Old Doctor Who - Part 4

[Deanjam]

They're usually about £45 on Amazon pre-order, so it's a tad cheaper.

[JamesTC]

It is roundabout the same price Key to Time was on DVD when it was released. Little bit more expensive than Trial of a Time Lord. Seems a fairly normal price for the rereleases to me.

[Malcy]

First Who DVD I bought was Spearhead From Space. It was £20 in Virgin. A couple of years later I was in Ireland and decided to pop in to Virgin there. 80 Euro for single story Classic Who DVDs! Jumped on Play.com and got them for about £7!

[mjwilson]

"This is definitely the last time these will be released"

"Actually, now you've spent £100 for a second hand copy of the box version, you can buy a standard version!"


Hopefully this will mean the initial pre-orders will run out less ludicrously quickly, if nothing else.

I'm not surprised this is happening but I am maybe a bit surprised it's happening so soon.

Mind if you they wait till they've finished the whole collection then physical media really will be dead.

[Alberon]

In general though, the retail prices of Doctor Who Blu-Rays - especially for the new series - have skyrocketed in the last few years. Series 8 is £15.99 on Blu-Ray, Series 11 has less episodes and features yet costs £30.

I dunno if it's the cost that's gone up, more a case of older series being sold cheaper. I certainly paid more for Series 8 back in the day.

I haven't bought any of the Chinball ones yet as they'll drop in price in a few years. I was never not going to buy them (I own Time and the Rani and Timelash on DVD), but I can wait to hatewatch them again.

[Replies From View]

I have Time and the Rani and Timelash on DVD too, along with all the classic era and the modern era series 1 - 11.  I bought series 11 compulsively, as a completist, followed by Revolution.

Then I saw series 12 and the compulsive completism is ended.  Waiting for the next showrunner to fix the Timeless Child garbage before I reengage with the modern era.  I haven't watched the newest special at all.

[Malcy]

Loads of episodes of those Myth Makers interviews gone up on BritBox. They're under the name The Doctors.

[A Hat Like That]

Targets now read:

The Massacre - all the story beats but ending feels incomplete. Literally no idea when its the Dr and when its not. Is that the point? ALSO anachronous timelords.
Didn't know if I'd covered Revelation but that's better than Resurrection.
Rose - absolute joy of a read. Lots of extra details.

Got Marco Polo on the go. It's OK.

[A Hat Like That]

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I'm only on iPlayer etc for a short time.

Torchwood: Children of Earth - never watched that first time around. Can't quite work out what I was doing in July 2009.

While it is just Quatermass (1979) retooled for more modern times ...

  ...  just how did RTD get this on BBC1 for a week? Ending of Episode 4 is particularly brutal, while there's a whole plotline of stay-at-home messages, curfews and the Government using 'vaccinations' as their cover that is very on-the-nose in 2021.

[Jerzy Bondov]

Target Dalek was great. He gets a bit bogged down in the side characters at the expense of the Doctor and Rose, but there's a chapter towards the end from the perspective of the Dalek (going right into what it's like to be born a Dalek and stuffed into a killing machine) which is brilliant.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I'm only on iPlayer etc for a short time.

Torchwood: Children of Earth - never watched that first time around. Can't quite work out what I was doing in July 2009.

While it is just Quatermass (1979) retooled for more modern times ...

  ...  just how did RTD get this on BBC1 for a week? Ending of Episode 4 is particularly brutal, while there's a whole plotline of stay-at-home messages, curfews and the Government using 'vaccinations' as their cover that is very on-the-nose in 2021.

Presumably the BBC saw it and just fell in love with it. Children of Earth was planned as the finale to a full 13 part series with Mickey and Martha's love story and Jack's secret family as the series arcs. But the BBC declined to commission a full series and Freema Agyeman was double booked, so RTD went back to the drawing board. As a last minute rewrite, it really is better than it has any right to be.

[purlieu]

It's so tonally different to any other Torchwood. Basically it's what 'adult Doctor Who' should have been, not endless sex gags. It's an utterly brilliant story, very brutal in places, and believable in terms of the government response. Definitely quite a brave thing for them to commission, and I'm really glad they did.

[Jerzy Bondov]

For me it's 50% the thing everyone says it is (the darkest and most uncomfortable bit of British TV sci-fi since Nigel Kneale), and 50% Torchwood (fucking total shit). I wish it didn't have any of the Torchwood lot in it at all.

[Deanjam]

It's fun to see Captain Jack die so many times.

