Last Classic Who Story you watched

[Qonundrum]

Despite popping in 'Behind the Sofa" for The Twin Dilemma and Planet of Fire, I opted to actually watch The Caves of Androzani first then circle back to those two, season 21 is loaded with gems...

Robert Holmes had allegedly written this as a more generic Doctor/companion outing, but given the scope of the plot (Doctor and companion get caught up in the middle of a harrowing adventure and have to escape by the skin of their teeth), it works in a way that would pretty much work for ANY Doctor, just change some dialogue slightly and voila.

There's a lot of multisyllabic and/or arcane words in this story, and even the Doctor retorts to Peri's slang with "please try and speak English", which is rather lovely. "Cupidity" is quite a find, even for 1984's standards. For a moment there, some might think Pip & Jane Baker were involved. Nope, just other writers of the same era who flaunted their relished use of the language, a long-lost trait that some might also argue. Not me, however.

The story also has some real Hartnell-style vibes and a style of adventure not often seen for some time, but more suited to the 5th Doctor's temperament.

Add in Graeme Harper's direction and *boom*, you have a real winner in terms of claustrophobia-driven pieces. Even if, in episode three, two scenes where the Doctor should be completely shrouded by characters who've already seen him are already able to see his outfit quite clearly (first Jek in the cave, then Morgus looking at the blindfolded Doctor on the viewscreen), it's not enough to take off a point.

With the new CGI, the magma beast does get a bit of a usable upgrade...

The quick use of the word "volatizer" is a sly reference to "Terror of the Autons"...

The upscaling AI... hmm, there's a lot that's noteworthy in good ways and OVERALL it's not terrible, but there are scenes where Gen. Shellack's forehead is smoothed out - among other overly-smoothed areas sprinkled throughout the story. In pt 2, when Jek meets the Doctor, the Doctor's fly appears unzipped but the scene passes by too quick and I wasn't going to pause it to see if it was an AI mistake. A few scenes also show a surprising amount of contrast banding, though that may vary between tv to tv. But distinctly worse, formerly legible text - like "ENTRANCE" - now gets smeared and the example word now reads "DITBAIKE" onscreen thanks to the AI. That's pretty bad. Note that I am not including Morgus' remote control as evidence. Headcanon it as another language and it works out well enough. At the end of the day, however, the pluses outweigh the minuses, though for anything with text in the foreground or middle, re-editing to keep those legible would have been nice.

Stotz' CGI ship looks like a partial blend of the Scorpio and the Zerok gold transport from Blake's 7 series 4 episode "Gold". Nice in-joke.

All 3 villains get one little moment to rant, and all excel. As for being allowed to have sympathy, Jek by far is the most deserving, even if he's still the most gray-area.

One character mispronounces "ensign" as "ehn sign", but consonantal shift might be the reason - even if it's limited in use as this is the only example of it, so I think it's more an actor gaffe than intentional. 'tis all good.

When Jek yells "DO YOU!!!", that's always worthy of jumping out of one' s seat. His line later about being unable to see or touch himself is a bit single entendre,and yet doesn't feel gratuitous and remains open-ended as he could easily be referring to his face, which is later shown. Gotta admit, the actors who see his face act wonderfully, and the only reason Jek's revealed face isn't even more gory on camera is because of censorship of the time. As usual, this acting thing means the audience has to keep suspension of disbelief going on and it all still works with aplomb.

The bat in pt 4 was supposed to be fighting the Doctor, but this got scrapped for time. Just having it rest and awaiting its death still works within dialogue accorded by others, and it's the one time the Doc caught a break in the hell going on all around him.

The incidental music is sublime. Indeed, long absent the Cloister Bell was, a tone not dissimilar is used during certain Doctor scenes as yet another clue.

If anything, pt 4 doing the previous episode recap should have included the Doc seeing his impending regeneration. It's not like this or preceding seasons had overly long recaps and this time it'd be perfect. Plus, the dialogue setting up what could be a difficult regeneration is icing on the cake, and not just for the drama of the moment, but for after it...

8/10 for being a fantastic complex, layered character piece, at the expense of sci-fi beyond Spectrox being used as "the fountain of youth" as a trope. Maybe 9, the use of a big ball of bat droppings being what raw spectrox is and Peri landing in a pile of it, and all done with absolutely zero comedic intent, deserves a bonus point - or more.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Robert Holmes had allegedly written this as a more generic Doctor/companion outing, but given the scope of the plot (Doctor and companion get caught up in the middle of a harrowing adventure and have to escape by the skin of their teeth), it works in a way that would pretty much work for ANY Doctor, just change some dialogue slightly and voila.

While I agree on principal, I do think that the way the Fifth Doctor composed himself especially in this one would not really be how I'd imagine, say, the Fourth or Sixth Doctor ever doing things, even in their later, mellower days. He seems to be overtly generous as well as the usual Doctor self, which is very much an attributable characteristic with this Doctor than anyone else. But that's just me, I guess.

 

[Qonundrum]

My next excursion into Nostalgialand is Frontios:

DISCLAIMER: MILD SPOILERS REGARDING THE CGI ARE BROUGHT UP. ALSO, WHY DID THE HTML5 STANDARD REMOVE THE ANNOYING /BLINK TAG AS I'D HAVE USED THAT INSTEAD OF BOLDFACE FOR THIS DISCLAIMER?

Where to begin... why, anywhere but the beginning of course!

The AI is generally quite good; even the TARDIS console screen showing the various segments has no text smear. Neither does "DEATHS UNACCOUNTABLE" on the plastic envelope and that one should have been a smearathon due to its angle! Some other scenes have nominal smear but considering most scenes in general, it's an artifact that's livable, the infamous glasses debate also reveals limited detail on the compressed DVD/original D3-archived recording, and comparing older blu-ray sets to this one where you freeze frame, the older sets have a temporal dithered crosshatch effect, which does reduce some clarity close-up, that AI doesn't have. So it's six of one, half dozen of the other. Yup, nitpicks aside, the AI is providing some value, even if not perfect. YouTube comparison videos will reveal all the pros and cons of it...

