What Who Are You Currently Watching? - Goes Fourth.

[Rob McCow]

Last night we watched The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar.

What an absolute mess.

For every brilliant idea there's two crap ones. Colony Sarff deserved his own episode and it makes no sense that Davros has employed him for security (when he's in the middle of the Dalek empire in Skaro???) but he is a great character. The planes stopping was nice but utterly unnecessary. The Doctor hiding was nice but utterly unnecessary. The tank / electric guitar scene was such a WTF moment. I can imagine people turning off their TV at that point.

The pacing is utterly bizarre. It takes ages to get going and then the story is wafer thin when we get there.

Oh and I'd forgotten that Kate Lethbridge-Stewart was in it but then you would, wouldn't you?

I thought re-watching Series 9 might make me excited for Series 10 but it seems to be going the other way...

[Stuart Wallis]

City of Death.

Ooh the beginning of Ep 1 ..... only surpassed by the cliffhanger of Ep 1. C'est bon!!

The stuff in-between isn't bad either.

[Leah Betts]

Even if we could bring him to our world, the Doctor's too pacifist to deal with many of the real world's threats. Remember, "any more talk of executions and you'll make me your enemy"?

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

Another good run for us this week...

The Tenth Planet
The Power of the Daleks
New Earth
Tooth and Claw

Nuzzink in ze world can stop us now... at least until Tuesday when we have to try and watch an incomplete story with no animated missing episodes :/

[Stuart Wallis]

Even if we could bring him to our world, the Doctor's too pacifist to deal with many of the real world's threats. Remember, "any more talk of executions and you'll make me your enemy"?

Well that's The Lads done for then...

[Andrew Curnow]

Last night we watched The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar.

What an absolute mess.

For every brilliant idea there's two crap ones. Colony Sarff deserved his own episode and it makes no sense that Davros has employed him for security (when he's in the middle of the Dalek empire in Skaro???) but he is a great character. The planes stopping was nice but utterly unnecessary. The Doctor hiding was nice but utterly unnecessary. The tank / electric guitar scene was such a WTF moment. I can imagine people turning off their TV at that point.

The pacing is utterly bizarre. It takes ages to get going and then the story is wafer thin when we get there.

Oh and I'd forgotten that Kate Lethbridge-Stewart was in it but then you would, wouldn't you?

Although I quite like it, I agree that almost the whole episode could have been replaced with "The TARDIS materialises on the planet Skaro".

I suppose you could argue that it introduces UNIT so that we're ready for the ZYgon story, and introduces the confession dial for episode 11 (although even that seems odd, why does the Doctor think he needs to leave his will in part 1, why would meeting Davros again mean it's curtains for him)...

[Leah Betts]

[AMELIA POND is sitting on Santa's knee at the shopping mall]


AMELIA: If you're really Santa Claus, why are there so many Santas Clauses at other malls?


SANTA: Well, Amelia, it's like how President Obama can't be everywhere at once so he sends his assistants out in his place


AMELIA: I don't believe in him, either!

[Stuart Wallis]

I believe in Santa! Amelia Pond is just his vent doll, that's all...

[Leah Betts]

I saw the joke on an old episode of Family Ties where Michael J. Fox's character is a shopping mall Santa and has to deal with a little girl who doesn't believe but has been made to visit Santa's Grotto by her mother (and he's not the first Santa the kid has done this to). I just had to adapt it for Young Amelia Pond given the disdain in her voice when she "thanks" Santa in The Eleventh Hour.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

This week with a bit of jiggery pokery involving playing a dvd and cd at the same time we managed The Underwater Menace with was fun and then last night was fan favourite School Reunion which remains a very poignant episode. So far re-watching the 2006 series is continuing to prove quite emotional and the next episode is likely to continue to be so as it's a favourite of my husband's....

[Leah Betts]

I've always wanted to see the Doctor regenerate in the middle of a story, so a completely different Doctor has to finish what the previous one had started and interact with characters who already thought they knew who the Doctor was.

