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CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!
Edited to avoid the Blinovitch Limitation Effect.

CobiWann fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Jul 22, 2015

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CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!


The Doctor, Sarah and Harry teleport to Earth to ensure the planet is safe for the survivors on-board Nerva Beacon to return to Earth and re-inhabit their world.

Only to find a Sontaran named Styre has captured a group of humans and conducting experiments on them to discover the human body's weaknesses, as part of the Sontaran's goal for domination of the galaxy...

Tom Baker is the Doctor in The Sontaran Experiment.

X X X X X

Cast
The Doctor - Tom Baker
Sarah Jane Smith - Elisabeth Sladen
Harry Sullivan - Ian Marter
Vural - Donald Douglas
Krans - Glyn Jones
Erak - Peter Walshe
Styre and The Marshal - Kevin Lindsay
Roth - Peter Rutherford
Zake - Terry Walsh
Prisoner - Brian Ellis

Producer: Philip Hinchcliffe
Writer: Bob Baker and Dave Martin
Director: Rodney Bennett
Original Broadcast: 22 February – 1 March 1975

Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEg2wQCmKNw

X X X X X

The Sontaran Experiment is a serial with an incredibly basic plot and incredibly basic secondary characters that was written and produced in an effort by Philip Hinchcliffe to stretch Doctor Who's budget. And it does so very well, serving as a “filler” story between The Ark in Space and Genesis of the Daleks by presenting a straight-forward adventure with a returning villain and good performances from the TARDIS team, especially from Elisabeth Sladen.

Following the conclusion of The Ark in Space, the Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Harry find themselves on an Earth ready to be repopulated by the survivors from Nerva Beacon. However, they soon find that they're not alone. A small group of humans in military space gear is hunting them while another of their group is desperately trying to hide from his comrades. A pit trap snares Harry while a floating robot captures Sarah Jane. Brought before its master, Sarah Jane realizes in horror that a deadly foe from the past has returned. The Sontarans are preparing to invade Earth...but not before performing a series of deadly experiments to determine just how much of a threat humans are...

For all the comments about Doctor Who being an incredibly low-budgeted production...well, they're right. The Sontaran Experiment came about because Philip Hinchcliffe was looking so save a little bit of money. The Ark in Space was originally part of a six-episode block of episodes called The Destructors. When Hinchcliffe came on board, he and Robert Holmes decided to instead split the six episodes into a four-part adventure and a two-part story, the first such two-parter since the First Doctor serial The Rescue. To save even more money, Hinchcliffe set the filming for The Ark in Space to be done entirely in studio and the filming for the two-parter to be done entirely on location, specifically the rocky moorlands of Dartmoor. And to top it all off, an old villain would be dusted off to save from having to design and create a new alien race; the Sontarans, making their return to the series a year after their debut in the Third Doctor story The Time Warrior.

Script writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin had only two weeks to submit the first episode of the story, managing to submit the full serial to Holmes in just under a month and a half. The speed at which The Sontaran Experiment was written shows in its final production. The basic premise – one lone Sontaran running a series of experiments on captured humans as a precursor to a full-blown invasion of Earth – is a bit silly, especially when invading a planet where no one has lived for over 5000 years! And that's even with a subplot cut out by Holmes about one of the astronauts being mind controlled. The choosing of Dartmoor as a filming site also caused some problems, as the cliffs and bluffs of the moors often meant the crew and actors were stuck in place during breaks, sometimes spending all day on the cliffs with their meals being brought up to them! And the episode's sole cliffhanger was ruined by its very title, much to the writer's dismay.

While the plot itself it weak, the way it develops is well done, to the point of the viewer possibly being a bit disturbed. The name “Styre” was deliberately picked by Baker and Martin to conjure up images of a merciless Gestapo agent, while the experiments themselves could have come directly from the notebooks of infamous Nazi “scientist” Josef Mengele. The moors of Dartmoor also add to the general sense unease surrounding The Sontaran Experiment; gray, rocky, desolate, but full of washes and crevices to catch the unwary. At only two episodes the story moves fast with very little wasted time, focusing more on what horrible thing is happening on screen and giving the viewer nary a chance to catch their breath.

