Gavin WintersFor the first time we discover that the Doctor’s ring has special powers (stop sniggering at the back!) #DoctorWho
#DoctorWho And The Web Planet Of Men In Leather Trousers With Canoes On Their Backs
Can’t fault The Web Planet for its imagination and ambition, and I’m sure it blew kids minds at the time, but today it’s a bit of a slog to get through. I wish the Zarbi would shut up with the bloody chirruping! #DoctorWho
I’m not sure who I feel more sorry for, the actors who have to hop about in the Optera costumes or the poor sod who has to crawl along the floor as the Venom Grub. #DoctorWho
Hartnell’s wig is unusually long in this story. Get a haircut, ya hippy! #DoctorWho
#DoctorWho - The Crusade. They certainly didn’t compromise or dumb down for so-called “kids” telly back then, with dense wordy scripts like this. Richard and Joanna’s intense argument in episode three wouldn’t be out of place in some heavyweight drama.
And Barbara holding a knife while considering having to kill a young girl rather than let her be captured is pretty adult and grim too.
Right, resuming the #DoctorWho marathon after a Xmas break with The
Space Museum.
Due to some timey-wimey shenanigans, the Doctor’s (and companions’) clothes magically change. Well, let’s hope nothing as silly as that ever happens again! 😜
The first episode is great, with all the ‘jumping a time-track’, weirdness and seeing their potential future. Very Twilight Zone. Wouldn’t be out of place to see Rod Serling popping up to give an ominous intro.
Then we get the less exciting stuff with the Xerons and Moroks. The wettest group of oppressors/rebels ever! A bunch of teenagers trying to overthrow some middle-aged men with ‘50s Teddy-Boy haircuts. Thankfully Vicki sorts them out and the revolution’s quickly done. #DoctorWho
It’s been a while in this #DoctorWho marathon since some randy bloke hit on Barbara, necessitating a call for Ian to punch his lights out. So here he is beating up a couple of Morok guards, just to keep match-fit in case anyone tries it on with her again.
Onto ‘The Chase’, and Dr. Who has a huge new space telly (how did he fit that through the doors?!) that he wants to show off to the others.
I like how the Time-Space Visualiser is labelled with names of planets from our solar system. Seems a bit of a small scope! #DoctorWho
Ian’s Dad-dancing. 😆
The whole Beatles sequence would seem fairly silly now if they’d ended up a forgotten, flash-in-the-pan bit of Sixties pop-culture. #DoctorWho
Those are some impressive theme-park animatronics for 1996! Completely independent automated robots that can walk and talk and dress themselves. Amazing! 😅 That whole episode is totally mad, really. #DoctorWho
Still, despite the crapness of the robot Doctor, the way it’s shot, with Hartnell and the other actor swapping places, or two cameras either side of Hartnell so he can switch between characters in an instant, is well worked out. #DoctorWho
Some unusual Dalek interactions in The Chase, like the hesitant “Err…um…” one, or the one who keeps saying “Yes” to everything until his boss gets irritated and snaps “Well see to it then!” Also, first evidence of Dalek levitation? The one who rises out of the sand.
Kudos to the director for creating an epic final battle sequence out of just a handful of Daleks and Mechanoids in a couple of sets, with lots of quick cuts and double-images and superimposed flame and smoke. #DoctorWho
It’s detail that I think is lost today, (because we can compare them easily and see the difference) but surely the yard where Ian and Barbara return home is meant to be the same one in Totter’s Lane? Bound to be how contemporary viewers understood it, surely? #DoctorWho
#DoctorWho - The Time Meddler. Another Time Lord! With another TARDIS! The first tiny steps towards expanding the canon and lore of the show and the background of the Doctor. Can’t imagine what it must’ve been like seeing this for the first time in 1965.
