Doctor Who [8]

Maybe it was just the coincidence of the number of Doctors?  

I kind of doubt anyone from the writing or production team really would be involved in the artwork for a soundtrack realease.

Interesting vid covering the Time Lords.



Its notable that the 9th Doctor says of surviving the Time War that 'I didnt have a choice'.
Given we know Moff discussed things with RTD this fits rather well with the conversation between the Moment and the War Doctor. I wonder how much RTD had in mind when he wrote those particular lines.

RTD reminiscing about Who from an article written just before the 50th-

"I was just a few months old when Doctor Who was first screened on November 23, 1963, so I am the same age as the show.
It has formed part of the backdrop to my life and I’m proud of that.

My first ever Doctor Who memory is when I was three and and I absolutely swear I can remember seeing William Hartnell regenerating into Patrick Troughton.
I can picture the moment clearly from my childhood.
It seemed like the strangest thing, very scary – the idea of a man turning into another man.

By the age of 10, Doctor Who was becoming part of my soul. It’s that age when you stop being just a viewer and become a fan.
I felt much the way kids today feel about Harry Potter.
They love learning all the rules of Quidditch and I loved knowing all the details of Doctor Who. The more gadgets and the more props, the better.

There was a period during the Nineties when it was off air and it was a bit embarrassing to say you were a Doctor Who fan.
It was ­considered a bit geeky.

I lobbied hard to bring it back, but a lot of people weren’t sure if it would work for a modern audience.
They said kids had moved on and they liked different things.
But I thought ‘well, if I like it this much, I can make other people like it’.
Now, it’s the coolest show in the world and everyone watches it!

The fiftieth anniversary is going to be such an exciting day for all the fans across the world.
I’m 50 years old and even I find myself thinking ‘only one more week to go!’
And I’m going to sit down at the same time as all those thousands of fans and watch the anniversary show and feel exactly the same.

I am so proud to have been part of it."

Every day I think about it and I still love the show as much as I ever did.

I just hope I get to see the 100th anniversary!

Well, he certainly succeded in making it popular. Though I'm not sure I share either his taste or opinion of how to do it.

But noone can argue with the fact that he was succesfull.

I've always said RTD era Who was a case of the right thing at the right time. He judged it right, even though it meant making a sort of Who-lite show crossed with a soap opera. And not a version of Who that appealed to me particularly.

But he needed to attract a new audience that would be put off by pure scifi, and to that end he got rid of all the continuity stuff- mainly the Time Lords and everything that came with them and brought in family drama elements, which the show never had before. No one ever asked where Sarah Jane's family were, or anyone elses for that matter. In fact sometimes a companions first story involved any family they might have getting killed off by the big bad of the episode!

Yes, exactly.   

He also made it very earth centric. And then came the celebrity cameos and so on. So it certainly fell in to the soap mold to a degree as you say.

But there's no denying he succeded in making it popular.

Yes it was very earth and indeed London centric.
And he did make it popular again, but then its even more popular now with a much increased viewing figures globally.
But I think you did probably have to start with a gentler reintroduction to the concepts to get to this point.
So whilst its not to my tastes for Who it served its purpose you could say.

For want of a better word, these are rather cute- Karen interviews Matt about the Doctor and Matt interviews Karen about Amy (from somewhere about the end of series 5 start of 6)

Nearly finished with Troughton, just The several months long War Games to go...

My thoughts on Troughton's era (well, what we've got of it at least) and the man himself:

-The stories are slighty faster and more formulaic than Hartnell's, this is both good and bad-the series started to feel like it was fully grounded and knew where in was going (tonally at least), Hartnell's stories were much more varied, with Troughton they seemed to have found a formular (Base under seige) and stuck with it, though it is a little repetitive.

-Less of the Bloody Daleks!

-My fave stories: The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Invasion, and The Ice Warriors

-The Ice Warriors were an interesting addition to the series which worked pretty well, more personality than the Daleks and Cybermen, though the raspy badly synced voices were terrible!

-I like the humorous interplay between Dr and Jamie, felt like a rubbish double act (in a good sense-the comedians were too busy winding each other up to bother telling jokes to the audience)

-I can definitely see why Troughton is the 'actors doctors'-the man is very very talented! A great dramatic range, quick fire responses, commanding voice and presence and simply pure talent, he was a solid no 2. He's got a great comedic timing, definitely comes across as Charlie Chaplin in space, I can see alot of influence on Matt Smith.

That said I stilll prefer Hartnell (admittedly there is much more of his stories to watch so it might be simple bias)-his stern angry mysterious persona and the more varied stories appealed to me more than Troughton's era, though I conceed Troughton was a more talented actor-is this a little weird? Hartnell dosen't seem to be very popular...

-Great chemistry with Jamie, the first companion who felt on an equal standing to the doctor for me. How convincing was his accent btw?

-Better use of incidental music and budget-the sets still looked wobbly but were more varied and convincing.

The Krotons was bloody terrible! Long winded and repeptitve, felt very 'filler' to me, the title villians were rubbish as well!

