The Classic Doctor Who Thread (1963 to 1989/1996)

[By Jove its holmes]

Fact of the Day: Tom Baker was the first DW series lead who wasn’t a veteran of the Second World War. He had the mercy of a late birth.

Topic

[Technopeasant]

* makes TARDIS noise to unfuck thread *

[Professor Flibble]

I often wonder how the last two series would be perceived if it wasn’t for the two godawful finales. I think they’re pretty damn solid on the whole. The worst ones aren’t as bad as the worst of the Chibnall era, and while the best ones may not hit the heights of RTD1 and Moff, they’re decent in their own right. The run from Boom to Rogue is extremely strong. But the first thing you think of when you look back on the first series is the stupid dog thing with the same name as a classic series villain, and for the second series it’s the stupid ogre thing with the first name as a classic series villain. Part of the problem of course is that with a shorter series, it’s easier for the whole thing to be overshadowed. With only eight episodes, a two-part finale is 25% of the run.

Something I maintain is that the mystery box story arc format doesn’t suit the show at all and I yearn for the return of the Classic Series format. I wasn’t keen on the Chibnall era like anyone else but it did do one or two things I liked, and Flux effectively being a Classic-style six part serial with cliffhangers was one of them.

[Professor Flibble]

If they ever do a Season 3 set…
I believe people involved with the range have confirmed that the plan is to do a set for all 26 classic seasons, and the blurbs saying things like “build your archive” support this.
For any episodes that are still lost and haven’t been animated by the time the Season 3 set happens, they’ll just include telesnap reconstructions. Season 3 is still worth doing for the episodes that do survive.

Yeah, every single season is going to be released. I think initially they weren’t going to wait for the animations but now the game plan’s changed, BBC Studios have apparently finalised a deal where they can make an animation immediately following the previous one, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they wait a little longer for seasons to be “completed.”

Also we’re totally getting a Wilderness Years box set. Paul Vanezis says he hates the title so internally its being referred to as “Season 27.” A widescreen edit of the TV Movie is also being considered, which is something I didn’t think was possible.

[Professor Flibble]

Ben, you missed off The Time Meddler, which is the best Hartnell story IMO. I mean, logically it would have probably made more sense to end the season with Ian and Barbara’s departure and then have the exciting new companion, the first appearance of another of the Doctor’s race, and the first story to properly mix history and sci-fi as the start of the next season, but they did things differently back then.

Ah, War Machines is my favourite Hartnell.

[Flap Jack]

Also we’re totally getting a Wilderness Years box set. Paul Vanezis says he hates the title so internally its being referred to as “Season 27.” A widescreen edit of the TV Movie is also being considered, which is something I didn’t think was possible.

Well I really hope they don’t call it that on the actual box!

The imminent 4K release of the TVM makes a wilderness years Blu-ray box set a bit of a weird prospect to me. The TV Movie would surely be the headline feature, but it would by definition be a worse quality version than the one we’re about to get as standalone – and aside from the movie the only other “main” feature would be Scream of the Shalka. One main feature that everybody recently bought on its own, and another main feature which is a low quality flash animation that is probably impossible to make HD. That’s a pretty thin justification for a box set.

Now, does this mean that I wouldn’t pay £40 or more just to own a source quality copy of Dimensions in Time with the alternate “Big Ron” ending included? No. But would I feel dirty doing it? Yes.

[Rushy]

I pretty much give up on Doctor Who past the Christmas Carol episode. I didn’t connect with the Silence arc, much less so with the Clara nonsense.

Series 10 was a rare glint of gold (not withstanding the terrible Missy and Monk arcs), and then everything after that isn’t even worth conversation for me. 

I like to imagine it ended with the Big Bang, with the Doctor sacrificing his entire existence to make sure the universe keeps standing. It’s bittersweet. With all of the Doctor’s victories gone, the universe is likely in a much worse state. But at least there’s hope. 

But if I’m extremely strictly honest (and at the risk of sounding pretentious), I think any semblance of true verisimilitude was lost after Eccleston’s Doctor. He was the last one I believed was a real person, not an artificially created character.

My personal favourites are Hartnell, Troughton, McCoy and Eccleston. 

[Professor Flibble]

The imminent 4K release of the TVM makes a wilderness years Blu-ray box set a bit of a weird prospect to me. 

