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Post by GC on Jul 12, 2024 14:10:15 GMT
As suggested by Servo.
Give us your top 5 and bottom 5 Davison stories then. And perhaps throw in what you think is the most underrated Davo story.
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Post by heccy on Jul 13, 2024 0:00:48 GMT
Top Five:
The Visitation
Black Orchid
Earthshock
Snakedance
The Caves of Androzani.
Bottom Five.
Frontios.
Warriors of The Deep
Resurrection of The Daleks
Planet of Fire
Arc of Infinity.
Underrated. Mawdryn Undead. I really like this story, that is all.
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Post by rapscallion on Jul 13, 2024 4:42:04 GMT
Best 5= 1. Earthshock 2. Kinda 3. The Visitation 4. The Five Doctors 5. The Caves Of Androzani
Bottom 5= 5. Arc Of Infinity 4. Snakedance 3. Warriors Of The Deep 2. Time Flight 1. Planet Of Fire
Under-rated = The King's Demons. Just a fun little story that doesn't try to be anything special. A guilty pleasure. Same could be said for Four To Doomsday.
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Post by Servo on Jul 13, 2024 6:19:58 GMT
Top 5
The Caves of Androzani Earthshock Snakedance Resurrection of the Daleks Black Orchid
Bottom 5
Warriors of the Deep Arc of Infinity Time Flight Planet of Fire The Awakening
Most underrated: The Visitation
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Post by Future-Diver on Jul 13, 2024 15:20:23 GMT
Top: The Caves Of Androzani Earthshock Kinda Enlightenment Mawdryn Undead
Bottom: Warriors Of The Deep Arc Of Infinity Time Flight Terminus The King's Demons
Underrated: Four To Doomsday
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Post by GC on Jul 13, 2024 23:04:10 GMT
Top 5
The Caves of Androzani Earthshock The Five Doctors Enlightenment The Visitation
Bottom 5
Warriors of the Deep Four to Doomsday Kinda Terminus Time Flight
Underrated
The Awakening
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Post by sadako on Jul 14, 2024 18:34:48 GMT
Top 5: Earthshock The Caves of Androzani The Five Doctors Enlightenment Snakedance
Bottom 5: Warriors of the Deep Terminus Time-Flight Arc of Infinity The King's Demons
I've got nothing for Underrated, but I do find Four to Doomsday a bit of a guilty pleasure.
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Post by Bowties on Jul 17, 2024 14:54:21 GMT
My top Peter Davison stories:
Castrovalva,
Earthshock,
Mawdryn Undead,
The Five Doctors,
And The Caves of Androzani.
Special mention, Black Orchid, Time Flight (guilty pleasure) and the King’s Demons.
I wasn’t too keen on Warriors of the Deep. I won’t go all Tanlee on it, but I did find it depressing.
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Post by WildcatMatt on Jul 20, 2024 3:26:31 GMT
As with the other ‘80s Doctors, doing 5 of each means accounting for large portions of their run, so I’m only doing four episodes each for Peter.
Top Four Davison 4. Earthshock 3. The Visitation 2. Planet of Fire 1. The Caves of Androzani
I have really mixed feelings about the Cybermen. We got a backstory from them, of course, but I don’t think Kit & Gerry spent a lot of time thinking about their strengths and weaknesses. Originally they were humans with cybernetic bits so they were still vulnerable to radiation (and probably concentrated rifle fire to the right places, now that I think about it). As time went on they lost a lot of that weakness as their bodysuits became more armorlike and then the whole thing about gold. I think this inconsistency is part of why they will always be second to the Daleks. The Daleks are the epitome of military run amok; thanks to Hitler we know what that looks like. The Cybermen though are the epitome of the tech-med complex run amok; fortunately we don’t really have an historical analog to pin that on. But that makes it harder to lock in on.
