Last Classic Who Story you watched

[kirk55555]

Just finished The Sea devils. I enjoyed it, and I think I liked it better than the Silurian story. It seemed to have a bit faster pace (even for a six episode story), and all the navy stuff was interesting. The Doctor and The Master were as great as always. A few of the supporting characters were a bit annoying, mostly because I'm used to the Brigadier not being quite so skeptical of the Third Doctor, so having people who don't know him keep constantly questioning him is a bit annoying,, if understandable. Overall, this was a solid story.

 

[Volpone]

The Doctor and Jo really are good together, aren't they? It's a bit cringeworthy, in modern times, how often he essentially calls her stupid--and even more so when she calls herself stupid, but it just shows how times have changed.

Black Orchid was on tonight. Just the opposite of the 6 parters--it's interesting how effectively they're able to tell a story with less than an hour to do it in. And he doesn't run around wildly waving a sonic screwdriver at things for a magic resolution (partly on account of the dirty, dirty Teraleptil blowing it up in the previous serial).

I was actually dreading the 5th Doctor stories. Davison was "my Doctor," growing up. So many things from the 80s haven't aged very well and JNT has a reputation for doing horrible things to the program, so I've been pleasantly surprised with the way the stories have held up. And Davison's more mild-mannered Doctor is an interesting change from the forceful personalities of Baker and Pertwee.

 

[Volpone]

Goddammit, Retro! Last night was "Black Orchid." So Wiki told me tonight was "Earthshock." I was really looking forward to it and worried because I was running late and was going to miss the beginning. I got home and clicked on, 11 minutes in, to see them loading the TARDIS into a Concorde. They skipped "Earthshock"!

Off the top of my head, they skipped the farewell to Susan, "The War Games," "Spearhead from Space," "Pyramids of Mars," and "Earthshock." I'm at a loss for how the syndication package they bought works.

 

[Sindatur]

Goddammit, Retro! Last night was "Black Orchid." So Wiki told me tonight was "Earthshock." I was really looking forward to it and worried because I was running late and was going to miss the beginning. I got home and clicked on, 11 minutes in, to see them loading the TARDIS into a Concorde. They skipped "Earthshock"!

Off the top of my head, they skipped the farewell to Susan, "The War Games," "Spearhead from Space," "Pyramids of Mars," and "Earthshock." I'm at a loss for how the syndication package they bought works.

If you don't mind streaming, you can always go to Youtube or Dailymotion to find the episodes they skip (Enter into Google Videos "Doctor Who Earthshock Playlist") (or whatever story they skipped) and you should find them. They have pretty much everything, except the recently discovered or revamped episodes

 

[Sindatur]

Doing my umpteenth rewatch of Tom Baker Serials, and last night, I watch Brain of Morbius.

Something I don't recall ever wondering about (but, surely I must have), since the Doctor is a Time Lord, why was Soren only interested in The Doctor's Head? Why not the entire body. I can understand for other species he might just want to attach the donor head to a more suitable body, but, since The Doctor's body was just as suitable as the head, why just the head?

Oh, and regarding the flashing of the previous faces, after the Hartnell face, we are shown Morbius starts to lose the fight, so, it's very easy for me to look upon those other faces as Morbius' faces, not the Doctor's

 

[Volpone]

Agreed on both points. Maybe it's one of those times, where you make a plan, based on the options available and at a later point the options change, but you're so married to your plan that you don't realize it. It would be a great alternate universe: Condo points it out, Solon is like "...huh."Quick jump cut to Morbius-Doctor and the first time he meets the Master again, instantly vaporizes the Mastwe, an shows the universe what REAL evil looks like.

 

[DWF]

Doing my umpteenth rewatch of Tom Baker Serials, and last night, I watch Brain of Morbius.

Something I don't recall ever wondering about (but, surely I must have), since the Doctor is a Time Lord, why was Soren only interested in The Doctor's Head? Why not the entire body. I can understand for other species he might just want to attach the donor head to a more suitable body, but, since The Doctor's body was just as suitable as the head, why just the head?

