Doctor Who: season 1

[altariel]

Since Eastercon, we've been watching Doctor Who from the start. So every morning, with our breakfast, we have a single episode (listening to the audios of the missing ones). It's a brilliant way to watch the show. We're at the end of season 1 now, so here are some capsule reviews. We've been surprised at wot we've seen. Neither of us have watched all the Hartnells before, and certainly not in order. We weren't expecting a show with such a modern feel, and one that has so many direct connections with the first season of Rusty's Reincarnation (none of which we shall talk about below). On with the motley.


An Unearthly Child
altariel: God, I love this episode. Can't be critical about it.
mraltariel: It looks great, really eerie, and Ian and Barbara have just the right amount of UST.

100,000 BC
altariel: Well, that was a surprise. I remember it being dull and stupid and in fact it's interesting and well done. Which means that when I last saw it, I must have been the dull and stupid one. I don't think it could have sustained more than three episodes though.
mraltariel: There's an enormous difference watching these stories one episode at a time and in the right order!

The Daleks
altariel: I think this drags quite a lot in places, although I believe I think it drags in the places where other people think it's good.
mraltariel: The TARDIS crew are good, but the story sucks. It looks interesting, and the music is great. But the plot is so thin anyway that when it's stretched across that many episodes it collapses. At least they killed the monsters at the end, so we won't have to see them again!

The Edge of Destruction
altariel: A story about the horrors of the nuclear family.
mraltariel: I think this is a bit odd to watch with my porridge in the morning.

Marco Polo
altariel: Triumphant. Wonderful.
mraltariel: We might actually be able to listen to all the missing episodes after all!

The Keys of Marinus
altariel: Hmm. Good in parts. I hate the episode about the trapper, but I like the proto-city from 'The Way Back' in episodes 5 and 6.
mraltariel: BRAINS IN JARS! BRAINS IN JARS! I'm surprised they've done two 'quest' stories in a row, especially given how good the first one was. This is a much better story than its reputation though.

The Aztecs
altariel: OH JOHN RINGHAM NO!
mraltariel: This one's supposed to be good. It looks good, and I can see that the idea is good, but it's got some terrible performances. And it feels even longer than most of the six parters.

The Sensorites
altariel: Everyone's fluffing their lines all the time! Do you think they rehearsed this at all? Actually, I really like the creepy build-up in the first couple of episodes; felt very 'Ambassadors of Death'. And I like that the Sensorites don't like people being noisy, because I don't like that either. Also the chunky Sensorite's reaction to swapping the sashes around is my moment of the season. It's like watching the production crew invent science fiction in front of you.
mraltariel: Wot she said.

The Reign of Terror
altariel: I wish they had spent more time on the political intrigue and less time getting captured and escaping, again. But the final episode was brilliant.
mraltariel: They get captured and escape so often they even feel the need to mention it in episode 6. Still, I'd have another series. This is starting to get quite good.

Ranking
Marco Polo
An Unearthly Child
The Reign of Terror
100,000 BC
The Sensorites
The Keys of Marinus
The Edge of Destruction
The Aztecs
The Daleks

Comments

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

Fascinating!

It's 'Oh John Ringo No', unless that was a joke about someone called John Ringham and I failed to get it.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

One of the actors doing a particularly hammy performance in that story is called John Ringham. So it's a very bad joke that only really amuses me.

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

We watched Edge of Destruction the other night. I thought it was a quite good 'trapped in a lift' episode with everyone going a bit nuts.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

It made me think of what you said about that Sapphire and Steel story and the nuclear family. Mum (Barbara), Dad (Ian), child (Susan), and Grandfather, all stuck in the house together and cracking up.

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

I should have spotted it as being a nuclear family ref because it quite obviously is now you mention it. Duh.

[kradical.livejournal.com]

one that has so many direct connections with the first season of Rusty's Reincarnation (none of which we shall talk about below).

Oh, talk about that! I'm curious. (It's been ages since I saw the Hartnells, and they're not foremost in my mind at present.)

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

Ah.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

Interesting that you ranked "The Daleks" bottom. If you had come to it never having seen or heard of the daleks, as we did back in 1963 (yes, I'm that old!), I wonder if you would have been more impressed. The daleks made an enormous impression at the time, and were probably more responsible than anything else for turning the programme into a success.

It's interesting just how much of an anti-hero the Doctor was in those early stories: selfish, cowardly and irritable. In fact one gets the idea that they were toying with making him an out and out villain.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have spotted it if you hadn't been talking about that S&S story in those terms just before I watched it.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

How cool to have seen it all first time round. I think the low ranking for 'The Daleks' is partly a result of the fact that I've seen it before several times and some of the other stories not at all, so they had novelty on their side.

Yes, the Doctor feels dangerous: I think this is because Ian and Barbara are our POV characters (like Rose), and so we are seeing the impressions of someone mercurial and not-quite-human.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Really rubbish joke.

[kendokamel.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to track down the old series on DVD, but so far, the public library has not been very forthcoming...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Not all of it is out on DVD yet. All the existing episodes are out on video, but I don't think that would be in the right format for the US :-(

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

Nah, I thought it was funny.

Your watch-through sounds a treat; I've never seen any Hartnell, and precious little Two. I'm inspired to correct that, now.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

So little Two to watch, alas, although the BBC audios with the narration are filling the gap very well: the 'Marco Polo' one is terrific.