In part 4, the Doctor's exchange with Gravis while Tegan looks on fuming is nothing less than fantastic, well worth the wait.

Color and contrast refining remain nothing short of spectacular.

The plot as summary: Frontios is intelligent yet obtuse at the same time. Overall, character pieces and subplotting, and wit, readily overcome the big Tractator Plan (more on that TP later), even if the Doctor comes across too much like his predecessor with the comedy at times.

The new CGI - which is increasingly the norm for these stories as the CGI makers generally put much thought into authenticity over pointless blingy additions - looks rather splendid for the Tractator effects. The TARDIS reforming itself, however, is a bit iffy. Like with Terminus, the walls don't convince and for no reason an "80s vision" of what the 1996 McGann interior TARDIS arch was thrown in, though in re-viewing it's growing on me quite a lot. It does do more to add to the scope of the interior. After all, it's not like the show has revealed other console room sets before. Seeing the outer plasmic shell re-form is fantastic, and nice touch on the overhead light (like the one created for the very first TARDIS interior in 1963) as well. Even for the otherwise iffy interior wall moments, the camera cutaways between scenes are fast enough to minimize the problem.

Speaking of Six since I hadn't, remember "Vengeance on Varos" where people claim the Doctor is pushing someone into an acid bath, even though the struggle doesn't show this at all? Well, the Doctor and Turlough are seemingly trying to prevent Brazen from being grabbed by the mining machine yet it's painfully obvious the Doctor lunges forward and leads him to his death. Either way, do a retake for either scene to clearly show how neither Doctor was shoving anyone anywhere.

Turlough gets some more background detail, complete with race memory of the Tractators. Add in his final story, Planet of Fire, and it starts to beg questions as to how it all fits, but don't think too much into it, unlike for...

...the Tractator Plan ("TP" for short). This isn't the first time a monster species wants to putter a planet through the galaxy as cheap transport. The Daleks wanted to do this in 1964 for some reason, even though it's just as dumb given there's no warp drive or any FTL drive. The debatable goal of our Tractator friends aside, the idea of combining gravitational forces and amplifying via a geological equivalent to an inductor coil is actually way-cool. Now that aside, how the Tractators will pass the time by while waiting for their planet to pass another to hop onto for this great expansion project given the issue of speed and distance, never mind direction (velocity)... or eating, or as this involves their breeding-- obviously the real life-related questions mount faster than Al Bundy's attempts at prowess, and even faster than Mestor's great plan to spread gastropod eggs across the galaxy and note how those ready-made scrambled omelets aren't exactly doing FTL either... But give it all enough headcanon to explain the minutiae away and you'll end up with just enough gravitas to roll along with it, no pun intended.

Individual episode rankings:
pt 1: 9/10
pt 2: 8/10
pt 3: 7/10 (probably the slowest paced despite having some answers revealed)
pt 4: 9/10


Overall:
8.25/10, an underrated little gem that's more than the sum of its parts. Don't let it drag you down.


Bonus:

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Great video and eagle eyes will notice good moiré reduction in some scenes too... Considering the sheer amounts of haloing in the original material, the AI processing has done - overall - a very good job for the season 21 stories I've seen so far, with a handful of exceptions that disappoint but all the positives vs the negatives prevailing... (having seen some AI products attempting dehaloing of this sort, it's not always a panacea either...) All in all, at least from what I've seen so far, season 21's AI isn't as excessive as season 13's was, if anything there's some occasional slight horizontal stretch (likely to match up with the 16mm footage's aspect ratio?!) but that's not AI in of itself. Grand, do I now look at "The Twin Dilemma" next as its screencap comparison shows too much green tint on the DVD cap (reds look completely off and Colin looks anemic) and too much red tint for the blu-ray (Colin's face looks too far red, the yellow lapel looks too pure yellow (think RGB 255/255/0), and the cravat looks the wrong shade too)...! But color grading isn't AI upscaling/edge enhancing either...

 

[Sim]

I continued my rewatch of the 2nd and 3rd Doctors:

In the last days, I watched "The Tomb of the Cybermen" (German dubbed collector's release), "The Abominable Snowmen" (for the first time the colour animation -- I'm amazed, what a great story with great setting!), "The Ice Warriors" and now "The Enemy of the World" (German dubbed collector's release -- perhaps this serial is my favorite 2nd Doctor story. Throughton has Ricardo Montalban as Khan vibes here! =)).

And 3rd Doctor: "The Claws of Axos", "Colony in Space", "The Daemons" and "Day of the Daleks" (Special Edition).

Got to say, each time I rewatch the Pertwee stories, the more I like them. Perhaps Pertwee now is even my 3rd favorite classic Doctor, behind Tom Baker and Troughton.

 

[Qonundrum]

Continuing the renaissance of season 21,

PLANET OF FIRE

All of Davison's seasons are marvelous IMHO, and while seasons 19 and 20 feel more exploratory in environments and situations and ideas, 21 just feels tighter and with a newfound purpose (as well as having some neat ideas, but I find more of the preceding two seasons more memorable in that regard).

The story has a long checklist of items to accomplish. The story does them surprisingly well. Really well, honestly. Is this an all-time great? Well, no, but it's got vision and mission and purpose and stride holding itself together that elevate it into being more than the sum of its parts. It's even got soul, in a sense.

The Doctor has clearly recovered from his uncharacteristically jovial state from "Frontios", partially thanks to how grim "Resurrection of the Daleks" was.

Turlough gets a thoughtful exit, even though it's a little at odds with his premiere story where he's excited to get home... maybe it was an adopted planet but he was later captured and exiled to Earth and that's too much minutiae to stuff into this story.

Peri starts out uneven, but remains engaging: At times she's whiny, but she still has the gumption to get back up to finish the job - persistence and perseverance - as well as being both determined (e.g. searching for the Master inside his TARDIS) and also quick on her feet to figure out Kamelion could be altered by her thoughts. Despite her struggles, she still wants to see the universe if the Doctor accepts. A solid introduction indeed, it's a shame her journeys afterward were less consistent.

