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Post by GC on Jul 12, 2024 14:12:29 GMT
As suggested by Servo.
Give us your top 5 and bottom 5 Hartnell stories then. And perhaps throw in what you think is the most underrated of Bill's stories.
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Post by Servo on Jul 13, 2024 7:08:48 GMT
Top 5
The Daleks’ Master Plan (taking out the truly awful Feast of Steven, the rest is Doctor Who at its very best. The Destruction of Time is, in my opinion, the single best episode of Doctor Who and it’s utterly criminal it’s missing). The Myth Makers The Massacre The Tenth Planet The Dalek Invasion of Earth
Bottom 5
The Sensorites (great first episode, snoozefest after that). The Space Museum (same as above) The Gunfighters (if only it didn’t have that awful ballad) The Keys of Marinus (gets pretty dull pretty quickly) The Web Planet (snoozefest from start to finish).
Underrated: I’d love something of The Savages to be found.
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Post by Future-Diver on Jul 13, 2024 9:41:18 GMT
Top: An Unearthly Child The Time Meddler The Romans Galaxy 4 Marco Polo
Bottom: The Reign Of Terror The Smugglers The Sensorites The Celestial Toymaker The Keys Of Marinus
Most underrated: The Ark
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Post by Servo on Jul 13, 2024 10:02:53 GMT
It’s fascinating to see everyone’s opinions.
I must confess The Celestial Toymaker nearly made my bottom 5, but I just can’t get that wretched ballad in The Gunfighters out of my head. It’s funny how one thing c an=n completely ruin a story.
I must also confess that I wouldn’t mind an episode of The Smugglers turning up either.
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Post by Future-Diver on Jul 13, 2024 10:19:22 GMT
It’s fascinating to see everyone’s opinions. I must confess The Celestial Toymaker nearly made my bottom 5, but I just can’t get that wretched ballad in The Gunfighters out of my head. It’s funny how one thing c an=n completely ruin a story. I must also confess that I wouldn’t mind an episode of The Smugglers turning up either. As much as I adore the Hartnell era, I simply don't like stories about cowboys or pirates, so The Gunfighters and The Smugglers were never going to be amongst my favourites. I don't mind the song in The Gunfighters so much (whenever it kicks in, I tell myself - 'that's Nurse Gladys Emmanuel singing' - and it seems less irksome) but I just have a natural aversion to stuff set in the American Wild West. I'm not even a fan of Carry On Cowboy.
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Post by rapscallion on Jul 13, 2024 11:01:19 GMT
Best 5= 1. An Unearthly Child 2. The Dalek Invasion Of Earth 3. The Web Planet 4. The Daleks' Master Plan 5. The Time Meddler
Bottom 5= 5. The Crusade 4. The Savages 3. The Chase 2. The Edge Of Destruction 1. The Space Museum
Under-rated / Guilty pleasures - The Web Planet, The Sensorites, Planet Of Giants.
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Post by Servo on Jul 13, 2024 14:59:48 GMT
It’s fascinating to see everyone’s opinions. I must confess The Celestial Toymaker nearly made my bottom 5, but I just can’t get that wretched ballad in The Gunfighters out of my head. It’s funny how one thing c an=n completely ruin a story. I must also confess that I wouldn’t mind an episode of The Smugglers turning up either. As much as I adore the Hartnell era, I simply don't like stories about cowboys or pirates, so The Gunfighters and The Smugglers were never going to be amongst my favourites. I don't mind the song in The Gunfighters so much (whenever it kicks in, I tell myself - 'that's Nurse Gladys Emmanuel singing' - and it seems less irksome) but I just have a natural aversion to stuff set in the American Wild West. I'm not even a fan of Carry On Cowboy. If you’re going to make Westerns and you’re not American best leave it to the Italians.
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Post by heccy on Jul 14, 2024 15:07:15 GMT
Top Five.
An Unearthly Child
The Daleks
The Chase
The Time Meddler
The War Machines.
These are my current top five, but can change.
I can't think of a bottom five, I find some thing to enjoy in all the First Doctor stories I've seen.
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Post by GC on Jul 14, 2024 23:24:15 GMT
Top 5
The Time Meddler An Unearthly Child The Daleks The Romans The Tenth Planet
Bottom 5
Planet of Giants The Space Museum The Gunfighters The Web Planet The Celestial Toymaker
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Post by profh0011 on Jul 15, 2024 2:12:13 GMT
This is a bit tough...
TOP
The Romans The Time Meddler The Gunfighters The War Machines
BOTTOM
The Web Planet
I can't think of any others.
