As Doctor Who Turns 60, the TARDIS Flies Again Tonight (bbc.co.uk) 53
It was November 23rd of the year 1963 that Doctor Who first premiered on the BBC. And the many years since then have wrought their changes, writes the BBC:
Events on screen and off have shaped the character's personality, their face changing to reflect Britain itself, and every version building on what has gone before. To truly understand Who, you have to know your history...
[T]he series was originally intended to teach children history as much as thrill them... [T]he Daleks were shouty miniaturised tanks, terrifying to a nation that had lived through World War 2... Scripts by the likes of Douglas Adams (who wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) leaned into the show's inherent strangeness... Interestingly, the new specials and series involve Marvel-owner Disney, who will stream it outside the UK and Ireland, in turn helping boost the budget.
The article handily summarizes the last 60 years. ("Perhaps the most shocking revelation of [2010 showrunner Steven Moffat's] tenure was a hitherto unseen, past version of the Doctor, played by John Hurt. Other writers would take this idea and run with it...") The article ends with the words, "Only time will tell."
And elsewhere another BBC article notes that today "the TARDIS is set to return to BBC One and iPlayer." With David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor and Catherine Tate reprising her role as Donna Noble the popular duo will make their spectacular return to mark the show's 60th anniversary with three special episodes running each Saturday from the 25th November...
Neil Patrick Harris as the Toymaker [is] set to cause all kinds of mayhem. It's going to be an unmissable cosmic adventure, all before Ncuti Gatwa gets the keys to the TARDIS over the festive season.
Thanks to Alain Williams (Slashdot reader #2,972) for sharing the article.
[T]he series was originally intended to teach children history as much as thrill them... [T]he Daleks were shouty miniaturised tanks, terrifying to a nation that had lived through World War 2... Scripts by the likes of Douglas Adams (who wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) leaned into the show's inherent strangeness... Interestingly, the new specials and series involve Marvel-owner Disney, who will stream it outside the UK and Ireland, in turn helping boost the budget.
The article handily summarizes the last 60 years. ("Perhaps the most shocking revelation of [2010 showrunner Steven Moffat's] tenure was a hitherto unseen, past version of the Doctor, played by John Hurt. Other writers would take this idea and run with it...") The article ends with the words, "Only time will tell."
And elsewhere another BBC article notes that today "the TARDIS is set to return to BBC One and iPlayer." With David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor and Catherine Tate reprising her role as Donna Noble the popular duo will make their spectacular return to mark the show's 60th anniversary with three special episodes running each Saturday from the 25th November...
Neil Patrick Harris as the Toymaker [is] set to cause all kinds of mayhem. It's going to be an unmissable cosmic adventure, all before Ncuti Gatwa gets the keys to the TARDIS over the festive season.
Thanks to Alain Williams (Slashdot reader #2,972) for sharing the article.
Hide (Score:2)
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Muscle cramps in the dark and the dust have got to be much better than watching the show, I guess.
Douglas Adams Shada (Score:4, Interesting)
Not too many years ago, the BBC resurrected the old, unfinished Shada episode by Douglas Adams and finished it with animation. The dialog was apparently complete and recorded. There are also a couple older episodes restored through the use of animation. A good way of preserving these lost episodes.
It's really too bad the BBC diminished Romana's character. It was good to have a strong female character who was equal to the doctor, but after the first season they reduced her to another damsel in distress, albeit one who can fly the Tardis. She was pretty weak in Shada, needing the doctor to rescue her, but the story was interesting and any Whovian who hasn't seen it should have a watch.
Speaking of good, equal companions, I'm glad Donna is back, although probably briefly, as the Doctor's Companion. She was good foil to the doctor, and in many ways his equal in the end. Not a damsel in distress, and not someone hopelessly in love with him either.
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The animations were done by recording new dialog for the missing sequences (this after Big Finish completed the story by having 8 and Romana carry out the scenes instead). They had all the exterior filming done - the strike hit them in the middle of studio work.