Kamelion was killed off fairly well and with a surprising amount of sympathy. Intended to show the then-latest in STEM and real robotics (not the toy K9), it sadly ended up a failure due to the lack of documentation on how to program the thing. As such, it pretty much was forgotten about, save for a scene deleted from "The Awakening". Only now is Kamelion back, with the clever use of silver-sprayed kitchen gloves and silver face paint to show an intermediary state, when Kamelion wasn't fully presenting the being that the controller was mentally projecting.

This story also proves the 21st century didn't start the meme of "THE MESSAGE".

A shame Peter Grimwade had stopped directing for the show, but I always appreciated his style as a writer - he was often more forward-thinking and plot-based rather than character, and in this story he definitely shows some character chops and especially for Turlough and the Doctor. (More notably and as an aside, he also had a field day playing with using time as more than just a part of a destination, but as actual plotting device and integration. At least for his previous two scripts, for which one needed more polishing than the other, but I digress...)

There's a lot more "eye candy" in this than usual for Classic DW. Not just Peri but from a male point of view as well, since the show almost never showed guys "for the moms" in the past in the way it showed women "for the dads", so this one's playing catch-up. The 16mm film negs* restored and remastered only exemplify this so much more. (The site I had posted earlier regarding surviving 16mm location work) seems out of date as AI could not have pulled in so much detail.)

* Davison's era is by far the best when it comes to the 16mm being found or obtainable. Shame about season 22, but the Fifth Doctor is pretty much my favorite (and isn't even "My Doctor" since most people born in the 20th century would be citing Tom Baker with that title, which includes me, but it proves that the first one you see on screen isn't always your favorite and that can change as easily as a tornadic and/or bean-byproduct wind.)​

A shame the blu-ray didn't include either the DVD special edition as the CGI fire for Sarn helped differentiate it to the Lanzarote scenes, as well as sadly not including some of the alleged outtakes.

As always, "Behind the Sofa" blends a perfect mix of fun commentary sprinkled with factual and anecdotal/experiential items from the cast who made it and are lovely to watch.

8/10, it's a wonderful casual tale to relax to. Especially as the story that follows this is one of the most tense, and with a tone not felt in a long time (e.g. Hartnell's era, even if "Androzani" modernizes things by using a little more humor - partially as a reflexive state by the Doctor, perhaps).

 

[Christopher]

Turlough gets a thoughtful exit, even though it's a little at odds with his premiere story where he's excited to get home... maybe it was an adopted planet but he was later captured and exiled to Earth and that's too much minutiae to stuff into this story.

It seemed more that he was eager to get off Earth, because he hated it there. He did briefly talk about using a ship to get home, but perhaps he just figured anywhere was better than Earth.

Peri starts out uneven, but remains engaging: At times she's whiny, but she still has the gumption to get back up to finish the job - persistence and perseverance - as well as being both determined (e.g. searching for the Master inside his TARDIS) and also quick on her feet to figure out Kamelion could be altered by her thoughts.

I found Peri great to look at (especially in a bikini) but annoying as a character. She got better in the Trial season, though.

Kamelion was killed off fairly well and with a surprising amount of sympathy. Intended to show the then-latest in STEM and real robotics (not the toy K9), it sadly ended up a failure due to the lack of documentation on how to program the thing. As such, it pretty much was forgotten about, save for a scene deleted from "The Awakening". Only now is Kamelion back, with the clever use of silver-sprayed kitchen gloves and silver face paint to show an intermediary state, when Kamelion wasn't fully presenting the being that the controller was mentally projecting.

Kamelion was such a wasted opportunity. I don't know why they couldn't do more with the character, since they only needed to use the robot puppet briefly between his disguises.

 

[Qonundrum]

Okay, so in my rando-rewatch, as I'm down to three stories from the rather good season 21 boxset (WAAAH!):

The Twin Dilemma (pt 1)
Yep, doing this part-by-part and over a few days. Not just because the classic era was meant to be enjoyed in 25-minute installments and not as omnibus editions, but because this one is not as engaging as the others. If 'Warriors of the Deep" managed to get significantly elevated, it's a shame this one couldn't, but to be fair this one had far worse behind-the-scenes problems with scripting. Which I will get to in due course...

First off, Nicola Bryant and Colin Baker both excel with the material given with some fantastic onscreen chemistry, even if most of their scenes involve bickering and/or enduring post-regeneration calamity thanks to the spectrox toxemia from the previous story, noting that one reason I otherwise would never watch these out of order is because there is a loose arc between stories, even if Davison's Doctor's sense of humor was just as inconsistent between the stories as well.

It was a bold idea to try to shake things up with regeneration as a dramatic plot device. While done already for the 5th Doctor in "Castrovalva", now it's taken a different turn - only this is a far darker and more sinister series of events and showing perhaps why post-regeneration antics "should never have been a thing", as the only way to use it for dramatic purposes is to hype up potential death (the 1982 adventure) or really have it go haywire and awry (this 1984 yarn). Since a story about post-regenerative broken arm would be boring, there's no other place to go than to go down the bunny hole of mental or emotional instability - and then how long you stay down there until you get the character to recover, oh dear... So double up the kudos for Colin who not only has to give a good first impression for the new Doctor, he also has to act out this material no matter how iffy or murky. He does so with aplomb, and his maniacal laughter in the wardrobe room is particularly noteworthy of excellence...

...Indeed, the strangulation event aside*, the writing for this story isn't exactly terrible so far**, just different when not stale...

