Doctor Who for the rest of us

[shiftwork2]

Not entirely sure about this but I think we could benefit from a thread for the rest of us who may remember Doctor Who from broadcast.   It has all just gone up on iPlayer and this is new.

We may not be experts but the nostalgia may be just as keenly felt.  Doctor Who is not the preserve of anyonee.

I have dipped my toe in and it has been fun.  My era is 1977-1981.  It's Tom and he's the avuncular charismatic Doctor we thought he was.  There may well be other fondly-remembered eras.

Be kind to us weaklings and suggest the best bit of all the telly that could make the memories of us here.

[non capisco]

Pertwee is my guy. Spearhead From Space is possibly the most perfect Doctor Who serial there ever was. Mannequins coming to life and going garrity, smashing out of shop windows on a 1970s London high street. Come on now. All shot on film. A newly regenerated Doctor coming to terms with the fact he's stuck on Earth and his TARDIS ain't fit for purpose any time soon.

Pretty much love the whole of Pertwee's run. Inferno ramps up the narrative stakes to fever dream intensity levels. Carnival Of Monsters is like the nightmarish Monty Python deja vu sketch but on a boat with all beasts and that. The Green Death has dialogue like "But Doctor, it's exactly your cup of tea. The fellow's bright green apparently...and dead." His second series where The Master turns out be the villain in every story and he still acts surprised. There are a scant few shit boring ones like The Monster Of Peladon but even that has a character that looks like a sentient yellow penis head in a cloak with a voice like Hattie Jacques pretending to be a mouse.

[shiftwork2]

I need to get on this.  Pertwee is before my time but the feel is oddly comforting, like a toddler's exploration of the grey seal of a wet and warm washing machine.  The early 70s view of the future.  Monty Python hints at a world of low budget stagey stiffness and I would love this.

[non capisco]

I have a nostalgic fondness for some Peter Davison stories because those are the ones I first watched and some of them like Snakedance, Kinda and The Awakening are still exactly as strange as they seemed to me when I was around five years old. His run is much more of a mixed bag though, although his final story The Caves Of Androzani is top tier Doctor Who. Perfectly paced, agreeably eccentric (at one point a villainous character breaks the fourth wall for fuck all reason I can tell), one of the best cliffhangers of all and my favourite regeneration scene of any Doctor. Straight into Colin Baker and his dog eggs first story, like when The Fall followed up Your Future Our Clutter with Ersatz GB.

[Toki]

There's a possibility you've missed Graham Crowden in the Horns of Nimon. If that's the case, you must see his introduction and his last scene. The rest of that post-Hinchcliffe/Holmes era is a footnote to his performance (people will argue that City of Death is the best thing from that series, but I'm going to ignore that opinion for now).

[non capisco]

Horns Of Nimon might well be the best bad Doctor Who story. Stack heeled disco bulls bending down and shooting lasers out of their horns and Graham Crowden not so much chewing the scenery as munching it. YOOO HOOOOOO! LORD NIIIIIIIIIMON!

[Toki]

He looks straight down the camera in his first scene, and it's just completely delightful.

[Bourgeois Pig Shit List]

Quick guide:

60s stuff - black 'n' white, lethally slow. You'll fall asleep ten minutes into part two of whatever story you're watching & when you wake up, hours later, it'll still be going. Picks up a bit later on when there's regular dolly birds/a young man in a kilt to look at. Best to skip

70s stuff - in colour now but the palette is still fairly limited, nicotine brown and prison-bedding green being the most common. Stories are a little faster but still fucking endless. Major haunto/paedo vibes give way to the smell of Brut failing to overpower body odour. Avoid.

80s stuff - gaudily-coloured nonsense that goes too fast but still takes absolutely fucking forever. Not as good as it used to be, either. Top notes of pretension and wank,  deeper tones of pantomime and camp, nasty afterburp.

90s stuff - no, you're alright.


Or, alternatively:

The Romans - fun little early 60's romp, William Hartnell actually hilarious

Horror Of Fang Rock - proper spooky stuff, Tom trapped in a lighthouse with a murderous alien

Rememberence Of The Daleks - late 80s comeback, Sylvester McCoy effortlessly running rings around everyone.

