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Post by Cyggy on Mar 5, 2022 5:39:51 GMT
Please rate and discuss this story here.....
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Post by Cyggy on Mar 6, 2022 22:04:59 GMT
Not really my cup of tea. I find it a bit of a one note story that thinks it's being terribly clever in it's premise, but doesn't really do much with the idea. I think I prefer the Doctor Who Weekly comic strip "City of the Damned" - where all emotion is outlawed.....
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Post by Cyggy on Jun 22, 2022 19:48:48 GMT
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Post by Cyggy on Jun 22, 2022 22:23:04 GMT
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Post by Cyggy on Jul 5, 2022 22:09:21 GMT
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Post by sadako on Jul 6, 2022 13:20:59 GMT
It is Season 24 pantomime, but they seem to have gotten a lot better at it. It's very slick, even quite sharp in places. Some performances in it do leave a raw impression.
The Kandyman is terribly unfortunate however, the scene where McCoy is laughing at the podium steps might be one of the worst scenes in the show, and much of its mid-part does feel very flippant and forgettable. It certainly pales against the terrifyingly resilient dystopian set-up seen in Day of the Daleks.
I'm also very uneasy with the death of Fifi, it feels very wrong for this kind of story and does leave a nasty taste.
It does seem written with some informed political ideas about people power, and in some ways is more prophetic than ever these days. We do seem to live in a modern culture where happy positivity and wellbeing has become a fixation, and those who aren't able to go along with those cliques are looked upon as undesirables, and it actually does speak well to what that tyranny can be like emotionally to endure.
Overall, I don't regret watching it, but I don't really see it as canon.
It just looks like it belongs to a different show entirely.
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Post by Future-Diver on Mar 15, 2023 10:47:54 GMT
"I can hear the sound of empires toppling."
I'm quite a fan of The Happiness Patrol, even though it looks cheap and shoddy, features a daft Bertie Bassett sweet shop villain and feels like a slightly twisted Kid's TV version of Who. However, I enjoy watching the Thatcher-inspired Helen A (played marvelously by Sheila Hancock),her pet monster-dog Fifi and the simple but clever idea of a planet where unhappiness is forbidden. I also relish that whole exaggerated satirical/Orwellian tone to the story - Sylvester and Sophie are smashing in this (I like it when the Doctor tries to sing 'As Time Goes By'). Why hasn't Character Options released a Happiness Patrol figure yet?
'Happiness will prevail'.
7/10
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Post by Silent Walter on Mar 21, 2023 13:27:21 GMT
Not as good as Remembrance and Greatest Show In The Galaxy but still a cracker. It's on par with Maxwell's Silver Hammer in that people always trash it for it's camp visuals and Bertie despite the dark story and weighty subtext. Even though that being what makes both great.
7/10
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Post by Bowties on Mar 30, 2023 14:51:04 GMT
That candyman was weird. But the scene of McCoy’s Doctor disarming that guard with words is quite impressive.
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Post by Bowties on Mar 30, 2023 14:53:30 GMT
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Post by Future-Diver on Apr 15, 2023 21:33:36 GMT
Update: I finally showed my wife The Happiness Patrol today. Her verdict? "That was the worst Doctor Who story I've ever seen"
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Post by Future-Diver on Apr 16, 2023 5:39:24 GMT
"Fans always wanted the show to be dark and punchy, and as soon as they heard about a story was called The Happiness Patrol, they formed preconceptions about it. Another problem was a lot of the costumes and the elements were this kitsch holiday camp thing, presented as sinister, but I think some fans lacked the irony to see beyond the surface, to see it was this horrible concentration camp".
I genuinely like Andrew Cartmel - anyone who appreciates 2000AD, Halo Jones and Alan Moore, can't be all bad, but I hate it when writers, producers, etc, try to blame the fans for their own failings- it's a common excuse. A particular show is poorly received and isn't fondly remembered - not because it was inherently crap or badly produced but because the fans who watched it lack something (intelligence, a sense of irony, an open mind, etc). It's an easy way to defend your own shortcomings - blame the fans.
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Post by profh0011 on Nov 1, 2023 12:46:03 GMT
I can't think about this without once again bringing up, the planned running order was:
REMEMBRANCE GREATEST SHOW HAPPINESS NEMESIS
Watch it in that order and it "works" way better than the actual broadcast order.
Coming into this straight after REMEMBRANCE and it feels like something's missing. That something being, the character development of the relationship between The Doctor and Ace.
Despite the BBC's F***-up (which presumably has carried on to this day, as similar scheduling F***-ups have with the Adam West BATMAN), I liked this story from the first time I saw it. And I especially liked Ace in it. I think she looked cuter in here than in any other story, except perhaps "Survival", but, in there, she seemed to be more "grown up".
I have actually only ONE major criticism of this story-- and it's a technical problem that, by this point in TV history, should NOT HAVE EXISTED anymore. The sound mix is terrible. The music is SO LOUD, there's whole scenes where I can't make out the dialogue. WTF??? To me, that's not a sign of "lack of time", that's a sign of "incompetence", of people who DON'T KNOW what they're doing. And it was a problem in many other stories during JNT's era, including "Revelation". How do you manage to SCREW UP things like that, that are "THE BASICS"??
As an aside... I've been thinking an awful lot lately about how I personally put in an IMMENSE amount of effort to generate and maintain a POSITIVE attitude every day, put a smile on my face, and laugh as much as possible-- and there's very few things I love more than passing that on to other people when I'm out running errands.
For me, at its base, it's self-preservation. But being able to pass it on to other people, in a world that is SO COMPLETELY F***ED UP on so many levels, makes me feel even better. So, I think, it's contagious-- even to myself. And that's a good thing. It's not only a good thing, it's NECESSARY.
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Post by GC on Apr 9, 2024 22:10:57 GMT
Doctor Who: The Happines Patrol In Studio – CG set tour
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Post by profh0011 on Apr 10, 2024 4:00:14 GMT
I don't know how many times I saw this before I suddenly realized John Normington was the same guy who'd been the main villain in THE CAVES OF ANDROZANI!
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