Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 25 of 31

Thread: Doctor Who talk

  1. #1

    Doctor Who talk

    OK, so am I the only person around here who even cared that the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who was last Saturday, an event commemorated by the best anniversary special the show has done since The Three Doctors?

  2. #2
    There's a Dr. Who thread ongoing here, isn't there?? Anyway, yep, thought it was really good. Would even have gone to see it at the theater in 3D if there had been any way I could have made the time.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by trurl View Post
    There's a Dr. Who thread ongoing here, isn't there??
    There might have been back in March or April, or whenever it was the most recent series aired, but there's been no talk about The Day Of The Doctor. Virtually none on Facebook, as well, from what I can tell. Or if there was, it happened more than a week before it actually aired (I didn't go to the second page of archived threads).

    Quote Originally Posted by trurl View Post
    Anyway, yep, thought it was really good. Would even have gone to see it at the theater in 3D if there had been any way I could have made the time.
    Yeah, I'd have like to have seen it in the theater too, but it didn't play anywhere near me. Hell, it didn't even play in this state.

    I thought it was a good episode, easily the best anniversary show since The Three Doctors.

    Also liked the ending, with The Curator.

  4. #4
    Member hippypants's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Texas
    Posts
    2,134
    I haven't seen it yet, don't have BBC, however, it was playing at a few select theaters around Texas. I had company so was busy. I haven't been to Amazon perhaps they may have it to rent. Otherwise I've been watching the Matt Smith eps. as they play on PBS here out of Dallas.

  5. #5
    Very lovely touch with Tom Baker coming in at the end, made me all misty eyed for my past, but my kids were clueless as they grew up with the re-booted Who. Now if only Elizabeth Sladen was around still, life could have been complete.

  6. #6
    Member Brave73's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Charlemagne, Quebec, Canada
    Posts
    47
    Loved the chemistry between Tennant and Smith throughout the episode (reminiscent of Troughton and Pertwee during their appearances together). Tom Baker's appearance was a huge surprise, not to mention Peter Capaldi's brief cameo.



    Also, Peter Davison wrote and directed a 30 minute story about his "involvement" in the 50th anniversary episode (along with Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy). Lots of cameos from past-DW actors and other special guests.

    "The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot"

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01m3kfy

  7. #7
    Recently Resurrected zombywoof's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Sunset Blvd.
    Posts
    385
    I enjoyed it greatly!

  8. #8
    Member
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
    Location
    East Linton, Scotland
    Posts
    446
    Thoroughly enjoyed The Day Of The Doctor on the big screen and in 3D. Felt really something to be taking part in an event which was being screened in cinemas and simultaneously being broadcast around the world.

    Big lump in the throat when Tom Baker made his surprise appearance (quite an achievement to keep that under wraps in this age of spoilers!), and huge round of applause from the audience at the end. Our cinema had to show it in multiple screens to meet demand, and it was fun to hear the applause echoing across the neighouring screens.

    Been a fan since I was 5 yrs old - I'm nearly as old as the show (but I'm sure there won't nearly the same buzz for my 50th next year ) - and I can remember the excitement of my first 'regeneration' when Tom Baker arrived. I met him not long after he started, and here's the evidence John with Dr Who AKA Tom Baker.jpg (ps, I'm NOT the one with the pigtails...)

    Looking forward to seeing where Capaldi takes the Doctor next year.

  9. #9
    Member scags's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    NY /NJ
    Posts
    0
    They did a good job with it. The script was great, and they didn't ham it up, too much.

  10. #10
    Nice picture, Valen. Tom Baker is still my favorite Doctor (with Elizabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith as my favorite Companion). And yeah, it was really cool that for once, they kept something like that under their hats (pun intended). Apparently, the reason for the simultaneous worldwide broadcast was to avoid spoilers, ie "If everyone watches at the same time, nobody will have the big reveals spoiled for them".

    Did anyone notice the scarf the girl with the big glasses was wearing? Looks awfully familiar!

    And yeah, the interaction between Matt and David was very much like Patrick and Jon in The Three Doctors, with John Hurt basically filling in for William Hartnell in that scenario! I loved that groan he gave as Matt yells "GERONIMO!" and David yells "ALON-SY!" Seems to me like I haven't seen John Hurt doing much comedy, but he obviously has a real talent for it.

    (Wow! What a career track John Hurt has had! He's gone from being the first human victim in the Alien franchise to appearing in a Paul McCartney video to Doctor Who!)

  11. #11
    Member Brave73's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Charlemagne, Quebec, Canada
    Posts
    47
    Quote Originally Posted by GuitarGeek View Post
    And yeah, the interaction between Matt and David was very much like Patrick and Jon in The Three Doctors, with John Hurt basically filling in for William Hartnell in that scenario! I loved that groan he gave as Matt yells "GERONIMO!" and David yells "ALON-SY!" Seems to me like I haven't seen John Hurt doing much comedy, but he obviously has a real talent for it.
    I thought Hurt was brilliant as the straight man to Tennant's and Smith's comedic moments. Loved that scene in the forest when Doctors #10 and #11 were holding their sonic screwdrivers and Hurt sarcastically replies "“Those are screwdrivers, not weapons. What are you going to do, assemble a cabinet at them?"