Oh, and regarding the flashing of the previous faces, after the Hartnell face, we are shown Morbius starts to lose the fight, so, it's very easy for me to look upon those other faces as Morbius' faces, not the Doctor's

Why not jsut take Condo's body fro that matter? But it is a Frankenstein story and it kind of makes sense for Morbius' body to be a patchwork of many other races. And I agree I've always thought the faces in the mind bending scene to be Morbius' past lives.

 

[Volpone]

I'm thinking "Earthshock" is probably where the series turns a corner. "Timeflight," while relatively well done and fairly entertaining, has some pretty egregious holes in it. Just lots of moments where things happen only because that's what the plot requires.

And I'm halfway through "Arc of Infinity" right now and every moment of it is just painful to watch. Clunky and terrible. I halfway expect a disgruntled space janitor and a couple robots to be sitting in front of me, making wisecracks.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I never had a problem watching Arc of Infinity. Always thought it was pretty decent, personally. And certainly much better than Timeflight.

 

[VDCNI]

I only watch Arc Of Infinity with the commentary on. One of the best of the range.

Agreed it's better than Timeflight though!

 

[Mr Awe]

I'm thinking "Earthshock" is probably where the series turns a corner. "Timeflight," while relatively well done and fairly entertaining, has some pretty egregious holes in it. Just lots of moments where things happen only because that's what the plot requires.

I rewatched Timeflight in the past year and it really wasn't that bad. I think it really was just episode 3 that sucked bad in that it got weirdly metaphysical. But, outside that episode, it was actually rather good.

There's plenty of good Davison stories after Earthshock. Snakedance, Mawdryn Undead, Enlightenment, Cave of Androzani to name just a few top notch stories.

Mr Awe

 

[DWF]

I'm thinking "Earthshock" is probably where the series turns a corner. "Timeflight," while relatively well done and fairly entertaining, has some pretty egregious holes in it. Just lots of moments where things happen only because that's what the plot requires.

I rewatched Timeflight in the past year and it really wasn't that bad. I think it really was just episode 3 that sucked bad in that it got weirdly metaphysical. But, outside that episode, it was actually rather good.

There's plenty of good Davison stories after Earthshock. Snakedance, Mawdryn Undead, Enlightenment, Cave of Androzani to name just a few top notch stories.

Mr Awe

Can't really say I liked Mawdryn Undead, but that's just me. Time-Flight was affected by the budget and it shows most of the budget went into Earthshock. Peter Davison and some of the other actors weren't too happy with the end result, but I do think it's a good story just badly told.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Timeflight is awful. I still don't understand what was the point of the Master's disguise.

 

[Volpone]

Exactly. I didn't want to say anything because I wasn't sure if you can spoil a...30+ year old story, but if you're on prehistoric Earth, where nobody knows you, and then you keep everyone you kidnap under mind control so they think they're in 20th century New York and can't even see you, why bother with the disguise? For that matter, if the other flight thinks its in New York, what do they think they're doing at the airport when they're working on breaking into the sanctum?

If the Master can't get into the sanctum, why are there miniaturized bodies there?

If, at every point up to the resolution in this story--including 2 minutes before said resolution WITHIN THIS VERY STORY you can materialize a TARDIS around another TARDIS, why, suddenly, can't the Master's TARDIS materialize at Heathrow? And even if it couldn't, why wouldn't it just have a failsafe that offsets its materialization instead of being thrown into space, out of control?

How come the suspicious Master didn't suspect the Doctor might have sabotaged the part he gave him? How come it didn't occur to the Master that the new power source would burn out said part after only one trip? How is being trapped at the center of the Master's TARDIS on your home planet somehow better than being trapped at the center of the Master's TARDIS on some other planet?

So a Concorde can land in a random open field with minimal damage? Then it can also take off from the same field? And the takeoff hasn't caused any damage that will cause problems with the subsequent landing? At the very least they should have had a throwaway line about having emergency crews standing by.