Adams combined ideas from Shada and City of Death in assembling the first Dirk Gently novel.
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Some time earlier I had a VHS of Shada using whatever footage they had plus Tom Baker narrating the missing parts and filling them in. This animated version might be fun. It's been long enough that I've pretty much forgotten everything except that the one scene in the boat made it into the Five Doctors special.
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I seem to recall that Lala Ward, who played Romana (or at least the second iteration of her) was involved with Tom Baker at the time. They probably wrote her out to avoid potential workplace relationship issues. As you say, it's a shame.
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Well, the problem with Romana is that she was a Time Lord and, even if she was supposed to be naive at the beginning, she could grow into the Doctor's equal. So, then you have an issue; either she has to be written against type, or the Doctor will have no one to explain it all to, which is one of the points of having a companion anyway.
Either way, she had quite a good run for a companion.
Behind the sofa (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish I could remember, but my memories of 1963 are very dim. I must, however be one of the few Slashdotters who where alive in the UK then. I definitely remember later episodes. It was neither the Daleks nor the Cybermen, but the Cybermats [wikipedia.org] (1967) that had me hiding behind the sofa.
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You remember entire plot lines from shows you saw back then (that you haven't rewatched)?
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Not the entire plot, just the scary bits.
Re:Behind the sofa (Score:5, Interesting)
The plotlines back then were pretty coherent and tight. Some were so iconic that yes, even if I haven't watched them in over a decade, the points are still clear in the mind. Helped also that I devoured the novelisations of those episodes.
Whereas, with my housemate, I asked her what stories of the last Doctor she remembered. Partly because I was testing myself; it turns out my passive memory for them is fine, if I was prompted with one element from the story I could remember the rest, but if you asked me to list a point from a bunch of such stories, I'd be lost unassisted. ... when she named one plot point from an episode from the Doctor BEFORE the Doctor under discussion, I pointed this out to her. And I recognised that because no matter how bad the scripts were, Peter Capaldi was awesome. He made even miserable 21st century scripts almost bearable.
An Unearthly Child. The Daleks. The Edge Of Destruction. The Dalek Invasion Of Earth. The Space Museum. The Celestial Toymaker (where I learned the Towers game). The War Games. Day Of The Daleks. Pyramids Of Mars which got spun into part of the spinoff series's "Faction Paradox" worldbuilding. Look, and so on and so on and so on.
The old stories were not only memorable, not only tight, but well executed. Whereas the new stuff is so thoroughly soaked in castor oil and teflon, it's forgettable within a week. Even to somebody absolutely soaked in the previous worldbuilding.
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The best choice I've ever made was to stop watching the 13th doctor after the first two absolutely terrible episodes. I was sceptical about both the gender swap and the ensemble cast approach, and it turned out that those weren't even the problem - turning the doctor into a bumbling idiot who stumbles into solutions by pure accident was so off-putting that I didn't even care if he was now a she or an alien with three heads - it clearly wasn't the doctor anymore.
That made me miss all the character- and setti
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As someone who has watched almost all of extant Doctor Who (not on first broadcast, since most of it came out before I was alive, but in reruns and torrents), I've seen the writing quality ebb and flow over a long time. And I would say the quality of the show is mostly dependent upon the writing. My favorite era was from about 1970-1980 (Pertwee and Baker). I distinctly remember a man wrapped in bubble wrap, spraypainted green, flailing around on the floor in the role of an intergalactic grub. And it was gr
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To be fair, I think a lot of that is because people remember the good episodes, and the notable episodes that introduced famous villains or added significantly to the lore. There were a lot of really, really terrible ones over the decades too.
That said, the modern era seems to have a problem with stakes fatigue. Pretty much every week it's at least the entire Earth on the line, if not the whole universe. While the older episodes were often quite over-the-top, it helped that most stories were a few episodes
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The scariest one I remember is "Fury from the deep" where people are "taken over" by seaweed in North Sea gas pipelines. Unfortunately it is one of the missing series.
