A First-Timer Watches Doctor Who

[apenpaap]

A while back, I watched some episodes of Doctor Who (with David Tennant as the Doctor) being rerun on TV. Since I really liked them, I decided to try the old series, starting all the way back in Season 1. I'm at The Aztecs now, and so far really enjoying it, so I decided to start a review thread about it. If it continues to enjoy me, and if I can keep finding the DVDs (and the money to buy them), I'm planning to watch it all, so that should keep me busy for about two years. Please don't spoil episodes I haven't seen yet in this thread.
I give scores from 0 to 10, meaning:
0: So bad it causes me physical discomfort, like nausea, haemorraging, or urge to gnaw my own legs off.
1: Very, very bad
2: Very bad, making me want to stop watching it before it ends.
3: Bad
4: Weak, but watchable
5: Not bad, not good
6: Enjoyable
7: Pretty good
8: Good
9: Very Good
10: Perfect

An Unearthly Child (6/10)
An Unearthly Child (9/10)
The Cave of Skulls (4/10)
The Forest of Fear (3/10)
The Firemaker (3/10)

An Unearthly Child starts out great with the first episode, and then descends into poorness. An Unearthly Child (the episode, not the story) has a very nice, mysterious story and introduces us to the Doctor and the TARDIS. It didn't take me long to figure out that Susan was a companion of the Doctor, but I was very surprised that she was his granddaughter (Because I was still thinking of the Doctor as David Tennant, and he looks a bit too young to have a granddaughter). The Doctor and Susan both seem very alien and mysterious, and in the Doctor's case, a little sinister.
The next three episodes don't live up to the story's great start, however, as the story degrades into a story about the politics of a group of cavemen from which the third episode could have been entirely cut and no one would notice as it's complete filler. Susan loses all her alien-ness in these episodes, screams a lot, and comes up with a rather poor escape plan that actually works. The one thing I like about these three episodes is that the cavemen are not stereotypical half-apes with clubs that go "Urgh!".
I really enjoy William Hartnell as the Doctor. He plays the Doctor very good as a rather sinister anti-hero (though later on, when the Doctor gets more noble Hartnell is still very good btw). Ian, Barbara, and Susan become rather annoying after they reach the stone age, but the Doctor remains a very interesting character.
The black-and-white took a bit of getting used to, but felt natural quickly.

 

[Mr. Sin]

Your opinion of the first serial is pretty much consistent with everybody else's-the pilot episode is great, but the rest of the story is pretty bad. "The Daleks" is where Doctor Who really begins.

The Hartnell era is very good-it's often underrated by fans due to Hartnell's age, the bloopers and the black and white.

 

[Lonemagpie]

If it continues to enjoy me, and if I can keep finding the DVDs (and the money to buy them), I'm planning to watch it all,.

Cool, but do bear in mind that not only is it not all out on DVD yet, but a fair chunk of the black and white episodes no longer exist at all...

 

[Mr. Sin]

However, thankfully all the classic Doctor Who stories (Minus some Dalek stories from the show's later years and the Douglas Adams stuff) have been novelized, although in some cases they deviate from the scripts.

However, there are photos/scripts/other material that have survived. Fans and some companies have attempted reconstructions using what's been left.

The damage is mainly to the Black and White era, although the Pertwee era is missing good color copies of several stories. However from Tom Baker on the series is fully intact.

 

[Candlelight]

If you're interested you can go here for what exists and not, what was found when, etc:

http://www.angelfire.com/magic/thedoctorwhonexus/

Some it is depressing. Season Four consisted of 43 episodes.

Only 9 remain in existence.

 

[Cutter John]

So any thoughts on the original pilot version of the first episode? I rather liked it, even though the Doctors even more of a dick in that one.

I'd recommend checking out the ABOUT TIME book series once you've gotten more Hartnell's under your belt. I've only read the first volume so far, but it goes into really in-depth detail of the episodes. Particularly useful when it comes to the lost stories. Just be mindful of spoilers.

 

[Captain Pike]

I like your scoring system and the fact that you rate both the story as a whole, and then each episode individually. Very comprehensive.

 

[FalTorPan]

William Hartnell's Doctor is underrated. I enjoy his Doctor every bit as much as my other favorites.

I think it'd be cool if creative people such as this person would consider creating original animated fan fiction of the first Doctor's adventures prior to "An Unearthly Child." Imagine a younger-looking, more naive first Doctor leaving Gallifrey, stealing a Tardis that he has even less control over than he does in "An Unearthly Child," and with a working chameleon circuit. Could be fun.