We needed more of the flute!

just The several months long War Games to go...- Malick

Its worth it!   

I agree on many of your points. NuWho doesn't have many of the base under siege formula, the closest modern equivalent is probably Cold War, and its no coincidence thats the story the Ice Warriors reappear in.

I am a huge Jamie fan, next to Rory and Harry my favourite male Who companion despite some serious cringe at the portrayal of the Scottish side- the accent is pretty good for an Englishman, but the 'Brigadoon' war cry is painful    And details like his kilt, which is about a century too early for his time period.

I think Smith is heavily influenced by Troughton who he says is his favourite Doctor but it is not a copy either, he brings in a lot of elements from other Doctors as well as a fair bit of himself to it- but Troughton is certainly a major influence.

Posted by Karen Gillan-

"1st pic of Matt and I in character was released 4 years ago today, but I have the real one from the 1st camera test"-



Its amazing how different (and young!) they look here.

As we were talking about the RTD era. Something it tended to overlook, perhaps.

I think its fair to say the RTD era certainly, for want of a better word, humanised the Doctor in a way he had never been before- its hard to imagine any of classic era Who Doctors either falling in love with a companion or being quite so emotional in general about stuff as 10 in particular was.
I can see how that appealed to a lot of people but for me it makes the character that bit less mysterious and alien. I prefer it when you are never quite sure how he will react or engage with a situation because he isn't human.

Yeah, you could perhaps call it the "soap series" element or something like that.

Alan Davies raised a quite interesting point while talking about a completely different matter as to just that. That the timeslot that is now almost exclusively taken up by soap series in the 70's and 80's was the home of British sitcoms. And slowly but certainly it became the realm of soap series.

And perhaps it's just that development that led to some of the changes in the reimagined Doctor Who?   

There's certainly a lot of soap series tropes that snuck their way into the series.

I think it was deliberate on RTD's part, in that it fits his previous style too. Queer as Folk is also very domestic. I think its just his style.

Hm, that's interesting. I don't think I've seen any of his previous work.

That doesn't preclude the fact that sociatal change might have had something to do with shaping his tyle, of course.

I'm guessing but I think he probably sold bringing the show back on his plans to strip it off a lot of what he thought of as the 'baggage' and by making it appeal to a demography that was more used to watching Hollyoaks.
I that I think he was right as I have said before. It suited the taste of the time as you point out and it also meshed very well with his own style of writing.
Giving Rose a family that were recurring characters and a home life was something completely new to Who, it had ever been that way before with a Companion when it was all about the travels, adventures and how they interacted with the Doctor.

I think RTD is a better writer than Moffat at that style of story, of focusing more on the characters themselves than the stories they are in- most of his Who stories are pretty poor scifi, full of pop culture references and pulling resolutions out of a hat at the last minute with no way to see them coming because they are pulled out the hat at the last moment.
But he does do the domestic stuff well.

Moffat is better at fast paced dialogue, intricate plotting and the scifi and he likes the baggage.
But he doesn't focus on the characters lives the same way.
Although I think Amy is an exception to this in that she is in my view the most developed and complex companion in Who, but others like River are only developed in so far as they have to be in the story they are in, outside of the stories Moffat is less interested in his characters lives than RTD was.
Where RTD never introduced a secondary characters that didnt somehow manage to give you half their life story and their motivations before proceeding, Moffat is happy to paint secondary characters in broader strokes. Its just a difference in style.
For me Moffat is more suited to writing Who in its classic style, and RTD is better at writing domestic drama.

http://paulhanley.deviantart.com/art/The-Infinite-Doctor-435474438

I recognized less than half=The 12, War, Cushing Docs, Hurdnall, Shalka, Valeyard and Rowan Atkinson.

How many can you get?

Got the same ones you got, plus the Doctor/Donna is in there and the faces of the 4th Doctor that preceded what we call the 1st Doctor (from Brain of Mobius) thats another 4, and the human/Doctor 10 that went with Rose is there and the other actor to play 1 from the 5 Doctors after Hartnell had passed away. The blonde at the front is Joanna Lumley, also from the Children in Need skit Rowan was in, as is the Hugh Grant one. And the Caretaker from Day is there too.

After that starting to struggle!

I think the Nicolas Briggs Doctor is in there:

http://dwexpanded.wikia.com/wiki/Nicholas_Briggs_Doctor

The others seem to be alternative ones from some of the Big Finish Stories, David Bradley isn't in there.

There are also two faces, one looks like Derek Jacobi (right above Capaldi head) and to the right of the ninth Doctor is the famous actor who played the older Ultravox scientist in Cold War (and whose name temporally escapes me) but I dont know where or when either of them played the Doctor.

And the Dream Lord is in there too.

Wasn't there a cartoon Doctor Who series in the 80's Neverla or something?

That scientist was played by David Warner I think (my personal choice for Cirdan the Shipwright...). The Doctor Who canon is obviously alot bigger that I realised...

Yes David Warner, excellent actor. Yes I could see him as Cirdan.

Dont remember a cartoon Who- there was a computer animated web Who featuring 10 and Martha.