spiders, bringing the 3rd Doctor's Era to an end. It pretty much went out with a whimper. The big chase in episode 2 was fun and exciting, but the rest of the story wasn't great. It felt overly long at 6 episode (like many stories in Pertwee's era), the evil aliens weren't particularly interesting (and the bad spider puppets weren't even bad in a funny way), we had a very racist "white person pretends to be Asian" scenario, and The Doctor ended up going out with a whimper. Overall, just not a very interesting or entertaining end to a good Doctor. So, now that I've watched the whole 3rd Doctor era, my Top/Bottom 5 stories: Top 5 1. Spearhead from Space 2. Terror of the Autons 3. The Three Doctors 4. The Daemons 5. The Mind of Evil Bottom 5: 1. Ambassadors of Death 2. The Curse of Peladon 3. The Green Death 4. The Monster of Peladon 5. The Mutants I like Pertwee as The Doctor a lot, and his era overall is ok, but it suffered from way too much padding, especially in his first series. The supporting cast was decent, with The Brigadier, Benton and Sarah being the best side characters, Liz Shaw being ok but stuck in the really padded Season and never getting to leave Earth, Jo grant being mediocre (mostly existing to be dumb and get caught) and Yates just sucking. Roger Delgado was great as The Master, and definitely the highlight of the villains this season. He doesn't beat Ainley as my favorite Master, but he definitely made the role his own and his performance is probably the reason that the Master has gotten to stick around as a recurring antagonist.
I finally saw the animated "The Faceless Ones." It starts out kind of slow, but it's a good solid story with a lot to like about it. I like how Colin Gordon's airport commandant starts out as an antagonist, an obstructionistic figure who mistrusts the Doctor and dismisses his claims, but once he's finally convinced it's all real, he adapts quickly and becomes a stalwart and effective ally with a proto-Brigadier-ish quality. I also like how the Chameleons aren't monolithic monsters but just people trying to survive, so that the Doctor is able to exploit the divisions within them and convince the subordinates to turn on their leaders and agree to a peaceful resolution. As for the animated reconstruction, it's one of the better ones, with fairly good character animation, not as clumsy or cut-outy as a lot of them. I still don't quite get why they feel the need to animate the surviving episodes as well as the missing ones, but I guess they do it for the consistency, especially for the color/widescreen version.
They animated the surviving episodes because the animations were partly funded by BBC America, and they wanted a consistent product to broadcast. Switching from HD colour widescreen to the tattered B&W film print of episode 3 would have been quite the jump! Sadly BBC America aren’t commissioning any more, so there will be no further animations for the time being. It’s a shame with Troughton’s era so close to completion - The Wheel in Space and The Space Pirates would have finished two out of three seasons for him.
Shada. The one from the Blu-Ray Season Set with the animation filling in the unfilmed / unfinished scenes.
Watched the entire epic The War Games, then Spearhead from Space. It's pretty amazing how dramatically the style of the show changes between these 2 episodes. Also amazing how The War Games, at 10 parts, seems less padded and drawn out than many 6-parters. Good writing and editing.
As I said about it in this thread back in July '21, that's because it isn't just one situation dragging out repetitively episode after episode. Every couple of episodes, a new layer of the scenario is peeled back and the dynamic changes, so it stays fresh throughout.