 

[apenpaap]

The Daleks (8/10)
The Dead Planet (8/10)
The Survivors (8/10)
The Escape (7/10)
The Ambush (7/10)
The Expedition (4/10)
The Ordeal (6/10)
The Rescue (8/10)

Now this is a good story. It introduces us to the Daleks, who make very good and scary villains. It made me like Ian, Barbara, and Susan again. It has only two weaknesses: the Thals, who are simply immensely boring, and the subplot of episode 5 and 6 where Ian, Barbara, and some annoying Thals walk through swamps and caves, which seemed purely filler.
It starts out nicely in The Dead Planet, where they explore the jungle and the city (the jungle didn't really seem dead, unfortunatly, because it was the same set they ran through in The Forest of Fear) too quickly for the Doctor's taste, so he tells the others the TARDIS needs mercury (boy, did he regret that lie). The episode ends with a nice cliffhanger as the Daleks capture Barbara. The next two episodes mainly have the main characters slowly dying from the radiation while Susan goes into the jungle alone to get the radiation treatment one of the annoying Thals left behind for them. Despite all the screaming, Carole Ann Ford actually did a pretty good job at the acting here. They manage to escape by dressing Ian up as a Dalek only to find those annoying Thals are walking into the Daleks's trap. Ian warns the Thals about the trap way too late (how was the Thal leader not seeing those Daleks? They were standing hardly a metre away from him!) and in a way that would put admiral Ackbar to shame ("NO! IT'S A TRAP! RUN!"). Now we get to the filler episode. The Thals (did I mention they are annoying?) don't want to fight, and Ian makes a pretty good argument that they can't expect them to fight for the fluid link, and then proceeds to get them to fight anyway. Next they start walking through the swamp and a Thal gets eaten. The sixth episode partially continues with this useless side-story, and partially has the Doctor and Susan breaking into the Dalek city, using a mirror to blind the Dalek's outside-camera and short-circuiting their electricity, but they get captured quickly. The Doctor tries to bargain and bluff his way out (some great acting here), but it doesn't work, and Ian, Barbara, and the Thals resque them and destroy the device that powers the Daleks, who all die. A pity, I was hoping they'd return in later episodes .

 

[Captain Pike]

Be careful what you wish for..

 

[Candlelight]

Many of the longer stories had filler in them, so it's hard to be critical in that respect.

There's really only a handful of stories where that doesn't count, as the filler material can be genuinely more interesting than (or complements) the main storyline (Pertwee's story Inferno is one example, and really does hold seven episodes in length).

 

[apenpaap]

The Edge of Destruction (3/10)
The Edge of Destruction (3/10)
The Brink of Disaster (4/10)

This was a rather poor, weird, convoluted, and weird story. Something flashes, they all pass out, they wake up confused, Susan goes psycho with a pair of scissors, goofy shit happens, the Doctor drugs Ian and Barbara, Ian tries to kill the Doctor, the Doctor tries to kill Ian and Barbara, more goofy shit happens and they all work together, the Doctor has a great, but poorly timed speech, it turns out the goofy shit was the TARDIS trying to tell them a switch was stuck (obviously this way was much more logical than just showing the words "Warning: switch stuck" on a screen), they repair it, the Doctor apologizes, and they land in the 13th century Himalayas.
As poor and weird as the plot was, there are some good things about this story. I very much liked the Doctor's speech, but I couldn't help thinking that maybe it would've been smarter to repair the TARDIS first and then do the speech. The other thing I like about the story is that it is where they become friends. In An Unearthly Child, there was a lot of enmity between the Doctor and Ian and Barbara. In The Daleks, they basically have a cease fire, but still don't like each other very much, but from Marco Polo onward (or at least until the Sensorites, which is were I am now) they really become a team.

 

[Candlelight]

The Edge of Destruction is a bizarre one. I only watched it once and never really understood the characterisations.

 

[Captain Pike]

I like it.

 

[Andrew_Kearley]

Your opinion of the first serial is pretty much consistent with everybody else's-the pilot episode is great, but the rest of the story is pretty bad. "The Daleks" is where Doctor Who really begins.

I'd disagree with that. The first episode is great, but the caveman story is much better than it's usually given credit for. It's certainly a lot better written and directed than the Dalek story, and has some striking and powerful ideas at the heart of it. It plays much more like serious tv drama than its successor, which is more of an adventure story runaround.

 

[Stevil2001]

I don't like An Unearthly Child 2-4 or The Daleks, personally.

The Edge of Destruction, however, is sheer genius.

 

[Kelthaz]

Your opinion seems to mirror that of mine so far. Assuming you skip the missing episodes like I did your first great episode of Doctor Who will probably be "The Aztecs."

 

[diankra]

Your opinion seems to mirror that of mine so far. Assuming you skip the missing episodes like I did your first great episode of Doctor Who will probably be "The Aztecs."

Aztecs is definitely the best story of the first run, but there's very little of that frst season which doesn't hold up (so long as you can take black-and-white, and slow-and-talky. But rewatching the original Survivors over the last month< i'm reminded how powerful slow and talky can be.)