* Yep, this deserves its own footnote and it's so big that even Bigfoot and Babe the Blue Ox could fit in the footprint with much room to spare: Yeah, Peri - caught up in an already complex series events and as such doesn't think about it under the cacophony of the situation - forgets to say "thank you" - so its also possible the Doctor had noted this subconsciously, in along with a bizarre claim of being a spy (which we the audience knew, but from his POV he might not be certain and it's a novel thought, especially after Turlough asking to come on board and trying to kill him for three stories so the recovering Doctor is also blanketly imposing the same set of events upon this effective stranger he barely knows... but no casual viewer in 1984 would have remembered all of this, the script wasn't going to - and couldn't - spoonfeed that much minutiae into it all, and even more ardent fans might not remember either. Interesting parallel and character complexity in applying rote being attempted, though. But is it effective? Well, no...) ​

​

** as I recall, the worst of it is in pt 2, with 3 and 4 trying to piecemeal something better as Eric Saward takes over from otherwise-accomplished script writer Anthony Steven, but more on that in due course. But if his typewriter was electric, the power supply unit could very well have had a capacitor or rectifier blow up, in which case one needs to find a backup or fetch a pencil to go along with the paper instead... but I digress.​

Okay, to get back to the story and its characters, we have these twins and some nucular fam parents - who are out because, yo, this is latch key kid era and the kids are well-versed with mid-1910s slang as they tell daddy to "buzz off" so they can play their maths game "Equations". They're certainly not humans from 1984, 1964, 2024, or any recent time because I don't know any kids who love doing math and nowadays one has a calculator anyway so they're not going to care. But unlike "Logopolis", the punch line - I mean, the reason - for their being special is not really made mention of, only that they're needed. It doesn't help that the father is ramping up melodrama for all it's worth. Even more than that, the story is now creating parallel comparisons against Adric and he was never deemed a fan favorite as little was done with his character. What is the predilection for mynahing back to Bidmead's era when it's all being reused so poorly? I will admit, the acting of the twins, in this episode so far, isn't terrible, and their ability to recite lines simultaneously is rather good indeed.

Upon landing on Titan 3 and exploring, there's a surprisingly poignant moment as the Doctor... chides Peri over leaving one of her own kind to die. It's a powerful moment, but in a story that's already done more powerful scenes - to lesser and controversial effect - which makes this particular scene, a far better reminder that the Doctor is not the same species as Peri and might indeed not act like humans - diluted as a result.

The cliffhanger is surprisingly decent.

The big dramatic reveal that XV773 was not designed for warp drive then begs the question of its purpose as a freighter, since infraluminal speeds would take months to go anywhere. So it's up to the audience, assuming anyone cared, to sit there and wonder its history - because, reasons. Maybe it ferried nonperishable goods between planets that never needed expedited next-day service at additional cost or whatever, but was stolen or sold to someone who then upgraded it. (There's enough dialogue to suggest things, but the emphasis on not supposed to have warp drive comes across all wrong and we don't know enough about their society for it to fit adequately.) If the story were better, I'd spend more time wondering about the minutiae as well, but if the story were really better, it'd know how to put in enough details without throwing off the viewer who then has to headcanon more than what's really needed to make it work. But the story focuses, hyperfocuses, on the twins and their attributes and everyone dropping everything and running the moment anyone in the theater screams "FIRE!!!" So they're important, we're told it, but - as with the ship - there's no narrative anchor to give it needed or deserved weight. Maybe later episodes will address this as a story's first part often sets up situations without explanation, of which occurs later on in the story. (And there are other scenes that do this, except the ship and the importance of the twins definitely feel too weak. So far. I vaguely remember the rest of the story, only a couple scenes, so it'll be like watching this for the very first time.)

The upscaling is pretty decent overall, not much in the way of blurred-out forehead lines or other detail. That said, "CMDR FABIAN"'s nameplate reads "COW FABRIENN" thanks to the AI upscaling still not handling text (even though "Frontios" had AI upscaling and with no problem with the text on the TARDIS screen!). Also, some scenes look like too much red tint was applied as people look too pink and the Doctor's yellow lapel looks lemon peel yellow instead of a warmer yellow hue. It's not major, but it's enough. Also, if AI is used and if they're using Topaz, there are dehalo settings that could have benefitted all of season 21 due to the sheer level of haloing in the source material. But that's a sheer guess and, even with whatever upscaling techniques were applied, it's by no means terrible. Am grateful the 16mm film negs were found (Seasons 19-21 seem to be the gold standard for recovered footage, save for season 20 as "Arc of Infinity" looks like it was telecined material cleaned up... I don't recall how much of season 18's filmed material was recovered.)


Fun aside: Even back then, the makers weren't quite happy with the shiny new direction the show was seemingly taking:

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(enjoy!)


One other thing - older blu-ray sets had a type of blocky artifacting to shroud limitations in upscaling. The new AI processes do away with that, but have their own flaws - sometimes not bad, other times egregious. All in all, season 21's look is stronger than the reputation on review sites, but some scenes will stick out badly while others excel.

Rating: 6/10. There's the potential for a really good story in there, even if it's - so far - borrowing too much plot fodder from previous seasons and doing nothing of interest with them. Most of the positive rating goes to the actors giving it their all, combined with the IDEA of "regeneration gone wild", even if the direction on paper was questionable. All this said, I don't think subsequent episodes are going to be as high in rating, but more on that later.

​

 

[Nerys Myk]

Does Quadrophenia count?

 

[Christopher]

First off, Nicola Bryant and Colin Baker both excel with the material given with some fantastic onscreen chemistry, even if most of their scenes involve bickering and/or enduring post-regeneration calamity thanks to the spectrox toxemia from the previous story, noting that one reason I otherwise would never watch these out of order is because there is a loose arc between stories, even if Davison's Doctor's sense of humor was just as inconsistent between the stories as well.

I never attributed that specifically to the spectrox, just to post-regeneration instability. We saw in "Castrovalva" that a regeneration could be unstable and potentially fail, and the Fourth Doctor was a bit erratic at first in "Robot."

The big dramatic reveal that XV773 was not designed for warp drive then begs the question of its purpose as a freighter, since infraluminal speeds would take months to go anywhere.

Years or decades, if you're talking interstellar travel. In-system, it could be months if it's slow enough, but days or weeks if it can manage substantial sublight velocity.

The upscaling is pretty decent overall, not much in the way of blurred-out forehead lines or other detail. That said, "CMDR FABIAN"'s nameplate reads "COW FABRIENN" thanks to the AI upscaling still not handling text (even though "Frontios" had AI upscaling and with no problem with the text on the TARDIS screen!).

I'm confused by your references to AI upscaling. Is this an official BBC release doing that, or some fan production? I'd be surprised to see the BBC using such a flawed technology. And I sincerely hope there are still unaltered versions available.

