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Lots of old Doctor Who!
Feb. 25th, 2008 08:11 amSam got a lot of DVDs:
The Invasion
This Patrick Troughton-era story is a recent DVD release; episodes one and four of eight are still missing, but have been reconstructed with animation over the surviving soundtrack. It works well enough for the purpose, though it's nothing but a substitute; the animation is really limited (done with Flash, I think) but the episodes in question don't have a lot of action in them anyway.
Like a lot of early Doctor Who serials, The Invasion feels padded--we don't get our first glimpse of a Cyberman until the cliffhanger of episode four. Still, it's worth seeing for Kevin Stoney's amusing performance as a megalomaniac industrialist in league with the Cybermen (coincidentally, Mr. Stoney died when we were halfway through watching this), and for the first appearance of UNIT. You can also imagine lots of femslash subtext between Zoe and her temporary sidekick Isobel, if you are so inclined.
Inferno
Especially in his early appearances, Jon Pertwee decided to play the Doctor as a very, very serious character, and this is a very, very serious serial that actually becomes outright grim and leaden. It's seven episodes long, and it all starts to sort of run together after a while. I can also see what people say about the character of Liz Shaw being badly treated--the Doctor behaves in an absurdly sexist manner, condescending all the time to this woman who was probably one of his most competent companions, and people don't really call him on it.
The grimness of Inferno actually seems to have made it something of a fan favorite, but it's hard to reconcile with the fact that a major subplot involves guys turning into green werewolves on contact with goop from the interior of the earth. Still, it's kind of fun when the Doctor accidentally ends up in Doctor Who's version of the evil Mirror Universe for a couple of episodes, and they get to kill everybody.
The Androids of Tara
After Inferno, this entertaining bit of fluff went down like cotton candy, though admittedly it's one of the weaker Tom Baker-era stories. The Fourth Doctor, the First Romana, and K9 find their segment of the Key to Time almost immediately, but then have to bluff and mug their way through a Prisoner of Zenda pastiche on a very silly planet with pseudo-medieval culture, electric swords and android duplicates. Mary Tamm wears gorgeous outfits and rides a horsie. Sam dearly loved this one as a little girl.
The Pirate Planet
Ahh, now that's more like it!
This story was famously written by Douglas Adams (though it sounds like the story editor tweaked it a lot), and you can tell. This is another one from the Key to Time season, involving a planet that dismantles other planets for mineral wealth (though they don't really explain how this can keep the inhabitants rich without some sort of interstellar trade, which doesn't seem to be happening). The place is run by a bellowing cyborg pirate who regularly kills his minions with a robot parrot. There are also a bunch of strange chanting psychic gestalt-mind people. The reason all this is happening turns out to be really convoluted. The Doctor is at his goofiest.
There's a lot about it that doesn't make any sense on prolonged analysis, but, you know, it's Doctor Who. But after a slow-ish start in the first episode, it ends up absolutely crammed with cool, crazy ideas, basically the kind of thing I wish Doctor Who did all the time. I somehow missed seeing this until now, but I think it's already become one of my favorite classic Who serials.
Our DVD player vomited on contact with this disc, so we watched it on Sam's computer. I'm not sure what the problem was.
The Invasion
This Patrick Troughton-era story is a recent DVD release; episodes one and four of eight are still missing, but have been reconstructed with animation over the surviving soundtrack. It works well enough for the purpose, though it's nothing but a substitute; the animation is really limited (done with Flash, I think) but the episodes in question don't have a lot of action in them anyway.
Like a lot of early Doctor Who serials, The Invasion feels padded--we don't get our first glimpse of a Cyberman until the cliffhanger of episode four. Still, it's worth seeing for Kevin Stoney's amusing performance as a megalomaniac industrialist in league with the Cybermen (coincidentally, Mr. Stoney died when we were halfway through watching this), and for the first appearance of UNIT. You can also imagine lots of femslash subtext between Zoe and her temporary sidekick Isobel, if you are so inclined.
Inferno
Especially in his early appearances, Jon Pertwee decided to play the Doctor as a very, very serious character, and this is a very, very serious serial that actually becomes outright grim and leaden. It's seven episodes long, and it all starts to sort of run together after a while. I can also see what people say about the character of Liz Shaw being badly treated--the Doctor behaves in an absurdly sexist manner, condescending all the time to this woman who was probably one of his most competent companions, and people don't really call him on it.
The grimness of Inferno actually seems to have made it something of a fan favorite, but it's hard to reconcile with the fact that a major subplot involves guys turning into green werewolves on contact with goop from the interior of the earth. Still, it's kind of fun when the Doctor accidentally ends up in Doctor Who's version of the evil Mirror Universe for a couple of episodes, and they get to kill everybody.
The Androids of Tara
After Inferno, this entertaining bit of fluff went down like cotton candy, though admittedly it's one of the weaker Tom Baker-era stories. The Fourth Doctor, the First Romana, and K9 find their segment of the Key to Time almost immediately, but then have to bluff and mug their way through a Prisoner of Zenda pastiche on a very silly planet with pseudo-medieval culture, electric swords and android duplicates. Mary Tamm wears gorgeous outfits and rides a horsie. Sam dearly loved this one as a little girl.
The Pirate Planet
Ahh, now that's more like it!
This story was famously written by Douglas Adams (though it sounds like the story editor tweaked it a lot), and you can tell. This is another one from the Key to Time season, involving a planet that dismantles other planets for mineral wealth (though they don't really explain how this can keep the inhabitants rich without some sort of interstellar trade, which doesn't seem to be happening). The place is run by a bellowing cyborg pirate who regularly kills his minions with a robot parrot. There are also a bunch of strange chanting psychic gestalt-mind people. The reason all this is happening turns out to be really convoluted. The Doctor is at his goofiest.
There's a lot about it that doesn't make any sense on prolonged analysis, but, you know, it's Doctor Who. But after a slow-ish start in the first episode, it ends up absolutely crammed with cool, crazy ideas, basically the kind of thing I wish Doctor Who did all the time. I somehow missed seeing this until now, but I think it's already become one of my favorite classic Who serials.
Our DVD player vomited on contact with this disc, so we watched it on Sam's computer. I'm not sure what the problem was.