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I am rewatching all of Doctor Who in order, and I'm still in the first season but the costumes are wild
Some of the episode titles are amazing though
I have now reached the one where the TARDIS gets miniaturised, which is BRILLIANT. This is the first cliffhanger
(The second cliffhanger is - "And then he pulls the plug out of the sink...")
Have just reached an episode that features Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth I, Abraham Lincoln, the Daleks AND the Beatles.
It contains a reference to the Beatles having a memorial theatre in Liverpool, which in 1965 is clearly written as a joke, but now very obviously isn't
My nerd pilgrimage has now reached the 2nd Doctor. When I was a baby nerd, only five 2nd Doctor stories - out of *21*! - existed. You can now buy 14 on DVD, and there's another one out next year. It is sort of amazing.
also, let's be honest, this wouldn't have happened if Doctor Who hadn't turned into one of the biggest franchises into the world for a bit, so thanks RTD I guess
Although not quite big enough for me to have persuaded anyone to pay me to write about this, so swings and roundabouts
Got to the end of the fourth season, when the Doctor destroys the Daleks once and for all. Phew! Thank god that's happened.
Just hit a cliffhanger in which the army blows up a tube tunnel, and honestly I have never been scared of Doctor Who before, but this
"Cannon Street and Tower Hill have gone now." "That just leaves... the Monument." *dramatic music*
Honestly this one could have been written specially for me, they look at the map and everything.
Honestly this one could have been written specially for me, they look at the map and everything.
So there's a point in the late 60s where the production team of the show with the most flexible format every devised just start making the same story over and over again and expect everyone not to notice. It's weird.
Isolated high tech base, check. Paranoid commanding officer, check. Monsters, chekc. Security chief, check - in one of these stories there's a security chief in a *monastery*. Just... why. Why do that. Why keep remaking the same bloody thing.
look I'm gonna keep adding to this thread until someone is stupid enough to let me write it down for money so you're just gonna have to deal with it okay
Now only two and a half Troughton stories to go, which means I will finally be free of the endless tedious base under siege stories which are all exactly the bloody same. Doctor Who as dumb ITC action series.
This experience has made me realise that, in the old show, I have a strong preference for the odd nunbered Doctors though.
Also you note that the BBC have quietly but obviously shifted to animating all the missing episodes at the exact point I decided to watch the entire show, in a transparent attempt to force to do it again some time.
Anyway. 234 episodes down, 461 to go.
Now onto the aggravatingly & incompetently named Doctor Who & The Silurians, which was a favourite as a kid. It's great, obv, but main realisation - it's another 60s base under siege only with a few clever twists, isn't it?
1970 is meant to be the big break in the original series (new Doctor, new setting, colour, which allows VSO, etc). But watch the series in order and you realise that it's not.
Just realised that, in the credits for the Dr Who story commonly known as "The Ambassadors of Death", the last two words arrive a second later and in a bigger font.
In other words, it should be more properly known as "The Ambassadors... OF DEATH".
In other words, it should be more properly known as "The Ambassadors... OF DEATH".
Onto The Claws of Axos which is an example of the notional Dr Who that lived in the public imagination pre 2005. Alien invasion! Monsters which are obviously men in coloured sheets! Everything looks crap and nothing makes sense! It's like a piss take of itself.
Chris Chibnall probably loves it
Oh yeah and the aliens sometimes look suspiciously genital-y
My Doctor Who re-watch has reached The Sea Devils (1972), which has cheered me up a bit because it contains a brilliant scene in which the Master watches The Clangers and tries to learn their language
Alas I'm entering the period of the 70s where large chunks of Who stories have a decent first episode the promises to be about imperialism, then five more boring ones that turn out to be about people yelling at each other in unconvincing corridors.
Just finished season 9. There are 17 seasons of the old show and 12 of the new one to go.
Turns out there's quite a lot of Doctor Who actually.
Turns out there's quite a lot of Doctor Who actually.
Just realised that The Three Doctors is Monty Python' s Tennis Playing Blancmanges from outer space sketch and now I can't unsee it.
In this one, the Doctor is running out of oxygen, but he's played by Jon Pertwee so this doesn't stop him changing his outfit between gasps.
Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974), which, charmingly, tries to turn the arrival of the monster from the Chewits adverts into a twist by broadcasting the first episode simply as "Invasion".
Anyway, this one's great, because it's not actually about dinosaurs, it's actually about environmental radicalisation. Also despite having 15 years and four whole Doctors to go yet, I've just realised that in terms of run time I'm basically halfway
Seriously though.