[Stuart Wallis]

That's exactly how I was hoping The End Of Time would end - rather than the sloppy last fifteen minutes, Matty turns round after the Doctor takes the radiation, then Daleks burst in wanting to know which way Gallifrey went. Ah well...

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

Well you can blame Moffat for the Daleks not appearing in that story as he specifically asked RTD not to include them so that he could then completely over use them once he took over...

[Stuart Wallis]

Why not? I blame him for everything else that's gone wrong on the show ever since...

[Rob McCow]

...and strangely enough everything that's gone right as well!

(But yes there have been issues.)

[Stuart Wallis]

...and strangely enough everything that's gone right as well!

If I can think of any past his choice of Doctors I'll let you know...

[Leah Betts]

Tenth Doctor: I don't want to go!
(regenerates into a duck with a Scottish accent)
Scrooge McDoctor: Awk! Where's my number one dime!


(Tennant has been cast as the voice of Uncle Scrooge in a new version of Ducktales.)

[Nyder]

The Unicorn and The Wasp

Oh dear this one irritated me a bit. It's strange because when I first viewed this I found it really delightful. But this time round I thought it was a bit silly. The sequence where The Doctor was trying to combat his arsenic poisoning and those mimes were quite cringey, as were all the Agatha Christie book references. On the positive side, wonderful performances from Fenella Woolgar and the always wonderful Christopher Benjamin. Maybe I wasn't just in the mood for this story ...... I'll watch it again sometime in the next decade.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

So nearly two weeks ago The Moonbase went down very well and then last week we managed to get through the recon of The Faceless Ones without too much pain (I'd previously listened to The Macra Terror on the own to avoid needless recriminations as we've agreed that Ken doesn't need to bother with entirely missing stories as he doesn't enjoy having only the soundtrack).
We also very much enjoyed The Girl in the Fireplace which was to be expected, although I think the original plan to get series 2 finished before the new series starts is officially out of the window.
I'm braced for much wailing and gnashing of teeth as we try to cope with the recon of The Evil of the Daleks tomorrow...

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

So last week we managed to quite enjoy The Evil of the Daleks and followed this week by The Tomb of the Cybermen

We've also recently watched Rise of the Cybermen, The Age of Steel, and just this evening The Idiot's Lantern

[Nyder]

As well The Pilot I've been a busy boy watching Silence in The Library / Forest of the Dead and .... Mawdryn Undead

[Leah Betts]

There's some fan debate about what to do if The Celestial Toymaker were ever returned, given the "catch a nigger by the toe" version of eenie meenie miney moe that's in it. BBC Editorial Policy means that any DVD would have the line changed or muted but many fans are up in arms at that. I might have more sympathy for those fans if they weren't coming across as "they're taking away my precious racial slur!".

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

Having parked our rewatch the rest of David Tennant's first series (with the first series of Torchwood also waiting in the wings!) until July we're pressing on nicely with season five
having successfully made it through The Abominable Snowmen and The Ice Warriors.
That's two more down from the list of stories I'd never seen/heard before. (my next "new" classic story listen will be Fury from the Deep in a couple of weeks time)

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

There's some fan debate about what to do if The Celestial Toymaker were ever returned, given the "catch a nigger by the toe" version of eenie meenie miney moe that's in it. BBC Editorial Policy means that any DVD would have the line changed or muted but many fans are up in arms at that. I might have more sympathy for those fans if they weren't coming across as "they're taking away my precious racial slur!".

Was that included on the CD audio release? I cheated with this story when we got to it a couple of months back as I'd heard it before sometime previously so can't remember.
I'm guessing it was probably edited out so I'm sure something similar might happen if there were to be a DVD release although certainly on the possible animations front this has to be pretty near the bottom of most people's wishlists.

[Stuart Wallis]

"they're taking away my precious racial slur!".

A remark that will surely go down in history - or on the Titanic... These are the same completest fans, I'm thinking, who complained about the boom shadows that were painted out of some DVDs - "they're taking away my precious cock-ups! My beautiful copy of The Discontinuity Guide is now invalid!" (You shouldn't have sold your videos on eBay then!)