The Doctor WHO Thread (Please indicate potential spoilers when discussing current episodes.)
Fade2Black
Posts: 1,457
New Doctor Who trailer has debuted (unofficially).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvo9KoRPj-Y
Feel free to use this thread for all thingsseason 7 Doctor WHO related.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvo9KoRPj-YFeel free to use this thread for all things
Comments
I can't wait!
Guess I'm going to pass out for a while......
8-}
I just finished the first season and HOLY CRAP WHAT A FREAKING INCREDIBLE SHOW!!!!!!!!
Although I have to say I'm EXTREMELY disappointed Eccleston is no longer the Doctor. I absolutely LOVED him.
I'm probably rehashing a conversation people have exhausted years ago, so apologies for that.
"To love Doctor Who is to know change", taking into account my brief research into the show, is both brilliant and eloquent.
I appreciate your thoughtful guidance. I've watched the first episode of the second season and I do indeed like the new Doctor, although I will concur with your good lady wife and remain a steadfast Eccleston enthusiast.
I've only ever heard a few of the Big Finish classic Doctor audios, but they've all been pretty good. The most recent one I've heard is The Holy Terror, a 6th Doctor story which was great. Starts off very funny, gets satirical in the middle, and then creepy as hell at the end. Another 6th Doctor story I loved was ...Ish, which got so deep into issues of the English language that it made my little English major heart just soar. And Colin Baker was the perfect Doctor for that one... in fact, I can see why so many people think he's the best of the audio Doctors. Big Finish treats his version far better than the TV series ever did. Not a scene-stealing leather-clad mercenary character to be seen!
Currently reading one of the 7th Doctor "New Adventures" novels, too: Blood Heat, the beginning of the Alternate History arc. Never read a lot of these as they came out, but reading them now kinda confirms my fears about them: they make the 7th Doctor into a really manipulative dick. I know he was seen as the master chessplayer toward the end of the TV series, slyly moving people around to serve his needs, but he was never as callous as the books made him to be. On the show, he had to destroy Ace's faith in him one time, and he felt really bad about it. In the books I've read thus far, he seems to do that because it's Tuesday. Some of the plots in the books I've read are good, mind you, but I almost have to envision a completely different Doctor as I read them.
Part the First:
1st Doctor – William Hartnell
An Unearthly Child – Very first story. Worth seeing for that.
The Daleks – First appearance of the Daleks. Too long, but has its moments.
The Aztecs – Can’t remember seeing this one, but I hear it’s one of the better straight history stories from the era.
The Dalek Invasion of Earth – Too long, but has its moments.
The Romans – Ditto.
The Chase – The Daleks get their own time machine and chase the TARDIS all over. Lots of fun bits.
The Time Meddler – First time we meet another Time Lord. My favorite Hartnell story.
The Tenth Planet – First Cybermen, last Hartnell. The last episode is long missing, but the regeneration scene still exists.
2nd Doctor – Patrick Troughton
(Most Troughton stories no longer exist in complete forms. Stupid BBC. You can see sample episodes from a lot of those if you look, though. Here’s what’s worth watching in more-or-less complete form, though.)
The Tomb of the Cybermen – Best Cybermen story ever.
The Mind Robber – The Doctor and companions are taken to a land of fiction. Lots of fun, and quite creepy in places.
The Invasion – Incomplete Cybermen story, but missing bits were filled in with narration on VHS release, animation on DVD. First appearance of UNIT.
The War Games – WAY too long, but last Troughton, and the first time we really see the Time Lords and find out why the Doctor left.
3rd Doctor – Jon Pertwee
Spearhead from Space – First Pertwee, first color episode. The Doctor is exiled to Earth and begins working with UNIT.
Inferno – A bit too long, but a fun alternate universe story.
Terror of the Autons – First appearance of the Master, who then shows up in most subsequent stories for the next season or two. And even when those stories are bad, they’re still kind of awesome because the original Master, Roger Delgado, is a fantastic actor, and he and Pertwee play off each other very well.
The Three Doctors – Tenth anniversary episode. Pertwee, Troughton, and Hartnell team-up (though Hartnell doesn’t do much because he was quite sick in real life).
Frontier in Space / Planet of the Daleks – Two stories that make a bigger one.
The Green Death – Once again, maybe two episodes too long, but lots of good material. Fantastically awful special effects in places, even by Who standards.
The Time Warrior – First Sarah Jane.
Planet of the Spiders – Last Pertwee. Plays off of a plot point from The Green Death.
4th Doctor – Tom Baker
(Baker played the Doctor for 7 years, so there’s a lot to pick with him.)
Robot – First Tom Baker. Silly, but fun.
The Ark in Space / The Sontaran Experiment / Genesis of the Daleks / Revenge of the Cybermen – Four individual stories that all make up one big adventure. They leave the TARDIS behind in Ark and don’t see it again until the end of Revenge. Some stories are better than others. If you watch only one from this cycle, make it Genesis.
Pyramids of Mars – Fun story. Sarah Jane claims to be from 1980, which will annoy and confuse fandom for decades.
The Brain of Morbius – Doctor Who’s take on Frankenstein.
The Deadly Assassin – Fun, Gallifrey-centered whodunit.
The Robots of Death – Basically an Agatha Christie plot with robots and crazy costumes.
The Talons of Weng-Chiang – Doctor Who’s take on Sherlock Holmes. Fantastic story.
