What Who Are You Currently Watching? - Goes Fourth.

[Nyder]

It's okay - Episode 2 was a lot better


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[Leah Betts]

Having grown up with both, I always wondered how Emilio Delgado would have played the Master on Doctor Who and Roger Delgado would have played Luis on Sesame Street.

[Stuart Wallis]

Now there's a thought! The Master flying round the universe in Oscar's dimensionally transcendental trash can...

[Leah Betts]

Frontier in Space:

Um, one moment we're in the middle of a battle-scene, the next the Master and the Ogrons...have vanished. And I don't mean in a teleportation kinda way.

[Leah Betts]

Othering Omega, who am I kidding? the third Doctor couldn't organise a ••••-up in a brewery, let alone deal with the Master and the Ogrons.

[Stuart Wallis]

If a certain one-man cheese and wine party in Day of the Daleks is anything to go by, he'd probably attended quite a few...

[Leah Betts]

Which Doctor would be most likely to partake in a Coca-Cola?

[Stuart Wallis]

Obviously not Pertwee! Tennant - he's certainly done voiceovers for ads for everything else!

[Leah Betts]

Review: The War Games






This was good in many ways, but also bad.


The good part was that this was the story that revealed the backstory about the Doctor leaving Gallifrey and how he got his TARDIS. We also see the Time Lords for the first time. Of course, the story ends with the Doctor's two Companions, Jamie and Zoe, being returned to their own times, and the Doctor being exiled to 20th Century Earth, leading us into the Pertwee Era.


The problem I have with this story is the aliens and their war games. First of all, how did they manage to grab so many soldiers off Earth without anyone noticing. The aliens said that they took thousands of soldiers from various Earth wars up to and including, the First World War. I'm sorry, but I have hard time believing that. This is not taking a single yacht out at sea, this is taking thousands of soldiers. Someone is gonna see something.


Second of all, the aliens plans to conquer the galaxy with the surviving soldiers. Sure, that'll work. The Daleks and/or the Cybermen would make pretty short work of the aliens and their army.


Still, The War Games was a good way to see out the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton). I still enjoy it, despite the silliness of the aliens and their plan.

[Stuart Wallis]

The problem I have with this story is the aliens and their war games. First of all, how did they manage to grab so many soldiers off Earth without anyone noticing. The aliens said that they took thousands of soldiers from various Earth wars up to and including, the First World War. I'm sorry, but I have hard time believing that. This is not taking a single yacht out at sea, this is taking thousands of soldiers. Someone is gonna see something.

If the Time Lords are going to be able to put Jamie and Zoe back with no effort at all, putting all those soldiers back will just take a little extra time, and they've plenty of that.

Second of all, the aliens plans to conquer the galaxy with the surviving soldiers. Sure, that'll work. The Daleks and/or the Cybermen would make pretty short work of the aliens and their army.

Or half a dozen other aliens I could think of, I'll give you that!

It's the Master's plan to breed giant budgies that he must know will do for Atlantis in The Time Monster that gets me. Bonkers!

[Nyder]

I'll be spending the Bank Holiday with some Faceless Ones! Most of it will be really faceless of course - in the audio sense for Eps 2, 4, 5 & 6

[Leah Betts]

Hard as it is to believe, there was a time - a happy, innocent time - before Herbert, Maylin Tekker and the blue-faced android weren't burned horrifically and irreparably into our memories. But it's true, there was in fact a day when fandom went from cries of "We won't let the Doctor die!" to mumbles of "Well, okay, fair enough...".

[Leah Betts]

Logopolis

1) They​ ought to bring back Nyssa and have her open a can of whoopass on the Master.

2) I still don't know how the Master thinks he's going to call the whole universe with a dictaphone and a radio telescope.

3) Nyssa is covered in lipstick, eyeshadow and blush in this story. To borrow my thought about Miss Jackson from The Hand of Fear, does Nyssa moonlight as a circus clown?

4) This wasn't the best-written or best-produced story.

[Stuart Wallis]

2) I still don't know how the Master thinks he's going to call the whole universe with a dictaphone and a radio telescope.

Of course, if he'd reversed the charges, that would be really evil. That's what I'd have done...

[Nyder]

Carnival of Monsters - one episode per night. It's rather good isn't it? Takes me right back to the Five Faces season - how exciting that was!


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[Leah Betts]

I was once led to believe that the second Doctor sucked on his recorder in lieu of a cigarette.

[Stuart Wallis]

I'm glad I read that properly!

The Invisible Enemy (I'm glad I read that right as well!). Not bad, but the villains were more desperate to win than the good guys. (An amazing scene when Marius tells Dr. Parsons to shoot him if the virus took him over was like something from an old war movie). And I never tended to notice the inappropriately bright lighting In 1980s Who, but surely after a spaceship hits your space hospital in the deck below yours, surely there'd have been some sort of technical problems somewhere? But no, they carry on as though nothing had happened, lighting and all.

[Leah Betts]

I'm glad I read that properly!

