The DOCTOR WHO Thread

[ShyViolet]

“Night of the Doctor”: Moffatt’s tiny seven-minute jewel of an episode that featured Paul McGann as Doctor number Eight. Great narrative “bridge” that connected Classic with NuWho. (I consider McGann as part of Classic.)

No offense to Christopher Eccleston (great actor), but I still don’t understand why McGann was passed over for the reboot...yeah ok maybe the Telemovie was a bit silly here and there (although let’s face it, you could also say that about MANY DW eps, both Classic and Modern): but like 98% of all Who fans, (as sharply divided they are on pretty much everything else) felt he delivered a BRILLIANT performance.

So yeah....maybe he just didn’t fit what Davies wanted in a new Doctor. I suppose we’ll never know. But it makes me sad...

(The fact that McGann was still so memorable in NOTD even though it ended with a shot of JOHN HURT, who gave a marvelous performance as the War Doctor, is pretty amazing in itself. I really feel that the Night segment should be edited into Day of the Doctor.)


https://youtu.be/-U3jrS-uhuo

[EricJ]

“Night of the Doctor”: Moffatt’s tiny seven-minute jewel of an episode that featured Paul McGann as Doctor number Eight. Great narrative “bridge” that connected Classic with NuWho. (I consider McGann as part of Classic.)

And of course, Classic Paul McGann's on DVD, but as a Fox movie, it's not "technically" BBC, and thus not airing with BritBox's streaming collection of all current BBC Classic Who available, Peter Cushing included.
(Which I've just sprung for watching on Amazon, after exhausting the third or so of the collection that was airing FWA on PlutoTV. The amount of surviving William Hartnell stories there is, frankly, surprising.)

So yeah....maybe he just didn’t fit what Davies wanted in a new Doctor. I suppose we’ll never know.

There are...(sigh)...a LOT of things Davies originally wanted the new Show and new Doctor to be. 'Nuff said.

Which is one reason there seems to be a cultural Great Divide between bingey fangirls who want to gush over the NuDoctor's latest "romantic" companion, and those of us who grew up on the "Sherlock in Space" Tom Baker and Patrick Troughton.
You'd think Bingey Fangirls would be more hooked on Classic Who's Saturday-cliffhanger format, but it's harder to ship the 2nd Doctor and Jamie in fanfictions. (Not that they haven't tried...)

[Ben]

The McGann movie is Universal's.

Cushing's were actually Amicus films, now owned by StudioCanal.

All three naturally licensed the property from the BBC, who get co-pro credits, and a co-copyright on the TV movie, which is part of the classic canon. In an international style split, I believe the BBC does have the rights over here as a distributor, but obviously in the US, Universal, as the producers of the pic, would have first dibs, hence why no Britbox.

[ShyViolet]

Which is one reason there seems to be a cultural Great Divide between bingey fangirls who want to gush over the NuDoctor's latest "romantic" companion, and those of us who grew up on the "Sherlock in Space" Tom Baker and Patrick Troughton.

Yeah, I’ve also sometimes been upset about the show’s “transformation” from 60s-80s family-orientated sci-fi series to what sometimes feels like a teen-orientated fantasy series like Twilight, Hunger Games, even Harry Potter sometimes. (Even though he’s grown on me, Matt Smith VERY much looked like a character from an HP movie the first time I saw him. Actually still does lol.).

And it wasn’t the Doc occasionally getting romantic that bothered me, it was that he would FALL INTO A PASSIONATE ADOLESCENT-TYPE LOVE AFFAIR WITH A COMPANION WHO AT 19 WAS ALMOST THE SAME AGE AS 16-YEAR-OLD ACE, ANOTHER TEENAGED HUMAN WHO WAS AS MUCH A NIECE OR DAUGHTER AS ANYTHING TO DOC SEVEN. YEAH, I COULD JUST SEE ACE AND THE DOC KISS PASSIONATELY AT THE END OF SURVIVAL RIGHT AFTER ESCAPING THE MASTER. “SOMEWHERE THERE’S DANGER, SOMEWHERE THERE’S INJUSTICE, AND SOMEWHERE ELSE THE TEA IS GETTING COLD! COME ON ACE, LET’S MAKE OUT!”

Still though, I eventually accepted that times have changed, especially the audiences that the 2005 reboot series (I call it that) was aimed at. Media fans/demographics are incredibly different than they were in the 1970s, not just in the UK but all over the world.

The first time I watched Who I must have been about seven years old; it was on TV once a week on PBS and my brother and I both kind of liked the monsters. We had NO idea about any DW lore back then, mostly because neither of spoke a whole lot of English yet. (Kinda awkward to mention, but we temporarily stopped watching because it was almost impossible for us to understand the British English accents. Also they were always in a hurry it seemed, and talked too fast for us to follow lol. It was usually the Davison doctor (again, had no idea at the time) or Baker. And they were always hanging out in the same round white room. Lol.