Oh Wilderness Years has tons of stuff that can go on it. And they’ve left special features from previous sets like the Doctor Forever! documentaries. The fact any footage from Dimensions in Time was included in Wish World lends credence to the possibility they’ve paid for the rights to use it. Both versions of 30 Years in the TARDIS, Search Out Space, The TV Movie (as the headliner of course), The Curse of Fatal Death, Death Comes to Time, Real Time, 2003 Shada and Scream of the Shalka. As the primary content, I think that’d make for a really cool set. Also given the BBC haven’t done home media releases for some of those webcasts.

[Professor Flibble]

My personal favourites are Hartnell, Troughton, McCoy and Eccleston. 

Troughton and McCoy are my general favourites, but Matt Smith is my favourite revival Doctor, and Tom Baker and Paul McGann also make the top 5 for me.

[Professor Flibble]

I pretty much give up on Doctor Who past the Christmas Carol episode. I didn’t connect with the Silence arc, much less so with the Clara nonsense.
Series 10 was a rare glint of gold (not withstanding the terrible Missy and Monk arcs), and then everything after that isn’t even worth conversation for me. 

I do actually love A Christmas Carol, to the point I consider it a favourite of mine from the revival. That’s even if it breaks some of the show’s rules to tell its story. I love the world, the characters, and I’ve got nostalgia-tinted spectacles for 2010 and the beginning of the Matt Smith era, when everything felt so magical and optimistic. But yeah generally I think the show became far too introspective and insular, and you could tell precisely when the casual audience dropped off. I think it must’ve been the River Song reveal in A Good Man Goes To War. 

[Rushy]

I have a distinct memory of watching late series 7 (somewhere around Name of the Doctor) and realising that I no longer cared about this world, that it no longer felt like cause and effect had any meaning in it. It was very disheartening. I had connected with the way RTD ran the show, where everything tied together in neat and subtle ways. 

[Flap Jack]

Oh Wilderness Years has tons of stuff that can go on it…

It does, but I’m more thinking about the strangeness of the box set’s structure compared to the rest of the range. Seasons 2-26 are all centred on the common thread of a single broadcast season, and the special features are almost entirely about those. For The Wilderness Years, you’d have 1 canonical film, 4 webcasts, and a huge assortment of almost completely unconnected special features spanning over a decade. It wouldn’t be remotely cohesive, and the proportion of main features to special features would be way off.

[Professor Flibble]

It wouldn’t be remotely cohesive, and the proportion of main features to special features would be way off.

I’d say it’d be a bit like The Bodysnatcher Collection, but that did have Remastered. I think it’d still work as a way to mop everything up. And I’ve wanted some of those things to get a proper home media release for years. Always loved Curse of Fatal Death. Practically Classic Who distilled in the length of one episode. And again, that’s got different versions.

[Professor Flibble]

 and another main feature which is a low quality flash animation that is probably impossible to make HD. 

Oh, actually, Scream of the Shalka can very easily be converted to HD from the flash files, because it was made using vector graphics. There’s a page here on The Millennium Effect website with a video.

https://millenniumeffect.co.uk/index.php/the-collection-the-wilderness-years/

I’d assume they could also do this for The Invasion animation. James Goss says the original flash files still exist.

[Warbodog]

With Doctor Who, my perspective isn’t so much when it stops being good, but whether it was any good before. Like The Simpsons, there are only portions of it I really care about and would rewatch and focus on, the majority is just there.

[Professor Flibble]

With Doctor Who, my perspective isn’t so much when it stops being good, but whether it was any good before. Like The Simpsons, there are only portions of it I really care about and would rewatch and focus on, the majority is just there.

I find that even the rough patches of the show or the weak stories for me, there’s something I can enjoy about them. Admittedly less in the revival.

[Flap Jack]

I’d say it’d be a bit like The Bodysnatcher Collection, but that did have Remastered. I think it’d still work as a way to mop everything up.

I guess if it happens, we’ll all get used to it, but it does feel like an evening meal being 90% dessert, or a book being 90% index. That’s good to know about Scream of the Shalka though!

If they could go back in time and change the way they did these collection releases, I think it would have been better to divide a lot of these extras across different sets rather than lumping them all together at the end.

So The Curse of Fatal Death and Scream of the Shalka would be with The TV Movie, Shada 2003 would either be with The TV Movie or Season 17, Real Time would be with Season 23, Death Comes to Time and Dimensions in Time would be with Season 26 etc.

