"Who" Are You?

[gnomi]

When I was younger, I used to periodically watch "Doctor Who" on WGBH (channel 2), the Boston local PBS station, or WENH (channel 11), the New Hampshire local PBS station. There were two slight problems with this approach to watching "Doctor Who":

1. The periodic nature of my watching meant that I ended up seeing the same bits (mostly of the Tom Baker years) over and over
2. Both GBH and ENH showed a half-hour block of "Doctor Who" (I believe) twice each day, but they weren't contiguous half hours. So I'd get the first half hour of an episode and then the first half hour of a different episode, and there was no guarantee that in the same block the next day they'd show the next half hour episode (it happened sometimes but not consistently).

Since 2005, mabfan and I have become quite fond of the new (Russell T. Davies) "Doctor Who." And since he's finding places that my "Doctor Who" knowledge is lacking, mabfan has taken it upon himself to expand my "Who" horizons. So he acquired some "Doctor Who" DVDs from Mike's Comics, and last night we sat down to watch The Five Doctors.

And... I liked it. I found the pacing a little slow, but (as mabfan and I have discussed, and as Steven Johnson writes), television pacing in general has gotten much faster over the past 20 or so years. But the story was good, and the doctors' interactions with their companions and each other were entertaining.

Next up, The Three Doctors.

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Narf!

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

I've gone back an been watching all the available DVDs. What I find is that I prefer the earlier doctors and then the current crop. I dislike Pertwee, who seems to actively dislike humans, despite the rest of the doctors' affection for them.

What strikes me is that most of the stories show the potential to be much better than they actually were. Not just in the special effects, but in the acting, the writing, and the plotting. They almost cry out to be re-written and remade.

[llennhoff.livejournal.com]

And we will OBEY the first law of time - LATER!

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen The Five Doctors yet; part of me is almost afraid to because I think my brain might explode at the idea of meeting myself again and again and again (and again) all in one room.

Of course, if I had to meet myself as Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant? That might not be so bad. :-)

[seborn.livejournal.com]

If you're interested in seeing even more Tom Baker, I just got the Key to Time season on DVD last week and can lend it to you once the Media Consumption Mob What Consumes Media At My Place and I have finished it. Assuming that you and mabfan don't have it yet.
Also the first three William Hartnell stories, for some serious old-school action. His Doctor is not a nice man, but if I had to deal with early 1960s pacing, I would not be nice either.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

We have Key to Time, but Nomi ought to see Unearthly Child, for completeness' sake if nothing else.

[wildecountry.livejournal.com]

i grew up on doctor who, but now i watch it for david ten-inch, excuse me, david tennant. ;)

[kuroshii.livejournal.com]

I just couldn't get past the cheese factor with the original show. The way it was described to me (which makes sense now looking back) it was The Show That Wouldn't Die, with The Incredible Shrinking Budget. BBC kept trying to kill it, fans kept getting more insane so they'd say "well OK, but we're not giving you as much money this time."

Oh, and it was a children's show, originally meant to teach history and science (the first companions were schoolteachers!). It still sortof is--it airs in a "family show" timeslot in the UK--but with more universal appeal.

Davies has managed to secure a decent budget, at least partly because the childhood fans like him are now the ones holding purse strings. So it can afford things like, oh, decent scripts to go along with the better effects?

[sorek.livejournal.com]

Five doctors was a trifle annoying for me as it was more like "Three Doctors, five minutes of footage of a fourth, and a stand-in". On the other hand, i think the "stand in" did a good job.

It was also better than "The Two Doctors" whose novelization was much better than the actual episode.

I'm not sure I ever saw the "The Three Doctors". Can I borrow it after you're done?

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

I liked The Five Doctors quite a lot when it came out. I went back to it at some point after college, and I realized that it (and the series itself, to a lesser extent) is cheesy like whoah. I did grow up watching the show, but in that "it was on PBS sporadically" American way (and in that "they were already on Tom Baker before I was out of diapers" way), not in the "it's a revered cultural institution of my society" British way. Even so, I have affection for it.

Weirdly enough, I'm growing more fond of the new series as it gets further along, despite the cheesy/goofy aspects. I'm not sure how much of that comes from crushing on Tennant in glasses. (I need to deal with finding a good "legal" Tennant userpic ....)

Anyway: Glad you liked it.