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There is an animated version of this, using the original soundtrack from the episodes. IMHO they did a really good job of it and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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Re: Behind the sofa (Score:1)
Oh that's what it was - I remember chasing my little sister round the room zombie style, arms outstretched, going "The seaweed, the seaweed!" in a spooky voice. Topical then with the North Sea oil rigs just starting. I never feared the mechanical foes, it was always the squidgy organic ones. The yetis were quite terrifying and there was one where something came out of the foam-filled London Tube tunnels.
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The original Cybermen were really creepy.
The latter ones are toned down a lot and I'm surprised they haven't resurrected that original design.
Re: Behind the sofa (Score:2)
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Thanks, I must have missed or forgotten that one.
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I was really excited for this. Unfortunately, they only spend a short time as the original ones and quickly "evolve" into newer designs. I was hoping it would have been a soft-reboot back to the originals for more than the episode. Still a great episode though (as was its follow-on episode).
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I wish I could remember, but my memories of 1963 are very dim. I must, however be one of the few Slashdotters who where alive in the UK then. I definitely remember later episodes. It was neither the Daleks nor the Cybermen, but the Cybermats [wikipedia.org] (1967) that had me hiding behind the sofa.
I was 11 in April 1963 and I remember the early Hartnell Doctor very well. I had a pal who was into drama and we used to 'do' the Doctor, gripping the lapels of our jackets and exclaiming 'The Daleks!'
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I remember going to see the movie version in about 1963.
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I remember being thrilled by the first episode (Unearthly Child). As a kid keen on science it was so rare to have anything hinting at the mysteries of time and space rather than bland sitcoms on TV. It was a must-watch from the first episode until leaving to study at university at the turn of the decade - in a time when tvs were rare and expensive none of us had one and so I lost track of it.
For me, the heyday was the time of Patrick Troughton. I've never re-watched those episodes for fear that I'd be disap
No more Dr who on Australian ABC after 50 years (Score:3)
Sadly, after running on Australia's ABC for 50 years, Dr Who has departed free to air TV here and must be watched on Disney+. A sad milestone. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/nov/26/doctor-who-australia-abc-cancels-free-to-air-tv-show-disney
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The usual I'm afraid, 1. someone wants to make money for absolutely no effort, and 2. nickel & diming with sodding, cursed adverts, the death of everything.
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Came here to mention this and no, I am not going to subscribe to Disney+.
I kind of gave up on the franchise after the last effort anyway and it will take some major improvements in writing/plot/character progression/acting etc for me to interested in it again.
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Will second everything said in that post.
Well, almost everything. The "major improvements" required would have to destroy and undo most everything in the last couple of seasons in order to be workable.
Regardless of how previous stories like say Mawdryn Undead or The Brain Of Morbius or whatever the garbage Planet Called Christmas episode or whatever one had Amy begging the Time Lords to give him just one more was called relied on the number of regenerations the Doctor had left... the Doctor now has infinite
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Who mostly just ignores canon, so there's really no need to undo anything.
For example, when Time Lord Romana regenerated she tried on several different bodies, like you would try on different outfits, eventually settling on looking exactly like a princess from a previous episode (played by the same actress, Lala Ward). That one was written by Douglas Adams, and quietly forgotten about.
Of course, all the Extended Universe stuff is ignored, except when they randomly decide to name check some book-only charact
Re: No more Dr who on Australian ABC after 50 year (Score:1)
"Dr Who has gone full Disney." Not yet and I dearly hope Disney don't have the rights to interfere creatively or start their own Who EU. Else earth will be flooded by:
"One of those regeneration-wave devices, strapped to the Doctor now, dropped on a planet and done. Forever and ever and ever and ever."
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Too late. Now that the special has aired, we can see it has indeed gone full Disney. From what I gather it's quite preachy and lacking any real substance. I have zero interest in watching the coming episodes with the new actor booked to play the lead role.