 

[Set Harth]

holy schnikes...

Spoiler

 

[Qonundrum]

I never attributed that specifically to the spectrox, just to post-regeneration instability. We saw in "Castrovalva" that a regeneration could be unstable and potentially fail, and the Fourth Doctor was a bit erratic at first in "Robot."

Great reminders, esp. "Robot", thanks!

I always took "Robot" as a brief moment of Tom doing an all-out comedy act, which did get subdued a bit... then came season 17, ha!

"Castrovalva" ultimately did the regeneration instability idea the best, or at least regarding the immediate aftermath and with the least amount of controversy. Being a season opener, we all knew the Doctor would heal... as much flak as TTD not wrongly gets, as a season finale it really does have one wondering if the Doctor (in universe) was going to make it - then again, the ending is as almost "fourth wall" in terms of letting the viewers know all was going to be okay, the only remaining way to tell the audience would be to overtly mug the camera and yell at the audience to be optimistic for next year...!


I did need a couple of viewings to piece it all together and, indeed as a fun tangent, only recently did I realize that it may have been better to have done "Androzani"'s cliffhanger recap starting part four with the Doctor seeing the wavy lines as how many people, who watched part three, would remember by the end of the following week that the wavy lines effect was the Doctor's point-of-view in holding back impending regeneration?

Years or decades, if you're talking interstellar travel. In-system, it could be months if it's slow enough, but days or weeks if it can manage substantial sublight velocity.

True

I'm confused by your references to AI upscaling. Is this an official BBC release doing that, or some fan production? I'd be surprised to see the BBC using such a flawed technology. And I sincerely hope there are still unaltered versions available.

My apologies for not mentioning the detail, it is about the official BBC season 21 boxset release of recent. I've seen some genuine improvements in picture quality (PQ), but the flaws can be mindbogglingly bad. Until then, the best release might be staying the original DVD (until disc rot wrecks it, only certain US releases succomb to this). Even with the high levels of compression on the DVD image, the occasional distortions aren't there and are shrouded by compression artifacting anyhow. Without compression, some of this stuff would look smoother anyway, but AI would use smoothing along with digital noise reduction for removing noise from the archived magnetic tape material, then the selective edge refining, color tuning, and other processes, then (optionally) topped with artificial noise/grain added to negate some of the "smoothness" created during the upscaling process. I also wonder if each deinterlaced frame is converted from raster to vector as a precursor to the resize (Adobe Illustrator's done that for a decade+ now)...

I'm certain the masters on D3 still have the original 625i resolution and could be re-upscaled in the future. Not as much to add detail that can't exist, but to render a picture to look decent enough and natively on a 4K screen, or hope your 4K set has an image processor to also upscale 1080P or lower resolution into something presentable on top of the PQ on the disc (or stream, lower bitrate and all) being played.

 

[Qonundrum]

holy schnikes...

Spoiler

Spoiler: My reply :D

Yep, that's pretty bad - worse considering the image is otherwise mid- or foreground shot where, unaltered and even on the DVD, would be properly legible. Let me guess the story and method used to get it: It's a snapshot from "The Android Invasion", taken on smartphone camera pointed at the TV? It's been claimed that "The Android Invasion"'s 16mm films do exist (which if true renders that all the worse as 16mm has more definition than VT), there is no way it would be illegible and an AI setting was ramped up too high. IMHO, season 13 looks worse than 21 (the worst of the range).

 

[Christopher]

I always took "Robot" as a brief moment of Tom doing an all-out comedy act, which did get subdued a bit... then came season 17, ha!

Terrance Dicks's novelization of "The Face of Evil" explained how Xoanon could have the Fourth Doctor's face (even though all his adventures from "Robot" onward had been pretty much continuous with no room for unseen incidents in between) by saying that on the night after his regeneration in "Robot," he'd clandestinely slipped away in the TARDIS and come back to the moment just after he left, and didn't remember it afterward because his mind had still been unsettled.

"Castrovalva" ultimately did the regeneration instability idea the best, or at least regarding the immediate aftermath and with the least amount of controversy. Being a season opener, we all knew the Doctor would heal... as much flak as TTD not wrongly gets, as a season finale it really does have one wondering if the Doctor (in universe) was going to make it - then again, the ending is as almost "fourth wall" in terms of letting the viewers know all was going to be okay, the only remaining way to tell the audience would be to overtly mug the camera and yell at the audience to be optimistic for next year...!

Since I didn't see the stories in first run, I keep forgetting that "The Twin Dilemma" was a season finale instead of a premiere.

My apologies for not mentioning the detail, it is about the official BBC season 21 boxset release of recent. I've seen some genuine improvements in picture quality (PQ), but the flaws can be mindbogglingly bad. Until then, the best release might be staying the original DVD (until disc rot wrecks it, only certain US releases succomb to this). Even with the high levels of compression on the DVD image, the occasional distortions aren't there and are shrouded by compression artifacting anyhow. Without compression, some of this stuff would look smoother anyway, but AI would use smoothing along with digital noise reduction for removing noise from the archived magnetic tape material, then the selective edge refining, color tuning, and other processes, then (optionally) topped with artificial noise/grain added to negate some of the "smoothness" created during the upscaling process. I also wonder if each deinterlaced frame is converted from raster to vector as a precursor to the resize (Adobe Illustrator's done that for a decade+ now)...

I'm certain the masters on D3 still have the original 625i resolution and could be re-upscaled in the future. Not as much to add detail that can't exist, but to render a picture to look decent enough and natively on a 4K screen, or hope your 4K set has an image processor to also upscale 1080P or lower resolution into something presentable on top of the PQ on the disc (or stream, lower bitrate and all) being played.

It's disturbing that an official release is using AI that alters the content of the images. That's not improving it, it's degrading it.

 

[Sim]

Wow, it's amazing how you guys take apart every detail of these new releases ... can't say I'm remotely deep enough in the matter to be able to comment on it.

I'm just rewatching Troughton and Pertwee (alternating one serial of each), mostly on the DVD release (except the few serials that have been German dubbed and released on a German collector's edition Blu-Ray, which use the recent UK season boxes as source).

