Rank & Rate: The Tom Baker Era

[kirk55555]

The problem is, your argument on why the first episode sucks is weak. Especially considering that its based on your perception of it being a slow-paced story about people running around in Paris. Which is, of course, nonsense.

Except my perception comes from watching the episode, so its not nonsense. Unless Netflix snuck a 25 minute episode of another show featuring Tom Baker and Romana II (I get the real names of the Romana's mixed up, so whoever #2 is) wandering around Paris, the slow, boring, piece of filler I watched was episode 1 of The City of Death.

 

[DWF]

The problem is, your argument on why the first episode sucks is weak. Especially considering that its based on your perception of it being a slow-paced story about people running around in Paris. Which is, of course, nonsense.

Except my perception comes from watching the episode, so its not nonsense. Unless Netflix snuck a 25 minute episode of another show featuring Tom Baker and Romana II (I get the real names of the Romana's mixed up, so whoever #2 is) wandering around Paris, the slow, boring, piece of filler I watched was episode 1 of The City of Death.

The point is that yhou only saw one of four eps. It's funny that you praise The Two Doctors when ep. three starts out with a three or so minute reprise of part two padding out part three and extending the search around Saville for the second Doctor.

 

[Timewalker]

Oh, so it's just Paris you don't like. You don't seem to complain about all the wandering around London that happens in nuWho.

That is not true. When they are in London in NuWho, they have a point. At the very least, they aren't silently wandering around the streets for 20 minutes, with a minute or two of eating and museum gazing scenes shoved in. They are going somewhere that will have the plot, or set it up, or something.

Considering that you never say why Paris doesn't have a point except that "it's Paris, and the whole story was just Tom Baker's vacation video" (after admitting you haven't even seen most of it), you will have to forgive my assumption that it is indeed Paris that you object to. One of the reasons I don't like nuWho that much is because they spend so damn much time in 21st-century London. There's a whole multiverse out there - why don't they use it?

And no, there was no 20 minutes of "silently wandering around the streets." The characters had a destination in mind, and they were going there. On foot. You might as well accuse a mailman of "wandering" because he's on foot and not speaking to anyone for the majority of his route.

Did we see every second of the trip from the museum to the Count's home? No. There are a lot of steps that weren't shown, and your continual insistence that this show was nothing more than Tom Baker's vacation video is nonsense.

Technically, every step isn't shown, you're right. But, that's because they only had 23-25 minutes of episode. In that time, they shove in as much uneventful wandering as they can, but not literally every step. So, what? I obviously didn't mean that an episode that probably took a week to film put every second of footage into a 25 minute episode, just that they tried to show as much pointless, uneventful wandering as they could.

Yeah, I can see it now:

Producer/Director/Writer: "We're spending a lot of money here, so let's just have Tom and Lalla wander around for no reason, and figure out a story later."

Tom Baker & Lalla Ward: "Cool!" (or whatever the appropriate British expression is)

That's how you see this story, right?

Plus, when you're filming on location, doesn't it make sense to show the location? At least this time it's honestly Paris. Do you have any idea how many American TV shows and movies are filmed in Vancouver? I've only been to Vancouver twice, but even I can spot the places that purport to be some American city but are really Vancouver (and Toronto, to a smaller extent).

I don't care about the location of a shoot, I care about the story. They could film in front of Buckinham Palace, tell me they're in France and I won't care if there is an interesting story happening.

Oh. Come. On. If you didn't care about the location, you wouldn't have typed the phrase "wandering aimlessly/randomly/pointlessly around Paris" enough times to make me sick from alcohol poisoning if I were to make a drinking game of it.

Spoilers be damned:

To be honest the "steal the Mona Losa" isn't even the plot really. It a means to an end for the plot, which deals with the starting of all life on Earth, an alien who is in I think twelve timelines at once. Coordinating with himself across all time. A scientist that is working on a form of time travel (the money from the theft is paying for that). A plot to make six authentic "fakes" of the Mona Lisa to get seven times the money for the time travel experiments...so the alien can stop himself from being split into 12 persons across all time, and bring his race back from extinction. Do so would inadvertently end all life on Earth.

Kind of a lot of plot there for a travelogue, eh? After episode one is used as the establishing location episode and introduce people episode, the plot happens for the remaining three episodes with a lot less of "wondering in Paris without purpose".

The "at the time" complaints about this episode set was that it was "too funny", for the hardcore fans. They were happy that the show was filmed in Paris. That was not a complaint at that time. They were quite tired of quarries and anywhere at UK.

I loved the humor in this story, and the scenes of the Paris streets and the cafe were partly character development and, as you say, introducing the problem that the Doctor has to solve.

Yeah I wasn't all impressed by the time bubble idea and really the Countess not know the Count is an alien makes no sense. But it is the highest rated story in the history of the show, even though it shares many of the problems the entire season had, still it's a one of the better stories in the show's history.

