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Post by GC on Jul 12, 2024 14:11:13 GMT
As suggested by Servo.
Give us your top 5 and bottom 5 Troughton stories then. And perhaps throw in what you think is the most underrated Trout story.
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Post by Servo on Jul 13, 2024 6:51:23 GMT
Top 5
The Invasion The Web of Fear (despite the presence of Evans) The Evil of the Daleks The Tomb of the Cybermen The Fury from the Deep (just don’t watch the animation).
Bottom 5
The Underwater Menace The Space Pirates (if some more of this surfaced I may change my opinion) The Macra Terror The Dominators The Krotons
Underrated: I think it has to be The Wheel in Space. If more of it turned up I’m sure it may be like Enemy of the World and be seen more positively.
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Post by Future-Diver on Jul 13, 2024 10:01:37 GMT
Top: The Evil Of The Daleks The Invasion The Power Of The Daleks Fury From The Deep The Enemy Of The World
Bottom: The Highlanders The Underwater Menace The Mind Robber The Space Pirates The Krotons
Underrated: The Moonbase
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Post by rapscallion on Jul 13, 2024 10:45:08 GMT
Best 5= 1. The Web Of Fear 2. Power Of The Daleks 3. The Invasion 4. The Seeds Of Death 5. Tomb Of The Cybermen
Bottom 5= 5. The Mind Robber 4. The Underwater Menace 3. The Macra Terror 2. The Dominators 1. The Space Pirates
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Post by heccy on Jul 14, 2024 15:19:32 GMT
Top Five.The Power of The Daleks The Evil of The Daleks The Tomb of The Cybermen The Web of Fear The Ice Warriors. I haven't watched much of the animated Troughton Dalek stories. I hate the animation, all of them, that the Beeb have put out. My love for those two Dalek stories comes from the audio releases back in the early 1990's, that featured Tom Baker doing the narration. Possibly, Tom Baker's best Doctor Who work IMHO. I can't say which are my five bottom, as there is so much missing material for me to judge. As I said, I hate the animated versions. Sub par, worse than 1970's Hanna- Barbera style. It can't do justice to actors like Hartnell and Troughton. UPDATE: I do like the War Games and think it's underrated
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Post by GC on Jul 16, 2024 13:38:20 GMT
Top 5
Tomb of the Cybermen Web of Fear Power of the Daleks The Invasion Fury from the Deep [Not the cartoon shit]
Bottom 5
The Krotons The Dominators The Space Pirates The Underwater Menace The Mind Robber
Underrated
The Wheel in Space
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Post by Bowties on Jul 17, 2024 13:13:47 GMT
My top Troughton stories:
The Highlanders,
The Moonbase,
Evil of the Daleks,
Fury from the Deep,
And The War Games.
Honourable mentions to Power of the Daleks, Tomb of the Cybermen, The Abominable Snowmen, The Web of Fear, The Wheel in Space and The Seeds of Doom.
Not too keen on the Dominators.
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Post by WildcatMatt on Jul 21, 2024 2:10:42 GMT
Top Five Troughton 5. The War Games 4. Tomb of the Cybermen 3. The Invasion 2. The Evil of the Daleks 1. The Power of the Daleks
I find it interesting that the three longest stories from the series are all on my top lists. (No, I don’t count Trial as a 14-parter). The War Games has no reason to be good on paper. It’s long, it’s a script written quickly at the end of a season where everything was a mess, and its designed as a repeated capture-escape-recapture exercise. But somehow Mac and Terry keep feeding us enough to keep it from getting dull, building up to the revelation of (yet another) renegade Time Lord running the show, ending with the Doctor choosing to give himself up to Gallifrey in order to get all the unwitting participants back home. David Saville makes a great pseudo-companion and the war college is quite fascinating, what with their wacky headband glasses and all.
I hadn’t been in fandom long enough to have actually heard Tomb referred to as “fandom’s most wanted” so I have no idea how true that is. All I know is just as I was trying to work out what was out there before the Internet, Tomb was found and rushed to video. And it’s as good as I had hoped. Morris Barry clearly learned while making The Moonbase as Tomb is much more sure-footed and apart from Toberman on wires the effects work pretty well. There are a couple of questionable things in the script in terms of why and when the group goes back down to the tomb, but otherwise it’s a treat.
I’d gotten a bootleg copy of The Invasion not long after I bought Tomb, and Invasion has a very unusual vibe to it. Some of it’s the music, some of it’s the pace, some of it’s the direction, some of it is Kevin Stoney’s dynamic presence on-screen, but there’s a very immediate feel to it. It’s refreshing and there’s lots going on over the course of the story. I think I like the Tomb version of the Cybermen a little better than the Invasion version, but the less-baggy version does play nice on the London sets.
Power and Evil, Evil and Power… The first DWB issue I found had a viewer’s survey which anointed Evil as the best Who of all time. And if you’re going to judge a story by what still exists, Evil:2 is damn near perfect. Great music, great guest cast, Victorian beards, bubbling laboratories, and direction that lets Pat’s facial expressions do all the work. The sudden change of expression when he repeats “Static?!” and the way he reluctantly turns his head when the Dalek asks, “Now do you understand?”
David Whitaker really outdoes himself with both scripts (even if Power was heavily rewritten). He turns down the bombast and adjusts by increasing their cunning and intelligence. The results are quite amazing, especially when the Human Factor suddenly gives us playful Daleks.
But in the end I’ll give slight preference to Power. There are so many plots afoot with shifting alliances and character arcs, it’s like everyone has a side hustle and if you work to keep track of it all it’s quite rewarding to watch it spool out. The way the Daleks play the colonists is chilling (“I am your ser-vant!”) and having the audience know exactly what is going to happen by the end drives up the tension as you want to throw things at your TV as the humans get bamboozled. And such a shame we can’t see it all.