Personal feelings on season one:
Aztecs: superb. Seems that everyone thinks that, unless they have trouble with black and white.
Daleks: one episode too long, but then it was going to be a six parter originally.
Marco Polo: Not seen it. Sounds good. Placed third on the comments of friends who did see it.
Edge of Destruction: Some slips, a bit hammy, but when it works, brilliant.
Sensorites: Yes, it's slow. But it's great. It feels like what we'd have got it Trek or Who had been made in the 50s and made well.
AN Unearthly Child: Look, I quite like the Caveman stuff. Show it to a non-SF fan and they get it.
Reign of Terror: Bit meh, but OK.
Marinus: Sorry, it's the start of cheap corridors and cheaper plots. But if it's the worst of the season, it's a pretty good season.

 

[apenpaap]

Marco Polo (8/10)
The Roof of the World (6/10)
The Singing Sands (7/10)
Five Hundred Eyes (7/10)
The Wall of Lies (8/10)
Rider from Shangdu (7/10)
Mighty Kublai Khan (7/10)
Assassin at Peking (8/10)

It's a shame this one got wiped, as it was a good episode. Luckily, the sound is still with us, and a lot of photos have benn made while shooting it, and reconstructions have been made with these photos and the audio. The reconstruction I've watched even has an introduction by Mark Eden (Marco Polo) and coloured photos (coloured in with computer, I'd guess). It took a bit of getting used to, but no more than the black and white.
The Roof of the World starts with the TARDIS crew examining the huge footprint Susan found at the end of the last episode. During this scene, the Doctor has a really stupid look on his face on the photo used. Since the TARDIS is broken they can't stay here and thus descend the mountains, coming across a Mongol caravan led by Marco Polo. He's willing to give help, but can't stay in the Himalayas, so he decides to take the TARDIS with him. The Doctor explains it's a flying caravan, and Tegana and the other Mongols think he's a sorceror, and Marco Polo commandeers the TARDIS to gift it to the Khan, hoping he will be so grateful to let Marco go back to Venice. Perhaps just asking the Doctor to take him back to Venice would have been a slightly better idea, rather then making a two-month journey to Shangdu, gifting the largest empire in history advanced technology, hoping the Khan will release him, and making the years-long journey to Venice back, but who am I to question Marco Polo's plans?
Anyway, we quickly find out that Tegana wants to take the TARDIS for himself, so he can give it to his Khan who'll kick the great Khan's ass with it. There's also Ping Ciao, a 16 year old girl who's going to marry a 75 year old man in Shangdu and becomes friends with Susan. To get to Shangdu, they cross the Gobi dessert, during which the Doctor is mostly absent. Ian becomes friends with Marco Polo, but can't convince him to release the TARDIS. At night, Tegana cut the water bottles and blaims raiders. Marco sends him ahead to an oasis to get some water for the caravan, but when he arrives he decides to start chewing what little scenery there is instead of bringing water to the caravan.
Next episode they are all dying of thirst, but luckily the Doctor and Susan, who Marco has allowed to sleep in the TARDIS, managed to catch the condensation on the TARDIS's walls, thus saving everyone from thirst. The caravan arrives at Tun-Wang, where Ping Ciao tells a boring story. Tegana leaves (can't say I blame him) and Barbara decides to follow him. She gets captured in the cave of fivehundred eyes that Ping Ciao was talking about (What kind of cheap cave is called "the cave of fivehundred eyes" btw? It sounds like they wanted to make a cave of a thousand eyes but ran out of money). The Doctor, Susan, and Ping Ciao search for Barbara in the cave, and Susan sees a pair of the eyes moving (because one of Tegana's buddies is looking through them).
They free Barbara, who gets in a discussion with Marco and Tegana, and Marco decides to keep a closer eye on the crew and imprisons them in a tent. Ian escapes from it and finds a guard dead. Next Tegana's buddies attack the camp in what sounds like a kick-ass action scene. By throwing bamboo in the fire they scare the raiders and Tegana kills the guy he ordered to attack. A messenger arrives saying the Khan wants Marco Polo to hurry up, so he decides to continue on horseback and send the TARDIS with the mail. The Doctor has repaired the TARDIS by now so they try to leave, but Susan gets captured when sayign goodbye to Ping Ciao.
Ping Ciao flees the caravan, and Ian goes after her, finding the TARDIS being stolen, while the rest of the caravan arrives in Shangdu and meet Kublai Khan, who is at this stage of his life a little old man. He likes the Doctor and plays backgammon with him, in which the Doctor wins 35 elephants, 4000 white stallions, 25 tigers, the sacred tooth of the Buddha and the entire commerce of Birma for a year. The Doctor bets this all against the TARDIS, but this time the Khan wins. He does give the Doctor a walking stick though. Tegana tries to kill the Khan, but Marco Polo stops him and Tegana kills himself. Then Marco gives back the key to the Doctor and they leave.

 

[Stevil2001]

The colored photos are actual color photos, not recolored (or at least they could be; I admit I'm no expert on what's the case in the instance of Marco Polo). Color photography was invented well before 1964!