Ben Saunders

[Ben Saunders]

I loved the bit in Top Gear where, to simulate the sound effect of the doors opening on the Starship Enterprise, Jeremy just blew some air out of one of his nostrils

[Ben Saunders]

Oh, someone punch him out.

[Ben Saunders]

He does have them though, what else would the glove be for?

[Ben Saunders]

Given that the second clip looks to have been made twenty years after the first, I could hazard a guess.

It’s probably not an original Craig Charles joke either to be fair, it’s pretty standard. Just delivered well, by Craig.

[Ben Saunders]

Actually it’s probably the image dropping one or two generations because they did all the effects in post by that point didn’t they?

[Ben Saunders]

I noticed the shit CSO from a very young age, and those moments when the picture quality changes for no discernable reason – different cameras, probably. It’s distracting, but nowhere near as distracting as Tony to cover it all up with poorly done 1997 CGI.

[Ben Saunders]

(played by Rob Llewellyn)

[Ben Saunders]

Reb Blackstone

[Ben Saunders]

Why did they combine six letters into three though?

[Ben Saunders]

bananas

[Ben Saunders]

Why can I not quote on this website?

It’s difficult to remember how to do it because it’s so inconsequential

[Ben Saunders]

ENTANKLED
THE TANKING

[Ben Saunders]

TIMETANKS
TANK TO RIDE
BACK IN THE TANK
HOLOTANK
PSITANK

[Ben Saunders]

T-shirts that aren’t branded for a particular series

[Ben Saunders]

Now short shorts I can get into. Not literally, though

[Ben Saunders]

Oh, definitely not then

[Ben Saunders]

I don’t like them

[Ben Saunders]

I don’t really like the flipside cover, by the way, Craig’s face in that photo just doesn’t look very good and it breaks the tradition of only having him and Chris on the cover x

[Ben Saunders]

The Last Jedi was far too long and incredibly boring. All the stuff with Luke, Rey and Kylo was interesting, and could have made for a decent movie all on its own, but the B and C plots with the slow motion chase and the casino planet were just tedious.

Also the shit jokes undermining the drama, as if they’re afraid of being too serious for too long, Mary Poppins made me want to die, weaponising that thing that shouldn’t be weaponised opens up a can of worms (although I thought it was fine) and oodles and oodles of plot convenience.

The Doctor Who Movie is a lot of fun and McGann is great, but I totally get the whole “it’s not really Who” angle – it is incredibly cheesey, and quite different from the rest of the show. And the half human thing

[Ben Saunders]

Even having a synopsis for it would be too much of a spoiler. You’ll just have to experience it for yourself

[Ben Saunders]

Fuck my arse we’re onto the third page

[Ben Saunders]

Also No Name, he generated an entire other living being out of his “bleeding CGI”, that’s got to at least make a dent in his reserves. Also he was mortally wounded etc.

It was stupid, can we just pretend it never happened, as we do with large swathes of the show’s canon already?

[Ben Saunders]

My gripe with the two Tennant regenerations lies squarely with RTD, honestly, because bringing Rose back just to give her another gushy ending where she gets her own Doctor Clone to go off and shag for the rest of her life is just about one of the worst things that ever happened on the show, and the fakeout regeneration was cheap drama that happened at a time when we already knew Tennant was bowing out later. It also directly contributed to the magification of regeneration energy which is not something I view as appropriate or sensical.

Also yes there were a couple Moff novelisations listed then taken down recently – and a couple Moff episodes being novelised by other people, interestingly.

[Ben Saunders]

He did say he tried to put too much into it on the dvd – the subplot about the daleks wanting to make a clone of the doctor so as to invade gallifrey, or something, for one.

[Ben Saunders]

Maybe Saward doesn’t want Resurrection of the Daleks novelised because it’s shit.

[Ben Saunders]

GLINNERWORLD

The crew encounter a Psi Moon where hundreds of clones of television writer Graham Linehan are allowed to roam free, talking shite. They decide he’s actually a bit of a knob and consider either nuking the moon or just leaving, but before they can he blocks them anyway.

[Ben Saunders]

“It would be like making Snoke…” *

So you don’t think I’ve just spoiled something, I haven’t

[Ben Saunders]

Big Finish did bring The Valeyard back the The Last Adventure, which is apparently good.

There’s an interview with the Moff where he’s asked about the Rani and the Valeyard, and he pretty much says only sweaty nerds even know who they are so there’s no point in bringing them back because 80% of your audience will be like “who, sorry?”

It’s like making Snoke Darth Plageuis and trying to pass it off as a huge twist – everybody who hasn’t seen or who has forgotten about the prequels won’t care.