Bottom Five Troughton 5. The Seeds of Death 4. The Highlanders 3. The Krotons 2. The Space Pirates 1. The Underwater Menace
I actually found it difficult to populate this part of the list. Part of that is the fact that Troughton has so few 4-parters and therefore a surprisingly short list of stories relative to the number of episodes. The other part is, there really aren’t a lot of real stinkers in Troughton’s era.
So I’ve had to dig through my metaphorical couch cushions a little. In fact, the biggest demerit I have for most of these stories is that they’re a little dull or over-padded.
With Seeds, I don’t completely buy that a single point of failure this large was allowed to exist. You mean there’s never every been a large-scale T-Mat outage before? Also the seed pod idea isn’t bad and I get the coupling with weather control, but that seems like control is fairly local and therefore hard to maintain across the globe.
With Highlanders, obviously I’ve only experienced the recon and I found it to be quite slow. Maybe if a print showed up to change my mind…
Krotons also isn’t bad. In fact, if you want to give it points for being an emergency replacement that isn’t Pip-n-Jane quality, it’s pretty darn good. But it’s also fairly obvious that it’s a sci-fi script reworked to use the TARDIS crew.
Now we get to actual bad. Not terrible, just bad. Space Pirates was another rush job, squeezed even further by not having the regulars in Part 6 because they were out doing filming for War Games. So there’s enough padding to stuff a mattress. It doesn’t help that it also suffers the problem that Enemy of the World had where the existing episode contains a lot of setup that you only appreciate in context. But it’s a story that Jamie, Zoe, and the Doc get into just by getting separated from the TARDIS and then spending five episodes trying to get back.
And lastly, Underwater Menace. The most recent recovery does this some favors and I really ought to give it more ambition points for doing the underwater scenes. There are some parts here that border on clowning with the Doctor trying to avoid pursuit. They would be okay but Zaroff is so far off the scale that it makes all just too much.
Underrated Troughton: The Dominators
This story makes it to a lot of least/worst lists and I can understand why, because there are so many elements about this story that are bonkers. What saves it for me is a) how obvious it is that Pat and Fraser are having a blast doing this; b) the relationship between the two Dominators is also quite funny in a dumb-and-dumber way; and c) one of the Dominators being Ronald Allen.
Yes, it probably is a little too campy, but it’s fun if you just roll with it.
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Post by profh0011 on Jul 21, 2024 15:01:55 GMT
With one exception, I'm still stuck with what PBS had in the 80s. So it's virtually impossible for me to do this list fully, as I haven't seen most of his stuff (and reading lengthy articles in DWM doesn't really count).
The War Games The Three Doctors The Five Doctors The Two Doctors The Mind Robber Tomb of the Cybermen
As much as I tend to dislike 6-parters, it blows my mind that a 10-parter should be structured so well that I didn't get bored watching it. A big question that often comes up among fans, was "The War Chief" also "The Master"? He could be, but I'm not really sure. I liked this one suggestion that if you think of them as separate characters, then it would have made far more sense for "The War Chief" to have been the villain in "The Deadly Assassin" more than "The Master" (who really should have been killed in "Planet of the Spiders"-- ahh, what might have been). And, also, the villain from "The Deadly Assassin" should have come back in "The Talons Of Weng-Chiang". We can blame Philip Hinchcliffe for that not being thr case. Either way, Philip Madoc made a really scary villain as "The War Lord". How arrogant could a guy be?
I always remember seeing part 1 of "The Mind Robber" and thinking, OH, this must have inspired "Warriors' Gate". And to a lesser degree, a bit of "Frontios".
It's such a shame that so much of Troughton's era was lost. Despite Tom Baker having what I generally consider better-written stories, I actually got to like Troughton's Doctor MORE than Baker's. Although Troughton puts out an air of goofiness, you tend to KNOW it's just a facade; with Baker, the facade is too convincing too much of the time. On this scale, it really reminds me of the difference betwen Lt. Columbo between his earliest stories, and those in the late 70s. In the 90s, they got back the idea of showing audiences the real Lieutenant, when the bad guys weren't around.
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Post by markhev1966 on Jul 22, 2024 0:50:43 GMT
Top 5 The Invasion The War Games The Web of Fear Tomb of the Cybermen the Seeds of Death
Bottom 5 ( I really don't dislike any of these although Dominators is boring) The Dominators The Space Pirates The Underwater Menace The Krotons The Macra Terror
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Post by heccy on Jul 22, 2024 11:16:44 GMT
Nice to see The War Games getting some love
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Post by HappyGoLucky on Jul 23, 2024 9:34:45 GMT
Top 5 1 Power Of The Daleks. 2 The Invasion. 3 Evil Of The Daleks. 4 Tomb Of The Cybermen. 5 The Web Of Fear. (Evans should have been strangled by a Yeti!!!)
Bottom 5. (that hurts to type that as i love this Doctor) 1 The UnderWater Menace. 2 The Dominators 3 The Space Pirates. 4 The Krotons. 5 The Seeds Of Death.
Underrated stories, there's plenty.
The War Games is an epic finale!! Just seems to me that people have little patience these days to sit through it. The Mind Robber is absolutely brilliant and nearly made my top 5. Fury From The Deep is a fine piece of writing, shame they ballsed up the animation. The Wheel In Space would make a brilliant Trout story if they found just another episode then did "proper" animation ala Cosgrove Hall style. Thanks. Regards HGL.
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