Anyway. The Cybermen in Revenge were, in my opinion, terrible. As bad as the Daleks in Destiny. So I was glad they got a breather. Earthshock is a product of JN-T’s better instincts. Not having a namecheck in the titles. Actually building up suspense to a proper cliffhanger reveal. When working in images of the other Doctors as identification was still exciting and novel. The tension driven by the grittiness and the seeming inevitability of it all just keeps building until the end. I would rate it #2 actually, except the early TARDIS scenes are so frigging cringeworthy. I know this is supposed to play off the “Doctor as father figure to Adric and the kid wants something different than the parent does” but it’s played so embarrassingly and diminishes the Doctor’s character. No wonder Tegan starts bossing him around.
The Visitation, to me, is quintessential Doctor Who. Aliens doing alien things around the time of a significant historical event and the Doc gets in up to his eyeballs. It’s nice. I do hate the zapping of the sonic screwdriver though. I understand JN-T’s point about get-out-of-jail cards but why does he have to be such a dick about it? He was the same way about gleefully blowing up K9 over and over, too.
I’m not a huge fan of Turlough. I blame some of that on the friend who got me into the show, he disliked the character also and liked to call him “Turdlough”. As a Yank with only a vague understanding of the whole British boarding school concept that would have been grokked by the domestic audience, I couldn’t quite get how old he was supposed to be and whether he was at that school because he was a troublemaker or what. Having the Black Guardian encouraging him to kill the Doctor early on added some lingering trust issues also. Therefore I was expecting to hate this story.
Surprise! I like it quite a lot. I mean, seeing Nicola Bryant in a swimsuit is almost as yummy as seeing Wendy Padbury in that catsuit, so that was a pleasant start. Her accent may wobble but otherwise as an earthling suddenly caught in the middle of the Master-Doctor conflict she does a great job portraying the arc from wibbling to trying to do constructive things. I feel bad for how things went for Kamelion on an emotional level but from a storyline perspective it makes the Master nastier than usual and leaves us with something to think about in terms of being dominated as a human or as a sentient machine. It’s also a reasonably good backstory for Turlough in terms of explaining his hesitance to talk about his past.
And finally, Caves. It’s the nexus of so many things – last Davison story, first story with Peri established as the companion (and it’s a pity we didn’t get 1-2 more stories with them together), first Holmes script for JN-T, first official Who debut for Graeme Harper, and more. There’s received wisdom within fandom that “Peter’s Doctor didn’t have a character until the last story” and I get where that comes from. But I think it’s more subtle than that. Part of it is the range: this may be the most animated we see him, especially in the Part 3 cliffhanger. It’s certainly not because he takes control of the situation, in fact, the only times he does is when he escapes Jek’s base and later when he goes for the bat’s milk. Maybe it’s that he seems a little less helpless and/or hopeless when he’s a prisoner. The way he stands up to Jek in their duel of words certainly is stronger than his frequent reaction of sort of stopping and frowning.
So we have a cracker of a script from Holmes. The guest cast is out of this world. Christopher Gable brings so much body language to Jek; everything backs up his tale of being a bougie on Major until Morgus double crossed him. Stotz is absolutely convincing. John Normington is pitch-perfect as the amoral capitalist.
And then there’s the direction. Active camera work and a lot of action happening in different parts and depths of the screen. The 3D hologram videophone is a really neat trick. And then there are the lines straight to camera. On paper they are bonkers but Harper blocks them so the mind immediately makes the leap to treat it like you’re hearing their thoughts and it works a treat. He also keeps the magma creature largely in shadow so keep it from wrecking the atmosphere.
Finally there’s the regeneration itself. It’s absolutely masterful how the cameos build and blur and keep layering on top of each other with the video feedback overwhelming what we see, calling back to the first regeneration and even further to the original titles. And then boom!! The Doctor bolts up and the effects drop away. I got goosebumps the first time I saw it late at night on a PBS station with poor reception and I still get goosebumps today.
I’m not a huge fan of Colin’s image being superimposed over the Davison credits though; I get that visual effects had progressed enough to do that compared to the previous regeneration, but I thought there was something poignant about having the distorted starfield. And there are a few moments when you can tell Harper’s running out of time in the studio and could really use another hour but he’s not going to get it so we make do with a shot that’s a little less polished. But that’s minor. A triumph all the way around.