But I absolutely love DALEKS' INVASION EARTH 2150 A.D.
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Post by WildcatMatt on Jul 16, 2024 1:42:02 GMT
I'm going to cheat a little, but here we go:
Top five Hartnell: 5. Marco Polo 4. The Time Meddler 3. The Romans 2. The Dalek Masterplan 1. An Unearthly Child (1)
Putting Marco Polo on this list feels trite. And I spent a lot of time thinking about what else I could put in its place and I came up empty every time. I've found the recon to be absolutely captivating every time I've watched it. The pace is gentle, but never drags. It breathes and gives a sense of scope and time spent together that's rarely achieved again. We also get some character development for Susan and the long process of bringing Marco over to the side of the TARDIS crew is really well done. Maybe one day we'll see if the visuals live up to the imagination.
It was interesting coming to the show in the 1990s, because you knew all about the Time Lords from the Baker/Davison eras. It's hard to appreciate just how much of a game changer this story was when it was first broadcast. It plays with expectations magnificently, weaving the introduction of Steven into the crew with exploration of the anachronisms present with a sure hand. And then there's the Monk. Not an evil megalomaniac, just mischievous. The reveal of the Monk's TARDIS is one of the best cliffhangers ever, and the Doctor's punishment for the Monk is stunning.
Early on, the Hartnells were really hard to watch. Lionheart didn't make separate NTSC masters from the film prints (let alone use the negs) so we got to see whatever film print was handy, mastered to 1" PAL episodic, converted to 1" NTSC episodic, edited to 1" NTSC compilation. But The Romans is a gem. First of all it strikes a tone and holds to it. So the whole thing hangs together. Everyone is in on it from the regulars to the guest cast and it works a treat. It's just plain fun and until the DVD releases this is the story I would show casual Tom Baker fans that were B&W-curious.
Even if you include "The Feast of Steven", Masterplan is amazing just to listen to. Nation and Spooner seem to completely understand Hartnell at this point and play to his strengths. Was that a line fluff I just heard? Or a deliberate misdirection aimed at the other character? Bill is so on top of his game at this point you can't tell which it is and it only makes his Doctor better. The Daleks are in great form here also, conniving and chilling. Yes, there are a couple of moments in "Volcano" when the injection of the Monk feels a bit like padding but it lightens the story a bit and clearly Butterworth is having a great time playing off the Daleks. And if you discount part 7, it doesn't sag nearly as much as you'd expect. Big ideas, big scope, big loss that we don't have it.
I'm going to break out part 1 of serial A because there's so little connecting it to parts 2-4. Because it's freaking brilliant. For setting up the premise of the show it does a remarkable job easing you into the core concepts and establishing the characters. The buildup of questions and weirdness has you ready for the TARDIS being dimensionally transcendental and you just accept it -- you have to -- and the storyline just keeps moving.
Bottom five Hartnell: 5. The Sensorites 4. The Space Museum 3. The Celestial Toymaker 2. An Unearthly Child (2,3,4) 1. The Gunfighters
I started making my bottom five list and a funny thing happened. In my first draft, four of them were from the Wiles/Tosh era, and I started to write about how I deliberately left off Web Planet because I gave it credit for trying something ambitious and failing.
But I have to ask myself, isn't that the same thing that Wiles and Tosh were doing? Being experimental and failing? Why would I give Lambert/Spooner a pass but not their successors? Am I being too hard on Dodo?
What I do know is my reaction to Dodo is very much like my reaction to Mel. Both of them start off half-baked and take a long time to warm up. In both cases it's because the companion is being brought into the show at a time when the production office is in disarray. That doesn't give the actress a lot of support and it comes across in their performances. With Jackie Lane some of that seems intentional since Dodo literally just runs into the TARDIS so Steven and the Doctor aren't going to just take to her -- but it's also abject stupidity on the parts of W/T since they created that problem themselves by writing their way into a Katarina redux and only realizing it at the last minute.
So I think I know why I am the way I am when it comes to being charitable: Web Planet is a misstep by an established crew that was trying something different. The Wiles/Tosh stories are more irritating because they're attempting to change the overall formula -- more revolution than evolution -- which was something they were very open about at the time and they went too far too fast.
In general then, the stories I've settled on are there because they should have been better than they are and mostly for similar reasons. The Sensorites moves at a snail's pace with unresolved plot threads and a too-naïve conception of the alien race. The Space Museum just doesn't hang together well.
