Doctor Who for the rest of us

[Papa Wheelie]

As a non-fan who rather enjoys old telly/overly ambitious, imaginative productions I'm watching Doctor Who right now, Genesis of the Daleks, one of the oft-cited all-timers. It's relatively very good, we'll-paced for DW, and explores some relatively interesting territory. Nevertheless, after watching a fair bit of DW over the last six months, I do find that I like the idea and atmosphere of DW more than I enjoy the stories or the performances or what have you. I like to see people making the most of the resources they have and elevating ideas through pure invention and gumption. That's much more appealing to me than anything else. And so I struggle to pick out the good stories or serials based on narrative development or acting or direction. All that stuff is fairly prosaic but it's got charm like little else. It's not a good show, in my opinion, but it touches me unusually deeply. I barely watched it as a child, it's not that.

[Papa Wheelie]

I've concluded I have no interest beyond Troughton, Pertwee and Tom Baker. Hartnell and Davison are quite engaging actors but I don't really enjoy their stories very much. I think by the 80s it looked cheap in an unpleasant way. Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy seem like good guys but that late 80s vibe is abhorrent. Never going to watch the new stuff, just seems like people running around and CBBC tier effects.

[gilbertharding]

Going to watch the one where Sarah Jane leaves the fourth doctor for the last time - because that's another one I remember from when I was seven.

What I remember in particular is that the anonymous suburban street where the TARDIS dropped her off looked *exactly* like where we lived.

While watching the Pyramids of Mars, did I hear them refer to the 'present day' for that timeline as the early 1980s?

[Ambient Sheep]

While watching the Pyramids of Mars, did I hear them refer to the 'present day' for that timeline as the early 1980s

Good evening.  You've just opened a big can of worms. :-)

https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/UNIT_dating_controversy

[Tarquin]

For classic Who I always recommend starting with The Ark in Space, as that's my first memory, then watching in order, skipping Revenge of the Cybermen as the only true dud, all the way to Horror of Fang Rock. Everyone behind and in front of the camera is on top form in this run.

Personal favourite is The Deadly Assassin which is the most stand-alone story ever made. You can just jump in and watch that. Starts with an explainer text crawl and has no companions. It's also a rip-off of The Manchurian Candidate but would itself be ripped of for The Matrix. It's wonderful!

Scary shit for a 5-8 year old:
Daleks shot from below in Genesis
Stones of Blood meet campers
Peter Pratt "predictable as ever."
The rat from Talons - really
Horrible Sontaran torture techniques

[non capisco]

skipping Revenge of the Cybermen as the only true dud

It's not great but I like the Cybermat and the cast's valiant attempts to make a half arsed robot vampire rat thing convincingly look like it's going for their necks.

[Egyptian Feast]

Born in the late 70s and some of my earliest and vaguest TV memories are of watching Peter Davison episodes with my older sister. I can recall us being severely disappointed when he was replaced by Colin Baker and not watching it much from there. I remember catching a Sylvester McCoy episode that looked like it was filmed on the set of Hi-De-Hi and thinking it was shit.

In the mid 90s BBC2 repeated some Pertwee and Baker stories on Friday evenings along with The Man From UNCLE (unless I'm remembering incorrectly) and I really enjoyed watching both while having tea and getting ready to go out. I have particularly fond memories of The Daemons and that rude little fella in the green body stocking.

I've always meant to have a deeper dive into the Pertwee/Baker/Davison era, but never got around to it. I was even tempted to subscribe to BritBox. The only Dr Who I'd knowingly watched since the mid 90s was a short clip of Eccleston asking someone if they'd farted and I think a Matt Smith episode was on in the background one Christmas.

Now it's all available on iPlayer I thought I'd give the first episode of The Daleks a go a couple of weeks back because I was having trouble sleeping and thought the slow pace might send me off quicker and since then I've burned through An Unearthly Child (only the first episode), The Edge of Destruction, The Aztecs, Planet of Giants, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Rescue and am currently halfway through The Romans. 