I'm guessing it was either a marriage of convenience or an open marriage.

 

[DWF]

^^^LOL!, the funny part is that they wouldn't even been married had the BBC not raised a fuss them living together and not being a married couple.

 

[kirk55555]

And no, there was no 20 minutes of "silently wandering around the streets." The characters had a destination in mind, and they were going there. On foot. You might as well accuse a mailman of "wandering" because he's on foot and not speaking to anyone for the majority of his route.

Having a location in mind doesn't matter. Its the actual journey that was pointless and wandering. In any other episode, traveling from the TARDIS to a museum, and then from the museum to a cafe, would probably be less than a minute of screen time (if nothing happened while they were walking). In this, they stuck long, pointless, uneventful shots of them walking in Paris.

That was the problem, it was pointless long shots of walking where the shots themselves didn't have a point in the story. The locations they were traveling to did, but the actual walking itself was pointlessly drawn out. They weren't attacked, or finding plot relevant stuff, or anything. They were just going from point A to point B in the longest way they could get away with, and nothing of note happened during the trips.

Yeah, I can see it now:

Producer/Director/Writer: "We're spending a lot of money here, so let's just have Tom and Lalla wander around for no reason, and figure out a story later."

Tom Baker & Lalla Ward: "Cool!" (or whatever the appropriate British expression is)

That's how you see this story, right?

Of course they figured out a story first, they just built it either knowing they could pad at least one episode out with monotonous location shooting that did nothing but fill time, or they realized while filming that extra walking scenes was needed to fill time or something. Either way, it worked out to them having less story than most episodes of Doctor Who, and replacing the minutes of story with walking.

Oh. Come. On. If you didn't care about the location, you wouldn't have typed the phrase "wandering aimlessly/randomly/pointlessly around Paris" enough times to make me sick from alcohol poisoning if I were to make a drinking game of it.

I don't care about the location. If this had been set in London, I'd complain that they spent 20 minutes wandering around London. It wasn't the city, it was showing a bunch of traveling footage that gave nothing to the story, and just filled air time. It doesn't matter what city it was set in, except that they probably wouldn't have filmed it this way if they were in London instead of Paris.

 

[Ithekro]

The primary recommendation is "just watch it". Try not to be grumpy when doing so or it might effect your viewing. The rest of the story is not just wondering around Paris. So drop that notion. There must be a reason why it is considered one of the better series. Wouldn't it do to investigate that rather the brush it off because one gets the wrong impression the first episode? An impression that seems to have been made from focusing on the wrong parts of the story.

 

[kirk55555]

The primary recommendation is "just watch it". Try not to be grumpy when doing so or it might effect your viewing. The rest of the story is not just wondering around Paris. So drop that notion. There must be a reason why it is considered one of the better series. Wouldn't it do to investigate that rather the brush it off because one gets the wrong impression the first episode? An impression that seems to have been made from focusing on the wrong parts of the story.

I don't really want to argue anymore. I won't be watching it, under any foreseeable circumstances. There is too much good stuff out there. There are only two more Tom Baker serials I plan to watch that I haven't already seen (Keeper of Traken and Logopolis), and it will probably be awhile until I get to them.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

There is too much good stuff out there.

Yes. And City of Death is one of them!

 

[kirk55555]

There is too much good stuff out there.

Yes. And City of Death is one of them!

In your opinion. People like different things. I loathe The City of Death, but that doesn't take anything away from your ability to enjoy it

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Whatever.

Here's my ranking. Clearly, the Holmes/Hintchcliffe (spell) era was the best for this actor/Doctor, but there were good stories to be found in in the Graham Williams era (most nostably, the Key to Time stories and City of Death), too. But, both the Williams and the JNT eras were problematic, with the Williams era being the clear defining point, to me, when the show was really starting to decline, quality-wise. Its not his fault, but at the same time, I don't quite think he helped the show with his influence a lot.

Still, this is the last OldWho Doctor who had at least a satisfying BBC run, on the whole. All the other Doctors after him in OldWho suffered substantially and never had the overwhelming number of good stories that this Baker had. That said, he's also been privy to some really shitty stories.

Anyway, here's that:


1. Talons of Weng-Chiang
2. Genesis of the Daleks
3. City of Death
4. Shada
5. Pyramids of Mars
6. Seeds of Doom
7. Deadly Assassin
8. Robots of Death
9. Ribos Operation
10. Horror of Fang Rock
11. Brain of Morbius
12. Ark in Space
13. Terror of the Zygons
14. Androids of Tara
15. Keeper of Traken
16. State of Decay
17. Face of Evil
18. The Sunmakers
19. Pirate Planet
20. Stones of Blood
21. Power of Kroll
22. Planet of Evil
23. Robot
24. Logopolis
25. The Sontaran Experiment
26. The Hand of Fear
27. The Invisible Enemy
28. Nightmare of Eden
29. Warrior's Gate
30. Full Circle
31. The Armageddon Factor
32. Meglos
33. Masque of Mandragora
34. Android Invasion
35. The Creature from the Pit
36. Destiny of the Daleks
37. Revenge of the Cybermen
38. The Invasion of Time
39. Horn of Nimon
40. Leisure Hive
41. Image of Fendahl
42. Underworld

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Hm, nobody wants to tear apart my list? Not fair!

