The DOCTOR WHO Thread

[ShyViolet]

(American) teens react to Dr. Who! .

https://youtu.be/z5vLvo9yXpA

[ShyViolet]

Really cool video “guide” to DW “basics”.


https://youtu.be/Omj2O_fIP7I


(I know it sounds kinda boring, but trust me it’s great! )

[ShyViolet]

These were just astonishing: I really can’t adequately describe how well-written they all were: (Virgin Dr. Who New Adventures, not to be confused with the Target novelizations which were much shorter and only based on actual televised episodes.)*


https://www.ithoughtitoldyoutowaitinthe ... adventures


Basically completely original DW novels (pre-Davies, based on Docs 1-8); long, narratively layered, all-in-all spectacular. (Published mainly during the post-Survival “Wilderness” years of the 90s).

I’ve read Iceberg by David Banks (yes, the Cyberleader from Docs 5-7), Vampire Science, (a quite convincing eighth Doc story about, well, Vampires) and Decalog, which was basically a short story collection by all different writers, many veterans of the original series. (One was Paul Cornell, who also wrote the novel Human Nature starring Doc # 7, which, of course, was the blueprint for the script he’d eventually write for Tennant’s Human Nature/Family of Blood two-parter.)

They’re also quite hard to find nowadays. I guess in the UK you might come across them once in a while, as the blogger writes, but living in the US it’s basically Amazon or nothing. They’re all sold through third parties, which is fine; I guess I’m maybe just too cautious about buying something that way; I always worry about the actual condition it will arrive in (or if it’ll arrive at all.). I’m sort of old-fashioned about books anyway and miss it when you could just walk into a store and find what you needed.


*(Man I had soooooo many Target books as a kid! They were super cheap too and soooo much fun!!! )

[Randall]

I would enjoy reading these, though that applies to many shelves of books already at my house!

For online book sales, one must look at bookfinder.com. They list books from multiple online sellers. I found the rare Doctor Who Companion there (another Who must! ).

[ohmahaaha]

I managed to find several of these some time ago, many of them thru "half.com" which unfortunately is no longer a going concern … but you could also try eBay. I concentrated on novels that featured both Doctors and Companions that I liked, and have not been disappointed. Only caveat in your searchings: there are certain titles that, owing to their rarity, sell for exhorbitant prices that no matter how much I would like to read, I simply refuse to pay. Same thing with the 6th Doctor adventure "The Two Doctors" in DVD format … just impossible to find, check out what those are selling for on eBay. I dearly wish BBC would re-release that!!

[Randall]

Amazon.ca was having Doctor Who DVD sales a few years ago, just when I was getting into the franchise (finally). I grabbed loads of them when they could be had relatively cheaply, and now I have a DVD case full of classic Who, containing most of the available stories. I'm glad I got them (including The Two Doctors) when the getting was good. (e.g. I bought The Time Meddler in 2012 for $14.49; now copies are listed on Amazon.ca by Marketplace sellers for $200-300. I purchased about 24 other DVDs in that same order, all for 11.99 to $14.49, which looked extravagant then; but some of those discs go for big bucks now.)

[ShyViolet]

Is there actual “canon” in the Who universe?



https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2019 ... star-wars/

[ShyViolet]

That's just so awesome about the two Troughton eps being recovered! I really hope both of them, plus the animated chapters, eventually make it to BritBox. (That's a sub service that streams Classic Who as well as other older Brit shows like Fawlty Towers, Are you Being Served, etc...)

It basically has every single Classic Who ep, even the restored ones with animated chapters. (But unfortunately no Tenth Planet! Why???? Those original Cybermen are about the scariest thing that ever came out of Classic Who, at least in my opinion.)



***********************************************************************************************


Really cool vid summarizing the "basics" of DW, both Classic and Davies/Moffett. Very well done.

[Randall]

I have been enjoying the recovered and newly animated episodes. Nice to see more coming out soon, too.

[ohmahaaha]

Agree!!! Praying for a release of "Evil of the Daleks," and - the Holy Grail - "The Dalek Masterplan" - IF they are feasible. I was reading an article on line the other day that said something to the effect that it makes a difference the amount of material available to them - not just audio recordings, but telesnaps or pictures - as to how feasible it is to animate the remaining episodes. I'll take what we can get though, and I'm glad they're concentrating on the Patrick Troughton episodes since they got hit the hardest by the BBC wiping.

[EricJ]

I have been enjoying the recovered and newly animated episodes. Nice to see more coming out soon, too.

Which others are coming out? I saw "Power of the Daleks" in its Fathom run a year or two ago, and it wasn't too bad--It's all about restoration, not animation quality, and more Troughton in the rerun mix is always a plus.

[Randall]

The Macra Terror and The Faceless Ones are next.

[Daniel]

Doctor Who is coming to HBO Max. "with all 11 seasons of the historic BBC series" - Not quite.

[ShyViolet]

Oh jeez, it figures. I hate it when Classic Who doesn’t get any respect even though so many of the reboot series’ episodes are built on the exact same ideas, and nine out of ten times not nearly as effectively. (With the notable exception of Moffett’s episodes, which actually enhanced and further explored Classic Who’s themes rather than simply recycling them with a considerably higher SFX budget.)

I know a lot of those who dislike Classic think it’s just some campy junk series from the 70s where there’s way too much talking. (That’s certainly the gist of the show’s Honest Trailer on YT.) But really, ask yourself, if it was that terrible, why didn’t it get cancelled after William Hartnell’s tenure, especially since the show’s budget was REALLY low then and the series was still being filmed in BLACK AND WHITE?? (As it was during Patrick Troughton’s era.). If all of it was crud, why in the world would ANY footage (and even recorded dialogue!) of those episodes that were so carelessly and inexplicably destroyed by the BBC be so unbelievably sought-after today, with skilled animators meticulously re-creating the missing scenes?

I used to sometimes flip through Doctor Who Magazine (which has been around since the 70s if I’m not mistaken) but stopped doing that years ago when almost every Classic ep
that was being reviewed/analyzed by the writers was not only not taken seriously but sometimes even ridiculed. (Especially in Time Team reviews, ugh. ).

I mean I totally understand that many of Classic’s eps have the occasional unintentionally hilarious/campy/preposterous moments, and I’m all for sending up those moments as much as anyone. (Hey, some of them were really funny!) But honestly...with the exception of profiles of Classic’s stars, the editors basically use the 2005 reboot series as the main attraction while parading Classic as running gag/irrelevant footnote to lighten the mood a bit and give their readers a good laugh.

Maybe I wouldn’t feel as passionately about this issue if DWM hadn’t interviewed and then completely discredited one of Classic’s best script editors, Christopher H. Bidmead. He not only was responsible for Tom Baker’s last season being AMAZING, but was the man wrote two of Classic Who’s best episodes ever, Logopolis (Baker’s swan song) and Castrovalva. And the interviewer actually begins by asking him questions like: “Don’t you feel that the Doctor Who of nowadays has more depth than when you were writing it?”

That sentence pretty well summarizes DWM’s attitude towards Classic.

[Ben]

What annoys me is the inconsistency in regarding classic Who's part of the show's history. They kind of don’t say these new series are connected and then all through it there are allusions to Hartnell and all the other lives the Doctor has had! These new post-Davies series, while *perhaps* not intended as such right at the start, are *clearly* continuations of what came before. Even McGann was seen in the 50th anniversary (the fact they had a 50th anniversary is a clue right there!), which pretty much confirms it. They really should just start admitting the legacy and that it’s really one long timeline, with a little break between the 90s and 2000s, which ultimately doesn’t mean much when considering a show about time travel...!