[The Roofdog]

For me it's 50% the thing everyone says it is (the darkest and most uncomfortable bit of British TV sci-fi since Nigel Kneale), and 50% Torchwood (fucking total shit). I wish it didn't have any of the Torchwood lot in it at all.

Haha, I was considering giving it a rewatch until I got to this. I remember it being good, might just leave it at that.

[Jerzy Bondov]

To be fair I'm in the minority for thinking that.

[Replies From View]

It's so tonally different to any other Torchwood. Basically it's what 'adult Doctor Who' should have been, not endless sex gags. It's an utterly brilliant story, very brutal in places, and believable in terms of the government response. Definitely quite a brave thing for them to commission, and I'm really glad they did.

Agreed.  Also it makes 2009 less of a non-year for Doctor Who than normally accepted.

[VelourSpirit]

Agreed.  Also it makes 2009 less of a non-year for Doctor Who than normally accepted.

It's mad to remember thinking four hour+ long specials (well, one was a day out of 2009), a whole series of Sarah Jane Adventures and an excellent miniseries of Torchwood was a non-year back then. That's Davies and Gardener for you, utterly mad how stressful that era was for them.

[The Roofdog]

It's mad to remember thinking four hour+ long specials (well, one was a day out of 2009), a whole series of Sarah Jane Adventures and an excellent miniseries of Torchwood was a non-year back then. That's Davies and Gardener for you, utterly mad how stressful that era was for them.

And The Eleventh Hour aired 3 months later. Nowadays that's at least a 15 month gap, no questions asked

[Replies From View]

Just a shame the 2009 specials were so nothingy.  I'd got it into my head that the Tenth Doctor's hubris would be his undoing, but the sense of him having gone too far at the end of Waters of Mars didn't lead into anything.  It would have made sense to puncture the Time Lord Victorious stuff before Moffat took over, as he only ever raised it in his tenure in a kind of self-aware parody form.

[Replies From View]

I still haven't watched all of Torchwood series 1, 2 and Miracle Day.  I've caught some episodes from series 1 and 2 and found them stupid, and watched a couple of episodes of Miracle Day and it didn't grip me like Children of Earth.


Are there any standouts I really shouldn't have missed?

[purlieu]

Nope.

[mjwilson]

Targets now read:

The Massacre - all the story beats but ending feels incomplete. Literally no idea when its the Dr and when its not. Is that the point?

I believe (although I wouldn't call myself a huge expert) that that pretty much matches our knowledge of the TV version. Are there any bits where the Doctor sneakily disguises himself as the Abbot? Nobody knows!

[pigamus]

Sue Perryman from Wife in Space couldn't tell any difference. Neil had to tell her when Hartnell wasn't the Doctor. Or probably wasn't...

[Replies From View]

[JamesTC]

I still haven't watched all of Torchwood series 1, 2 and Miracle Day.  I've caught some episodes from series 1 and 2 and found them stupid, and watched a couple of episodes of Miracle Day and it didn't grip me like Children of Earth.


Are there any standouts I really shouldn't have missed?

There is this brilliant one where it turns out humans are the bad guys ahhhh (by Chibnall so you know it is going to be great) and another with a lesbian making machine or something. Top quality stuff.

[purlieu]

It's worth noting that the main thrust of Miracle Day is excellent, and it has some bleak consequences in itself, but that aspect feels like far too much of a retread of Children of Earth, and the second half is a nice (admittedly somewhat daft) idea that's just not done very well. Were it another five part story it'd probably be pretty decent, but it's just a bloated mess in the end.

[A Hat Like That]

Early on in Miracle Day, "its going to be some massive magic space clunge"

And it was.

[A Hat Like That]

Torchwood episodes I can actually remember (but needed wikipedia to help me) -

Countrycide - ending a bit abrupt, but a solid creepy work
Small worlds - I remember liking this, good use of a common fairy tale
Out of Time - good time travel story
Sleeper - action one

There was one about a WW1 soldier that I remember being well put together.

For every one that's alright to good, there's two that are not.

[frajer]

I'd recommend 'Captain Jack Harkness' from near the end of the first series, a decent and spooky episode with interesting flashbacks to Jack in WWII. That was the one that made me think "ah it's found it's footing" but then the finale was a mess and Series 2 was just as patchy and shambolic.

For every one that's alright to good, there's two that are not.

Spot on.

Interestingly, the Big Finish Torchwood releases are consistently strong. They strip back (oooh!) all of the juvenile sex stuff and instead focus on making creepy and great contemporary/ period dramas set at different instances in the Torchwood timeline. Their Series 5 continuation Aliens Among Us was great too. Recommended.