The Doctor Who Thread

[Gothmogxx]

Originally Posted by nosferatu42

I like Troughton, but i would say every doctor has a fair amount of shit stories.
Convince me otherwise.
Honestly i'd probably say it's a 50/50 situation.
I'm just going to hide behind the sofa now.

Jon doesn't have a shit story. Even something like The Time Monster, his worst out of all 24, has its merits. Same with Claws of Axos.

Colin is good enough. Twin Dilemma is unintentionally hilarious and Timelash is nowhere near as bad as is claimed. I enjoy his other Stories.

Chris and David have decent eras as well. Even something which should be bad like Fear Her is bolstered by David and Billie's great chemistry.

Although this is the problem Jodie has. She just isn't a good Doctor and doesn't have the advantage of improving poorer stories with her performance.

[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by iank

I have to admit that I'm afraid I just could not get into The Faceless Ones animation at all. It was Power all over again for me. Not sure what the issue was - I loved the part-animated Shada and the wholly animated Macra Terror, but while I've enjoyed the extant episodes in the past, I just found it agonisingly boring. I don't know whether the animation is worse again, whether the actual story is boring, or whether the animators have been held back by having to animate too much or by the largely real-world settings that prevent the kind of visual reimagining Macra Terror enjoyed, but this thing just kept sending me to sleep. Very disappointing

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

I agree with you.

I too found it immensely boring for the most part. The best episodes were one and six, which were the ones which included other animation rather than people. The planes looked great, sadly the characters didn't.

I don't think it helped that Ben and Polly weren't in the story much and also the fact that the story was just so damn talky. As far as entertainment goes it was deadly dull. Oh and the Chameleons? What sort of monster were they? Absolutely pointless.

I liked it

Previously I had only seen the surviving live action episodes, which bored me, so I wasn't expecting much, but I thought the fully animated B/W story was thoroughly entertaining

I didn't like the Pauline Collins character tho - she really grated on my nerves!

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Susan Foreman

I liked it

I didn't like the Pauline Collins character tho - she really grated on my nerves!

They basically swapped Ben and Polly for her, no wonder they left at the end of it.

[Mojo]

Originally Posted by Gothmogxx

Jon doesn't have a shit story. Even something like The Time Monster, his worst out of all 24, has its merits. Same with Claws of Axos.

Claws Of Axos is one of my favourite Third Doctor stories!

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Mojo

Claws Of Axos is one of my favourite Third Doctor stories!

Same here.

[Susan Foreman]

Who: Before And After #17
Name: Mark Eden
Year(s): 1964
Stories: Marco Polo Episode 1: The Roof Of The World / Marco Polo Episode 7: Assassin At Peking
Character(s): Marco Polo

Before Who:
Films - Captured (1959), Out of the Shadow (1961), Operation Snatch (1962), The L-Shaped Room (1962), The Password Is Courage (1962), The Partner (1963), Heavens Above!* (1963), Blind Corner (1963)
Television - Quatermass and the Pit, ITV Television Playhouse, Knight Errant Limited, Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond, Armchair Theatre, The Avengers, Sir Francis Drake, Dimensions of Fear, The Saint, The Verdict Is Yours, Jezebel ex UK, 24-Hour Call, Love Story, BBC Sunday-Night Play, The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre, Espionage

After Who:
Films - Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), Game for Three Losers (1965), The Pleasure Girls (1965), Doctor Zhivago (1965), I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967), Attack on the Iron Coast (1968), Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968), Arthur? Arthur! (1969), Nobody Ordered Love (1972), Fern, the Red Deer (1976), Richard's Things (1980), Claudia (1985)
Television - Detective, Catch Hand, Armchair Mystery Theatre, Emergency-Ward 10, Thirty-Minute Theatre, Out of the Unknown, Till Death Us Do Part, St Ives, Trapped, Man in a Suitcase, The Prisoner, ITV Playhouse, Crime Buster, Beyond Belief, The Troubleshooters, ITV Sunday Night Theatre, If It Moves, File It, Suspicion, Spyder's Web, Clouds of Witness, Crown Court, The Pathfinders, Arthur of the Britons, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, The Adventures of Black Beauty, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Special Branch, New Scotland Yard, Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors, Doctor, The Top Secret Life of Edgar Briggs, General Hospital, Sam, Warship, Murder, Jesus of Nazareth, London Belongs to Me, Poldark, Wilde Alliance, The Law Centre, ITV Sunday Night Drama, Cribb, The Sandbaggers, The Square Leopard, The Professionals, Coronation Street*, Gun Fight at the Joe Kaye Corral, Sorrel and Son, The Practice, The Detective, The Collectors, Cluedo, Agatha Christie: Poirot, Doctors, Casualty, An Adventure in Space and Time