    Another favorite scene from the episode...


  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Brave73 View Post
    I thought Hurt was brilliant as the straight man to Tennant's and Smith's comedic moments. Loved that scene in the forest when Doctors #10 and #11 were holding their sonic screwdrivers and Hurt sarcastically replies "“Those are screwdrivers, not weapons. What are you going to do, assemble a cabinet at them?"
    Yeah, there were a lot of great lines tossed into the show. It was also great to see the Zygons again, finally. And that final shot showing all the Doctors was great too.

  13. #13
    Member
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Re-deployed as of 22 July
    Posts
    0
    Last week I bought the 3 disc box of The War Games story with Patrick Troughton, bloody wonderful in B & W, the Doctor with Jamie and Zoe. Wonderful hippy designed plastic hangings on the sets. And a cameo by David Troughton, he was very young then, I met him once in Chelsea when they were filming a Bergerac episode that he was guesting in.

    5 Fav Docs.
    1. Tom Baker
    2. Sylvester McCoy
    3. Matt Smith
    4. Patrick Troughton
    5. Jon Pertwee

    5 Docs I didn't like

    1. Colin Baker
    2. Peter Davidson
    3. William Hartnell
    4. David Tennant
    5. Chris Ecclestone

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by PeterG View Post
    Last week I bought the 3 disc box of The War Games story with Patrick Troughton, bloody wonderful in B & W, the Doctor with Jamie and Zoe. Wonderful hippy designed plastic hangings on the sets. And a cameo by David Troughton, he was very young then, I met him once in Chelsea when they were filming a Bergerac episode that he was guesting in.
    Oh yes. In the 80's, Doctor Who's US distributor (Lionheart, I think was the name of the company) cut all the serials they had to access to into "made for TV movies", so that they could be shown in a single night. With The War Games, it was so long that they had to split it across two nights.

    I think Terence Dicks said that thing about The War Games was that the first episode was great, the last episode was great, "it was the eight episodes in the middle that were the bloody problem". I know there's a lot of talk on the DVD commentaries about how the longer the stories got, the harder it was to keep the story moving. I guess that's why that was the only time they tried to do something as extravagant as a 10 part story!

    As for least favorite Doctors, right now, Colin Baker and William Hartnell are the only ones who come to mind in that regard for me. Colin Baker was hampered, I think by this idea that his Doctor was supposed to be "mad" or "unstable" or whatever, and for me that didn't quite work too well.

    With Hartnell, so far I've only seen four of his stories, those being the first four (which are on the Beginnings DVD set, though Marco Polo appears only in audio form, with still photos because that's one of the "lost" stories) and The Aztecs (which was shown on BBC America recently as part of their "The Doctors Revisited" series of programs explaining the history of the show). My impression is that he's sort of a grumpy old man, not someone anyone would really choose to travel with for any length of time.

    Ya know, now that I think about it, I wonder how old Susan was supposed to be. She's sort of presented in the show as a teenager, but how do we know she was really that young? Carol Ann Ford was in her 20's when she played the role (wow, and I thought they did that on American shows!), and as we've seen, just because a Time Lord/Lady looks young, doesn't mean he/she is young! For all we know, she could be a 100 years old, but just pretended to be a teenager for whichever purposes, perhaps because she had to do all the leg work for The Doctor while they were stranded at Totter's Lane, so she went incognito as a teenager so as to not appear suspicious.

    Speaking of which Totter's Lane, did anyone notice the school at the beginning of The Day Of The Doctor, where Clara is teaching? I believe that's the school that Susan was attending in The Unearthly Child, also the school in Remembrance Of The Daleks (where Ace beat the bloody snot out of a Dalek with a Doctor modified baseball bat). I didn't catch in the actual broadcast (the sign goes by too fast in the broadcast, with the print too small) but according to Wikipedia, Ian Chesterton is the head of governors, and the headmaster is one W. Coburn, apparently an allusion to Waris Hussein and Anthony Coburn, who respectively directed and wrote An Unearthly Child.

  15. #15
    Member
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Re-deployed as of 22 July
    Posts
    0
    Yea, Dicks said on the interview disc that they had to keep employing tricks to drag the story out to make it a 10 party, and he said that because they had so many wars to choose from, it wasn't a difficult process, many epsiodes employed the same format and storyline 1. resolve cliffhanger - gunfight 2. new war arena - gunfight 3. capture - gunfight 4. escape - gunfight 5. travel in the SIDRAT 6. recruit more resistance soldiers - gunfight 7. capture - cliffhanger

    And after having watched all 10, which I loved, I did kind of get that feeling (that Dicks mentioned) of, hey, they spent a lot of time coming and going from that barn and a lot of time having shootouts and a lot of coming and going from the war games control room and a lot of time being captured and escaping over and over again without the story actually moving forward in any way.

  16. #16
    Member
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Re-deployed as of 22 July
    Posts
    0
    At the end of War Games the Time Lords force a regen on the Doc & exile him to Earth.
    Great spacey music & back in the days when actors had to act such things out, watch Troughton's facial antics. They achieve the transformation very well.