At first, the manic, grinning Doctor from Robot and The Ark in Space might seem a little out of place in a bleak story involving alien experimentation. While trying to fix the transmat circle and later interacting with the astronauts, Tom Baker puts on the easygoing charm and wide eyed alien nature that was rapidly becoming a vital part of the Fourth Doctor's character. But when the Doctor discovers that Harry has been hurt and Sarah Jane has been kidnapped, the grinning and the kidding around comes to a halt. The Sontaran Experiment is the first time viewers get to see the serious side of the Doctor. His actions in previous serials still had a hint of the Third Doctor's swashbuckling nature. The second episode of this story shows a Doctor who still has his comedic moments, but the smile and teasing nature of them is replaced by a deadpan delivery, and his smile is less jester like and more of a cat stalking its prey as he attempts to stop Styre. In the grand scheme of things, The Sontaran Experiment helped to define the “serious” side of Tom Baker's Doctor.

As a note, during the second episode, Tom Baker broke his collarbone during the scene where he discovers an unconscious Sarah Jane and is attacked by Styre. The Doctor's scarf was used to cover up Baker's neck brace and sling during shooting. This explains why Baker looked a bit off and pale in some scenes and why there are several shots where you can't see the Doctor's face as veteran stuntman Terry Walsh stands in for him. This is especially apparent during the final fight scene where the melee between the Doctor and Styre is mixed with quick cuts to Tom Baker holding a stick.

Halfway through his run, I'm not really seeing Harry Sullivan as anything close to an imbecile. Maybe it's Ian Marter's chemistry with Baker and Sladen, or maybe it's just that Sullivan is a character who means well with his actions. Harry takes a bit of a back seat in this story. He has plenty of on screen time, but never really seems to do anything directly related to the central plot by spending his time stuck in a pit trap (which he manages to climb out of), discovering Sarah has been captured by Styre, tries to help one of Styre's prisoners who is part of a water deprivation experiment, and almost bashing Styre on the head before the Doctor stops him. Still, Harry's eager to help, follows the Doctor's orders, and has a great report with Sarah Jane, showing a bit of growth as he does his best to stop calling her “old girl.”

The same concern I had with Sarah Jane Smith in The Ark in Space continues with The Sontaran Experiment, as Sarah Jane spends a good chunk of the episode either tied up or unconscious. But there's one thing that Elisabeth Sladen did very well and that was act like she's scared to death. No companion pulls off “I'm brave but holy crap I'm about to freak the [BLEEP]out” like Sarah Jane could. The scene where Sarah Jane realizes Strye is a Sontaran is one of the acting highlights of Doctor Who's entire run, from the small “yikes” when she sees him step out of the Sontaran sphere to the end of the scene, where she's trembling with fear as Styre outlines the experiments he plans to run on her. Sladen's performance in this scene is so outstanding that after the director yelled “cut” he ran UP the steep hillside to shake her hand, congratulating her all the while. Beyond that, Sarah Jane's purpose in this episode is to be the damsel in distress, but any concerns over that fate are mitigated by just how powerful her moments of fear are when confronting Styre.



Kevin Lindsay “returns” to the role of the Sontarans, playing Styre, an identical clone (even though the costume and makeup look different) of Linx from The Time Warrior. Lindsay helped to establish the classic-era Sontaran – ruthless, straight-forward, by the book, and always following orders and protocol, a FAR cry from the comedic stylings of Strax in modern-day Who. Styre goes one step further in being incredibly cold blooded, with no sympathy or concern towards any of his experimental subject or towards a frightened Sarah Jane. It's all about his orders and following them to the letter, which leads to his demise as he insists on finishing his experiments towards the Marshal of the invasion fleet, who is also played by Linsday in a way that channels less “ruthless warlord” and more “Dad waiting for his kid to finish what he's doing.” Sadly, the heavy Sontaran costume exacerbated Linday's heart condition, who would die a few months later at the age of fifty-one.

The astronautical experimental subjects are nothing to write home about. There's little change to develop four characters in a two-part serial, so we get a lot of skulking about, threatening with guns, shooting with guns, and being part of a ghastly experiment involving gravity and resistance to pressure of the human rib cage before one of them, and a traitor who helped the Sontaran in return for being promised his freedom (again, as part of an experiment) sacrifices his life to help the Doctor defeat Styre. The neat thing about the astronauts is their accent – Martin and Baker specifically wrote the astronauts to have South African accents, as the writers were interested in “language drift” and how a space colony's accent might develop over the years.

Cygnia posted:

As a kid, I admit,  a lot of the ramifications of this episode went over my head.  I wasn't aware of "The Time Warrior" back then, so I didn't realize that Sarah Jane knew about Sontarans (or Daleks, but I'm getting ahead of myself and Cobi) beforehand.  Which goes to show you just how pivotal she is to the "Doctor Who" mythos.

What didn't go over my head?  The torture and the utter cruelty of it.  Given the horror of experimentation on "lesser races" throughout Earth's own history, I could believe why the Sontarans would be willing to do it.  But the mood whiplash of watching this episode now and comparing it to the bumbling idiocy of Strax in current stories struck a chord with me.  Sarah Jane would not be amused to see the Doctor palling around with a potato butler given the agony she went through.  Just more reasons to nutpunch Moffat.

The other thing that will always stay with me is the climax, with Styre's head deflating faster than a football at Foxboro.  Clearly, this will resort in a ten game penalty from Roger Goodell, whereas all the torture, eh, just make it two games.

Set between two classic serials and running at only 50 minutes, The Sontaran Experiment feels like a bit of a throwaway serial, something only a fan of Tom Baker's era would enjoy as a quaint little piece. However, a nasty villain causes Baker to bring out the Doctor's angry determination and Sladen puts on one hell of an acting performance making The Sontaran Experiment a serial that shouldn't be overlooked.

Random Thoughts
- A nice scene where a piece of the Nerva shuttle saves the Doctor's life, leading him to tell Harry never to throw anything away and then failing to find his 500 year old diary in his pockets, leading him to tell Harry to never keeps his pockets cluttered.

quote:

DOCTOR: Well, no. I'm a sort of travelling time expert. As you can see, Earth's been habitable for several thousand years, but they didn't wake up. Why? Clock stopped. Overslept. So here I am. 
VURAL: Clock expert? 
DOCTOR: Horologist, actually. And chronometrist. I just love clocks. Atomic clocks, wall quartz clocks, grandfather clocks...cuckoo clocks?
-I have to mention the Sontaran's robot, which looked like it was made from a child's Erector set and then had a car's radio antennae added to it as mandibles. Filming outside meant the effects crew couldn't use chroma key to make it hover, so it rolls around and looks a bit silly. The cables it shot out to ensure the astronauts and Sarah Jane looked impressive though.
-Cygnia mentioned it as well – Sontarans apparently deflate when overloaded with enegy...
-The Doctor manages to drive away the Sontaran invasion by bluffing the Marshal. A sign of the Doctor's guile, or the writers penning their way out of a corner?

Cobi's SynopsisThe Sontaran Experiment is a short but solid serial, much like its namesake villain, a cold blooded military scientist who brings out the Fourth Doctor's angry determination.

Next up – The Doctor must fulfill a daunting mission – to change the course of evolution itself...

Tom Baker is the Doctor in...Genesis of the Daleks.

CobiWann fucked around with this message at 11:48 on Jul 23, 2015

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
There's an anecdote about the production of "The Sontaran Experiment" which is related in one of the special features - because of his heart condition, Kevin Lindsay would go up the hillside and stay there all day rather than trek up and down in the heavy outfit, so he had his meals carted up the hill, and one day a local woman who was either walking her dog or out for a ramble had a fright when she came round a corner and saw him in full Sontaran costume eating his lunch.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

The Sontaran Experiment is a lot of fun mostly because it's so short. There are a lot of obvious issues (most notably the budget) but because there isn't the normal 4 (or 6, or sometimes EIGHT!) episode stretch of the storyline, it's easier to forgive or put out of your mind.

Plus it serves as a nice come-down from the very good previous story and the INCREDIBLE next story.

The_Doctor posted:

Chapter One

I read all the r's as rolling :allears:

Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Jul 22, 2015

docbeard
Jul 19, 2011

Jerusalem posted:

I read all the r's as rolling :allears:

None of my ideas for that thing ever got beyond the idea stage, but I kind of still want to do The End of Time with Seven and the Brigadier just for the "Back to hell with you, Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrassilon" scene.

Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004

It was really weird going from Bernice Summerfield and the Criminal Code, which has Bowerman trying to imitate the McCoy roll, to Klein's Story and Survival of the Fittest, which has the genuine article.

Also, I'm only halfway through the latter the story, but so far the Klein trilogy is quite good.

Dr. Gene Dango MD
May 20, 2010

Fuck them other cats I'm running with my own wolfpack

Keep fronting like youse a thug and get ya dome pushed back
Please consider reviewing a reconstruction CobiWann. I would be interested in reading it even if I had seen it.

Anyone got a favorite reconstruction? Mine's The Macra Terror, it really is scary sometimes (and I'm usually not scared by Who at all) and moves well. It is to my great shame that I have only watched the first episode of Troughton's inaugural episode.

Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004

Somehow Marco Polo is very scary for the first part of it, because just hearing Carole Anne Ford scream and scream with only a few still images for context is really loving unsettling.

Dr. Gene Dango MD
May 20, 2010

Fuck them other cats I'm running with my own wolfpack

Keep fronting like youse a thug and get ya dome pushed back

Bicyclops posted:

Somehow Marco Polo is very scary for the first part of it, because just hearing Carole Anne Ford scream and scream with only a few still images for context is really loving unsettling.
I forgot about Marco Polo, that's a great serial. The colorized version adds a little something too. I heard a rumor that Disney wanted to make a movie out of it, now that could have been something.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

Dr. Gene Dango MD posted:

Anyone got a favorite reconstruction?

It's been made redundant by the animated reconstruction now, but I always had a soft spot for the recon of The Ice Warriors, which used the conceit of a giant weatherstorm rendering communications ineffective resulting in the missing episodes being explained away by only being able to catch snippets of the surviving scenes before the weather "cleared up" allowing the recording/transmission to continue to be viewed.

Random Stranger
Nov 27, 2009



Dr. Gene Dango MD posted:

Anyone got a favorite reconstruction? Mine's The Macra Terror, it really is scary sometimes (and I'm usually not scared by Who at all) and moves well. It is to my great shame that I have only watched the first episode of Troughton's inaugural episode.

I know it's the cliche obvious answer, but Power of the Daleks is so good even in just audio form.

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!

Dr. Gene Dango MD posted:

Please consider reviewing a reconstruction CobiWann. I would be interested in reading it even if I had seen it.

Hmm...tell you what. Let me get to Sarah Jane's last serial as a full-time companion and I'll do The Ice Warriors, then when Leela leaves I'll do The Macra Terror.

My current plan was to go all the way to Survival, then go back to Spearhead from Space, then back to An Unearthly Child.

Gaz-L
Jan 28, 2009
Ice Warriors has an 'official' animated reconstruction though.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

CobiWann posted:

Hmm...tell you what. Let me get to Sarah Jane's last serial as a full-time companion and I'll do The Ice Warriors, then when Leela leaves I'll do The Macra Terror.

My current plan was to go all the way to Survival, then go back to Spearhead from Space, then back to An Unearthly Child.

I figured I'd do all Big Finish, then do the Doctors backwards from 7th to 1st - that way there will ALWAYS be Who to watch, ALWAYS :stare:

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!

Jerusalem posted:

I figured I'd do all Big Finish, then do the Doctors backwards from 7th to 1st - that way there will ALWAYS be Who to watch, ALWAYS :stare:

Big Finish - "Where we're going we won't need eyes to enjoy Doctor Who."

Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004

CobiWann posted:

Big Finish - "Where we're going we won't need eyes to enjoy Doctor Who."

Which is good for some of the characters in at least one of the cliffhangers.

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

CobiWann posted:

When Hinchcliffe came on board, he and Robert Holmes decided to instead split the six episodes into a four-part adventure and a two-part story, the first such two-parter since the First Doctor serial The Chase.

The Chase is six parts. The Sontaran Experiment is the first Doctor Who story with exactly two parts.

Jerusalem posted:

It's been made redundant by the animated reconstruction now, but I always had a soft spot for the recon of The Ice Warriors, which used the conceit of a giant weatherstorm rendering communications ineffective resulting in the missing episodes being explained away by only being able to catch snippets of the surviving scenes before the weather "cleared up" allowing the recording/transmission to continue to be viewed.

The recon of The Ice Warriors is, I think, better than the animated version - because absolutely nothing happens in the two missing episodes, the abridged recap in the recon makes the story move on so much better.

IceAgeComing
Jan 29, 2013

pretty fucking embarrassing to watch

MrL_JaKiri posted:

The Chase is six parts. The Sontaran Experiment is the first Doctor Who story with exactly two parts.

Isn't Edge of Destruction a two parter? There's at least one other Hartnell two part story - I think the one after Dalek Invasion of Earth was

Forktoss
Feb 13, 2012

I'm OK, you're so-so

IceAgeComing posted:

Isn't Edge of Destruction a two parter? There's at least one other Hartnell two part story - I think the one after Dalek Invasion of Earth was

The Rescue, yes.

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

IceAgeComing posted:

Isn't Edge of Destruction a two parter? There's at least one other Hartnell two part story - I think the one after Dalek Invasion of Earth was

Duh, thought it was three for some reason.

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!

MrL_JaKiri posted:

The Chase is six parts. The Sontaran Experiment is the first Doctor Who story with exactly two parts.

Derp. Thank you, mathematical genius!

I meant The Rescue but got some Juggernauts in my review...

FreezingInferno
Jul 15, 2010

THERE.
WILL.
BE.
NO.
BATTLE.
HERE!
Colin Baker: It Wounds Me When My Doctor Is Lowest Rated

Colin :smith:

Dr. Gene Dango MD posted:

Anyone got a favorite reconstruction?

It was Enemy Of The World but then Phil Morris raided Mugabe's sock drawer and actually found the whole thing.

FreezingInferno fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Jul 23, 2015

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!

"But every six Doctors, they get it right!"

Colin. :unsmith:

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

The round things are back. :stare:


Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004


It is probably worth noting: not even Colin Baker cares for the coat.

IceAgeComing
Jan 29, 2013

pretty fucking embarrassing to watch
Colin Baker should be the thirteenth doctor imo

After The War
Apr 12, 2005

to all of my Architects
let me be traitor

Colin Baker posted:

[Capaldi’s Doctor] is grumpy and curmudgeonly and intolerant, and gosh – I should be playing it now. I wasn’t old enough when I did it. I can do intolerant!

It's really a pity that this is the only way you see his Doctor portrayed. One of the reasons his Big Finish work is great is the way Colin makes his Doctor so.... "human" would be the best term. He's able to accessibly convey the emotional state of someone who's been through ~900 years of experiences, good and bad, comprehensible to us or not. When he softens his voice to relate bad news or something he regrets, it comes across stronger than every "I'm sorry" of the Tenannt run put together.

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?
One of the things that makes Colin's Doctor so great is his sincerity. People sometimes like to characterize Six as having this "facade" of bravado and self-righteousness that hides his insecurities and shame and regrets, but I'm not sure that's quite right.

Six has regrets and insecurities and shame, there's no doubt about that. But he doesn't wallow in them or let them hold him back. His bluster and outrage and verbosity and joviality are all just as genuine as his fears and his anxieties. Instead, they motivate him. His fears over his "worthiness" push him to save worlds and topple regimes. In order to be good, he has to do good. His faults lie, of course, in his tendencies towards self-obsession and self-certainty, but (when written properly) he reflects on his excesses and acknowledges his mistakes. And when he apologizes, it's never in doubt that he knows exact what he's done wrong and won't do it again.

A few years ago, I was struggling with self-worth after some academic disasters and other garbage. Then I saw that convention video of Colin reading the speech from The Rings of Akhaten, and shortly thereafter met Colin himself. Over the following year I started really thinking about how I was living my life and realized that loathing myself for every mistake and failure and moment of ignorance was crippling me. So I resolved to stop. And as a promise to myself - a promise to be motivated forward by my regrets and failures rather than being held back by them - I dyed some baseball pants, ironed question marks onto the collar of a dress shirt, and got myself a coat.

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!

DoctorWhat posted:

A few years ago, I was struggling with self-worth after some academic disasters and other garbage. Then I saw that convention video of Colin reading the speech from The Rings of Akhaten, and shortly thereafter met Colin himself. Over the following year I started really thinking about how I was living my life and realized that loathing myself for every mistake and failure and moment of ignorance was crippling me. So I resolved to stop. And as a promise to myself - a promise to be motivated forward by my regrets and failures rather than being held back by them - I dyed some baseball pants, ironed question marks onto the collar of a dress shirt, and got myself a coat.

On a serious note, DW? :unsmith:

That’s one of the reason I love Doctor Who so much. Each Doctor represents something great about humanity – Seven saying “the ends never justify the means,” Nine saying “coward, any day,” Eleven going “I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important.” You’re right that Six is about doing good, being good, and it’s in the moments between the boasting and the bluster (I love the moments where Six admits he’s wrong with a quiet “oh…yes” or “mmmm, could be”) that really define him. I’m actually a bit afraid to get to Colin’s TV run because I only know him through Big Finish, but I just tell myself “no bad Doctors or companions, only bad writers and producers.”

It’s also one of the reasons Eight (and to a lesser extent Five) is my Doctor. My teenage and young adult years were a never ending series of mishaps, setbacks, bad situations, and just a never ending set of moments where things that should have gone incredibly right turned on a dime to go horribly wrong, to the extent that my friends would joke about how this reincarnation must be paying off a MASSIVE karmic debt, and the phrase “And at that moment, you could hear the universe cock the ‘gently caress With Cobi’ shotgun” is said quite often…

But on the advice of this thread, I got Storm Warning. The fact that Eight just gets absolutely CRUSHED by the universe on a regular basis comes through in Paul McGann’s performance, and he just keeps going forward, the Eternal Optimist. Even at the very end of his life, he refuses to walk away and let someone die if there’s a chance, no matter how slim, he could save them. It’s pretty much how I started looking at my life – from “oh, what fresh hell is this” to “brush your shoulders off.”

On a comic note, DW? We haven’t seen the Coat lately…I don’t suppose it’s travelling the world having its own grand adventures?

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!

CobiWann posted:

That’s one of the reason I love Doctor Who so much. Each Doctor represents something great about humanity – Seven saying “the ends never justify the means,” Nine saying “coward, any day,” Eleven going “I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important.” You’re right that Six is about doing good, being good, and it’s in the moments between the boasting and the bluster (I love the moments where Six admits he’s wrong with a quiet “oh…yes” or “mmmm, could be”) that really define him. I’m actually a bit afraid to get to Colin’s TV run because I only know him through Big Finish, but I just tell myself “no bad Doctors or companions, only bad writers and producers.”

I feel like, if you come at it from that direction, you can tell a lot about a person's character by the Doctor they relate to most. I feel like Eleven sits closest with me personally, although I've never properly considered it. Maybe I should sit down with exemplary stories from every Doctor and just feel out who I relate to most; ideas?

I've thought about this before, since it came up in some MMO roleplaying I do (because I'm a huge loving dork). One of my characters is a pretty broken girl who was comforted by stuff like Doctor Who during the darkest points in her life. When she jumped off the deep end and started on an utterly psychopathic plot, she was talked down when someone made her realize she wasn't the Doctor, in any incarnation; she was the sort of horrible villain the Doctor barges in on, makes a big dramatic speech at, and then does something ridiculous to kill off so he can go do the same thing next week. It took her a while to rebuild after that, but when she did she reinvented herself as sort of 'Seven by method, Eight by outlook'.

Davros1
Jul 19, 2007

You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible




The fact that between BF starting and the return of the show in 2005, Colin was voted best actor a couple of times for his audio Whos does may heart proud. And in an interview about it, he said "Maybe even one day Peter Davison could win one! Just kidding Peter!"

Dr. Gene Dango MD
May 20, 2010

Fuck them other cats I'm running with my own wolfpack

Keep fronting like youse a thug and get ya dome pushed back

FreezingInferno posted:

It was Enemy Of The World but then Phil Morris raided Mugabe's sock drawer and actually found the whole thing.
Enemy of the World is a complete serial? Hot drat, I thought I had run through all of Troughtons whole stories.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

Dr. Gene Dango MD posted:

Enemy of the World is a complete serial? Hot drat, I thought I had run through all of Troughtons whole stories.

Yep, it was released amidst much hullabaloo when it was discovered, along with a mostly complete version of The Web of Fear (the only missing episode is the first meeting of the Doctor and what would become the Brigadier :doh:)

By an utterly remarkable coincidence, Moffat just so happened to bring the Great Intelligence into the revival before the official announcement that the latter had been found!

Pesky Splinter
Feb 16, 2011

A worried pug.

DoctorWhat posted:

A few years ago, I was struggling with self-worth after some academic disasters and other garbage. Then I saw that convention video of Colin reading the speech from The Rings of Akhaten, and shortly thereafter met Colin himself. Over the following year I started really thinking about how I was living my life and realized that loathing myself for every mistake and failure and moment of ignorance was crippling me. So I resolved to stop. And as a promise to myself - a promise to be motivated forward by my regrets and failures rather than being held back by them - I dyed some baseball pants, ironed question marks onto the collar of a dress shirt, and got myself a coat.

:unsmith:

You didn't get the coat, the coat got you.

I must admit, before the thread convinced me to listen to the audios, through general osmosis, Colin Baker was very much that "Wait, who was that Doctor after Tom Baker? Oh wait, that one had lettuce and cricket? Who was after him, was it the Scottish one? No. Not-Richard E Grant from Withnail? Oh, that's right, the brightly coloured one!" :downs:
Which is a massive disservice to him, and how he plays Six. A view that (quite rightly), got changed very very quickly.
On that Withnail, and I topic, where's that Eighth Doc/ Shalka Doc team up Big Finish? :colbert:


CobiWann posted:

I’m actually a bit afraid to get to Colin’s TV run because I only know him through Big Finish, but I just tell myself “no bad Doctors or companions, only bad writers and producers.”?

The main issue with his TV run, is that he seldom gets to do anything other than act like an acerbic conceited arsehole, and his quiet, reflective moments are often interrupted by him snapping at Peri, or whoever. It's rare that he's able to show the range of emotions that we hear in the audios; the writers seemed to confuse 'passion' with 'terminally pissed off'. It's not Baker's fault - he's just working with what he's been given, but it was definitely a troubled production.

Gaz-L
Jan 28, 2009
It's basically why I like Trial, despite its numerous flaws. Six gets to show a lot of heart and charm in the frame sequences, and even in the body of some stories. (His failed attempt to comfort Peri in Mysterious Planet is wonderful.)

Dr. Gene Dango MD
May 20, 2010

Fuck them other cats I'm running with my own wolfpack

Keep fronting like youse a thug and get ya dome pushed back

Jerusalem posted:

Yep, it was released amidst much hullabaloo when it was discovered, along with a mostly complete version of The Web of Fear (the only missing episode is the first meeting of the Doctor and what would become the Brigadier :doh:)
Woah really? I enjoyed The Web of Fear a lot when I watched the snaps from it.

Gaz-L posted:

Ice Warriors has an 'official' animated reconstruction though.
I'm glad it does and I'm happy people enjoy watching them but the cartoon reconstructions are hard for me to watch. It makes following the action a lot easier but they can never really get the actors facial expressions or body language, and with Troughton that's missing a lot. Of course the snaps miss a lot too, but if you're lucky you get a good image of the actor and can fill in the blanks. Sometimes when I'm watching a reconstruction the film appears different from the scene before, and I realize that's because it's actual footage and what I saw before was my imagination filling in the gaps between the snaps.

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!
Big Finish is at it again…

http://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/doctor-who-special-offers-from-the-top-of-the-polls

They’re putting some of their “chart toppers” from DWM on sale. The only one I’ve heard is the Fifth Doctor Box Set, which I highly recommend for a proper dose of Adricing.

I am tempted by the Hinchcliffe box set…three stories into his time as producer and I’m easily a Philip Hinchcliffe guy.

Barry Foster
Dec 24, 2007

What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)
Capaldi just did an incredibly nerdy interview on the Doctor Who FB page (I can't seem to find a way to link it, since it's just a post...).

He has great taste in episodes. His favourites from Classic Who are pretty predictable, but his favourites from the new series?

Rose, The Girl In The Fireplace, The Vampires of Venice, and the Rings of Akhaten :getin:

Box of Bunnies
Apr 3, 2012

by Pragmatica

Barry Foster posted:

(I can't seem to find a way to link it, since it's just a post...).

This should take people directly to the post/video.

Mentions liking the Mondas Cybes and wanting to do a "Genesis of the Cybermen" type story with them.

Spare Parts TV :getin:

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Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Today I learned (or was reminded) that Jon Pertwee was Croft and Perry's first choice to play Captain Mainwaring on Dad's Army. That would've been a bit :stare:. Perhaps not quite as :stare: as the hypothetical scenario in which the Third Doctor is played by Arthur Lowe, but :stare: nonetheless.

(Though taking a step back, hardly outside the realms of plausibility, since Pertwee was best known for comedy and music hall before he was in Doctor Who.)

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