The valeyard is best left in that era of the show, and there’s no real need to bring the Rani back, but they probably could if they really, really wanted to

[Ben Saunders]

For the common man, Capaldi is still the 12th Doctor, Whittaker is still the 13th, and they are referenced as such in the show, none of it really matters unless you are actually, currently watching Time of the Doctor.

Any episode that addressed the regen limit was going to have some amount of asspulling in it, so I’m glad he did away with it in a Christmas special honestly. TotD has some really nice moments in it (the cracker scene later mirrored in Last Christmas) but overall it’s silly fluff like every Christmas special that isn’t A Christmas Carol.

The real deal with the Valeyard is this – the Doctor forgot, the audience forgot, everybody forgot apart from some sweaty nerds on the internet who think bringing him back would be a good idea for some reason

[Ben Saunders]

It’s best just to pretend Series Seven of New Who just didn’t happen, honestly.

Yes, there is fun Adams-ness to a lot of his work, but honestly it does not work for Doctor Who. Doctor Who needs to be taken seriously, as any of the best actors who have been in it will tell you. Because it’s so out there, so silly and unbelievable by default, you have to play it with the utmost sincerity so that the audience will believe in the story. Adams seems incapable of taking anything seriously for any extended period of time, although he does have his good moments of seriousness, like when the Doctor confronts the pirate Captain about his plans.

But then you have the gratuitous walking the plank jokes, the parrot, all that silly shite. City of Death is good because you get to look at Paris a lot, Tom Baker and Lalla Ward have incredibly chemistry, and there is loads of brilliant dialogue – not because of the plot.

It is worth pointing out that Tom and Lalla did a lot of uncredited rewriting on the dialogue of City of Death, and so not only are you getting Adams personality shining through, but Baker’s too.

I will say again that Tom Baker and Douglas Adams works incredibly well, but not for Doctor who

[Ben Saunders]

RED DWARF VII: THE LATE DRAUGHTS

Dissatisfied with how their chess tournament went, Rimmer insists that the crew play draughts instead. Meanwhile, a medical professional recommends Cat try out a different type of toothpaste. But was it a dentist?

[Ben Saunders]

ACCI DENT:

Rimmer wakes up one morning to find that all of the crosswords on the entire ship has been filled in. But was it Suzi Dent?

[Ben Saunders]

Guest appearance*

[Ben Saunders]

They also list A Fix With Sontarans, which features a first appearance by good old Jimmy Saville and lacks a fourth wall, which is… questionable at best.

[Ben Saunders]

There’s someone on /tv/ lovingly known as “chronological anon” who is making it his mission to experience every single piece of official Doctor Who content, in in-universe chronological order. He’s up to Paul McGann, I think.

He, is insane.

3355 Doctor Who stories are listed on this website: http://eyespider.org.uk/drwho/compleat.html

Just thinking about the sheer number of television stories and audios alone gives me anxiety.

[Ben Saunders]

>Earthshock is my favourite colour era classic Cybermen story

Talk about damning with faint praise.

The Capaldi two-parter was much more about the Masters and Bill, but I thought they used the Cybermen very well, and particularly enjoyed the body horror of the scarecrows and the transformation. Taking them back to their roots, there. The original Mondas costumes did look really, really bad though, I have to say. I liked the idea of using the original design, but… maybe they should have gone back to 576i black and white, as well.

There were supposed to be other Cyberman designs in that episode too (Tomb, Invasion, Earthshock) but, of course, there was no money for that, as usual. They would have been shown off as the Cybermen evolved more and more, rather than going straight from Tenth Planet to Nightmare in Silver.

[Ben Saunders]

I guess. That ending though.

Imagine being kid in the 80s only having heard of the Cybermen or seen pictures in a magazine, these legendary enemies of the Doctor, and then witnessing that cliffhanger to episode one after 25 minutes of buildup and mystery. Someone on the DVD said they host about creamed themselves. Also one of the first times they showed clips from old Doctors in an episode, if not the first time

[Ben Saunders]

ACCIDENT

But was it an accident?

[Ben Saunders]

That’s how I felt watching The Chase (the old Dalek serial)

I went and watched it because I wanted something lighthearted, quirky and fun, and it was great, but if I was tuning into Doctor Who for a serious emotional story and got fucking stuttering socially anxious Daleks and some spiv with a bad New Yoik accent it’d probably make me really angry.

[Ben Saunders]

I liked Delta and the Bannermen, but thought Battlefield was dull (minus any time the Brig was on screen) and Ghost Light was utterly incomprehensible. Apart from that, yeah.

Greatest Show in the Galaxy episode four is also probably the worst fucking thing I have ever seen. Such a good start, then that. Jesus.