[matildabj.livejournal.com]

I'm in the midst of The Reign of Terror. I'm trying to watch all the Dennis Spooner eps, as I work with his daughter and we have regular DW dissection sessions. It's making me want to watch more Hartnell.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

How cool! Convey our respects!

[matildabj.livejournal.com]

I meant to add that the Hartnell eps are better than I remembered from my childhood viewing of Daleks and An Unearthly Child (so I'm glad you put Daleks at the bottom of the list!). I'll be interested to read your thoughts on the second series.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

What an excellent idea! There are whole Doctors I haven't seen. Where did you get them all?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

In the past I've tended to watch Hartnell in story-length chunks, which can be a bit tough going. It's so much better watching them episode by episode. There's lots of Hartnell's third season I've never watched/listened to, and I'm really looking forward to them now. We'll definitely blog when we get to the end of season 2.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

All the existing stories are out on video, and many of them on DVD (and they were all shown here in the early 90s on one of the cable channels).

For the missing episodes, we're listening to the audio versions from the BBC, which have narration to describe what's going on. William Russell's narration on 'Marco Polo' was wonderful.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

They had some Hartnell on Prime here, but of course they took it off. I'm amazed they showed all of B7.

Hmm. I'm not sure where I could find them here. That's a lot of tapes. I'll have to look around.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

First of all, the Doctor isn't really the lead: the story belongs to Rose, not just as a POV character, but as the focus of the ongoing narrative. It's the same with Ian and Barbara. That's the primary similarity.

They're also both making a real effort to explain the format: IIRC, I think Rusty assumed that viewers would have no (useful) prior knowledge of the show. So a Londoner(s) meets a mysterious and even slightly threatening man who embroils them in an extraordinary adventure (in space and time!).

Within the first three or four stories of both, we're taken into a familiar "TV historical" past, shown a future vision, and introduced to some aliens. These are the basic building blocks of Doctor Who storytelling. They're not the only stories you could tell, but they're the ones to which the format chooses on the whole to restrict itself.

(Interestingly, the first journey with Hartnell takes us to humanity's start; the first journey with Eccleston fastforwards to post-humanity.)

I also get a very strong sense of the production crew learning-as-they-go what stories they can tell, and how to tell them (perhaps 'relearning' in the case of the new show). I commented in this post how watching 'The Sensorites' is like watching the production crew learning how to do science fiction on television. 'The End of the World' is a bit like this: "Gosh! Aliens!" It's worth remembering how long it had been since SF was produced for mainstream and primetime British TV (at least a generation of programme-makers.)

What else? They both stretch the budget as far as it could possibly go. And they were both given more of a chance to succeed than perhaps early evidence warranted!

ETA: Also, watching these Hartnells one episode at a time really brings home how they're discrete episodes, and how there's a continuous narrative through the season. It's not the same structure as the present day single 45 minute episode with a season-long story arc, but it was striking how different the format is from what we think of as representatively Who: i.e. the four-part Tom Baker adventure.

[kradical.livejournal.com]

Interesting, and I see what you mean, though I don't agree that Rose is the main character of the 2005 season -- the POV character, yes, and she's the way we're (re)introduced to the Doctor, but I would say at best she shares main-character status with the Doctor. So did Ian and Barbara, of course, in the early days -- but then, as I've learned reading Lance Parkin's Ahistory, Doctor Who was originally envisioned as a story about two teachers, and the Doctor was a side character at best.

The difference is that the 21st-century iteration of Who has kept the companion -- Rose, Martha, Donna -- as a main character, as opposed to the original, in which the companion became the sidekick rather than the focus.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I would say at best she shares main-character status with the Doctor

I think that's a more-than-fair interpretation, particularly given the way that we see the families of both Martha and Donna. It's interesting how the narrative of the show keeps pulling back to Rose, however, including now!

Is Parkin's book a history of the show's production?

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

I've been watching a load of Hartnells, on and off, but not in any particular order. I don't think anyone matches up to Hartnell's characterisation of the role until Tom comes along.

I also believe that, while Troughton is of course a brilliant actor, seasons 1-3 are quite simply better than seasons 4-6.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

My mistake in the past has been to try to sit through marathon viewing sessions of Hartnells. I don't think it's humanly possible to sit through all six episodes of 'The Web Planet', and trying put me off Hartnell for years. Then I watched 'The Romans' before writing 'The Slave War' and hugely enjoyed it. I'm really looking forward to 'The Massacre'.

[mraltariel.livejournal.com]

I think you're bang on there. I still prefer Troughton's Doctor to Hartnell, but it is pretty marginal (and based, in part, on the fact that Troughton can remember what to say most of the time), but many of his stories get trapped in a very repetitive "monster" framework.

[kradical.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's not Parkin's book -- I was mixing it up with another book I got at the same time: About Time: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who by Tat Wood & Lawrence Miles. The volume I have is the first one: 1963-1966, covering the Hartnell years.

Both books are published by the good folks at Mad Norwegian Press.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info and the link!

[gair.livejournal.com]

Hee! purple_pen just linked to this and I just wanted to quote this back to you:

I like that the Sensorites don't like people being noisy, because I don't like that either.

Best critical response ever!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I'm glad all that money I spent on postgraduate education wasn't wasted!