[ShyViolet]

Again, this is not meant to be a swipe at Eccleston, his Doc was way cool! (Although I do kind of prefer him in villain roles.)


But just wanted everyone here to see what we COULD have had in 2005:

(McGann’s original audition for Eight.)


https://youtu.be/56h_JuBZ9_0


(I do still have mixed feelings on the whole “I’m half human...on my mother’s side” thing, but there’s lots more background about that storyline here. And let me tell you, BOY does McGann know how to sell it. )

[ShyViolet]

Btw....just thought I’d mention that BIG FINISH IS ON SPOTIFY NOW!!!!

Basically you can listen to ALL the episodes (Not just Eight, but Six, actually played by Colin Baker) FOR FREE (on shuffle mode, unless you’re a member)...yes, thank you God, finally!!

Great news!

[Randall]

That is cool. Not sure when I would remember or make time to listen, but good to know.

[ShyViolet]

Random question;

I’m not sure, I could be screwing this up, but wasn’t Steven Spielberg the actual catalyst for the “American” Dr. Who, being that he was apparently a big fan?? I think I once read that that was the reason the project ended up at Universal, since that is and really has always been Spielberg’s “second home”?

Kind of interesting to think about, especially since in some ways the Telemovie does have Spielbergian aspects to it: overall optimism, lots of action/adventure set pieces, emotional high points with swelling music, old-fashioned romance, etc...

I have no idea how much influence Spielberg had on this film/TV pilot, (if it indeed was his idea) but I thought it was an interesting question since the premises for other famous shows have also been originally conceived by him—the 90s medical drama ER and the Showtime comedy/drama United States of Tara for starters.

[ShyViolet]

Some really cool trivia on the McGann ‘96 Telemovie!


https://www.doctorwho.tv/news/?article= ... o-tv-movie


They do make one mistake on The Five Doctors (89 minutes) as being the longest Classic Who story ever....I’m pretty sure there are at least a ton of Hartnell/Troughton stories that ran way longer—Hartnell’s Dalek Invasion of Earth, for one. The earliest stories were often made up of many episodes.

(AIso, IIRC Tom Baker’s terrifying Deadly Assassin was feature-film length.)


EDIT: Actually, it was the Hartnell ep The Daleks’ Master Plan I was thinking of. DEFINITELY longer than Five Doctors—it ran from November 1965 to January 1966 (in 12 parts!).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daleks%27_Master_Plan

[EricJ]

The opening narration from Paul McGann mentions the Dalek home world Skaro, and the Master! If you listen closely, you can hear the Daleks exterminate the renegade Time Lord.

Was that a later fix, after "The Daleks put the Master on trial"?
(...Www-what? )

[ShyViolet]

This article is a couple of years old, but has fascinating tidbits about some of thinking that went on behind the decision not to continue with McGann as the NuWho Doc in 2005. Even some thoughts from McGann about how he felt about the whole situation.


http://www.warpedfactor.com/2014/11/doc ... n.html?m=1

[ShyViolet]

The opening narration from Paul McGann mentions the Dalek home world Skaro, and the Master! If you listen closely, you can hear the Daleks exterminate the renegade Time Lord.

Was that a later fix, after "The Daleks put the Master on trial"?
(...Www-what? )

You can hear their “voices” while the Master “evaporates” in that cage-thing or whatever it was.

I also always found that “Daleks put the Master on Trial” thing very bizarre. I have a hunch that it was supposed to be the Time Lords, but then that would have basically been revealing who the Doctor was (not human, from another planet, etc...) during the first five minutes, so they scrapped it.

But still...I can’t picture the Daleks (even the more “evolved” NuWho versions) putting ANYONE on trial, let alone respecting their final wishes about who gets to bury them...?


EDIT: Oh wait that wasn’t a hunch, I actually did read that about the Daleks/Time Lords a very long time ago. So I guess yeah, it was definitely supposed to be the Time Lords, not the Daleks.

[Daniel]

The next two lost serials to be animated will be "The Abominable Snowmen" and "The Evil of the Daleks".

[Randall]

Sounds good! The animated versions can't compete with the real thing, but given they at least have the original soundtracks, I do appreciate them.

[EricJ]

The next two lost serials to be animated will be "The Abominable Snowmen" and "The Evil of the Daleks".

Currently watching the "Complete" Classic Who on BBC Britbox streaming, and just finishing up Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor arcs. ("I saw its mother, Mr. Thorn!")

Power of the Daleks is good for all-animated stories, and they haven't added The Macra Terror yet, but for incomplete stories where only one or two episodes are missing, eg. "The Web of Fear", they scale back and simply Ken-Burns the BBC still photos to the soundtracks of the missing episodes, with occasional captioned explanations of moving scenes.

How much of lost William Hartnell exists in audio/stills, or did they only do that for the Troughton seasons?
I've heard a few of the "lost" Hartnell/Troughton episodes on BBC Audio, but nobody's rushing for a restored version of "The Savages" or "The Sirens of Time".