Doctor Who: The Great Unwatched

The Sensorites. Here’s (not) looking at you, guys…

Bit of a fan, me. I got Terrance Dicks to autograph my copy of The Making of Doctor Who at a Target Books promotion at my school in 1977, I audio-taped Logopolis part 4, I bought Doctor Who Weekly issue 1, I went to a convention at Imperial College in 1987 when no one was watching the show on TV anymore, I’ve drunk with Andrew Pixley, I’ve criticised JNT in heated pub debates with DWAS luminaries. All that stuff and more. But  most of all, to prove my allegiance,  I’ve got all the classic series DVDs. Every single one. Haven’t watched them all yet, obviously.

The ironic thing about all these missing episodes re-appearing and being greeted as “new-old” Doctor Who by fans is that, for many us there’s still a whole shed-load of episodes that aren’t missing that we haven’t seen yet. Not because we don’t intend to, its just we’re taking our time over it, us tardy fans – things to do, people to see, you know how it goes. So while it’s great to have The Web of Fear back (and I’ve watched it twice now, just to make sure), that doesn’t mean I’m some kind of archive junkie waiting for my next fix of previously unseen old Who. Because I’ve got a whole fresh supply of the purest stuff right here on my DVD shelf to keep me wired to my vortex manipulator  (to completely over-extend the drug analogy) for ages, man. I mean, wow, the stuff I haven’t seen…

Planet of Giants

Never seen it, except to check out the Ian Levine restoration of part 4. Which was fucking terrible. I really should have watched the actual story but oh no, I jumped straight to the Levine thing. That’s how much of a fan I am.

The Aztecs

I’ve tried to watch this twice now, dammit I’ve even paid for it twice what with the Special Edition coming out and I still can’t get past Episode 1. It’s supposed to be really good, right? Well why does it put me to sleep? Answers on a bejeweled parchment.

The Romans

Marvelous story, sublime performance from Hartnell, tremendous sets, sparkling script…Never seen past Episode 1. I probably got a bit tired as I’m a “nighttime consumer”. Its what happens when you have a life and have to stay up late to enjoy these things but it didn’t prevent me from watching The Ark this week. Good story, The Ark!

The Space Museum

Just sitting there, unwatched…

The Gunfighters

I did watch Episode 1 and it was surprising good. Lovely sets, good performances, well directed. But then I remembered how much more fun The Time Monster is and started watching that again. Yes, The Time Monster and yes, again.

The Ice Warriors

Yeah, I saw it on VHS and it it was…well, a bit dull. But it’s Troughton so I will watch this soon. Perhaps. I do think though that it’s really important to try and come back to things fresh and watch them on their own merits. So I’ll try and think “not dull” when I watch it.

Then there’s the stories I saw on first broadcast but have avoided ever since, for one reason or another…probably in order to re-watch The Time Monster or The Chase again, both of which are just bonkers fun. Especially The Time Monster, as you know.

“…its got cartoon bits and everwifink…”

The Monster of Peladon

I must have seen this in 1974 when I was five but I’m buggered if I’m going to watch it in 2014 when I’m 45. I’ll wait until I’m 50. Or until somebody offers to pay me to write a book about how I was a withdrawn, rather  lonely child but Doctor Who became my escape into imaginative freedom and now I’m watching it all over again in the company of my  hilarious pet monkey. Because we need more of those sort of books, don’t we?

By the way, if this story was a Who song,  it would be Wicked Uncle Ernie.

The Key To Time Season

Here’s another box set I’ve bought twice and not watched. I mean, of course I fancied Mary Tamm, of course we all loved Tom, of course as kids we though K-9 was cool. Its just at the time I found this whole year completely forgettable and for some reason can’t be asked to watch the DVDs. Which is doubly odd because if I watched the DVDs, they’d help me remember why I found it completely forgettable…

Lovely box, though. Nice shade of pink. Be a shame to take the shrinkwrap off, if I’m honest.

Meglos

Here’s one I genuinely might have missed as an 11 year old because you-know-what was on ITV. Yes, Erin Gray in a spandex bodysuit. Shame that Jackie Hill returned to the show in a less-than-lauded story but that DVD cover looks intriguing…

But I was watching this:

…which trumped Tom Baker as a cactus hands-down,

Four to Doomsday

Early Davison (makes strange cliicky sound with his larynx)

The Visitation

Ditto (ditto)

Time-Flight

Do I detect a pattern forming here?

Warriors of the Deep

Here’s another one I stopped watching in order to watch The Time Monster.  I really should watch this though – visually it’s got a sort of Space:1999 vibe to it, as I recall. Thinking about it, perhaps I was watching Space:1999 instead of The Key to Time season?

“Space:1999” take a break, yesterday. Patrick Mower just out of shot.

Trial of a Timelord

They should have just found him guilty and regenerated him at the end of Episode 1 and time-jumped straight into…

Season 24

Ah…

Fact, Fantasy and Bullshit: Doctor Who Anew

It’s not exactly a JFK moment but tarry awhile and indulge me. You see, I remember exactly where I was when I found out  Doctor Who was coming back …

I was watching rubbish TV.

