Last Classic Who Story you watched

[Christopher]

The chef in "Enemy of the World" reminds me of Shakespeare characters like the Gravedigger in Hamlet -- some side character who just shows up to provide comic relief and snarky commentary in the middle of a tragedy or history (and probably to give the more comedy-oriented members of the Globe repertory company something to do in the play).

 

[The Four Doctor]

I note that the new series has tended to go with the UNIT Family model of various hangers-on plus a single female companion who is nonetheless primus inter pares.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Basically, I saw the entirety of Davison's run again. And to me, its clear that Davison's second season was his overall best, followed by his third. Its crazy when I read how dissatisfied Davison was with the second season, given that his Doctor had more to do in it and how it was more like classic Who. His first season has only one genuinely good story, and that's Kinda. I like Earthshock a lot, and it is the second best, but its nostalgia-ridden and definitely more of a fanwank than Kinda (also, the casting of the freighter characters is genuinely off, so that's some points off). Meanwhile, the second season has Snakedance (not as good as Kinda, but still well done), Mawdryn Undead, Enlightenment, The Five Doctors (which is still not great, but I'm loving the Third Doctor sections more and more every time I watch it) and the underrated Arc of Infinity. Good stuff. The third seasons has the OK but underwhelming Awakening, the serviceable Frontios, and then the pretty good Resurrection of the Daleks and The Planet of Fire, the latter of which has proven to be another underrated story, making Peter Grimwade one of Who's more underrated writers. But all of the above pale immensly compared to Caves of Androzani, which alone stands as Who's sole masterpiece in that decade. Really, the direction made all the difference here, especially after the myriad Peter Moffat episodes I've sat through. The only element that consistently doesn't work is the monster, which I wish they'd fixed for the DVD Special Edition, personally, as I imagine it'd have been an easy fix. Anyway, loved it once again, easily the best DW story since Hinchcliffe was forced off the program, and one of three last stands by the program.

Overall, I'd say Davison's run was much like the character himself: Harmless, but not really something special. His first year is almost entirely nonsense, and its a while for him to become Doctor-ish. I'd argue its a similar problem Capaldi had in series 8, but thankfully both actors found their Doctors eventually. Still, I imagine its gonna be a lot better than what follows with Colin Baker, who's up next...

 

[diankra]

Rather than create a new thread for sad news, Dudley Simpson (composer for 70-odd stories between Planet of Giants and Horns of Nimon, plus Moonbase 3, Tomorrow People and 51 episodes of Blake's 7) has died, in his 90s. He can be briefly seen, conducting the theatre orchestra, in Talons of Weng-Chiang.
Edit: just done a head count, and it was only 50-ish. Still a lot out of the first 108.

 

[Christopher]

A shame about Dudley Simpson. He, more than anyone else, represents the musical sound of classic Who to me.

 

[diankra]

A shame about Dudley Simpson. He, more than anyone else, represents the musical sound of classic Who to me.

A lot of very memorable themes for other series: Paul Temple, Target, Moonbase 3, Tomorrow People and of course Blake's 7.

 

[The Four Doctor]

that leaves just Ford and Russell left out of the cast and crew of Planet of Giants, i think.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

It really is too bad he didn't live to see Shada again, finished at last, with possibly a hint of the kind of sound he had left behind. Real sad to hear he's passed on.

 

[diankra]

that leaves just Ford and Russell left out of the cast and crew of Planet of Giants, i think.

The first to go was (main) director Mervyn Pinfield, who shared my birthday and died about nine months before I was born.
Met, very briefly, the other director Douglas Camfield, in October 83, a few months before he passed in 84.

 

[diankra]

Then it's fortunate that I never actually said anything of the sort. I'm not telling anyone how they can or can't watch the show, merely analyzing why the creators of the show 50 years ago chose to structure the narrative the way they did, based on the way the show was watched back when it first came out. They didn't see it as writing a single cohesive story, they saw it as writing a series of individual but connected stories. And that's why the focus of a serial could wander a lot or change halfway through. Especially in the longer serials, it kept things from getting too repetitive and showing the same sets and the same people week after week.

Also, in a sense, the whole thing was one ongoing serial. In the early years, the end of one serial would lead directly into the start of the next. So since any two adjacent storylines were (loosely) connected anyway, it wasn't much different to treat a single storyline as two or three sub-stories. Sort of the Key to Time/Trial of a Time Lord approach, but within a single serial. The format of the show made the distinction between a single story and multiple stories flexible.

If it weren't for the production code - and more relevantly at the time, the 'New Adventure for Doctor Who' pieces in Radio Times - Masterplan could be sensibly split into four related stories (6-1-3-2).

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Attack of the Cybermen - Honestly, I can't quite hate this one as much as it is by a lot of fans, apparently. Yeah, its very continuity-ladden... but its the 22nd season, it kinda makes that a show might often draw from its own history. I don't blame them for doing a story about the Cybermen trying to change the events of Tenth Planet and Tomb of the Cybermen. What I do object, though, is the rather random writing all over this. The story with the two escapees on Telos really goes nowhere, and Lytton just ends up captured like, super easy. Really, a little more characterization and an actual origin of the time ship that the Cybermen just happened to have found lying around somewhere (quite surprised Big Finish didn't adress this, actually, in a follow-up story), and an overal tighter writing and it might've been mightly improved.