Bottom Four Davison 4. Arc of Infinity 3. Time-Flight 2. Four to Doomsday 1. Warriors of the Deep
Sometimes I sit and think about how I might be remembered if I’d been in JN-Ts place as a fan of the show working at the BBC and getting to sit in the Producer’s chair. Given the same decisions, how many times would my inner fanboy goad me into making the same mistakes? Probably a lot.
It’s easy with 21st century eyes to look back at JN-T’s concept of a new “monster season” and, well, roll your eyes. I try to contextualize it though. Prior to 1979 the question of what existed within the BBC and what didn’t had no answer. By this time, the FTVL had a handle on what existed and some missing stuff was trickling back. Interest in the show’s history is growing, and JN-T loves the idea of mining the show’s back catalog for inspiration, and hey, there’s an anniversary coming up. At the time I’m sure this seemed less fanwanky.
Anyway, there are a lot of Who stories that end with some ambiguity, whether it’s a villain that may have survived, or a civilization left to rebuild itself. Several of the companions parted ways with open-book futures. So there are a lot of threads one could pick up.
Omega is close to last on my list of characters to resurrect. Caught in an antimatter explosion at a pinhole interface between universes. That seems about as permanent an end as you can get. And even if you handwave that, how does one even communicate with someone on the other side? Wasn’t that half the plot of The Three Doctors, that there was no way to contact the other side? Okay, fine, we’ll handwave that too. This time we’re going to give him a costume that looks like a big squashable bug thing because we want to misdirect the audience and not recognize him. Ugh.
And we get yet another traitorous Time Lord. Christ, if that many of them are like that I can see why the Doctor left in the first place.
Time-Flight, omg… I don’t want to hate this. I like the idea of a Concorde/TARDIS crossover thing. I like the opportunity for Tegan’s professional training to get dusted off. Hey, maybe the Chameleons are back? But no, no, it’s another awful Master story with a convoluted boring plot.
Four to Doomsday has the unfortunate status of being the first Davison story to go into production. This was a good idea, in that it made Castrovalva much more polished because the character and actor relationships would be established. Because all the things I’ve read about the on-set tension is as bonkers as the Doctor using a cricket ball in space. You can see how much the cast is not on the same page and it overwhelms parts of the story. Bad.
And finally, let’s talk Warriors on the Cheap (as it was so christened in DWB)… go re-read the first couple of paragraphs about Arc of Infinity and come back. … OK, refreshed? So, most of what I said about Arc basically applies here too. And I get the idea that the Silurians and Sea Devils might seem like two great tastes that taste great together. Just not the way they’re combined here.
I could buy the idea that both races survived the bombings and in the course of doing whatever they do in their underground bunkers, discover each other and form an alliance against the humans. I would buy this much more than the hierarchical relationship we see and it would give more opportunity to develop the story around cracks in the alliance, especially once the Doctor gets involved.
I suppose there’s supposed to be some philosophical thing in this story about how sometimes life gives you a shit sandwich and you just have to eat it, with Davison’s line about “there should have been another way” and all. But the thing is, that’s what the Doctor does – find another way. In that sense the story lets down the entire series, particularly in light of how genocide comes up again in Trial just a couple years later.
But hey, at least the Sea Devils got cool new costumes, right?
Underrated Davison
Frontios
Frontios take a lot of crap for the part 1 cliffhanger, and rightly so. Davison’s reaction is absolutely flaccid. I suppose they were going for a “so overwhelmed it comes out wrong” kind of thing but it doesn’t work and, in fact, supports my point about how less detatched the Doctor is in Caves compared to this.
But otherwise the story has some good bones. A demoralized colony. Mysterous disappearances. Something about the ground. And I give Mark Strickson a lot of credit for his gibbering, drooling performance as the memory of the Tractators surfaces. Rarely have I felt that much sympathy for Turlough.
And it’s an interesting concept for a TARDIS defense mechanism to react to a critical gravity event by displacing into the real world and splintering into pieces. It may be questionable but it’s not all that different than what happened in The Mind Robber, really. (And I’m okay with not seeing Janet Fielding in a catsuit clinging to the TARDIS console.) And then the Doc goads the Tractators into doing the dirty work of bringing the TARDIS back together. Not too shabby, in my mind.