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Marco Polo in Mark Eden and Derren Nesbitt, actually has some actors of some standing.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The cover artwork to Justin Richards eighth Doctor BBC novel Option Lock, published in Feb 1998.

[Gothmogxx]

I enjoyed the Faceless Ones animation, though not as much as when I first watched the Recon back in 2018. I think its a Story with a solid first episode, along with the final two. But all the airport stuff in between is mixed. Occasionally good, but sometimes dull.

I actually liked the idea of the chameleons: they're not some alien force out to destroy the earth or take it over. They literally just need to steal people in order to survive as a species, which works when you factor in the Doctor. He's not afraid to play them off against each other at the end, but as soon as their threat is gone, he immediately offers to help them. The First Doctor, at least in his early days, wouldn't have done that. This moment still feels like its when he has truly become the Doctor we all know and later love.

Shame Ben and Polly get such a horrible send off though.

Overall, out of the eight Stories script writer Malcolm Hulke worked on, its easily his weakest, but still very much worthwhile. A testament to how skilled he was as a writer. From a writing and story perspective, almost all of his other Stories can match the works of Holmes, Houghton, RTD and Moffat.

[Susan Foreman]

Who: Before And After #18
Name: Derren Nesbitt
Year(s): 1964
Stories: Marco Polo Episode 1: The Roof Of The World - Marco Polo Episode 7: Assassin At Peking
Character(s): Tegana

Before Who:
Films - The Silent Enemy (1958), A Night to Remember* (1958), Room at the Top (1959), Behemoth, the Sea Monster (1959), In the Nick (1960), Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960), The Man in the Back Seat (1961), Victim (1961), Karolina Rijecka (1961), Strongroom (1962), Term of Trial (1962), Kill or Cure (1962), The Informers (1963)
Television - The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, Sword of Freedom, Armchair Theatre, The Adventures of William Tell, The Larkins, The Invisible Man, ITV Television Playhouse, Skyport, Theatre 70, Danger Man, International Detective, Man of the World, Dixon of Dock Green, Emergency-Ward 10, Taxi!, The Sentimental Agent, The Saint, No Hiding Place

After Who:
Films - Life in Danger (1964), The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965), The Blue Max (1966), Operation Third Form (1966), The Naked Runner (1967), Nobody Runs Forever (1968), Where Eagles Dare (1968), Monte Carlo or Bust! (1969), Burke & Hare (1972), Innocent Bystanders (1972), Ooh... You Are Awful (1972), Not Now Darling (1973), Shado (1974), The Amorous Milkman (1975), Spy Story (1976), The Playbirds (1978), Give Us Tomorrow (1978), The Saint and the Brave Goose (1979), The Guns and the Fury (1981), Funny Money (1983), Eat the Rich (1987), Bullseye! (1990), Fatal Sky (1990), Double X: The Name of the Game (1992), Pu-239 (2006), Flawless (2007), The Hot Potato (2011), Run For Your Wife (2012), Home for Christmas (2014), Tucked (2018)
Television - The Protectors, ITV Play of the Week, Public Eye, Gideon's Way, Danger Man, The Rat Catchers, Mr. Rose, Write a Play, Softly, Softly, The Troubleshooters, Man in a Suitcase, The Prisoner*, Honey Lane, Special Branch, Strange Report, UFO, The Persuaders!, Return of the Saint, The House on Garibaldi Street, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, The Chinese Detective, The Comic Strip Presents..., Bergerac, Hale and Pace, The Courtroom