As is, I'd say its comfortably one of the better stories of Six's run, second only to Vengeance on Varos, really.

 

[Mr Awe]

Attack of the Cybermen - Honestly, I can't quite hate this one as much as it is by a lot of fans, apparently. Yeah, its very continuity-ladden... but its the 22nd season, it kinda makes that a show might often draw from its own history.

I rewatched this one 5-ish years ago. I think it starts just fine. However, I thought the ending was terrible. They'd tried to do too much in too little time--too many story lines crammed together The continuity stuff wasn't a problem for me, it was how they resolved the story.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Yeah, I keep hearing that continuity is a chief problem of it, and I disagree - its the unfocused storytelling involved. While I don't hate the ending as much as you, its messy to say the least. And Colin Baker doesn't quite carry the pain of the death and destruction around him the way Peter Davison did in Warriors of the Deep.

 

[Christopher]

It's a fairly superficial issue, and hardly unusual for Doctor Who, but it always kind of bugged me that "Attack of the Cybermen" returned to Telos but used the '80s design for the Cybermen instead of reviving the look of the "Tombs" Cybermen, or making the tombs look anything like they had in the original story. I'm partial to the idea hinted at in "The Doctor Falls," that the reason there are so many different Cyberman designs is because they evolve in parallel on so many different worlds. But it doesn't really hold up, because the franchise has a history of using different Cyberman designs to represent the same Cyber-civilization (as with Telos) or the same design to represent different ones (like the Cybus design debuting in an alternate universe and then showing up without explanation in the main one). I certainly understand the real-world, logistical and creative reasons for using the current designs instead of reverting to older ones -- e.g. they could only afford to use the suits they already had, and some of the design changes reflected improvements in wearability and the like -- but I still can't help but wish they'd had a little more consistency.

 

[ihno]

The Dalek one with the 7th doctor.

I never managed to watch the 7th doctor, not because of McCoy but the show lost it a bit in my eyes. The BigFinish audios encouraged me to give it a try and it was nice.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I dunno... couldn't the Cybermen on Telos simply have evolved in twenty years, just like they did on TV? I don't mind that, personally.

Also, you could definitely make the argument that the Cybermen on Invasion were not from Mondas, since they mention Planet 15 or whatever that was. So that could be a seperate origin right there.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

The Dalek one with the 7th doctor.

I never managed to watch the 7th doctor, not because of McCoy but the show lost it a bit in my eyes. The BigFinish audios encouraged me to give it a try and it was nice.

Believe it or not, but I've mostly listened to all of Five and Six's output, but not Seven's. I just never got around to them, but the sheer lack of continuity and enormous timeline gaps just prevent me from enjoying him fully.

Plus, I see him as a NuWho-lite Doctor. A "Dark" Doctor who isn't really as dark as all his successors actually ended up being.

 

[Christopher]

I dunno... couldn't the Cybermen on Telos simply have evolved in twenty years, just like they did on TV? I don't mind that, personally.

Evolved while they were frozen in the tombs? The idea of "Attack" was that it was a prequel to "Tombs," that the Cybermen went into hibernation in "Attack" and emerged centuries later in "Tombs" (but earlier in the Doctor's experience because he's a time traveler). But not only did the Cybermen look completely different in the two stories, but so did the tombs.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Evolved while they were frozen in the tombs? The idea of "Attack" was that it was a prequel to "Tombs," that the Cybermen went into hibernation in "Attack" and emerged centuries later in "Tombs" (but earlier in the Doctor's experience because he's a time traveler). But not only did the Cybermen look completely different in the two stories, but so did the tombs.

I didn't get that while watching it. The Cyber Controller is said to have "survived" his encounter with the Doctor, and the Cyber base on Telos is completely destroyed at the end. And the Tombs have already been operating with many Cybermen wherein, some of which went mad because of it. And the Cryons wanted the Cybermen and their Tombs destroyed because of that.

It may have been conceived as a prequel, but the end result I watched didn't give me that impression at all. I don't see Attack as a prequel to Tombs, but rather a sequel for all involved.

 

[diankra]

I rewatched this one 5-ish years ago. I think it starts just fine. However, I thought the ending was terrible. They'd tried to do too much in too little time--too many story lines crammed together The continuity stuff wasn't a problem for me, it was how they resolved the story.

I have a draft script for Attack, where Griffiths is killed by the Cyberleader in the sewer base in part one, Stratton and Bates don't appear at all, and the Cryon plan is to lure the Controller into an ambush on Halley's Comet (comets being the Cryons' homeworlds, hence building refrigerated cities on planets like Telos as their colonies). Doesn't really make any more sense overall, and of course it simply ignores the design differences between Tomb and the 80s.