Most of these episodes, I have rarely rewatched since I first watched them a decade ago, and I watch some of the animated recons for the first time.

In the last days, I continued with:

2nd Doctor "Web of Fear" (German dubbed collector's edition Blu-Ray), "Fury from the Deep" (colour animation), "The Dominators", "The Mind Robber" and "The Invasion" (including the two animated recon episodes).

Especially "The Mind Robber" amazed me ... it's hilariously surrealistic and meta! Love it! =)

Also 3rd Doctor "The Curse of Peladon", "The Time Monster", "The Three Doctors", "Carnival of Monsters", "Frontier in Space" and now in the middle of "Planet of the Daleks".

 

[Qonundrum]

Terrance Dicks's novelization of "The Face of Evil" explained how Xoanon could have the Fourth Doctor's face (even though all his adventures from "Robot" onward had been pretty much continuous with no room for unseen incidents in between) by saying that on the night after his regeneration in "Robot," he'd clandestinely slipped away in the TARDIS and come back to the moment just after he left, and didn't remember it afterward because his mind had still been unsettled.

cool!

Since I didn't see the stories in first run, I keep forgetting that "The Twin Dilemma" was a season finale instead of a premiere.

Same here. I had no clue for years; I saw TTD in 1985 originally as an omnibus and it immediately followed with "Attack", not knowing of the season structure at the time... I think it was around 1987 when I'd finally found enough material that really dug into it all. I miss that bookstore...

It's disturbing that an official release is using AI that alters the content of the images. That's not improving it, it's degrading it.

Aye. Any mangled text is definitely degrading it rather than making it acceptable for viewing on a screen with a resolution deemed impossible at the time. At least updated effects can be turned on or off... then again, any form of editing is arguably in the same boat? The Blake's 7 releases show unmodified videotape content and the interlacing jaggy line artifacting is atrocious. Technically, or at least in my perception, deinterlacing and processes like VidFIRE are also AI of a sort, but the newer standards do end up being "one step forward, two steps back" for sure.

 

[Qonundrum]

The Twin Dilemma (pt 2)

Much to my shock, this remained largely watchable - but with a few iffy scenes just to be sure that no viewer could ever call it "a classic". So, where to begin...

The Doc and Peri discussing the saving of Hugo's life at the start is somehow rendered more interesting by the story's very context. This episode, if not story, is a curate's egg for a bizarre mix of clever moments/ideas combined with equally stupid ones.

More, the contrast between the Doctor/Peri versus Mestor/Edgeworth is almost a total inversion/opposite of the other. I can't really explain it nimbly, so go watch it in "analysis mode" enabled, but these scenes actually make for interesting viewing on an archetypcal/character examination level. (I'll try writing down a table or chart or something during pt 3...) Even if the underlying story is pants, there's still enough going on at character level to keep things going.

that said, it's definitely a bizarre episode and the story feels like it's almost realizing it's got potential but never quite figuring it out to solidify everything it's wanting to do. Never mind we don't have enough of Mestor's machinations, apart from some boring kidnapping that any old drama show could do so where's the twist beyond their ability to be little Adricwannabes despite having less personality/depth/background to them?! (We'll see the reason later on, that's all I remember, but on first viewing I'd felt a tad left out of the proceedings, but gravitating more toward the Doctor rambling quotes from literary passages/figures at the time and with such magnetic gusto.)

Okay, her's some on plot dingbattery, actually: The twins. Also, converting math into power? Where's the power plant? What type of power? It's a very loose association told on screen that doesn't quite line up. I mean, and to compare, I just scribbled (√225)+(8675309-6060842) on paper and all of a sudden it didn't turn into a BBQ spit roasting chicken with go-go dancers gyrating on both sides of it, so what gives?

The kids' acting still isn't terrible and they're kids. As par for the course with child actors, they get a lot more flak than they deserve. /myTwoCents

Set design - well, they love that tinfoil, don't they? In 1985, I didn't notice how many props and set bits from "Terminus" were wrapped up in it and/or spraypainted black, but it's way too obvious now. If the story were more engaging, it'd be too easy to overlook and roll with also, "Some of this technology looks familiar" notes the Doctor, as most of it was indeed used in "Terminus".

Peri hiding Hugo's gun's power pack in... the ugliest outfit in the wardrobe? Did the Doctor get half the clothing from Studio 54's fire sale or something? Also note that Tegan's outfit from "Resurrection of the Daleks" is in the background and not hard to spot. More importantly, what would Freud or Jung or Rorschach be fathoming when you consider (a) she saw this alien being put on a goofy outfit, and (b) she wanders off to put on an almost-as-goofy outfit, so therefore she places the power pack in an outfit that Hugo - even by powers of deduction - would be able to fathom through soon enough? But he too wanted to be Studio 54-wannabe and finds it all fast enough.

I wish Peri knew of Tegan, since the Doctor's mindfart and bringing up Tegan's name and catchphrase was still a poignant moment, but one that Peri has no relation to. The line was meant for us, not her.

A few positives:

1. The acting by Colin and Nicola continues to excel, especially with what's on paper to recite
2. Character dialogue remains hit or miss, but there's some good stuff like "That bump has no business being on a deserted asteroid", referring to the dome, is almost cleverer than it deserves to be as we normally don't get this type of detail, much less told in the way it was
3. ECXCELSIOR!! The first literary figure to be quoted, Longfellow, is done with much entertaining bravado by Colin. Colin's also having a field day with that scene, relishing every moment. Can't say that I'd blame him, he's very engaging in this and, again, definitely uplifts a stinky script.
4. Oddly enough, the scene where the Doctor - in another mental mishmash moment - hides behind Peri actually fits! This is the one time where it might, ha!!
5. "Kindly refrain from addressing me as Doc, Perpugillium!" is another fantastic bit of relished dialogue Colin puts out and I'm yumming it all up. Colin is definitely working overtime to make anything seem more comedic while in an unstable moment as a balancing act
6. Another example of emphasizing comedy is the moment the Doctor is assuming happily his teleportation tweaking worked, then looking at Peri's watch to see that the watch wasn't working!
7. Colin Baker and Maurice Denham make a great double-act, with much onscreen chemistry, possibly having the most in this story.
8. Great modelwork too