[Ben Saunders]

Apologies for the unprecedented triple post, but Rose is quite deliberately a retread of Spearhead, so watch Spearhead first, imo

[Ben Saunders]

I actually think Earthshock is fantastic but it’s hard to separate the “I watched it when I was 10” from the “It is genuinely good”. Interesting that I forgot Nyssa and Tegan were even in it until I watched it again recently, lol.

Rose is actually quite fun I think but it’s definitely not the strongest episode, and has some dodgy cgi

[Ben Saunders]

Earthshock – decent. strong, even
Spearhead – brilliant, maybe a bit slow, Pertwee’s first
Robots of Death – considered a classic, it is quite good if i remember rightly
Rose – ehhhhhhh it’s alright, first ever episode of New Who

[Ben Saunders]

I actually started with Tomb of the Cybermen, The Time Warrior and Genesis of the Daleks, which are good but perhaps a bit slow for somebody jus starting out. A lot of Classic Who is pretty lethargically paced.

[Ben Saunders]

Lily, there is a Russian Facebook-type website which hosts every single Classic Who DVD and all its extras for streaming, but I think it’s a bit illegal and don’t want to link to it in case I get banned. They’re also on various other streaming sites in horrendously lower quality.
As far as what episode to begin with, maybe Ark in Space, the first good Tom Baker. Or City of Death, or Pyramids of Mars. Do not start with Caves of Androzani – it’s one of the greatest single Doctor Who stories ever, but it is the final episode of Peter Davison’s tenure, and works so well because it is his final episode and you understand his character and his relationship with his companion by that point.

It could well be an age thing, Captain No-Name. To me it feels like there is a relatively small but VERY vocal minority of Who fans who rate Sylvester McCoy higher than God, so much so that any criticism of him is immediately shut down. And any fanatic group like that end up doing more damage than good for what they’re trying to support, honestly. Also I’ve definitely met a couple of Tegan deniers, and honestly I get it – like Clara, she overstayed her welcome (in their eyes not mine) and didn’t get a lot of development initially. That was a problem with Davison’s companions as a whole – there were too many of them and therefore not enough time to give them any real meaningful development.

Thank you for clarifying that I was right about Williams and Adam’s Wild Weekend

[Ben Saunders]

GANYMEDE & WHO

A fansite for Rimmer’s favourite television program devolves into Doctor Who discussion instead. Meanwhile, Lister has to name all the moons of Jupiter or his bollocks will explode.

[Ben Saunders]

Also my impressions going into Destiny of the Daleks many years ago was “Douglas Adams basically wrote this.” It certainly feels like it, with the humour. But I don’t know where I got that idea from.

[Ben Saunders]

Oh hang on, it might have been Anthony Read who stayed up all weekend writing a script with Douglas Adams. Or it was Read and Williams, on Invasion of Time. Fuck. All those behind-the-scenes DVD interviews sort of blend into one, really.

Your Who opinions interest me, Captain No-Name, because I think Paradise Towers and Kinda are mediocre, but I like Delta and the Bannermen. I think McCoy is overrated by die-hards. At least we can agree Time and the Rani is shite.

Paradise Towers feels like something I should enjoy, but there’s something… off… about it. The performance of that zombie dude doesn’t help, certainly. I love Tegan. And Rory!

The Brain of Morbius is possibly the worst example of the Hinchcliffe era. It’s an abortion of a script that is a massive compromise between two visions which no one was happy with. Some of the “re-tread of a Hammer Horror” Who is good, Morbius isn’t. Anything written by Robert Holmes that isn’t Morbius or The Power of Kroll is worth your time, I’d say.

I agree with RTD being broad and not to taste, but have to defend Jenna Coleman. She was the companion for a -very- long time, and was dire in Series 7, and should have left in that one episode, but I really, really like her. “Appallingly underwritten” only applies to Series 7, I have to say, rather adamantly.

[Ben Saunders]

Tom Baker is also supported by the just wonderful Elisabeth Sladen for most of his good stuff, which helps. She was a phenomenal actress.

[Ben Saunders]

Jesus, you’ve only seen the film?

Tom Baker is the most popular “classic Who” Doctor, somewhat deservedly. David Tennant is the most popular “new Who” Doctor, no comment.

Tom Baker’s first couple of seasons are really, really good, and he is a very good Doctor. Most people probably start with him, which is fine. I quite like Jon Pertwee and Patrick Troughton, as well. And Peter Davison. And Colin Baker, on audio. And Matt Smith. And Peter Capaldi. Yes.

When I was getting into Classic Who I just picked a “top 10 episodes of Classic Who” article and watched all those, the general consensus on what’s good seems to be pretty spot on honestly.

[Author]

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