The “Key To Time” series: The Ribos Operation, The Pirate Planet, The Stones of Blood, The Androids of Tara, The Power of Kroll, The Armageddon Factor – The Doctor is forced into a mission by the White Guardian of Time and given a new Gallifreyan companion, Romana. Uneven, but fun overall. The Pirate Planet was written by Douglas Adams, so there’s that.
City of Death – Co-written by Douglas Adams. Fun and very funny story set in Paris featuring the villain from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and a few funny cameos. Maybe my favorite original series story ever.
Shada – Another Douglas Adams story, but one famously unfinished due to a BBC strike. Released on VHS in the 90s, though, with Baker narrating the gaps in the footage. Worth watching to see how much of this plot Adams ended up reusing in the Dirk Gently books.
The Keeper of Traken / Logopolis – Keeper follows on in a way from The Deadly Assassin, and leads into Logopolis, which is Baker’s final story.
5th Doctor – Peter Davison
Castrovalva – Davison’s debut, following on directly from Logopolis. The three stories make a fun trilogy.
Earthshock – The Cybermen return. Dinosaurs are discussed at length. There are consequences.
Arc of Infinity – Time Lords in funny hats! Colin Baker plays a Time Lord soldier a few years before he would be cast as Davison’s replacement.
The Five Doctors – 20th anniversary! Hartnell, long dead, is subbed by another actor. Tom Baker only appears in footage recycled from Shada. Sarah Jane has the worst costume ever. But despite all that, fun, and a great place to start with the original series, since you get the flavor of every era up to this point. Liam absolutely loves this one.
Resurrection of the Daleks – Grim, but interesting.
Planet of Fire – Ditto.
The Caves of Androzani – Even grimmer still, but very good. Davison’s last story, and many say it is his best.
6th Doctor – Colin Baker
(Colin Baker’s era… it has problems, chief among them The Worst Costume in Television History, though it has grown on me over the years, and a script editor who preferred that the Doctor took a backseat to the Leatherclad Mercenary of the Week. Seriously, that man had issues. There’s goodness to be found, though.)
The Twin Dilemma – Baker’s first story. Follows on directly from the end of Caves. About the only two good things I can say.
Vengeance on Varos – Violent and grim (lots of Baker stories are), but some sly commentary on TV programming and audiences make it worthwhile. Sean Connery’s son is in this, for what that’s worth.
The Two Doctors – Baker and Troughton cross paths in deep space and 1980s Spain. Very weird story, but worth it to see Troughton one final time.
Revelation of the Daleks – Another weird one, but fun. Alexei Sayle from The Young Ones is in this.
Trial of a Time Lord – Season-long story (made up of 4 smaller arcs) in which the Doctor is taken out of time by the Time Lords to be tried for crimes against Time Lord intervention laws. Lots of underhanded stuff going on in the background. Uneven, but good overall.
7th Doctor – Sylvester McCoy
Time and the Rani – First McCoy. And that’s honestly the only reason to consider watching this one. Really not very good, but if you want an intro to the man, here you go. Though he and the tone of the show change significantly from this season to the next. So maybe just skip straight ahead to…
Remembrance of the Daleks – The 25th season starts out with the Daleks and a return to the setting of the first episode not long after the Doctor and crew originally left Earth.
The Happiness Patrol – Lots of Maggie Thatcher metaphor written into this one.
Silver Nemesis – The actual 25th anniversary story. The Cybermen, a time traveling Lady Macbeth type who knows the Doctor, and neo-Nazis converge on Windsor Castle in 1988 in anticipation of a crashing comet.
Battlefield – Lots of King Arthur stuff in this, along with the return of UNIT. Jean Marsh is wonderful in this.
Ghost Light – BIZARRE haunted house story.
The Curse of Fenric – Ancient evil returns, and this version of the Doctor shows what lengths he’ll go to to fight it.
Survival – Some people like this one a lot, I don’t. But it’s the final episode of the original series, so there’s that.
8th Doctor – Paul McGann
Doctor Who (a.k.a. “The TV Movie) – McGann’s one and only official adventure as the Doctor (though he’s since done several “seasons” of Who audio dramas for a company called Big Finish). This movie was co-produced with the Fox network in hopes of being a pilot for a new series in both the US and the UK. It wasn’t picked up in either place, but if you want to see McGann, this is where you do it. McCoy shows up to regenerate, though, so there’s that.
Other
Dimensions In Time – Short oddity made for BBC’s annual “Children In Need” telethon to celebrate the show’s 30th anniversary with as many of the surviving cast members as they could assemble, and then combining them with the cast of soap opera EastEnders. So bizarre it deserves to be studied.
The Curse of the Fatal Death – Another charity programming thing (this time for Comic Relief UK, I think), this is a parody starring Rowan Atkinson as the Doctor, Julia Sawalha from AbFab as his companion, Jonathan Pryce as the Master, and a host of other famous Brit actors in quick bit (but important) parts. Written by Steven Moffatt long before the new series was even a thought.
I know this thread is meant to be about season 7, but I'm SO PISSED! and where else can I have a cow without drawing undue attention to myself.
So they throw a curveball at me with the changing of the Doctor from Season 1 to 2, I've since gotten over that. While I loved Eccleston, Tennant is mighty.
Just when I've gotten over the change, when season 2 ends ROSE IS GONE??!?!??!
HAVE SOME MERCY FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!
I understand and accept Library Boy's wisdom in that "Dr. Who = Change", but this is just cruelty in the purest form. How am I supposed to recover from the loss of Rose? Hmmm? :-L
Regardless, it's still the best show I've seen since Battlestar Galactica. So I should just calm down I suppose.