Last Classic Who Story you watched

[Doctorwhovian]

Saw the animated Scream of The Shalka, although I'm not 100% sure that counts as 'classic' Who. Like the TV movie, it seems like a bit of transition between old and new (and indeed Paul Cornell would write for the new series) although it's of course been 'wiped' by the new series (although you can place it as I suppose, an Unbound, a paradox, alternate universe whatever). Especially the companion with a worried boyfriend (Who's a Doctor himself, a bit like Rory) as well as the general attitude of the Doctor himself, who apparentally has had a recent tragedy (not the time war but possibly something involving the death of a former companion).


Apart from Cornell, Richard E. Grant, Sophie Okendo and Derek Jacobi (In the same role-sort of) would all have roles in the new series. Also I found it amusing that the slug monster sounds almost exactly like a Star Wars TIE fighter.

 

[Captain Dago]

^ It is an interesting look at an "alternate universe" Doctor, isn't it? I think Grant made an intriguing Doctor and I'm sorry he was limited to the one opportunity.

 

[Volpone]

OK. Done with "State of Decay." Now that I've seen the whole thing, I've got to say it shows that Baker could still shine with good material even in the later era. It isn't a surprise that Terrance Dicks is behind the story (I don't remember how much of his original story made it into the finished product). And it really feels like a Hinchcliff era Baker story. Nice.

(I did get a "Rocky Horror Picture Show" vibe off the vampires once or twice, but it's hard to pull off vampires without feeling a bit campy.)

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Beggars can't be choosers. I'm ecstatically grateful that RetroTV has decided to rerun classic Who. That said, along with the actual incomplete stories, they just randomly miss a serial for no apparent reason. I just realized that they skipped from "The Leisure Hive" to "Full Circle", bypassing Meglos. No cactus Doctor for you, RetroTV viewers!

I'm still not quite sure why they do that. I totally understand skipping over the incomplete stories. But it seemed that they jumped over quite a bit of stuff during the transition from Hartnell to Pertwee, with precious little Troughton included at all. IIRC, the Saturday episodes went straight from "The War Machines" to "The Dominators"/"The Mind Robber," then skipped all the way ahead to "The Silurians." This meant that "The Tomb of the Cybermen," "The Enemy of the World," "The Seeds of Death," "The War Games," & "Spearhead from Space" never even got a look in. (I don't recall them showing "The Krotons" either but I could be wrong about that.) I wasn't totally surprised that they skipped over "The Enemy of the World," since I think that one might have some tricky rights issues going on thanks to it being a new rediscovery. But what about everything else?

Saw the animated Scream of The Shalka, although I'm not 100% sure that counts as 'classic' Who. Like the TV movie, it seems like a bit of transition between old and new (and indeed Paul Cornell would write for the new series) although it's of course been 'wiped' by the new series (although you can place it as I suppose, an Unbound, a paradox, alternate universe whatever).

I'm just not sure why they didn't get McGann to do "Scream of the Shalka." It certainly would have helped it enormously in terms of its canonicity.

 

[Volpone]

They did show the Krotons. I actually caught that one on the weeknights and on Saturdays. Yeah. It is vexating. They skipped "Pyramids of Mars" which is possibly my favorite story. That was the first one I noticed them skipping that they clearly should have shown. At first I thought it was some kind of political correctness issue, what with the Egyptian servant being somehow racist or something, but (thankfully) they showed "The Talons of Weng Chiang" which is excellent but far more offensive racially than "Pyramids". And why "Meglos"? Are cactuses offended by a non-cactus like Baker portraying a cactus? *shrug*

Wrapped up "Warriors' Gate" tonight. So Monday should be "Logopolis" and we'll be into Peter Davison for the first time (for me) since the mid 1980s.

When they started showing Who in August, I was working nights, so I've been having to do the Saturday marathons to play catch-up. Now I'm caught up, but I think I'll stick around for episodes I may have missed and to rewatch the excellent early 4th Doctor stories. But after around "Horror of Fang Rock" I think I'll drop Saturdays for at least a bit.

Speaking of which, on a similar note, what's the deal with MST3K!? There's almost a decade of episodes of that but retro seems like they've got maybe 20 episodes--a couple from each season. This Saturday they'll be starting the third time through their rotation. And no "The Day the Earth Froze." I know they can't show a lot of the Toho and other Japanese monster ones anymore, but what about all the others?

 

[Doctorwhovian]

Funny thing about Mcgann in Shalka, it sounds a bit in some scenes like Grant is doing a Mcgann impersonation.

 

[Sindatur]

Wrapped up "Warriors' Gate" tonight. So Monday should be "Logopolis" and we'll be into Peter Davison for the first time (for me) since the mid 1980s.

Well, that really sucks, if they're going to be skipping Keeper of Trakken, since that's the first story of a "Trilogy" (Trakken/Logopolis/Castrovalva)

 

[Volpone]

"Traken“ should be tonight and Friday.

 

[Sindatur]

"Traken“ should be tonight and Friday.

Ah, OK, got it

 

[Volpone]

Geez, Sarah Sutton looks young. I guess when you're 14, a teenage girl doesn't look young, but when you're somewhere around 150...

Oh, and I hope I didn't sound like a douche in my earlier reply. If I did, I apologize. I didn't mean to.

 

[Sindatur]

Oh, and I hope I didn't sound like a douche in my earlier reply. If I did, I apologize. I didn't mean to.