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Post by sadako on Jul 20, 2024 11:06:28 GMT
Great write-up WildcatMatt.
I think you're particularly right about Arc of Infinity. The miracle impossibility of Omega's return should be a big deal in the story, but instead just feels treated as a taken for granted incidental. As seems typical, it just feels like a case of "it happens because JNT/Ian Levine wishes it so".
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Post by markhev1966 on Jul 22, 2024 1:06:11 GMT
Top 5 Caves of Androzani Earthshock The Visitation Enlightenment Planet of Fire
Bottom 5 Timeflight Frontios Arc of Infinity Four to Doomsday Warriors of the Deep
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Post by WildcatMatt on Jul 23, 2024 19:29:02 GMT
Great write-up WildcatMatt. I think you're particularly right about Arc of Infinity. The miracle impossibility of Omega's return should be a big deal in the story, but instead just feels treated as a taken for granted incidental. As seems typical, it just feels like a case of "it happens because JNT/Ian Levine wishes it so". I still don't understand why there wasn't an Ice Warriors story. That would have been a much more logical fit and they were overdue for a reappearance. I guess they wanted Omega because it was the 20th anniversary season so bringing back the 10th anniversary villain was really important? Ugh.
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Post by profh0011 on Jul 23, 2024 21:55:52 GMT
it just feels like a case of "it happens because JNT/Ian Levine wishes it so". Youtube critic "The Critical Drinker" often likes to say, " This takes place because the story needs it to happen."
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Post by profh0011 on Jul 23, 2024 22:02:31 GMT
I guess they wanted Omega because it was the 20th anniversary season so bringing back the 10th anniversary villain was really important? Ugh. Some stories should NEVER have sequels.
On the other hand... in an alternate continuity that my best friend and I both used, we wrote a HALLOWEEN sequel that was better than any of the movie sequels... and then I wrote a sequel to THAT that definitively ended the series... but then, to my own total shock and surprise (it was NOT planned to happen)... I wrote a sequel to THAT that actually EXPLAINED the entire misbegotten series in a way NONE of those AWFUL films even attempted to.
Good thing I changed all the character names.
Jack Kirby was right. "Create your own characters." It gives you INFINITELY more freedom to tell good stories.
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Post by WildcatMatt on Jul 24, 2024 18:05:06 GMT
Some stories should NEVER have sequels. I think it's always important to ask what a new story would tell us about the character(s). For example, Invasion of Time was not great but it expanded the Time Lords, the Sontarans, and the TARDIS itself. Did we get anything of substance from Arc of Infinity? Jack Kirby was right. "Create your own characters." It gives you INFINITELY more freedom to tell good stories. That's why Tom's era is so sparse on Dalek and Cybermen stories, Robert Holmes wanted new material or at least fresh takes on old ones. And I agree generally with Kirby but I think there's a time and place for both. When I was in high school, I developed what we now would call a Mary Sue fanfic. It was set in the Whoniverse, shortly after Season 26, with the main character being a young time lord not long out of the academy and working for the Celestial Intervention Agency. The first couple of stories involved my character meeting characters from other media franchises I enjoyed. This may sound lazy and venal (well, I suppose it is) but I was 16 and this was my first self-driven attempt at writing. Some of it was to impress a couple of cute girls in Yearbook once they found out what I was doing, but some of it was also a way of exploring my mental self. But some interesting things happened. No, not with the girls. But by working within the DW framework, I started to learn what was going to work and what wasn't. I would decide to write my character interacting with some other and I might write a couple of paragraphs or pages and then decide there wasn't really a story there. And other times it would click and I'd churn out 10-15 handwritten single-spaced college-rule pages. I never did come up with an idea for a Dalek story, but I did conceptualize a Cyberman story set roughly between Tomb and Invasion. And I created a monster race that were cousins of the Ice Warriors as my primary villain. Over the next year and a half I think I wrote something just north of 100 pages of material. By the end, I was actively outlining exit stories for the "borrowed" characters and developing more of my own. Then college came around and I had other things to think about. But I look back at it now, 30 years later, and I see that I needed that comfort zone as a place to start and a framework to ape. So infinite freedom is nice, but it's not always what you need.
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