 

[Timewalker]

Hm, nobody wants to tear apart my list? Not fair!

I take great exception to your choice for #1, and disagree with quite a few others.

Masque of Mandragora is one of my favorites, as is Image of the Fendahl.


I don't divide things up into groups of who the producer was. I prefer to go with who the companion(s) were.

 

[The Four Doctor]

I hate the orgasms over Hinchcliffe and Holmes. It's deeply disrespectful and insulting to others who have worked on our fav show.

 

[zarkon]

I hate the orgasms over Hinchcliffe and Holmes. It's deeply disrespectful and insulting to others who have worked on our fav show.

Someone has to be the best, and for most who fans it's them and their team.

3 seasons of generally very high quality storytelling will do that. Don't see how thats disrespectful to any of the other production teams. For me personally the RTD and JNT/Cartmel eras are no less fun just because H/H edges them out.

 

[chelly]

I have been seeing commericals on bbcamerica advertising classic tom baker episodes starting Sunday morning.
http://www.bbcamerica.com/

apologies if it has been posted already, I didn't see it when I looked.

 

[HARRY BROWNE]

out of the ones I've watched:
1. City of Death
2. Genesis of the Daleks
3. The Deadly Assassin
4. The Talons of Weng Chiang
5. Pyramids of Mars
6. The Seeds of Doom
7. Terror of the Zygons
8. Robot
9. The Sontaran Experiment
10. The Robots of Death
11. The Pirate Planet
12. The Armageddon Factor
13. The Keeper of Traken
14. The Ark in Space
15. Logopolis
16. Destiny of the Daleks
17. The Stones of Blood
18. The Androids of Tara
19. The Ribos Operation
20. Horror of Fang Rock
21. The Power of Kroll

 

[Qonundrum]

Until I drink another round of coffee and/or Jolt cola:

The Ark in Space
The Pirate Planet
The Stones of Blood
The Keeper of Traken
Full Circle
Warriors Gate
Terror of the Zygons
State of Decay
The Brain of Morbius
Meglos
The Face of Evil
The Creature from the PitRobotThe Leisure Hive
The Robots of Death
The Sun Makers
Image of the Fendahl
The Invisible Enemy
Pyramids of Mars
The Hand of Fear
LogopolisGenesis of the Daleks
City of Death
The Android Invasion
Nightmare of Eden
The Horns of Nimon
The Armageddon Factor
The Power of Kroll
The Androids of Tara
The Ribos Operation
The Masque of Mandragora
Planet of Evil
UnderworldHorror of Fang RockThe Sontaran Experiment
Revenge of the Cybermen
The Invasion of Time
The Seeds of Doom
Destiny of the Daleks
The Deadly Assassin
The Talons of Weng-Chiang

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Pyramids of Mars
You have never watched Pyramids of Mars until you have watched it on a 20in oversaturated colour Tv with only one rich deep bassy wood covered speaker that only the old heavy thick crt tvs had at the time, then you can truly enjoy it as Sutekh comes through that mummy casket and that deeeeep rich bassy sound effect, i can still hear it to this day, either that or it's the tinnitus.

 

[matthunter]

Kirk55555.5recurring is the same chap who pops up every week in The Flash and Supergirl threads to complain about how the last episode was dire and he's on the verge of not watching anymore. Just so you can make informed decisions.

 

[HARRY BROWNE]

My Updated List

1. City of Death
2. The Seeds of Doom
3. Genesis of the Daleks
4. The Deadly Assassin
5. Pyramids of Mars
6. The Robots of Death
7. The Talons of Weng Chiang
8. The Invasion of Time
9. The Ark In Space
10. The Android Invasion
11. The Brain of Morbius
12. The Masque of Mandragora
13. Terror of The Zygons
14. Robot
15. Shada
16. The Sontaran Experiment
17. The Keeper of Traken
18. The Pirate Planet
19. The Face of Evil
20. The Stones of Blood
21. The Armageddon Factor
22. Planet of Evil
23. Destiny of the Daleks
24. The Hand of Fear
25. Logopolis
26. The Androids of Tara
27. Revenge of the Cybermen
28. Horror of Fang Rock
29. The Ribos Operation
30. The Power of Kroll

(10/10 = No.1-6)
(9/10 = No.7-13)
(8/10 = No.14-20)
(7/10 = No.21-26)
(6/10 = No.27-28)
(5/10 = No.29-30)