In this episode of Doctor Who, Doctor Who (Jon Pertwee) runs over a tramp with a hovercraft, and the director plays it as a joke.
Well, Pertwee's dead, that's another Doctor down.
Blimey. @thejimsmith just pointed out that by sheer coincidence I managed to tweet this on the anniversary of Pertwee's actual death. Bloody hell
Onto Tom Baker, who was always the most popular when I was kid - sort of reigned supreme until Tennant - and, possibly because of that, is the one I have Never Quite Got. Annoying.
Also I realised last night that the reasons I love the Pertwee era, apart from the supporting cast, are a. For the first time the show tries to create a coherent world, and b. It's all about something, mostly post imperial anxiety. The modern show owes it a huge debt.
(Anyone annoyed by the Dr Who tweets, don't worry, there are only 27 seasons to go.)
Confess your popular opinion, Dr Who edition: Genesis of the Daleks is really very good
"These minerals are endangering my command" I don't know what the cynics are talking about, this dialogue is terrific
In Sgt Benton's last appearance, seven years after his first, we learn that a) he's taking his baby sister on a date, and b) even his android duplicate is a moron. Poor Benton, cucked to the end.
I've heard a lot of debate about whether the sonic screwdriver is used as a weapon down the years, but hardly anyone ever mentioned that Tom Baker kills people with his scarf.
We interrupt the 1970s to note that Heaven Sent is the best episode of Who, or possibly anything, ever, and that it's a real shame that's the exact season the show stop being the megahit it had been for a decade because it's so fucking good.
I'm not sure anyone has ever been as good as the Doctor as Capaldi is when he delivers the line, "...something to burn".
YA THINK??
Though it is quite funny* that there's a scene in which the Doctor is trying to persuade a nice Victorian policeman to be more suspicious of the Chinese street gang.
*Massively problematic.
*Massively problematic.
"Well, they were *Chinese* ruffians" HOW IS THE MAKE UP NOT THE ONLY RACIST THING HERE
Okay in ep5 one of the good guys uses the phrase, "Chinese - dozens of them!" It's not just the make up that's racist - it's the treatment of an entire ethnic group as an undifferentiated alien horde. They might as well be Daleks, It's sick.
One of my favourite SmithDoc moments is in The God Complex, when he delighted to learn someone's a Muslim, and visibly baffled at the idea this might be frightening. The Doctor here is *the exact opposite*, reflecting the prejudices of his time without questioning them.
The Invisible Enemy, which is about an evil virus.
The thought occurs that, if people who had Covid suddenly had weird hair growth and silver scales around their eyes, like the people infected in this story, then this whole pandemic thing would be a lot easier to manage.
The thought occurs that, if people who had Covid suddenly had weird hair growth and silver scales around their eyes, like the people infected in this story, then this whole pandemic thing would be a lot easier to manage.
If Kieran could just do this for every story then this process would be a whole lot quicker https://twitter.com/KieranCHodgson/status/1298874426382057472
Paused for a bit. Now back. Douglas Adams makes his first appearance as a writer. The results, The Pirate Planet, would, with its air cars and planet that eats other planets, make a terrific radio play
Finished this. It was very entertaining, had loads of fascinating ideas, but made no sense whatsoever.
Amazing writer - but thank god he isn't in charge of the whole series! *looks to camera*
Amazing writer - but thank god he isn't in charge of the whole series! *looks to camera*
The Stones of Blood is extremely silly but not quite committed enough to taking the piss out of itself to work. The cast are sending up a story that still seems to want you to take it seriously.
The season finale The Armageddon Factor a) has "shit shit Star Wars has happened how do we respond" written all over it and b) has a planet in it called @Atrios, which is confusing
Well. That entire season was a colossal waste of time.
In his first episode as script editor, Douglas Adams undermines the concept of regeneration. In his second, he turns the Daleks into a joke. He's objectively the greatest writer the show ever had, but he does get quite close to breaking the series by mistake.
Doctor Who needs jokes in it, but you sort of need to buy into certain silly things (regeneration is a big deal, those ridiculous pepper pot things are scary and dangerous) for it to function, and it's not clear Adams does. Even though he was a fan.