If he'd ever written an autobiography, I'm sure Troughton would have waxed lyrical about his recorder

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

My husband and I have recently starting doing one story a week of Hartnell with the plan being that (given that we're not doing recons) we'll be able to watch the animated Power in sequence by late January. Tonight Richard & Ken's watchathon reaches... The Keys of Marinus

[Andrew Curnow]

Oh Richard, you have my sympathies.

Elsewhen, I've just finished The War Machines - which although it now looks very dated, must have been an extraordinary change of style at the time, as much a breath of fresh air as The Time Meddler at the end of the previous season. Hartnell, whether behind the scenes he was happy or not, rises to the challenge of presenting the Doctor as, to coin a phrase, scientific advisor to a military organisation, rather than passing mysterious alien. He's superb, and that part 3 cliffhanger is a great moment.

I'm also coming towards the end of my Tennant rewatch (the dogs & I have been doing the tenth Doctor's era this year over Sunday breakfast) with this morning's episode being The Stolen Earth... with THAT cliffhanger!!

[Rob McCow]

The War Machines - which although it now looks very dated, must have been an extraordinary change of style at the time

That's the problem watching it today. They've done this kind of story dozens of times since and perfected the format. That said, there's a lot about the War Machines which is unique and that makes it kind of interesting.

We watched Robot (Doctor Who and the Giant... ) last week. It's absolutely superb, even if the ambition of the effects massively outstrips their ability. But Tom Baker's nervous energy is a delight to watch, especially as he comes out of the TARDIS in the different outfits and looks right down the camera. It's as if he's asking the audience to fall in love with him. I wonder how that worked out?

[Stuart Wallis]

"Weeeellll you don't have to love me now, viewers. I'll come back in seven years and see what you think then, hmm?"

[Leah Betts]

A repeat of The Armageddon Factor was pulled because of Diana's death - remember the young child who was legendarily told the Princess of Wales had died and reportedly responded "Who will look after the whales now?"

[Leah Betts]

The Mind of Evil

In this most convoluted of stories, what on Earth is going on with the Chin Lee subplot? The Master is planning to wipe out the peace conference with the Thunderbolt, so what's the point of stealing papers and murdering delegates? If it's to spread suspicion among the host nations then that might make sense, but Chin Lee calls UNIT in immediately after killing Chen Teik and apparently doesn't bother contacting Beijing until after she's spoken to the Brig.


In fact it feels like the whole thing is the Master seeing how much he can get away with right in front of UNIT HQ. Not content with having Chin Lee bring the stolen papers with her when she goes to see the Brig, he then has her go and burn them in front of the building and several witnesses (including her chauffeur, who clearly isn't in on it). When this fails to get a reaction he starts wandering around outside himself without a disguise. He must be doing it for sheer mischief by now. (And how on Earth did Chin Lee get to moonlight as his assistant at Stangmoor for a bit, despite being a high-ranking diplomatic official for one of the most rigid and authoritarian regimes in history?)


He's also well-prepared to help Mailer out when he arrives at Stangmoor, which is surprisingly prescient as the first riot was still in progress when he set out there. He is very fortunate that this doesn't seem to have prompted an immediate investigation by the Home Office or the police, so there are no pesky external observers around (apart from Jo) when he stages his rematch.


He also doesn't try to hypnotise Mailer, even though he must know that a hardened criminal is going to have his own agenda and isn't necessarily simply going to play ball with a blatantly crazy Thunderbolt blackmail scheme. Then again, Mailer doesn't think there's anything unlikely about every con in the building being offered "unlimited money", so perhaps he's not as wilful as we're led to believe. Also, this is a prison with an unsealed secret passage that's marked on the official maps, so maybe it's reserved for exceptionally dim prisoners.


Mind you, the hardened criminals are not so scumbagly that Jo gets threatened with anything worse than being pushed around and constantly being told to get some sleep. So basically we have an entire high security prison filled with evil thuggish gits who are still better qualified to be US president than Donald Trump.


In the one - mercifully brief - full-length shot of the dragon, it's apparent that it's not actually a Chinese dragon at all. In fact, if we accept that the UNIT stories are set in the 1980s, then it seems more likely that Senator Alcott was traumatised by seeing 'Arc of Infinity' and now has a morbid fear of the Ergon.


Despite the scenes with Fu Peng being regarded as a sign that the Doctor is best pals with Mao Tse-Tung (who - unlike other historical gits with which Pertwee's Doctor claimed a more than passing familiarity, like Genghis Khan and Napoleon - was still alive when this was made), it's actually an anaemic endorsement at best, and the Doctor is clearly trying to a) impress a suspicious authority figure who isn't their enemy and needs to be won over quickly, and b) totally one-up the Brigadier.


The big irony of this scene is that, apparently, Pertwee's Hokkien pronounciation is rubbish.

[Stuart Wallis]

So basically we have an entire high security prison filled with evil thuggish gits who are still better qualified to be US president than Donald Trump.

And if me and The Lads had been US citizens, we'd have proved it!