It isn't as good as the book at all I agree, but it's one of the few outstanding Tenth Doctor stories. Up there with Midnight, Blink and Waters of Mars as the stories from his era I recall with genuine fondness.
Favourite Doctor?
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It isn't as good as the book at all I agree, but it's one of the few outstanding Tenth Doctor stories. Up there with Midnight, Blink and Waters of Mars as the stories from his era I recall with genuine fondness.
As always:
Question - Who is your favorite Doctor?
Answer - Yes, Who IS my favorite Doctor.
Mark
I just can't get into McCoy. Being a Chaplin fan (have all his movies) I can see all the nods, so you'd think that would endear him to me more than it has. But there's just something about him that doesn't gel. I don't know if it's McCoy or what. He's a fine actor.....
But that may change as I've been doing a watch through of Who...just got to the Fourth Doctor and I'm seeing him through new eyes. Much more alien feeling than 1-3 combined and much more so than I remember him.
So it's possible by the time I'm done with McCoy I'll have a better opinion of him. Or worse...we'll see.
In the UK maybe, not in the states. Doctor Who here has exploded under Smith. It's bigger than it's ever been. Under Tennant, it was still relatively unknown. For us yanks that were with nuWho since the beginning, we've been aware of the shows popularity in the UK and so understood how big Tennant was.
But Who in the U.S. was still a pretty small club that was slowly growing. It's blown my mind how much you see Who exposure now. Billboards, write up in magazines, merch displays at stores like B&N or Hastings, full page ad's in comics, and so on. Smith is now probably more well known here than Baker was, strangely enough.
^Because we didn't have BBCAmerica back then. In the Tom Baker days, we only saw it because local PBS stations aired it--usually at some strange hour, like very late on Friday, or in the middle of Saturday afternoon. But now that BBCA is on many, if not most, regular cable services, it's available to a huge audience. It's no longer just a strange kiddie show from England on some odd little channel; it's now a family adventure Sci Fi/Fantasy show on cable. NuWho's popularity has grown steadily and has really hit the heights with Smith. There's also a lot more media attention, especially after Who topped the iTunes list for the first time.
I'm old enough to have watched it as kid on PBS in the 70's, so I remember. Here in Houston, it actually premiered first as part of a four show afternoon block on Channel 2 (NBC). I was too used to Star Trek, so had a hard time getting into it. Then it jumped to PBS on Friday or Saturday airings (I mostly remember late showings on Saturday nights).
As for Who being a "kiddie show from England".....well when I was a kid, I thought of it as a grown ups show, like Star Trek. It wasn't until I had long been an adult that I was told it was a kiddie show.
And of course I factor in all the various media options available to us in the present for Who's increased popularity.
Was that the block that used to show Who, Blake's 7 and The Prisoner (plus something else; I forget what), all in a block on Saturdays? That was a loooong time ago, but I LOVED all of those shows dearly. It was one of the few things that made the move to Houston in my teen years bearable.
When I was in high school, I even got to go to a Doctor Who convention at the Shamrock Hotel, right before they tore it down. Colin Baker was there and he showed one episode they'd just aired. It was the first one of his that I got to see--"The Twin Dilemma."
Fuck, I'm old.
When I was in high school, I even got to go to a Doctor Who convention at the Shamrock Hotel, right before they tore it down. Colin Baker was there and he showed one episode they'd just aired. It was the first one of his that I got to see--"The Twin Dilemma."
Fuck, I'm old.
If I was told to choose my top 3 it'd be: McGann, Tennant and McCoy. They're the Doctor's I return to the most when I'm re-watching old episodes. I like Smith too, but he's the current Doctor so it's kind of hard not to watch his stories 
But if I was forced to pick just one, it'd be McGann. He did the impossible, he made his Doctor endearing in a script that was essentially a regeneration story and left him with amnesia through most of it.
But if I was forced to pick just one, it'd be McGann. He did the impossible, he made his Doctor endearing in a script that was essentially a regeneration story and left him with amnesia through most of it.
Yeah, but in the books you don't have Sylv's acting limitations screwing things up!
(Look, Sylv's a great guy in real life, but he's just not the Doctor...)
And essentially he's being run by a different production team than on TV, so that makes a big difference.
I'd say he fits the same archetype as Patrick Troughton, Tom Baker and Matt Smith. I don't see how his performance is too far removed from the purest Doctor mould, as opposed to say, The Doctor running around snogging girls and crying all the time in slow motion.
I don't think there's much difference really. Andrew Cartmel's vision of what the show could do is absolutely the driving force of the VNAs even though he's not in charge.
He's not as much of an actor as them, he's more of a physical performer - closer, ironically, to the Pertwee mould in that sense...
Cartmel's vision to some degree, Darvill-Evans and Levene's visions, but not JNT's light-entertainment vision...
(trust me on this, I was there from the start!)
I'd say JNT's penchant for light entertainment vanished when Season 24 ended. 25 and 26 are a bold new direction. From Remembrance of the Daleks onwards, the classic series was the best it had been since the Hinchcliffe era.
Of course, a few seasons later we're in Voyage of the Damned territory and the show is JNT's showbiz excesses on crack until Smith turns up.
Of course, a few seasons later we're in Voyage of the Damned territory and the show is JNT's showbiz excesses on crack until Smith turns up.
Wossname in Silver Nemesis (the American woman in the car), and Hale & Pace in Survival say otherwise...
As someone who's a US fan, I can definitely say this is true. I only got into Who in 2006 and there has certainly been a dramatic uprise in how mainstream it's become in the last two years. I see DW stuff everywhere, not just the examples you said, but as a student on campus, I see tons of DW-themed T-shirts and when I wear my own TARDIS-resembling hoodie, I'm always guaranteed at least two compliments. And this has all been under Smith's era.
BUT DalekJim was talking about the UK (obviously with his location being GB). Even with the new surge of Who acceptance in the US, it's STILL not a tried-and-true public institution like it is there with everyone, children / middle-aged / elderly, watch it, often together as a family unit. And there, Tennant is still a mega-celebrity.
I saw it in the mid-late 80s on PBS out of Boston and Hartford, and they stripped it five days a week at 6 or 7 pm, running through all the doctors up to early Colin Baker when they stopped... I realize from things I've read here that we were lucky.
The Boston PBS station is one of their flagships and had a good budget for it.Those are just celebrities playing roles, there's not much attention drawn to them in the story and Survival is about as far away from light-entertainment as Doctor Who gets due to it being a dark philosophical nightmare.. It's less media obsessed than having a story about Big Brother and What Not To Wear, or stopping a story to look at a Shane Ward poster. Nor as irritating and pointless as a McFly cameo, Hale and Pace did good in their short, memorable scene.
Right now It looks like Tennant is way more popular than Smith. Looks like he'll catch up with Baker soon?
The TV Movie is what got me in to Doctor Who! First episode I ever watched, back in 1996. Loved McGann's performance and the liquid snake Master.
Chimes of Midnight is my favourite McGann adventure, though my favourite Eighth Doctor story would likely be a novel. Perhaps Interference.
Chimes of Midnight is my favourite McGann adventure, though my favourite Eighth Doctor story would likely be a novel. Perhaps Interference.
I love the tv-movie because for something that is chastised for being too American (which in part it is) it's incredibly respectful of the show and it's canon, and I was surprised at how easily the movie actually fits into the continuity of the show. It also has my favorite TARDIS console room.
If McGann were to return for the fiftieth, I wouldn't be adverse to his console room returning too.
If McGann were to return for the fiftieth, I wouldn't be adverse to his console room returning too.
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