Anyway, City of Death next which is a) brilliant b) Adams working out how to make good Doctor Who and c) an excuse for me to get angry about the portrayal of Parisian geography
City of Death is one of those stories that's so good that it feels cruel to recommend it to people because they might get the impression Doctor Who is always like this, and
Season 17 of Doctor Who mostly really doesn't work, but I wonder how much the problem is that losing Shada unbalances it. Am watching the DVD version now and once you get over the weirdness of something that's half live, half animated, it's way better than most of that year.
There's a bit in Shada where the Doctor strokes Chris's face, in a fashion that I feel has been under appreciated by modern fandom.
honestly, at this stage I'm almost surprised there's been no attempt to recontextualise the 4th Doctor/Adric relationship, because Waterhouse is very obviously flirting at points ("The handwriting!" "What about it?" "It's beautiful")
Meglos, in which the Tom Baker Doctor is impersonated by an evil cactus, works a lot better than it has any right to.
I dunno why some people say Doctor Who isn't serious drama, I really don't
confess your unpopular opinion: Tom, Lalla & Matthew work much better as a regular cast than just Tom & Lalla
Fair. Season 18 is the best season in years. https://twitter.com/stephenkb/status/1326979538178482176
Logopolis. Always a favourite as a kid. Finally getting to see it in sequence as Tom Baker's last story. This is an extremely cool way to spend a Friday night
Someone else who liked Logopolis as a kid is @stephenkb, who stole some of the dialogue for his Harry Potter fanfic https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/06/harry-potter-and-rift-time-stephen-bush-fanfic
Anyway, it starts with a silly story about measuring a police box, and ends with the entire universe in danger and the Doctor in an alliance with his arch nemesis. I can think of at least two occasions on which the new series has borrowed this structure
Although to be fair, The War Games did it first
Peter Davison's first season is a) great, b) got decent ratings and c) has fairly blatant anti-imperialist themes. Considering which it feels weirdly uninfluential. I wonder why.
I wonder if it's not massively action-packed. Lots of ideas; relatively little running around or fighting. All frock, no gun (at least until Earthshock).
Earthshock 1 is tense in a way this show hasn't managed in years - you know something horrible is going to happen, you just don't know what or when. Also, I think, Moffat channels a lot of this in Time of Angels, doesn't he?
Adric died, there's a surprise
On which note, I have strong views about Mawdryn Undead if anyone would like to hear them https://twitter.com/JonnElledge/status/1340807917596004363?s=19
Okay, the Brig's part in this story was originally intended for Ian Chesterton. Reaching back to the show's start like that would have been awesome, but I can't decide whether you'd lose something by not having the Brig as a character the Doctor always* comes back to
Terminus now, the first episode of which was I think the only episode of Who to actually scare the shit out of me when I was a kid
It is about everything breaking apart due to sabotage, plus a lot of people with plague, so it might be a bit close to the bone today
Also, this is the story that @arobertwebb memorably describes as as a sexual awakening in his memoir, so
Blimey, the guy who plays Bor in this is a dead ringer for @tombellforever
Garm's here
Someone set up an extremely niche joke instagram account for him, and only followed me, and I've never worked out who. I mean logically it must be @thejimsmith or @edjeff, but still
https://www.instagram.com/instgarm83/
https://www.instagram.com/instgarm83/
Enlightenment (1983) is the first Doctor Who story both written and directed by women. It includes this character, who is not evil but is *incredibly* creepy and drugs Tegan's drink, smiling all the while. Telling, somehow.
The early 80s is such a good period for the show, and no one ever gives it credit because 70s fandom are noisy/the ratings were high enough to set the narrative. But seasons 18-20 are brilliant, inventive and intelligent run
(Another reason no one gives it credit of course is that the show is going to go off a cliff, in a way that means there's talk of cancellation for the first time, before season 21 is out, but nonetheless)
The King's Demons is about the Master's evil plot to prevent Magna Carta, and is thus, we can assume, Daniel Hannan's favourite Doctor Who story
Because there is no Doctor Who Christmas special any more, I am watching one of the worst Doctor Who stories of the 1980s, accompanied, on WhatsApp, by Dr @mattsymonds
Warriors of the Deep assumes a lot of knowledge of the events of another story that was broadcast once, 14 years earlier
(I must say, having a friend to chat shit to is a much more enjoyable way of watching bad Doctor Who)
BEHOLD, THE TERROR OF THE MYRKA
Right, well, that was terrible, and halfway through I managed to accidentally WhatsApp the line "These humans will die as they have lived - IN A SEA OF THEIR OWN BLOOD" to someone who wasn't watching it with me, so Christmas evening well spent I suppose.
