Doctor Who Thread

[Silent Hunter]

Hey, I was wondering if besides ArchangelZero, there were other Doctor Who fans around here.

Yes, I'm one.

An appropriate day to ask; the show is 47 today.

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      As an aside, I just finished watching season 16 (the Key To Time saga). I really liked Tom Baker & Mary Tamm. I also found K-9 to be quite endearing. It's also sort of refreshing to not see the sonic screwdriver being used every five minutes, oftentimes for things that such a device would have no conceivable use for.

Season 16 is a good season, but did you find the ending a bit poor? I know many fans have, including myself.

As for Amy, I like her a lot. She's had her detractors, but she's a great addition to the TARDIS.

[Silent Hunter]

As for Amy, I like her a lot. She's had her detractors, but she's a great addition to the TARDIS.

Amy is quite interesting as she's a rather polarizing character.  Fans either flat out hate her or love her, there's rarely any middle ground.

It's rather the same with Martha, I've found.

[Silent Hunter]

Right... It's been a very long while since I watched the first season of the era, so I won't rate them.

I do, however, remember loathing "Boom Town" and also "The Long Game", as well as raving more over "World War Three" than is fashionable these days.

[Silent Hunter]

General question: how do I get into Dr. Who?  Where is the starting point for new viewers that doesn't entail watching 50 years of reruns?

I would suggest "Rose", the first Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) story, which is the start of the "new" show. You'll get the key concepts very quickly and there's only five "years" (roughly 14 episodes a year) of re-runs. You won't need to watch any of the "classic" episodes to get into it, although you will probably find yourself doing so at some point.

Or if you want to skip those, start with the first story for the current Doctor, Matt Smith, "The Eleventh Hour", which introduces the relevant characters for the current era.

A good number of stories for the First and Second Doctors were partially or totally deleted from the archives due to a misguided tape-wiping policy in the 1970s, but exist in at least audio format. In the event you'd want to do a classic watch-through, start with "Spearhead from Space", the first Third Doctor (John Pertwee) story, which is also the first colour story.

DVDs for these are easy to find on Amazon or stores like that.

You can drop in at any point, but you might not fully understand what's going on.

[Silent Hunter]

Rest In Peace.

[Silent Hunter]

It wasn't great televisual art (unlike, say, this), but it was good telly.

Going to have to disagree that The Shadow Line is great televisual art - I'm finding it very slow.

[Silent Hunter]

It wasn't great televisual art (unlike, say, this), but it was good telly.

Going to have to disagree that The Shadow Line is great televisual art - I'm finding it very slow.

It is slow, but then the best television drama has always tended to be fairly slow; I'd argue that The Singing Detective was the greatest thing ever shown on television, and it moved at a snails pace.

But then these things are entirely subjective

Sorry, I'll clarify: The Shadow Line is slow and boring. Nowt wrong with slow. Plenty wrong with boring.

[Silent Hunter]

Wait, season 6 has already begun in the UK ?

Yes, it already has; we've just finished the first half and are now on a roughly three month break.

[Silent Hunter]

Sorry, I'll clarify: The Shadow Line is slow and boring. Nowt wrong with slow. Plenty wrong with boring.

It's not boring, it's art, you philistine.

Though you could easily play a drinking game based around spotting the Godfather references.

I couldn't - I've never seen The Godfather...

[Silent Hunter]

BTW, forgot to say I've also fallen in love with the show's soundtrack. Murray Gold is really a great artist.

I totally agree; the CDs are available to buy on good online stockists.

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Oh, and on a slightly more highbrow level, I did like the use of the Minotaur myth. When that kind of thing is placed in a sci-fi context it usually ends pretty badly, but it worked quite well in this case.

It's not the first time it's actually been used on this show - it featured in the highly camp Season 17 story "The Horns of Nimon".

[Silent Hunter]

Caroline John has died aged 72

[Silent Hunter]

I really regret not watching the early Doctor Who. I have started to look for some episodes of the old series, and had the occasion to watch the very first episode (so... different but I kind of expected it), Genesis of the Daleks (quite nice and interesting, but still pretty old when watched today) and the 1996 movie (enjoyable, though I found the plot weak and certain scenes a bit weird).

You can get most of the old stories on DVD, although in English only. There's also narrated soundtracks for the stories that are incomplete in the BBC archives.

[Silent Hunter]

Mary Tamm has died aged 62

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Bradley was good, but a lot of that episode wasn't. Trying to do too much really.

[Silent Hunter]

The noir stuff was good. Am an eternal sucker for that.

I like noir stuff as well - Alex Kingston was great in that role.

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Very interesting. "Planet of the Giants" isn't one of the best stories, but wait until you get to the next one.

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christmas ep...better than last year's, and overally not awful at all really.

That's all I really ask for from the 'plot' of a Doctor Who Christmas episode.

MasterJedi is watching the First Doctor? Excellent.

MasterJedi: what are you doing about the missing stories?

[Silent Hunter]

but it looks like later First Doctor and definitly the Second Doctor absolutly get destroyed by that horrible BBC policy. What I've basically been doing is reading the synopsis on Wikipedia/other sites to get all of what happens.

Second Doctor got it really bad - there's only one story of Season 5 intact ("Tomb of the Cybermen") and that was only because it turned up in Hong Kong. It's only the hard work of fans that we have much of what we have. Same policy also has a couple of Third Doctor things only on black & white, although some of that has been restored to colour.

You can actually get the narrated audio soundtracks from Audible and AudioGo for the ones that are missing (and a few that aren't for some reason). That's how I did "The Daleks' Master Plan" of which only three of twelve episodes exist.

Also "Reign of Terror" is getting a DVD release with the missing two episodes animated (I have it on pre-order), but I don't know when it's coming out in R1. I would highly recommend too a box set called "Lost in Time", which has everything from the 'orphaned' stories (bar the two eps that turned up in 2011, although they'll probably be in a re-release).

Check your PMs.