The Celestial Toymaker is a really mixed bag for me. Maybe as a Yank I don't have the Billy Bunter backstory to appreciate some of the subtexts but I feel like the rewrites must have weakened it and of course the loss of recasting the Doctor at the end kind of pulled the rug out from under what power the story would otherwise have.
The 100,000 BC part of "An Unearthly Child" is also hampered by the capture-escape-recapture cycle. I give it a small boost given that it's part of the first production so they really needed something -- anything -- to get the show off the ground at that point.
And then there's The Gunfighters. I try really hard to give this story the same grace I give to Web Planet because again it's trying to be different. But everything that The Romans got right, this one gets wrong. The tone isn't right. And as a Yank, I find the attempt at a Wild West pastiche to be incredibly ham-fisted and cartoonish. Or maybe that's why I don't get the joke...
Underrated Hartnell: The Smugglers
I went into the recon for the Smugglers with really low expectations, but found myself really liking the Ben/Polly/Doctor combo and wishing we'd had at least 2 more stories with them.
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Post by profh0011 on Jul 16, 2024 2:45:56 GMT
I'm at a disadvantage, because all I have are what I taped off PBS in the 1980s. That's it.
Anything that turned up since... nada.
In fact, the only DOCTOR WHO I have that turned up since... was the videotape of "Tomb Of The Cybermen", which I ordered the very month it came out.
And so far, the only DOCTOR WHO I have on DVD... is INVASION EARTH 2150 A.D. Unfortunately, my copy has the opening theme song at the beginning of the movie... when, I know damn well it's supposed to be AFTER the jewelry store robbery!
Has the new Blu-Ray fixed this?
Oh, by the way... "An Unearthly Child" part one is INCREDIBLE. A shame parts 2-4 SUCK beyond all belief. You can really see, how, if it wasn't for "The Daleks", the show never would have made it past the first 13 episodes.
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Post by Future-Diver on Jul 16, 2024 5:43:53 GMT
Oh, by the way... "An Unearthly Child" part one is INCREDIBLE. A shame parts 2-4 SUCK beyond all belief. You can really see, how, if it wasn't for "The Daleks", the show never would have made it past the first 13 episodes.
I agree that the first episodes ( An Unearthly Child) is an incredible piece of TV drama, but strongly disagree with the received wisdom that the subsequent caveman episodes are mediocre and not really worth bothering with. In the following three episodes, we get to see the very first Tardis team working/bonding together, some great character moments, their struggle with the Stone Age tribe and Ian and Barbara's distress at being stranded in a grim and violent past with Hartnell's morally ambiguous Doctor (very much the anti-hero at this stage). The Doctor: Aren't you a tiresome young man!Ian: And you're a stubborn old man. Yes, I can see that after such a strong opening episode, following it up with scenes of grunting cave dwellers arguing over making fire is a bit of a let-down, but it's still fascinating to see those episodes as part of the very early days and development of Doctor Who, before the introduction of the Daleks and all the other more recognizably Sci Fi elements.
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Post by WildcatMatt on Jul 16, 2024 12:21:38 GMT
I'm at a disadvantage, because all I have are what I taped off PBS in the 1980s. That's it.
Then you know exactly what I mean about how bad the resolution and dynamic range of those visuals are, and how muddy the audio can get... The Loose Canon recons are all available via El Doctorio on DailyMotion and are worth checking out, even if you just want to dip into parts of a story to get a feel for it and find it hard to hang with a full 22 minutes of the recon format.
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Post by WildcatMatt on Jul 16, 2024 12:32:54 GMT
Oh, by the way... "An Unearthly Child" part one is INCREDIBLE. A shame parts 2-4 SUCK beyond all belief. You can really see, how, if it wasn't for "The Daleks", the show never would have made it past the first 13 episodes.
I agree that the first episodes ( An Unearthly Child) is an incredible piece of TV drama, but strongly disagree with the received wisdom that the subsequent caveman episodes are mediocre and not really worth bothering with. In the following three episodes, we get to see the very first Tardis team working/bonding together, some great character moments, their struggle with the Stone Age tribe and Ian and Barbara's distress at being stranded in a grim and violent past with Hartnell's morally ambiguous Doctor (very much the anti-hero at this stage). Yes, I can see that after such a strong opening episode, following it up with scenes of grunting cave dwellers arguing over making fire is a bit of a let-down, but it's still fascinating to see those episodes as part of the very early days and development of Doctor Who, before the introduction of the Daleks and all the other more recognizably Sci Fi elements. I'll grant you that in terms of the initial bonding of the crew, but yes, going from the high concepts of the first episode to grunting cavemen nattering about "I remember how the meat and fire join together" is an enormous letdown.
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