Your reply to me? No, not at all, you just corrected a misunderstanding I had (I didn't recall the mentioning of 2 episodes a night, so, I didn't imagine there was time for a 4 episode story)

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

RetroTV also occasionally skipped over episodes in the Phoenix, AZ area when the channel would occasionally switch altogether and become REVN instead. When the channel would resume being RetroTV, it would resume the Doctor Who reruns already in progress. As a result, we missed the 2nd half of "Robot" & the 1st half of "The Ark in Space."

Speaking of which, on a similar note, what's the deal with MST3K!? There's almost a decade of episodes of that but retro seems like they've got maybe 20 episodes--a couple from each season. This Saturday they'll be starting the third time through their rotation. And no "The Day the Earth Froze." I know they can't show a lot of the Toho and other Japanese monster ones anymore, but what about all the others?

IIRC, reacquiring the rights for a lot of these movies is really expensive. They can probably manage it for the DVDs because the DVDs are so flippin' expensive. But for TV reruns, they're probably limited to the absolute cheapest stuff and the stuff that's in the public domain. (IIRC, there's one guy that owns the rights to about 30% of all the movies that they riffed and he hates the show and refuses to renew the rights to any of them.)

 

[Turtletrekker]

FYI for Hulu Plus subscribers-- They currently have the first Peter Cushing movie, "Dr. Who and the Daleks", available to view. I'm not sure how long it's been available, but I've entered "Dr. Who" into their search engine more than once, and this is the first time I noticed it.

 

[Doctorwhovian]

Dalek invasion of Earth. Better than I remember it, although with still some goofiness, such as the Robomen (One helmet actually has some production writing on it!) the "Alligators" in the sewers, some bad action (The rebel's ambush on the Dalek saucer for instance) and the Slyther, but overall a pretty good and fun story with one of WHO's best endings/companion exits (and the first one too). Also I'm not sure if this how much of this was the restoration team, but I think episode 5's picture quality is one of the best preserved of 60's era classic WHO, especially for Hartnell.

 

[diankra]

Dalek Invasion of Earth 5 is good quality as it was one of the episodes telerecorded onto and transmitted from 35mm film, which survives, instead of being transferred from videotape to 16mm film later by BBC Enterprises.

Just watching Caves of Androzani 4 on Horror Channel right now: though still superb, Morgus's behaviour is very stupid... he deduces from the presence of two unexplained strangers in the war zone that they must be spies, sent by the President, and therefore murders the President and leaves his nice safe office to travel into the war zone (which is blowing itself apart) thus putting himself within throttling distance of the man who hates him so much that he's held an entire planet to ransom to demand Morgus's head...

 

[Volpone]

"Castrovalva." After such strong characters in the 3rd & 4th Doctors--for such a big chunk of the show's history--5's personality is a bit underwhelming. He's very much an '80s man. The Master's disguise in it--and Ainley's performance--are so good that it is a bit disappointing that they did a cheap video effect to remove the disguise instead of having him pull off the wig, etc, Scooby Doo style. And Jim Henson's take on M.C. Escher, in "Labyrinth" is a lot more effective than the recursion at the end of this (but hey, it is a serialized half hour kids TV show).

The thing I really enjoyed was Davison's impressions of 1 and 2. He got the mannerisms very well. Of course his "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" was less convincing, but such is life.

On the whole, a decent time.

 

[Volpone]

RetroTV also occasionally skipped over episodes in the Phoenix, AZ area when the channel would occasionally switch altogether and become REVN instead. When the channel would resume being RetroTV, it would resume the Doctor Who reruns already in progress. As a result, we missed the 2nd half of "Robot" & the 1st half of "The Ark in Space."

Speaking of which, on a similar note, what's the deal with MST3K!? There's almost a decade of episodes of that but retro seems like they've got maybe 20 episodes--a couple from each season. This Saturday they'll be starting the third time through their rotation. And no "The Day the Earth Froze." I know they can't show a lot of the Toho and other Japanese monster ones anymore, but what about all the others?

IIRC, reacquiring the rights for a lot of these movies is really expensive. They can probably manage it for the DVDs because the DVDs are so flippin' expensive. But for TV reruns, they're probably limited to the absolute cheapest stuff and the stuff that's in the public domain. (IIRC, there's one guy that owns the rights to about 30% of all the movies that they riffed and he hates the show and refuses to renew the rights to any of them.)

Well that would stink. I'm at the edge of the broadcast range for my station, so when we had some high winds and foul weather this winter, I lost the channel a couple nights. Totally missed "The Sontaran Experiment" and a couple other episodes.

Good point on MST3K. I was going to argue the point but I just happened to look up Season 3 the other day. Probably 1/3 of the episodes were "Gamera" movies, with more than a couple "Godzilla" films too, IIRC. And I know specifically Gamera and Toho wouldn't let them rerun them.

Anyway, first half of "Four To Doomsday" tonight. Peter Davison is growing on me a second time. After the strong personalities of Pertwee and Baker, an equally clever but more softspoken and less confrontational Doctor is an interesting change. He's still The Doctor. Just a bit different.

 

[Volpone]

"Four to Doomsday": The Doctor encounters an alien race that has destroyed their own planet with environmental neglect and is looking to use androids and a deadly organic toxin to wipe out humanity and take over Earth for itself. The chief alien is defeated when he is exposed to his own poison.

In other words: "The Android Invasion" with the 5th Doctor instead of the 4th. :/

 

[starsuperion]

Just watched the hand of fear, what a brilliant serial that was! Wow! I never saw it before now. It was absolutely smashing!! Highly recommended! !!

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Just started watching the Blu ray box set of season 8, missed it initial run last year due to other things so this is my first time seeing it, so far three episodes in and i am really enjoying it.