Steven must think there’s loads of people flying around in TARDISes as he’s now encountered two in two consecutive stories. #DoctorWho
The Monk’s such a fun villain you can’t help rooting for him a little bit. #DoctorWho
There’s some effective use of back projection in this story, with lots of rolling clouds seen behind the characters… only ‘slightly* spoiled by their shadows occasionally falling across the “sky”! #DoctorWho
Galaxy 4: Ah, the old sci-fi trope of warning about the dangers of a society run entirely by… (GASP!)…women!
“We have a small number of men, as many as we need. The rest we kill. They consume valuable food and fulfil no particular function.” Crikey! 😳
#DoctorWho
In the animation, Maaga grabs Steven by the throat and lifts him bodily off the ground! Surely an embellishment that wasn’t in the original episode? #DoctorWho
It’s hard to get a sense of the Rill spaceship since it’s all scaffolding and bits of perspex. Is that really meant to be the exterior wall? Of a spaceship?? #DoctorWho
Why does everyone in Galaxy 4 go on about “dawns” rather than days? I guess it makes the imminent destruction of the planet sound a bit more poetic.
Funny how Maaga spends the whole story obsessively wanting to take the Rills’ spaceship and only at the last minute thinks of commandeering the TARDIS instead.
#DoctorWho
The whole “Aha! The beautiful people are the baddies and the ugly monsters the goodies!” twist seems charmingly simplistic now, but must have been still fairly novel at the time.
And all when Star Trek was just a glint in Roddenberry’s eye… 😀 #DoctorWho
Watched the 2019 remake of Mission To The Unknown. Very good, and when watched in context with the surrounding episodes you could almost believe it was a product of the time. #DoctorWho
There’s still a lot of clumsy misuse of cosmological terms at this point. “Solar system”, “Galaxy”, “Universe”, etc, all get bandied about interchangeably. #DoctorWho
The Myth Makers: another semi-comical historical from Donald Cotton. The antics of the ruling family in Troy are part sitcom and part soap opera, with Barrie Ingram as Paris in particular being a character straight out of a farce. #DoctorWho
Our first view of the TARDIS wardrobe room apparently. Or at least it would be if the pictures weren’t missing, damnit.
Also probably the first (and only) use of the word “orgy” in #DoctorWho ! 😳
And that’s it for Vicki. One again the Doctor has an incredibly cavalier attitude towards letting a teenage girl stay in an unfamiliar time and place to marry the first bloke she got a crush on, and who she met two days ago.
Someone report him to the authorities! 🤪 #DoctorWho
The couple in episode one are arguing about what to watch on space telly - the Mars / Venus match or Mavic Chen’s speech. Disappointing to see that in the year 4000 there’s no longer any such thing as streaming/recording/catchup services. #DoctorWho
The Daleks really need better security at their conferences. The Doctor just waltzes in in a cloak and nicks the tarranium. Doh!
Should’ve had lanyards with photo ID. Though since the Delegates are all so bizarre looking it’d probably be redundant. #DoctorWho
Never mind everything else the Daleks have ever done, in the middle of The Daleks Master Plan they needlessly exterminate some mice! You bastards! 😨 #DoctorWho
Karlton (Chen’s No. 2) is an underrated villain. If his episodes still existed I think he’d be up there in the ranks of creepy underlings alongside Nyder from Genesis. #DoctorWho
The Feast Of Steven is properly mad, isn’t it? Quite a meta gag for the Doctor to “recognise” an actor from a previous role!