Okay, time for some whiny bits:

1. Edgeworth/Azmael seems to have the hots for Peri, while looking like someone whose active testosterone blood test level came back reading "25"
2. Azmael's past hints at him being a drunk who was glugglugging more than my ex. Given that the Doctor refers to a point of time a long time ago-- I really don't care or want to care about ever seeing this particular point of time so I'm just rolling with it. Then again, maybe the Master will get wind of it, make a stockpile, sell it on Earth, humans buy it, humans drink it, humans die because their digestive systems can't handle the ingredients. Which reminds,
3. Azmael is also ruling Jaconda. Not sure I'd care for a backstory on this bit either, but how many rogue Time Lords are ruling planets and for what reasons? It's just scribbled out in this episode at face value and a new viewer is still waiting for underlying reasons (of which a few get answered later, many don't)
4. The sci-fi in this story is a little fleeting and superficial so far (later episodes get to that later, so more on that later)
5. How does the Doctor, in a span of a few scant minutes, turn a molecular revitalizer chamber into a space/time teleporter by solely fiddling a couple of knobs and not installing new components? (Let me guess, Azmael brought the equipment when leaving Gallifrey and locked out 95% of its functionality. Lame, but passable, I suppose.)
   1. Don't forget, Six is still showing signs of erratic behavior and mental instability
6. The cliffhanger with Peri emoting has her too focused on the Doctor's demise. She's accepted him as him by now, but having her lose her marbles over him AND the situation she's forced into would be a little more weighty. The setup and scene are trying, but it's not landing as well as it needed to.

Another AI blunder is Hugo Lang's name badge getting mucked up and it's detracting, given the prominence in direct view of the camera.


Rating: 6/10 - This is on par with, and even better than, pt 1 at times (!!!). Yep, I'm surprised too. BUT the episode is inconsistent, glosses over a few things when deliberately ignoring fair contextual detail instead of "the power of magical cheap plotting", and contains worse moments in others. Yep, you'd read that right, there are scenes even worse than the traumatic-based and trauma-inducing strangulation that's not meant for the kids (any more than seeing people smoke ciggies in "Resurrection of the Daleks", but before I digress...). I wrote that because at least there's narrative anchoring and reason, no matter how controversial. Pt 2 often glides and contains nonsensical faff. It's all a shame as, despite no plot resolutions coming into place yet, the cast are entertaining as all heck, and some moments really are truly great. Then comes in the mucky stuff (regardless of which scenes are scribble-by-night or not). Even without having expectations thanks to the thinly-plotted "Androzani", this story is lacking no matter how hard it tries. But enough of it has kept me interested and, again, I only vaguely remember bits of the story. I just remembered two scenes from the remaining parts, but the rest of it is a void. So time will tell...

 

[Christopher]

Meanwhile, my attempt to watch the animated reconstructions in story order has hit the snag that YouTube's Doctor Who channel doesn't have "The Savages." I guess it's too recent?

 

[Qonundrum]

Meanwhile, my attempt to watch the animated reconstructions in story order has hit the snag that YouTube's Doctor Who channel doesn't have "The Savages." I guess it's too recent?

That would make sense. I've not kept up, though I had bought the blu-ray. I always liked the novelization, though I've not read it recently (years). I should be getting to watching it after finishing the wonderfulness of season 21. "Savages" is a newer home video release, but as "The Celestial Toymaker" was put out on that channel and it was released to home video a year earlier, hopefully it won't be too long before "Savages" gets there.

I wonder when/if "The Daleks' Master Plan" will get released outside the UK any time soon. Or put onto special home video release; there's a chance other episodes are stored in attics or dusty boxes halfway across the planet, but plenty of us double-dipped when "The Power of the Daleks", "The Enemy of the World" and "The Web of Fear" came out in different formats too...

 

[Qonundrum]

The Twin Dilemma (pt 3)

Well... the story is finally moving along, but big new epic for big new Doctor for big positive season finale where he saves the universe is... n't lining up as being one with a great payoff rewarding those sticking around. Oh, to be in a fan group in 1984 and trading notes back then... (I remember vaguely where in pt 4, but am focusing on the journey of the moment for these 24 minutes of FTW'ery.)

To start with, the recap involving the wrong time zone Peri was placed in by the magical altering of a piece of equipment designed for nothing remotely like what it was turned into (and with no new equipment needed*) led to another needless acerbic, abrasive moment by the shiny new manic Doctor (IMHO, keeping his instability for the first two parts along with re-earning Peri's trust and softening up than to continue it on even more.) The new Doctor definitely wears his emotions on his equally loud sleeves and while it has a potential for being refreshing, it's all overblown and overdone.

But Peri's line about compassion being the difference that remains between them is poignant, and good, as the episode starts with her saying it - followed up by Six showing it later on as the story flows regarding Jaconda, Azmael, the twins, and capping it with Peri as cliffhanger - to varying extents. A shame so many elements of the story crater, as there is some potential in this mess, and we FINALLY see the Doctor's sense of compassion slowly returning.

Hugo's next big moment with the Doc and Peri starts as Hugo sees Peri appearing out of thin air followed by Peri spazzing around the console. One thought had crossed my mind is one thing I would not do in a rewrite, if I were to have written the story, is to have an introduction go like this:

Hugo: Who are you?​

Peri: I'm Peri, and this is the Doctor who just appeared behind you.​

Hugo: Doctor, who?​

Peri: har har, how witty​

Nope. Never. Not ever.

As the story continues on, a scene with Mestor confirms the twins are Earthlings. Sigh. Until now, it could be assumed almost anything for anyone wanting to and it's also a cliché that humans of the future will develop to be godlike (never mind all Adrics, Logopolitans, Wesley Crushers, etc). Now it's confirmed, just Earthlings, year undetermimed but definitely in the future somewhere. In a more solid story, it'd be left vague, or the kids are confirmed as not being Earthlings and add a little intrigue. Everything shown so far hasn't been intriguing, in terms of plotting.