I wrote an entire book this year (details forthcoming soon, in all good bookshops 16 September, yadayadayada) but genuinely when trying to work out what I'd achieved in 2020 my first thought was: "Watched everything from Claws of Axos to Resurrection of the Daleks". I'm so cool
Doctor Who, the first 21 seasons, in tiers:
FUCK YEAH: 2, 3, 7, 18
GREAT: 1, 4, 8, 10, 12, 19, 20
GOOD: 6, 11, 13, 14
NOT BAD BUT FLAWED: 5, 9, 21
ACTUALLY BAD: 15, 16, 17
FUCK YEAH: 2, 3, 7, 18
GREAT: 1, 4, 8, 10, 12, 19, 20
GOOD: 6, 11, 13, 14
NOT BAD BUT FLAWED: 5, 9, 21
ACTUALLY BAD: 15, 16, 17
Planet of Fire is making me angry in a way a story this beige really doesn't justify, so I'm going to skip over that and suggest that the way you fix the 1984 run of Doctor Who is to swap Resurrection and Twin in the running order.
That way, the season finale is a big Dalek story in which the new Doctor might or might not be the sort of angry bastard who'd shoot Davros in cold blood.
(Mindblowing to me that not one major news organisation has attempted to monetise this thread as content. Guys, come on)
One episode in, The Caves of Androzani is not only as good as everyone thinks it is: it's one of those which, watched in context, is actually *better*.
The TARDIS has taken the Doctor beyond the realms of Doctor Who, and it's actually going to kill him.
Okay, I've been taking notes on all this, because a) I'm probably never going to do this again, b) it forces me to pay attention, and c) they spark chat on a nerd mailing list I'm on. This is tragic, yes. But for once I'm going to share them because I love this episode so much
By using an almost unreadable format I have minimised the embarrassment
The 5th Doctor's last cliffhanger
The Twin Dilemma looks a lot less like a tired season ender, and a lot more like a carefully thought through relaunch, than I'd remembered. The only problem is, every thought the production team has had about it is completely wrong.
Sure, let's play the new Doctor as his companion's abusive boyfriend, then take the show off the air for nine months, great idea, lads
Broke the thread dammit https://twitter.com/JonnElledge/status/1345779638841323521?s=19
Theory: Kevin McNally could have made the sixth Doctor work. No piece of casting could have made the companion strangling okay, but the character as written would work better with a younger, angry-young-man kind of actor, rather than a fruity character actor.
Actually, having got to Vengeance on Varos, which has a subplot that lies at the exact midpoint between a Greek chorus and watching people watch Doctor Who on Gogglebox... Colin can do Doctor-ish when they give him funny instead of mean. I apologise for doubting him.
The Two Doctors is not the worst story by any means, but it's *such* a waste. Tonally all over the shop, keeps Troughton away from both Colin and Hines for two hours, completely thematically incoherent. This season keeps being about three drafts from finished.
It is perhaps for the best we do not discuss Timelash.
Last night I watched Timelast part 2 immediately after an episode of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, and I would say that this might actually have enriched the experience
The scene in which Alexei Sayle blows up a series of Daleks using rock and roll deserves to be far more iconic than it actually is.
Slipback is really good and shows that a) they should have made more Doctor Who on the radio, b) the sixth Doctor works better on audi (yes yes I'm aware of the existence of Big Finish thank you) and c) Saward should have done more comedy and less grimdark
Trial... has loads of good stuff in it, even if it doesn't ultimately make a lot of sense. Can't help but think that the reason it's so hated has more to do with the context (the long wait, the cut to episode count, the threat of cancellation) than anything on screen
Also, if you're interested in the show's history - and let's be honest, you're not watching Doctor Who from 1986 if you aren't - it's impossible to watch without knowledge of that context leading you to think of all the other versions that would have worked better.
Anyway, I'm onto Sylvester McCoy now, who was my Doctor, but also has unequivocally the best opening titles and music
Won't be long. Fewer episodes left in the old show than in the first Hartnell season :( https://twitter.com/MsOlive/status/1354858598334148615?s=19
omg
Paradise Towers invents a whole new type of story - highly stylised and symbolic future setting, no attempt at realism - that the show hadn't really done before, but which RTD used so heavily you now can't imagine the show without. Orphan 55 used that formula last season.
There are people who'll tell you the old show peaked in the 70s and was unwatchable by the end. These are extremely silly people.