At one point the Doctor spells out TARDIS AS ‘Time And Relative DimensionS (plural) In Space’. Take that pedants! #DoctorWho
The previous week’s cliffhanger of a “totally poisonous atmosphere!” then becoming simply some 1960s air pollution is a hilariously crap cop-out. #DoctorWho
Back to DMP and The TARDIS makes a quick stop-off on Earth on New Year’s Day. (I timed the rewatch of this episode well)
Then it’s a welcome return for the Monk. I wish we’d seen the bit where the Doctor wraps him up like a mummy and shoves him in a sarcophagus! #DoctorWho
Towards the end the Delegates are back. Pity we didn’t (apparently) get to see more of Sentreal, the Satanic Christmas Tree. We’re all agreed he’s everyone’s favourite, yes? 😁 #DoctorWho
What a surprise, the Daleks turn on Mavic Chen and exterminate him. So much for your genius plan, Space-Trump! #DoctorWho
RIP Sara, we hardly knew ya (but at least a bit more than Katarina) 🤷🏻♂️
The Massacre (…‘of St. Bartholomew’s Eve’ if you insist, but I prefer the short version). Just weeks since this show gave us the madcap antics of The Feast Of Steven and now we get this extremely heavy political and religious drama. Must’ve been a bit hardgoing for kids at the time. #DoctorWho
Peter Purves is basically the co-lead at this point and is holding the whole thing together while Hartnell has his frequent long absences. #DoctorWho
Steven’s big argument with the Doctor before storming out, and Hartnell’s poignant monologue afterwards (mentioning his home world!), must be one of the most “I wish the visuals still existed” moments In sixties #DoctorWho
Oh, hello Dodo, random young person with no apparent life or backstory or reason to stay on Earth and so is a ready-made companion after stumbling into the TARDIS. That’s pretty convenient! #DoctorWho
#DoctorWho : The Ark. They must have spent a bit of cash on this one - huge sets, loads of extras, even a bloody elephant in the studio!
The visual FX are noticeably starting to improve too, with some new tricks for merging one picture with another.
“Take them to the Security Kitchen! Where they can… make my breakfast! Securely!” #DoctorWho
The Monoids really are the most rubbish villains for *constantly* blurting out their evil plans and letting everyone else hear. #DoctorWho
The Celestial Toymaker: Hmm, for many years ‘received fan wisdom’ said this was an all-time classic. I always think it was just people who were kids at the time found it mind-blowing. So weird and surreal and format-breaking. But it’s all a bit…nothing, really. #DoctorWho
The Toymaker himself is a fun and interesting villain, and after watching this again I’m now looking forward to his (apparent) return, but the plot is wafer-thin. Same runaround nonsense repeated for four episodes. #DoctorWho
Still, the totally-not-copyright-infringing-and-definitely-not-Billy-Bunter character of Cyril in the final episode is such an odious, annoying prick that his eventual death is one of the most satisfying in all of #DoctorWho ! 😄
The complete inverse of The Celestial Toymaker, The Gunfighters had a reputation for being rubbish… until people actually got to see it. A perfectly enjoyable and funny story.
And yeah, I even don’t mind ‘The Ballad Of The Last Chance Saloon’. So sue me. 😜 #DoctorWho
Hartnell once again showing how good he is when given a bit of comedy business. All the bits with the Doctor’s toothache in the dentist’s office are hilarious. #DoctorWho
River Song: “A Time Lord’s body is a miracle. There are whole empires out there who’d rip this world apart just for one cell…”
Well don’t leave your bloody tooth on 19th-century Earth, Doctor!
*spaceships gather in the sky above Tombstone*
I thought Dodo had a wandering accent. It’s nothing compared to some of the “American” accents on display here. Arizona via Yorkshire. #DoctorWho
“Your humble servant, Doctor Caligari!”
“Doctor… Who?”
“Quite so!”
First example of that joke? Unless you count when Ian said it in the very first episode. #DoctorWho
The Savages: a very underrated story about a parasitic ruling elite literally draining the life from the lower echelons of society. Always think this would be much more highly rated if we could see it. Hope it’s considered for these new animations at some point. #DoctorWho
The Doctor seems to be using a bulky, proto-sonic screwdriver at one point. Which he describes as “My reacting vibrator!”
Good grief. 😳
Juicy Cake Of Figs@gavinwinters One thing I like about this story, which I don't see why they've never done since, is having the Doctor and Companions pose as travelling players.
@datadivajf Maybe because of all the trouble it gets Steven and Dodo into when they have to perform! 😄
Ken Wilson@gavinwinters I am hoping it's not going to be a train wreck, as much as I like nph, it could be corny as fuck