I've been reading some of the old threads on here, so have been taking notes on your lists of what to watch and what to avoid. I've also been enjoying Bad Ambassador's reviews with coffee the morning after, so I've even got a nice routine going on already. I was going to skip a lot more of Hartnell but will probably keep going until Ian and Barbara leave as I've grown very fond of them and that loveable old cunt the Doctor. Wasn't sorry to see Susan bugger off though.

[Bad Ambassador]

[Egyptian Feast]

Not the expression of a man who has sat through three straight episodes of The Web Planet and has found out he's halfway through the story.

[Bad Ambassador]

You have my deepest sympathies.

[Norton Canes]

The Web Planet is a thing of rare and exquisite beauty.

[Mobbd]

Wait, all of DW is on iPlayer now? That's fantastic. Exactly the kind of thing the BBC should be doing. Free the archive!

I Googled the story to make sure I'd understood correctly and the announcement has the following picture. Who is the Black female Doctor between Davison and Whittaker?

[Mobbd]

Speaking of webs, Web of Fear was one of those missing ones that turned up in 2013. I watched it when it was released and it's a lovely story with some delightful images. Yetis on the London Underground!

[Mr Vegetables]

Who is the Black female Doctor between Davison and Whittaker?

Why, that's the Fugitive Doctor, who is probably – but maybe isn't – one of the many Doctors who existed before the first one, as we found out in The Timeless Children, every die hard Doctor Who fan's favourite story

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

The Web Planet is a thing of rare and exquisite beauty.

I'm quite fond of the utterly insane ambition of The Web Planet. I'll almost certainly never sit through it again, once was enough, but I'm glad it exists.

[Mobbd]

Why, that's the Fugitive Doctor, who is probably – but maybe isn't – one of the many Doctors who existed before the first one, as we found out in The Timeless Children, every die hard Doctor Who fan's favourite story

Thank you! Sounds quite poor!

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Thank you! Sounds quite poor!

It's abysmal, please don't ever subject yourself to it.

[Midas]

Wait, all of DW is on iPlayer now? That's fantastic. Exactly the kind of thing the BBC should be doing. Free the archive!

Bizarrely, it's all there except for the very first serial, An Unearthly Child, as the rights to the story have fallen into the custody of a far-right conspiracy theorist who believes the BBC conspired to murder their father (and has vowed to withhold it permanently from any future licensing agreements).

[Egyptian Feast]

Bizarrely, it's all there except for the very first serial, An Unearthly Child, as the rights to the story have fallen into the custody of a far-right conspiracy theorist who believes the BBC conspired to murder their father (and has vowed to withhold it permanently from any future licensing agreements).

I've just found out by checking episode lists that large chunks are missing from series 3 and there seem to be odd episodes skipped here and there. For example, the next story I was going to watch is The Crusade, but I'll be moving on as only episodes 1 and 3 are on there.

Edit: Ahh, they're lost. That'll be why.

[non capisco]

Yeah, those episodes are wiped/missing. A huge chunk of Troughton's stuff is in the wind. I think everything from Pertwee onwards survives.

[Midas]

I've just found out by checking episode lists that large chunks are missing from series 3 and there seem to be odd episodes skipped here and there. For example, the next story I was going to watch is The Crusades, but I'll be moving on as only episodes 1 and 3 are on there.

Aye, sadly episodes 2 and 4 of The Crusades aren't available anywhere because the BBC destroyed/taped over the master tapes (along with a number of other episodes with the first two Doctors). There are animated reconstructions using the original audio for quite a few of the Troughton missing episodes, at least.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Troughton is one of my favourite Doctors, but only a handful of his stories remain intact within the archives. As you say, non capisco, every era after that can still be enjoyed in their entirety.

[Egyptian Feast]

Guess I'll be skipping around a lot more once Ian and Barbara leave.

Which complete/mostly complete Troughton stories are worth watching?

[superthunderstingcar]

The Web Planet is a thing of rare and exquisite beauty.

I agree with this.

Like a lot of six-parters, it can be a bit of a trial if you sit down to watch the whole thing in one go, but there's plenty to enjoy if you watch one or two parts at a time.

Which complete/mostly complete Troughton stories are worth watching?

Tomb of the Cybermen (complete)
Enemy of the World (complete)
The Web of Fear (complete except for one part animated)
The Mind Robber (complete, can also be watched as part of the "Tales of the Tardis" series on the iPlayer)
The Krotons (complete, don't listen to anyone who says it's a load of ropey old shit)
The War Games (complete. Oh, and this is 10 parts, absolutely DO NOT try to watch the whole thing in one go. And if you think it sags in the middle, I promise you the ending is exceptional)

[Alberon]

Yeah, those episodes are wiped/missing. A huge chunk of Troughton's stuff is in the wind. I think everything from Pertwee onwards survives.

The worst of the missing episodes comes from the last of Hartnell's series and the first two of Troughton's. I suspect that reflects the waning popularity of Doctor Who in the late sixties after Dalekmania ended so less episodes were sold overseas.

Some Pertwee episodes only survived as American copies (converted from PAL to NTSC). But thanks to some inventive work on black and white copies of colour episodes and NTSC colour copies all of Pertwee now exists in colour.

I've been rewatching season 8 this week which has some colour restoration work in it. That's very well done, though I found the episodes themselves quite shoddy in comparison to season 10 which I rewatched only quite recently.

[Mobbd]

Bizarrely, it's all there except for the very first serial, An Unearthly Child, as the rights to the story have fallen into the custody of a far-right conspiracy theorist who believes the BBC conspired to murder their father (and has vowed to withhold it permanently from any future licensing agreements).

Whaaaaaat??

[Bad Ambassador]

Context: said fruitcake is the son of the original writer, who has inherited the rights to the script. He has said he will give the rights to the Russian government in his will, so the BBC doesn't try to kill him too. It appears, however, that existing agreements cover selling copies of the episodes, so the DVD boxset containing the story will be available for the forseeable, and it's still on BritBox and available digitally.

Re: actually missing episodes. Everything from Troughton's last story, The War Games, survives in close to the original format. There were a lot of Pertwee episodes that survived only as black-and-white prints, but as of 2013 the last of these was recolourised.

The missing episode animations are a mixed bunch. Most of them are Troughtons, and all but the two most recent releases - The Underwater Menace and The Abominable Snowmen - are included in the iPlayer catalogue. The quality of the animation is highly variable. The Reign of Terror at one point has seven edits in two seconds and often looks like it was assembled by moron AI. The one episode of The Web of Fear that was animated appears to have faces drawn on balloons in marker pen.

[Norton Canes]

Then there's Mission to the Unknown, a single-instalment episode from 1965 which serves as a prologue to the 12-episode epic The Daleks' Master Plan, broadcast a month later (the three surviving episode of which are on the iPlayer). Also known by its draft title 'Dalek Cutaway', it's unique in that it doesn't feature the Doctor or his companions, telling instead the story of a group of astronauts attempting to alert the Earth of the Daleks' plan for galactic domination.

The episode was wiped, but in 2019 students at the University of Central Lancashire attempted to recreate the whole thing as faithfully as possible. The result was absolutely fantastic, and makes me wish more missing episodes could be remade as live action rather than unwatchable animations.

[Norton Canes]

I mean, I get that the advantage with Mission to the Unknown is that it's easier to be convincing when you only have to replicate a cast of relatively nondescript actors. You're on a hiding to nothing if you're trying to find a decent match for Hartnell or Troughton (sorry, Reece). But it's got to be worth a go.

[Bad Ambassador]

Because I'm insufferable and to allow ease of browsing, I've compiled all my Who reviews into an ebook that can be read here.