[superthunderstingcar]

Horns Of Nimon might well be the best bad Doctor Who story. Stack heeled disco bulls bending down and shooting lasers out of their horns and Graham Crowden not so much chewing the scenery as munching it. YOOO HOOOOOO! LORD NIIIIIIIIIMON!

You meddlesome hussy!

[shiftwork2]

Horror Of Fang Rock - proper spooky stuff, Tom trapped in a lighthouse with a murderous alien

Thanks, happens to be where I'm starting.

[jamiefairlie]

First memories are halfway through P'twee so recall fondly Unit, Green Death and so on. I love this era as it fits in nicely with things like Time Tunnel and similar earth based sci-fi things that were in the ether at the time.

The gothic Tom era was my favourite, loved the eerie Sherlock Holmes meets Cthulhu feeling to those stories. Romana 2 is probably my favourite companion.

I have a fondness for Davison as I liked his gentleness but the stories certainly went downhill sharply with a few notable exceptions

I was appalled by Colin Baker and lost interest at that point.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

First memories for me? The 1996 "tv movie". Put me off watching anything else until about 2019 or something, when I watched Robot and Genesis of the Daleks and got closer to "getting" it. Started nu-Who last summer but stalled somewhere in the middle of the Smith run because... not sure why. Got distracted

[gilbertharding]

This is a good thread, I reckon.

I was born in 1969, so I can completely remember Jon Pertwee being the doctor, but only in fragments. There was a cliff-hanger where they ran through some ruins and came face to face with a huge dinosaur. One of the girls who he hung around with gave me peculiar feelings... I also remember the episode with the Who Mobile which I thought was hugely cool.

I began my rewatch of the iPlayer Dump with the Pyramids of Mars - which I thought I had fairly clear memories of - although as it turns out that was from 1975, when I was 6, so perhaps not. I could have sworn that the guy in the room behind the sarcophagus turned out to have the head of a cat.

I'm definitely going to watch the Seeds of Doom, the one where Leela comes in, and then the Key of Time, Logolopolis and a couple of early Davidson ones, and The 5 Doctors, then try and trace the story of the Daleks a bit.

Oh yeah - we had a black and white telly until at least 1980, so this is all a bit strange anyway.

[gilbertharding]

Of course, the main thing I want from Doctor Who is to get the feeling when you get home from a shopping trip with your parents in the old Cortina, through the cold and dark, and tea is a tin of Heinz chicken soup, a round of ham sandwiches and a slice of Mr Kipling cake, before sitting down to watch Basil Brush, seeing how Norwich, Ipswich and Peterborough got on in the regional news show, then 20 minutes of (apparently barely comprehended) sci-fi, followed by The Generation Game then going to bed to dream about Anthea Redfern.

But I know that can't happen, so...

[Endicott]

At one time I thought I'd been present for the whole Pertwee era, but then I got hold of Spearhead From Space (1970) and realised I had no memory of Liz Shaw whatsoever. Defo remember it from 1971 though, age 7.

Oh and BOOM! BOOM! Give us a twirl. Teasmade. Cuddly toy. Those were the days.

[Norton Canes]

I was born in 1969, so I can completely remember Jon Pertwee being the doctor, but only in fragments. There was a cliff-hanger where they ran through some ruins and came face to face with a huge dinosaur. One of the girls who he hung around with gave me peculiar feelings... I also remember the episode with the Who Mobile which I thought was hugely cool

Born in '68, so...

Day of the Daleks was the first Doctor Who story I remember. At least, it might have been...

The bit in question was the Ogrons materialising for the first time on present-day Earth. I was so petrified of them, I ran upstairs and refused to watch the rest of the episode. But, here's the thing - I'm sure that back then I remembered the Ogrons; that I recalled having been scared by them previously.

Day of the Daleks was first broadcast from 1st January 22nd January 1972. But of course it got an omnibus repeat, on 3rd September 1973, so there's every chance that I really did remember the Ogrons. Trouble is, if it was the repeat I'm remembering, then my earliest Who memory becomes the Doctor using the sonic screwdriver to set off landmines in The Sea Devils, broadcast from 26th February to 1st April 1972 (though it's a surprise that nothing from the intervening Curse of Peladon impressed itself on my memory).

Also - if the Ogrons were so frightening, and I remembered them second time round from the original broadcast, why don't I remember being scared by them both times?

Complications. 

[superthunderstingcar]

I was born in 1969, so I can completely remember Jon Pertwee being the doctor, but only in fragments. There was a cliff-hanger where they ran through some ruins and came face to face with a huge dinosaur. One of the girls who he hung around with gave me peculiar feelings... I also remember the episode with the Who Mobile which I thought was hugely cool.

Oh yeah - we had a black and white telly until at least 1980, so this is all a bit strange anyway.

You want to get Invasion of the Dinosaurs from season 11 watched, then.

[jamiefairlie]

Of course, the main thing I want from Doctor Who is to get the feeling when you get home from a shopping trip with your parents in the old Cortina, through the cold and dark, and tea is a tin of Heinz chicken soup, a round of ham sandwiches and a slice of Mr Kipling cake, before sitting down to watch Basil Brush, seeing how Norwich, Ipswich and Peterborough got on in the regional news show, then 20 minutes of (apparently barely comprehended) sci-fi, followed by The Generation Game then going to bed to dream about Anthea Redfern.

But I know that can't happen, so...

Sigh....like Limmy's Millport sketch.....

[jamiefairlie]

At one time I thought I'd been present for the whole Pertwee era, but then I got hold of Spearhead From Space (1970) and realised I had no memory of Liz Shaw whatsoever. Defo remember it from 1971 though, age 7.

Oh and BOOM! BOOM! Give us a twirl. Teasmade. Cuddly toy. Those were the days.

Yeah I have no memories of Liz Shaw at all   But very clear ones of Jo Grant and the Austin's and Daemons so I guess I Started to watch in January 1971 when I was still only 4

[gilbertharding]

4 seems to be a good age to start watching it, but it's interesting what our common memories of it are. The theme music; the peculiar way Sarah Jane used to shout 'Dak-tah!' in moments of peril; the smell of Senior Service smoke looming across the sitting room as dad sparked up his 15th of the day...

[Norton Canes]

Of course, the main thing I want from Doctor Who is to get the feeling when you get home from a shopping trip with your parents in the old Cortina, through the cold and dark, and tea is a tin of Heinz chicken soup, a round of ham sandwiches and a slice of Mr Kipling cake, before sitting down to watch Basil Brush, seeing how Norwich, Ipswich and Peterborough got on in the regional news show, then 20 minutes of (apparently barely comprehended) sci-fi, followed by The Generation Game then going to bed to dream about Anthea Redfern

Kippers. The smoky allure of kippers, for me.

[jamiefairlie]

Kippers. The smoky allure of kippers, for me.

It's the smells isn't it? For me it was the smell of pipes and cigars in the freezing cold and damp at the football.

[gilbertharding]

Started The Seeds of Morbius last night (another one I remember in black and white) and was THRILLED to note that the make-up for the guy turning into a plant was somehow more convincing than the terrible fake beards all the Antarctic explorers were wearing.

[Norton Canes]

Started The Seeds of Morbius last night

The Seeds of Morbius is a crossover I'd like to see (More than The Seed of Morbius, ew. Some spunk in a jar?)

[Mr Vegetables]

I am by any measure horribly obsessed with Doctor Who, but I still kind of feel more in the "rest of us" zone than the "fan" zone— I think because for me its appeal is way more in these sort of melancholy ghosts of the past that it holds

[gilbertharding]

The Seeds of Morbius is a crossover I'd like to see (More than The Seed of Morbius, ew. Some spunk in a jar?)

Shit - sorry. I was confused because I *started* watching Brain of Morbius in the hope it would give me a nostalgia hit, but it didn't ring any bells, so I skipped to The Seeds of Doom which I definitely remember (although the big house which will end up covered in plant material is the same big house that caught fire at the end of Pyramids of Mars, isn't it?).

It shouldn't be possible to watch these unless you're wearing your pyjamas after you've had your bath really.

[shiftwork2]

I think because for me its appeal is way more in these sort of melancholy ghosts of the past that it holds

This is what I was trying to get at with this thread.  Enjoyed gilbert's ham sandwich Basil Brush context.  I don't know where this is going to go beyond old bastards talking about Saturday nights of their childhood but maybe we can tease something out.

So, Horror Of Fang Rock.  It is just on the periphery of my memory.  Matters are confused by my reading of the novelisations but I think I saw this rather than read it.  The writing was good and the performances were fine.  I was surprised by this - perhaps I shouldn't have been.  Effective dank atmosphere.  Presuming this is Baker right in his charismatic avuncular stride, great fun.  Leela worked well with Tom and I found her warrior character quite interesting, particularly the bit at the very end when she's temporarily blinded and asks for a mercy kill.  Obviously the budget was low and the green blob was objectively better left to the imagination but overall it was a fun two hours.  I seem to do better with terrestrial stories so next for me (and before The Generation Game) is Talons of Weng-Chiang.  Oh those inscrutables.

[Norton Canes]

Presuming this is Baker right in his charismatic avuncular stride, great fun

Heh.

The first studio session took place on May 25th and 26th, covering Episodes One and Two, respectively. Baker had now developed a tense relationship with director Paddy Russell, who found the series star much more implacable than when she had directed him in Pyramids Of Mars. Baker, in turn, was frustrated that Russell turned a deaf ear to any discussions about enhancing the material. During the recording a scene in the crew room on the 26th, Baker repeatedly entered too quickly to be kept in shot; Russell finally gave up, and instructed the cameraman to train his lens on Jameson instead

Leela worked well with Tom

Rehearsals for Horror Of Fang Rock marked a turning point in the relationship between Jameson and Tom Baker. To date, Baker had been dismissive of his co-star, both because he felt that Leela's violent tendencies were inappropriate for Doctor Who, and because he did not want to be saddled with a companion of any sort. By now, Jameson had appeared on Doctor Who long enough that she was beginning to stand up for herself and her character, which finally prompted Baker to apologise for his attitude

A Brief history of Time: Horror of Fang Rock

Edit: Excuse all the copy n' paste, but Wikipedia is slightly clearer:

According to the DVD commentary supplied by Louise Jameson, John Abbott and Terrance Dicks, a scene in part three was crucial to the behind-the-scenes relationship between Jameson and co-star Tom Baker. In one scene, he consistently came in ahead of his cue, thereby upstaging her. On the grounds that this move was "not what they had rehearsed" she insisted on three successive retakes until he came in at the rehearsed time. This eventually won his respect. From that point forward, she claims their working relationship was much smoother

[Bently Sheds]

I was a Pertwee/Baker kid. Me and the big eared lad who became the Bloke From The Lighthouse Family competitively collected the Target paperbacks; I was missing The Tenth Planet, he had it but wouldn't let me borrow it & I could never convince my parents to order it from the Target shop featured in the back of the books. So my knowledge of the pre-Pertwee Doctor is based purely on the paperbacks and, as such, I reckon the Hartnell era is creakily boring old cobblers, but Troughton's stint is intriguing and worth investigating.

Originally Davison put me right off. Baker & Pertwee were decisive and in control; Davison, with his stupid cricket whites and wilted lapel celery, just seemed to be wimpy and ineffectual, totally lacking the dynamism of his predecessors.

So exploring Troughton and Davison's Doctors will be my first task on iPlayer.

P.S. Gilbertharding's nostalgio-post is a thing of beauty.

[Mr Vegetables]

This is what I was trying to get at with this thread.  Enjoyed gilbert's ham sandwich Basil Brush context.  I don't know where this is going to go beyond old bastards talking about Saturday nights of their childhood but maybe we can tease something out.

Well, it's all a bit later on for me because I didn't know much at all about Doctor Who until 2005, and I was almost an adult by then anyway.

But a lot of the stuff in it then was very resonant to me at the time, and was also stuff that it all leaned heavily away from later. This idea of the universe as kind of incomprehensible and unknowable, possibly tragic, but with real people in it who were inspired by that to live more passionately? Like it felt like it was written by someone who'd actually felt the size of space and time, and been haunted by it.