[Professor Flibble]

I guess if it happens, we’ll all get used to it, but it does feel like an evening meal being 90% dessert, or a book being 90% index. That’s good to know about Scream of the Shalka though!
If they could go back in time and change the way they did these collection releases, I think it would have been better to divide a lot of these extras across different sets rather than lumping them all together at the end.
So The Curse of Fatal Death and Scream of the Shalka would be with The TV Movie, Shada 2003 would either be with The TV Movie or Season 17, Real Time would be with Season 23, Death Comes to Time and Dimensions in Time would be with Season 26 etc.

I was very surprised Search Out Space wasn’t on Season 26, given it was a special feature on the 2007 Survival DVD. Oh, also, I forgot, the Destiny of the Doctors cutscenes with Anthony Ainley, stick those in the set too. 

I think also tbf McGann needs a cover, and The TV Movie and 2003 Shada on their own wouldn’t be enough to bulk the physical box out on the shelf. One thing I really like is how consistent the spines are in terms of width.

[Flap Jack]

I think the feeling that there ought to be a McGann Collection set is borne from the desire to cleanly divide Doctor Who into 2 eras – Classic and New, with no overlap. But the way I see it, Eight is neither one nor the other, and it’s fine if official releases acknowledge the wilderness years for what they were rather than pretending they were just a protracted Classic Who epilogue. The TV Movie was essentially an early attempt to do what RTD ultimately succeeded in doing, so in that regard it feels wrong to count it as merely an extension of the 1963-89 series just because it failed.

Having said that… I realise I’m doing quite a lot of arguing against a box set that when it comes down to it, I do actually want to happen. I’ll buy your good if perfect isn’t for sale, BBC. I’ll still be bitter about the double-dip, though.

[Professor Flibble]

But the way I see it, Eight is neither one nor the other

I’ve always seen Eight as a classic Doctor. If the DVD’s got roundels on it, it’s Classic Who.

Incidentally, I’ve ordered the steelbook, but I hope the regular blu-ray has an alternative roundel cover.

[Dave]

I’m more with Flap Jack, the TV movie is a different thing entirely to the classic series, to me. Although that might be because I remember experiencing the Doctor Who cancellation in real-time and the long wait for the movie to revive it, which felt like just as much of a reboot at that time as the RTD era did later.

In retrospect though I can see how the movie feels like a last hurrah of the classic series rather than the start of a new era.

[Professor Flibble]

I’m more with Flap Jack, the TV movie is a different thing entirely to the classic series, to me. Although that might be because I remember experiencing the Doctor Who cancellation in real-time and the long wait for the movie to revive it, which felt like just as much of a reboot at that time as the RTD era did later.
In retrospect though I can see how the movie feels like a last hurrah of the classic series rather than the start of a new era.

I think for me it’s also aesthetically it bears a lot more resemblance to the Classic Series, with the sonic screwdriver (I love the classic sonic screwdriver design btw), the Seal of Rassilon all over the place, the McGann logo basically being a modified version of the Pertwee logo, Hudolin’s police box design being very Classic. And McGann being the quintessential “Classic” Doctor with long curls, a quaint manner and a frock coat.

[Warbodog]

As someone who only caught some McCoy at age 4 and didn’t really know what he was watching, the McGann one definitely feels more like the proto-RTD revival to me, even if they were very disconnected. But as someone who watched a lot of 90s US SF TV, it felt the most like generic 90s US SF TV with a Doctor Who in it. I would have kept watching if it was picked up and hoped it got good, but I didn’t really care when it wasn’t.

I didn’t watch the RTD revival at first, but I remember seeing a photo of Tennant and still being disappointed that they’d fallen back on suits and hairstyles after the shaved leather jacket Not Your Daddy’s Doctor Who guy that had felt like a cooler update.

[Professor Flibble]

I didn’t watch the RTD revival at first, but I remember seeing a photo of Tennant and still being disappointed that they’d fallen back on suits and hairstyles after the shaved leather jacket Not Your Daddy’s Doctor Who guy that had felt like a cooler update.

I get why people don’t consider Eccleston’s look very Doctory, but I still think the cut of it, it looks more like a Doctor outfit than probably half of Ncuti Gatwa’s wardrobe in the role. Again, I’m very traditionalist when it comes to Doctor Who, I like shirts, collars, lapels, bow ties, checkered trousers etc.

[Professor Flibble]

But that’s not to say that some of Ncuti’s outfits don’t look great. I wish he’d worn his main brown leather coat look a lot more. 

[Professor Flibble]

Was talking about those roundel DVD covers earlier, rustled up a couple a while ago for Web of Caves and Curse of Fatal Death. Latter still needs a blurb. Oh and the CGI Daleks were done by ThePrydonian on Twitter, should’ve added a credit there. 

[Author]

Replies