  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by PeterG View Post
    At the end of War Games the Time Lords force a regen on the Doc & exile him to Earth.
    I believe that's the only on screen regeneration where we don't see the new Doctor's face. I think every other instance where the Doctor regenerated on screen, at least in the original show, the successor is seen on camera, even if for a brief moment. But in this instance, the first time we actually see Jon Pertwee as The Doctor is when he tumbles out of the TARDIS at the start of Spearhead From Space, the next story (and the first one in colour, and the only serial to be shot entirely on film).

    I gather that in the mini-episode (where are we supposed to go to see those?!) that sets up Day Of The Doctor, see the Eighth Doctor regenerate into...well, I guess we're supposed to call him "The War Doctor" but really he's the actual Ninth Doctor.

    And then of course, at the end of Day Of The Doctor, we see him start to regenerate again, presumably into Christopher Eccleston, but they cut away just as it's beginning.

  18. #18
    Member
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
    Location
    East Linton, Scotland
    Posts
    446
    Quote Originally Posted by GuitarGeek View Post
    I believe that's the only on screen regeneration where we don't see the new Doctor's face.
    Well, there's also the embarassing debacle when Colin Baker's Dr regenerates into Sylvester McCoy. Baker refused to participate, so McCoy had to lie on the Tardis floor face down with a curly blond wig.....not the series finest moment

  19. #19
    Highly Evolved Orangutan JKL2000's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Location
    Westchester, NY
    Posts
    16,529
    I like the old Dr. Who episodes I've seen with Tom Baker, but while my wife and son are into the new ones, I find it one of the most formulaic shows I've ever seen. Every episode is about some alien creatures that are doing harm to humans, but the doctor finds out there's some justification for it when he's somehow able to communicate with them. Of course, that describes a lot of Star Trek episodes too. The episodes with Tom Baker were much richer, though.

    That "weeping angel" episode with the statues that move when no one's looking at them was cool, though, and scary!

    Also, one of my son's friends went trick or treating last year dressed as an "Empty Child" from Dr. Who. People would ask what he was supposed to be, and he said "I'm an Empty Child."

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Valen View Post
    Well, there's also the embarassing debacle when Colin Baker's Dr regenerates into Sylvester McCoy. Baker refused to participate, so McCoy had to lie on the Tardis floor face down with a curly blond wig.....not the series finest moment
    If I remember correctly, Colin Baker had been fired from the job after the end of Trial Of A Timelord, then was asked to come back and do the regeneration sequence. That's why he refused to do it. In that instance, you saw the new Doctor, but not the old one. And I think that was the first time the regeneration occurred at the start of the new series, rather than the last episode of the previous one. They essentially did the same thing in the made for TV movie, where Sylvester McCoy steps out of the TARDIS into the middle of an attempted execution of someone who pissed off a crime boss, and gets caught in the cross fire.

  21. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by JKL2000 View Post
    That "weeping angel" episode with the statues that move when no one's looking at them was cool, though, and scary!
    The first episode with the Weeping Angels, which was called Blink, was easily one of the best episodes of the new series. Fantastic, scary, and a great ending. The second one, which came quite a bit later and had River Song and Amy in it, was not bad, but not as good as the first one. I liked the idea that a video of a Weeping Angel could turn into an actual Weeping Angel. The last one, the one set in Manhattan I didn't like as much, mainly because I thought the idea of the Statue Of Liberty being a Weeping Angel was going maybe just a little too far, plus I was unhappy about the way it ended.

  22. #22
    Member
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Re-deployed as of 22 July
    Posts
    0
    While Troughton, Pertwee and Baker were the Doctors of my youth and I loved them all, it is clear to see that Pertwee was the last of the "serious" Doctors. Hartnell was a doctor no one knew anything about, with Troughton we find out he is a Time Lord, and it is a very serious matter, and he is clearly scared of the Time Lords and returning to his home planet. Pertwee still kept it all very mysterious, serious and secretive. It's not until Tom Baker that we hear the Doctor openly joking about things in general, including his own rebellious background and run-ins with the Time Lords. In the Peter Cushing films of course the Doctor was a human Doctor, nothing more.
    Last edited by PeterG; 12-04-2013 at 01:56 PM.

  23. #23
    Member wideopenears's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    SF Bay Area
    Posts
    976
    Dug it. Liked the "Science of Dr. Who" special too, did anyone else watch that? Pretty cool, and a good job trying to explain relativity, etc., in layman's terms.

  24. #24
    Member
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Re-deployed as of 22 July
    Posts
    0
    Quote Originally Posted by GuitarGeek View Post
    But in this instance, the first time we actually see Jon Pertwee as The Doctor is when he tumbles out of the TARDIS at the start of Spearhead From Space, I gather that in the mini-episode (where are we supposed to go to see those?!) that sets up Day Of The Doctor, see the Eighth Doctor regenerate into.
    Exactly, Troughton starts pulling faces at the end of War Games & we see Pertwee first in Spearhead.

  25. #25
    Member Brave73's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Charlemagne, Quebec, Canada
    Posts
    47
    Time of the Doctor teaser trailer...


Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •