Dr Who

To be fair, E1 did have a mighty fine clevage.

It's true a Doctor Who special has become an essential part of the Christmas television schedule - and rightly so. It shows the BBC are determined to promote the franchise nowadays - and that should be great news for fans. Back in the 1980s it was totally different - the BBC wanted rid of it - hence why good actors such as Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy were given bum stories and poor scripts to work with. The production really weren't bothered in the show anymore. So credit to the BBC for continuing to give us specials to keep generating fresh interest in the series. Now they need to keep generating that interest in the regular series so that it doesn't become tiresome like I felt it did many times during Smith's last season. So I want to see new challenges for the Doctor, new storylines and fresh ideas, mixed in of course with established elements of the show.

Babelover48 - it obviously isn't the end of the Daleks forever. Remember they've already made appearances and will continue to make appearances since the end of the Time War. As an integral element of the franchise they have to remain. Of course we don't want to see them every week though. That would contradict everything I've just hoped for of fresh ideas.

I agree with many members posts about the 50th anniversary special feeling slightly rushed with not enough exploration in to the characters stories. As I've said previously a two part special, both parts feature length, would have been better. That would have given more time to explore in particular John Hurt's character. Such little involvement for an actor of his calibre was the major disappointment for me, especially with the amount of promoting this storyline was given in the months leading up to Saturday.

As I say I liked it, mostly, but still had the feeling that we should have had more. I'm hopeful they'll pull out all the stops for a rip-roaring Christmas special. The 50th anniversary has given them an opportunity to really bring the Doctor in to a new era. I just hope they take those opportunities in the new series.

(24-11-2013 20:42 )M-L-L Wrote:  The very first story "An Unearthly Child" was shown on BBC 4 last week after the "Adventure in Space and Time" drama about the Making of Dr Who (which was actually quite watchable)

If you've got Virgin TV, or know somebody that has, you can catch a bunch of classic episodes in their On Demand section just now as part of the 50th anniversary :

City of Death (Tom Baker)
Planet of The Daleks (Jon Pertwee)
Remembrance of the Daleks (Sylvester McCoy)
The Daemons (Jon Pertwee)
Tomb of the Cybermen (Patrick Troughton)
Trial of a Timelord (Colin Baker)
Genesis of the Daleks (Tom Baker)
Ghost Light (Sylvester McCoy)
Resurrection of the Daleks (Peter Davison)
Caves of Androzani (Peter Davison)
The Three Doctors (Jon Pertwee / Patrick Troughton / William Hartnell)
The Movie (Paul McGann)
The Time Meddler (William Hartnell)
The Two Doctors (Colin Baker / Patrick Troughton)
Vengeance on Varos (Colin Baker)
Web of Fear (Patrick Troughton - epsiodes only recently rediscovered, DVD not due until 2014 I think)

as well as all the New Who series 1 - 6 including all the specials and 4 series worth of "Dr Who Confidential" (if you really must?!)

Not sure how long they'll be on for; but they've been up for at least a month in the run up to the anniversary and are still all there at the moment.

These are usually free to watch as part of the subscription if you have one of the larger TV package bundles, rather than pay per view on an individual story basis. As with most On Demand programmes they're encrypted so unfortunately you can't record them.

That's really good if you have pay tv but alas as the bbc is something I have to subscribe to every month via my tv license I do think they could have found space on bbc2, 3 or 4 to air a few of the old shows as part of the celebration but hey that's just my yearning for former episodes I guess.

(25-11-2013 08:40 )bytor Wrote:  That's really good if you have pay tv but alas as the bbc is something I have to subscribe to every month via my tv license I do think they could have found space on bbc2, 3 or 4 to air a few of the old shows as part of the celebration but hey that's just my yearning for former episodes I guess.

there was a old episode on bbc4 the other day

also as ive said earlier. channel 5 Saturday and yesterday showed the 2 peter cushing dr who films

(25-11-2013 09:44 )Rammyrascal Wrote:  also as ive said earlier. channel 5 Saturday and yesterday showed the 2 peter cushing dr who films

Yes thanks Rammy and has also been said earlier, they are not considered as being fully part of the Dr Who legacy. They are stand alone movies that had little to do with the tv shows and were shown on Ch5. My comments are based on the fact that the programme is a BBC production, who I feel btw did a good enough job, just not my cup of tea. What I simply meant was it would have been nice to have seen a story from each of the Doctors as part of the celebration.
Anyway its all done and dusted now and time to move on. Having my own time travelling device I can happily report that the centenary show was a big hit with all surviving 18 Doctors taking part

Don't know how many people have seen (or want to see) this little* tribute film made by Peter Davison & others:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01m3kfy

A lot of in-jokes, but a lot of laughs, too

*a little over 30 minutes, in fact

(25-11-2013 13:02 )bytor Wrote:  What I simply meant was it would have been nice to have seen a story from each of the Doctors as part of the celebration.

I do agree with that. And I agree about the point about not having to have pay tv to watch old BBC programmes. But sadly BBC seems to farm out all its "repeats" these days to Gold, Watch and the like : Watch showed a story from each Doctor recently, probably not entirely un-coincidentally many from the list I posted earlier. If they've granted rights to these channels, they might grant to some of the Freeview ones that show old BBC stuff - I'm thinking that fairly new one Drama : surely classic Dr Who would get as many viewers as ancient old "Bergerac", "All Creatures Great and Small" , and "Lovejoy" ?!

I'd be surprised if BBC 4 didn't show some more -10 million odd viewers for the 50th special must indicate an interest in Dr Who which they'd be daft to ignore. They're not all tuning back in just for Tennant and Piper are they ? (Maybe they are, what do I know?)

BBC4 has shown the odd old story in the last few years - I think I remember seeing "The Green Death" and the "The Silurians" repeated a few years ago, and their budget for new programmes has been cut. They can't fill all the gaps up with old Top of the Pops repeats surely (because of Saville /DLT and all the rest) ?

Though I'm sure there's mileage in a TOTP clip show made up entirely of "Legs & Co" and "Pan's People" segments without any of the tedious miming original artists. Why am I not a channel controller ?

(25-11-2013 22:01 )M-L-L Wrote:  Though I'm sure there's mileage in a TOTP clip show made up entirely of "Legs & Co" and "Pan's People" segments without any of the tedious miming original artists. Why am I not a channel controller ?

Bloody hell, this is genius!

(24-11-2013 20:57 )M-L-L Wrote:  Yeah - there was basically a giant alien Demon with beard and horns and with hooved legs who was hidden in a buried spaceship who was the last of some all-powerful race that had basically controlled Earth's development a la Quatermass and the Pit and whom the Master was conjuring up to get his powers off him. The Master also had a henchman-creature that was a sort of living
"gargoyle" which was probably an nspiration for the "Weeping Angel" statues.
The Daemons is a pretty good story - the original Master and UNIT are in it; and it is a mix of things like Quatermass and the Midwich Cuckoos/Village of the Damned (for the idea of a country village cut off by an alien forcefield, but not the creepy alien children), It even has a TV channel news documentary being made in it for "BBC
Three" in it with a really annoying presenter working for it - a pretty good prediction for 1971!

The Master's "henchman" was called Bok the demon .He turned into a gargoyle when not "on duty" for The Master .I had the Dr Who Annual one Christmas and there was a on location feature on this particular episode .
At the storylines conclusion The Daemon "explodes" taking the church with it .
The "church" that was used in the explosion sequence was obviously a model .However , this did not deter some silly person writing into the "Points of View" programme the following week ."I think it's an absolute disgrace the BBC are allowed to destroy a Church in the name of entertainment " (or words to that effect) (I kid you not ) The "Points of View" presenter then had to reassure the viewer it was actually a model of a Church they had actually exploded .