It was 7:15am on the 26th September 2003, a Friday,  and my usual dose of breakfast TV was mildly distracting me from waking up. Ian Lee, a comedian apparently, was flicking through that day’s newspapers when something caught my eye. The show was RI:SE,  an easy-going post Big Breakfast effort from Channel 4 that was notable for being shot in a makeshift studio inside Whiteleys shopping arcade in West London, just around the corner from where I was working at the time. I don’t really know why  it was my wakeup experience of choice, I guess it was just the least demanding… (Dear God in the trees, you know the lying’s getting out of hand when you start lying to yourself…)

Being the presenter of a show aimed at the happening young  professional segment of the TV spectrum, Lee was fairly dismissive of that day’s Telegraph, but did accidently hold the front page up before the camera long enough for me to see something he didn’t – the words “Doctor” and “Who” in a small box-out near the bottom of the page pointing to a larger article within. I made a mental note to check out whatever that story was on my way to work that morning. Because lets face it, by 2003 the profile of the show had slipped so low that a cheapo interweb Flash animation starring  a tragically miscast  Richard E Grant was being touted around as an “official” continuation of the TV series and nobody seemed to give much of  shit. Doctor Who had become a great cultural shug of the shoulders.

To me, in that faraway wasteland of stunted possibility and over-earnest  fan projects blowing all about the margins like stale farts, any kind of news that might point to a brighter, more fragrant future was worth checking out…just in case.

So…(and by the way, if you really want the full effect of this tale, this is the point to cue up I Am The Doctor by Murray Gold and  leave it running till the end, Murray certainly would)… imagine by slack-jawed shock as I walked into a branch of  WHSmith half an hour to find myself brutally force-abducted by a band of randy space vixens who proceeded to rip my shirt open and lasciviously….No, eh?? no…as  I pick up that newspaper to read that the BBC were actually going to make Doctor Who again; real Doctor Who, on Saturday nights, with a top writer at the helm. Not some bogus BBCi webcast thing, not some ludicrous Hollywood hybrid with all flash and no bollocks…not some charity skit…the real thing.

If you were a fan, it was just the best time ever, because you had the anticipation and the drip-feed of information, bit-by-bit, building up expectation that this, finally, was going to be a proper go-around for our show. Oh yes, this was the real deal. The media buzz was amazing actually; that little boxed-out announcement morphed into pages of tabloid guff exploiting any and every tidbit of information they could glean about the new show. A great hail of fact, fantasy and bullshit kept us at a pitch of such kinetic geek-citement it was almost dangerous to touch us in case we squealed loudly and exploded.   And while the geeks sweated and fretted, the press had a field day. They still do, as it goes, and perhaps that’s the greatest legacy Russell T Davies left behind. All that glitz and glamour meant front pages, popular awards, spin-offs and massive audiences both here and across the pond. Its a wonderful success story that just keeps going. Did you see the live annoncement show for the Twelfth?

Modern “Who” coverage – all publicity is good publicity! Oh, hang on…

10 years its been. And we’re about to get the fourth new Doctor since the show came back. That’s as far as Tom Baker in the old money. And that milestone has not been reached because new Doctors are coming and going with late-80s-style haste and indecision; quite the contrary, we’ve had so many new episodes  to add to our Excel spreadsheets its indecent. And, in Ecclestone, Tennant and Smith we’ve had an opening salvo to match Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee. And with the casting of the towering  Peter Capald casting  almost daring the production team to up their game even further,  that Tom Baker analogy is even more on-the-nose. The best is surely still to come.

Its not all great of course, but it mostly is, and that’s great in itself.  There are things that get my goat: the obsession with “love conquers all” stories, too much contrived snogging, too many 42-minute stories with trite resolutions and under-blown peril (bring back the 2-parters!), the repeated use of Chris Chibnell and too much of Murray Gold walloping us  with unsubtle musical signposts to the emotional beats,  just in case we’ve missed them. But then I see my daughter has gone and left an excited  YouTube comment about how she thinks Murray Gold’s  stuff is “soooooo  awwwwsome!!!” and I relax, no problem, really, none at all. She loves Doctor Who, she’s grown up with it. She knows quality when she sees it.

The best bit of all? Its really isn’t the same show after all.

Its better.

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“Watching Dr Who”

…is the name of the painting by Christiane Kubrick, artist and wife of Stanley.

I love the idea that Doctor Who was part of the Kubrick domestic routine in the 70s. I imagine he was more of a Tom Baker man, given his penchant for wild-eyed “large” leading performers. He was also an admirer of Gerry Anderson, or at least his technical team, given their ubiquity on 2001. A few years later his correspondence revealed a deep irritation at the exisence of Space:1999; so much so that he was considering legal action. I can see his point, the first act of the opening episode (“Breakaway”) is a virtual re-tread of the Heywood Floyd-goes-to-the-Moon sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey, complete with deeply derivative designs, music and all round..er, aesthetic. But if you re-hire SFX man Brian Johnson, who jumped ship after Thunderbirds to work on 2001, the visuals are bound to have a certain similarity. No excuse for the plot though.  And don’t forget that colon-tastic title. I don’t think I’d ever seen a colon until 1975,  but after Space:1999 they came hoving around like rats, all the sci-fi franchises tossed them around like beach balls in a Miami brothel. Its all over now, of course. JJ Abrahams isn’t having them in his Star Trek films and where he goes others have followed. Colons had became synonomous with bad suffixes like IV: The Quest for Peace, :Insurrection, :Nemesis and my favourite, that oft used sign a franchise was hoisting the white flag of creative surrender… :The Beginning

There are no colons in this painting. It simply is.

Shame they’re watching “The Mutants” (season 9, 1972) but there you go.