While I'm tempted to say that anytime the Americans get their hands on a British show they ruin it (Space: 1999 a prime example), in this case I'm pretty sure the BBC and Davies would have ruined it on their own anyway, given Davies' comments over the la
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I swear I felt the same way, until I realised the script quality that started with the end of Eccleston's run and ramped up in Matt Smith's era, dragged down Peter Capaldi, was the core of Jodie Whitaker's whole run, which they're desperately trying to hide by dragging back Tennant and Tate and now goes full Disney with an ex-comic cute talking furry animal... is what's departed from our national public free-to-air broadcaster.
It's like an addictive drug with health benefits; being continually cut with laun
It's no great loss (Score:2)
It's no great loss because Dr Who has been circling the drain for years, and from what I've seen on recent episodes, has well and truly been flushed.
So This Is The ReTARDIS? (Score:2)
Sorry, I couldn't help myself. As can no one else.
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RTD's ReTarDis. And they've gone full RTD ReTarDis Disney and as I said above, you should never go full Disney.
I'm happy to help, I'm afraid just not in the usual direction implied, sorry.
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But being lost to the public consciousness is good for the public.
No matter how boosted, prettier and polished the episodes might become, it's a polished *turd*. The show's general trend has been inevitably downward since 2005 and worse, that's after (admittedly some stinkers but also) some incredible stories from the 1990-2004 period in the novels.
And those "Tales from the TARDIS" or whatever. Does the BBC own no de-aging video technology? They got a bunch of fan props, over-jammed them with no sense of de
Shit. (Score:3)
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You may have noticed above that the people who've watched the show through the majority of 1) their lives and 2) the show's life are moving their sofas so they can stretch out and fall asleep on them.
I am disappointed, hurt, heartsick and depressed that the show has become what it is. It's even more depressing that people think this stuff is the new exemplar of "thrilling". This stuff is right up^W down there with "The Rings Of Power" and AppleTV's "Foundation". This isn't the end of the world, this is the
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To steal from a signature earlier in these comments:
Woke, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit"
RTD brings back the Panto (Score:1)
Spoiler phobic people amuse me. I didn't really need spoilers to tell me the way this was going to go.
But I'll try not to spoil it for people haven't seen this colossal mess yet.
Let's think - What's the bargain with the audience that Tom Baker proclaimed eons ago?
Does the Doctor always win? Check - unless it's cliffhanger to create FALSE JEOPARDY! That was why when you hid behind the sofa you knew not to be too scared because your HERO was on it. He'd save the day. Some kettle and as string, a screwdriver a
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The old show had the Doctor as a straight white male - though the straight part didn't matter much because he was so old he was pretty much past all that - and there was a damn good reason for it; The Time Lords were stand-ins for the British aristocracy, the establishment. They had a few good people but had generally gone rotten with power and privilege and were totally blind to that. He was one of them who rejected all that and tried to be the good guy, and the aristocracy tolerated his adventures so l
With David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor ... (Score:2)
...ah.
So they're going to blatantly remind fans of how good the show used to be before launching "queer black" Dr Who?
Doesn't seem like a strong move, but whatever.
horse is dead (Score:2)
That horse has already been beaten to death, but that doesn't stop them from further beating.
Not impressed so far. (Score:2)
A evil version of Phineas and Ferb's Meep? Is that really the best they could do?
And, then, a TARDIS console with a offer machine (not even a teasmaid) where the console isn't waterproof or protected by fuses?
The flashbacks were irritating, too.
If this is the best RTD can do, then the show is dead.
Did They Ruin It? (Score:2)
I've never watched Dr. Who, but I just saw the promo for the new episode. It felt like a Hollywood cookie-cutter clone of the action movie drivel that Hollywood has been producing for the last 10 years (Start Trek Discovery, anyone? Or the last season of The Orville?). And it feels nothing like the older clips of Dr. Who I've seen over the years. I hope Dr. Who hasn't fallen into the B.S.-Action-Movie hellhole that so many others have. It deserves better.