It's also said that Azmael crossed galaxies to get them. Are they in another galaxy now (having transported them in a stolen cruiser that was fitted with what registers as warp drive but we as viewers will assume that while drooling) or is this one of the final examples of bad sci-fi writing that slobbers in the word "galaxy" as placeholder when they meant "solar system"? Unlike with Blake's 7 and the original Star Trek, this DW example could be set up to even visit galaxies but, go fig, the story is plot-by-numbers...

While not revealed until later in the story, the gastropods leave giant slime trails in their wake. And yet, we only see two small examples of this, and even the throne room has nothing but some wavy lines of gold paint and nobody pinching their noses, especially Peri - unless she's gotten used to it by now and the Doctor and Hugo have no smell receptors of any sort.

One scene involves Mestor instructing underlings to save the carcass of a traitor as food for slaves. Fast forward to "Revelation of the Daleks" and the same idea is used, albeit to far better effect. I suspect by now that Eric Saward has fully taken over in hopes to save this trainwreck of a script and while there are some moments trying to improve, they're caught in a mire.

The Doctor, in another magical manic moment inside the TARDIS, closes his eyes, crosses his arms, and beckons Peri to open the TARDIS door for him. Cringeworthy, sure, but it leads to a fantastic soliloquy by the Doctor, who needs Peri to mention how desolate the place is before opening his eyes to see the scale of destruction. It's a really great moment... in a really inconsistent story... that finally shows Six using the most amount of compassion so far. Also note, Colin's really trying hard to apply a multifaceted layer of camp and in a way as to make the story and actions less grizzly. Additionally, some of his triple-word injections are indeed hilarious, but the tone of the story combined with other dialogue is so wrong that it's not being made up for.

Some Hartnellisms, if not before now, definitely are on full display from Colin with lines such as "young man": and "young lady". How many people in 1984 would be cognizant of the first story in 1963 is one thing, but the vibes bestowed are flailing and failing due to their feeling forced. But Colin makes the lines feel suitably otherworldly - then again, his inconsistent personality already does that, but it's a nice subtle underpinning that buried mannerisms are coming back to the fore during his internal mental struggles.

Oh, the "lieutenant" mispronunciation running gag is genuinely hilarious.

Along with a snippet of real Earth mythology ("Peri"'s name from part one that was surprisingly well used, choking extreme aside), we now get some worldbuilding for Jaconda. I like the idea of ancient drawings used to tell the tale, also used in "Snakedance" and "Colony in Space", that a fable of giant gastropods had more reality to it. With no budget or cutaways, we don't see zillions of giant slugs devouring the place... but in that regard it's not important. (If there had been a budget, it'd have been applied elsewhere anyhow. Classic WHO showed the result of spectacle, not spectacle for the sake of spectacle.)

More on that, it's as if the writers of the story were looking for inspiration while looking at an aquarium and cleaning it during a snail infestation. I remember in part 4 in terms of what derails the story, but so far it's not terrible terrible. .

"Intransigent", big words are cool!

The Drak/Azmael interaction scene is another high point to a low story. Part 3 is a mess, but it's got the best scenes for the story so far.

Azmael's plan to somehow move planets into Jaconda's orbit (again, 17√3 doesn't translate to boom-boom-putter power in of itself), and temporally placed one day earlier to Jaconda doesn't make sense and if anyone should notice that, it'd be Azmael - the planets' masses alone would cause instability, and placing them a day behind Jaconda in time is static and they'd be out of food the next day. (I do recall the Doctor pointing out the obvious later on, but the script does neatly enough keep the story flow going just enough.)

As the Doctor overheard Azmael threatening to kill the kids, he runs in and - you guessed it - engages in another strangling. Only this time it's out of misunderstanding and hearing words out of context, rather than being in a mental haze and while under temporary insanity mistaking the name "Peri" as a fairy that's not turned good yet and wants to prevent her from doing so. If the idea is to show the Doctor more as a hero, this new attempt doesn't quite work either and at least the first attempt had post-regeneration difficulty behind it. This latest scene is just eye-rolling, which is even more remarkable considering the idea was to show the Doctor trying to defend innocent kids!!

I will say this, the Doctor states "That doesn't matter right now" regarding how he survived Titan III. Usually it's the usual "I'll explain later".

The plot finally starts to move forward reveal something about Mestor, but questions remain and what has been shown isn't very compelling. What's left are character interactions and acting, of which the acting is pretty good considering the material, but the interaction/dialogue all feels so uneven and misplaced, with few good ones, and there's nothing else creating a balance or focus or even direction in-story. It's just. There. And while villain motivations are starting to shite through, every other element helping to try to save this just isn't managing.


5/10. There are ideas in this, but a few set piece vignettes don't hold together such a mammoth mess. If it weren't for the acting and a handful of scenes, it'd be 3.


* It wasn't any cuter in 1998 when the 7th Doctor handwaves doing something similar with a RF-receiving TV set, holiday lights (which were alien data cables), and film camera with no relevant electronics (much less anything sensor-like properly connecting to the camera lens.)

 

[Christopher]

or is this one of the final examples of bad sci-fi writing that slobbers in the word "galaxy" as placeholder when they meant "solar system"? Unlike with Blake's 7 and the original Star Trek, this DW example could be set up to even visit galaxies but, go fig, the story is plot-by-numbers...

Blake's 7 wasn't entirely consistent about that. It usually presumed that it all took place within the Milky Way, particularly in the extragalactic-invasion arc that bridged Series B & C, but there were two episodes that erroneously suggested otherwise. Travis said at the start of "Duel" that his pursuit ships had chased the Liberator "into this galaxy," and Blake said at the end of "Killer" that he wouldn't risk letting the plague get out to "all the galaxies."

Although in at least one case, they did better than most SF shows: in "Star One," Avon said that Andromeda is “the nearest large galaxy to our own,” which is more accurate than the usual assumption in fiction that it’s the nearest galaxy, period. There are actually quite a few small elliptical or irregular galaxies in the Local Group that are much closer than M31/Andromeda.