Those are just the problems that come to mind off the top of my head. I suppose I could start naming off the problems with "Arc of Infinity" but I'd rather just try to put it out of my mind.

 

[DWF]

It's obvous that JNT wanted to keep the Master's presence secret, even Anthony Ainley's name was altered in the credits. And concord laned rather roughly as the Doctor pointed out.

 

[Volpone]

Synchronicity: "Arc of Infinity" was on Thursday and Friday...and "The Three Doctors" is on today. A double dose of Omega--in reverse order, no less.

 

[diankra]

Exactly. I didn't want to say anything because I wasn't sure if you can spoil a...30+ year old story.

The big flaw, for me, in Time-Flight is not the end-of-season production, or the 'Rewrite this to reveal that the villain's actually the Master in disguise' twist, but simply that there's no reason beyond the stock footage and location shoot in episode one why it's a Concorde.
That's sensible in production terms: getting access to Heathrow and a Concorde was a bit of a coup back then, so they would have wanted to make sure the story could go ahead with another type of plane if the deal didn't work out.
But in plot terms, there should have been a reason why the Master targeted that particular plane (not just pure chance), something he was planning to do once he was able to get to the present day, using some VIP (politician, business billionaire, etc) who was aboard and the Master had taken over.
And of course, in the RTD era, they'd have had a star actor or pop star or two do a quick cameo as themselves among the passengers failing to fight off the hypnosis.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Doing my umpteenth rewatch of Tom Baker Serials, and last night, I watch Brain of Morbius.

Something I don't recall ever wondering about (but, surely I must have), since the Doctor is a Time Lord, why was Soren only interested in The Doctor's Head? Why not the entire body. I can understand for other species he might just want to attach the donor head to a more suitable body, but, since The Doctor's body was just as suitable as the head, why just the head?

Yeah. I've always wondered about that. Best answer I can come up with is Solon is a vain egomaniac that wants to make the operation as complicated as possible just to impress people. I figure he probably started as fairly reasonable but started to go mad during his isolation on Karn.

I just rewatched "Underworld" last night. It was better than I remembered. Well... kinda. The story was a bit dull and Leela is criminally underused in the story. But I wasn't nearly as bothered by the CSO cave backgrounds this time around. There aren't too many edging problems and they do a remarkably good job of lining up the live actors with the plate shots. Frankly, if they'd added some more echo sound fx and some crunching footfalls as they walk on the gravel, I'm not even sure I would have noticed most of the time.

 

[Sybok Was Wrong]

I just rewatched "Underworld" last night. It was better than I remembered. Well... kinda. The story was a bit dull and Leela is criminally underused in the story. But I wasn't nearly as bothered by the CSO cave backgrounds this time around. There aren't too many edging problems and they do a remarkably good job of lining up the live actors with the plate shots. Frankly, if they'd added some more echo sound fx and some crunching footfalls as they walk on the gravel, I'm not even sure I would have noticed most of the time.

"Underworld" is acceptable as a one-time experiment, I think. The dvd extras really do a good job of explaining the rationale, and problems of shooting this episode.

Just watched "The Invisible Enemy"- definitely a story aimed more at younger viewers, but the dynamic of The Doctor/Leela really works; love the 70's feel & funky sci-fi sets of the Leela Era.

 

[Sindatur]

Just watched The Seeds of Doom. This was the first full Serial I watched in 1980. I had seen bits and pieces of episodes prior to this,while my brother was watching it, and something in Brain of Morbius made me decide to go ahead and watch regularly. So, I started with the next Serial watching every night, and by the time The Seeds of Doom was done, I was hooked.

So, anyways, wow, I never noticed before The Doctor twists Scorby's neck. That was pretty bad for a show mostly aimed at children. Sure, it didn't kill him, but, still, not a good thing to give the impression that snapping someone's neck isn't fatal.

Also, I found Chase's hypocrisy pretty funny. There he was complaining to The Ministry Guy (Hawkins?) about the barbaric Japanese practice of Bonsai, yet, he has hedges formed into pyramids, LOL.