The Doctor Who Thread

[Demoncrat]

Well put that man!

[Susan Foreman]

June 14th: Today in WHO-story

Births
1931 - Kenneth Cope (Packard in Warriors' Gate; father of Bad Wolf guest actress Martha Cope)
1934 - Michael Wolf (Nils in The Moonbase)
1937 - Michael Ferguson (director of The War Machines, The Seeds of Death, The Ambassadors of Death and The Claws of Axos; assistant floor manager on The Daleks)

1939 - Martin Johnson (designer on The Tomb of the Cybermen)
1980 - Blake Ritson (Big Finish Productions actor - Hurmzid in Gods and Monsters, Georges Legrand in Dark Eyes 4, Shibac in The Foe from the Future, Pilot Kellaway in Last of the Colophon, Rudolph in Death and the Queen, Young Litefoot in the Jago & Litefoot story The Year of the Bat and Captain James Astor in the Counter-Measures story Manhunt)

1983 - Tom Allen (Olivier Harper [First Doctor companion - Big Finish audio adventures]; Plutus in Big Finish's Gallifrey story Enemy Lines)
1998 - Julia Joyce (Young Rose Tyler in Father's Day and Holly Frobisher in the Torchwood story Children of Earth)

Deaths
1985 - Graham Leaman (Controller in The Macra Terror, Price in Fury from the Deep, Grand Marshall in The Seeds of Death and a Time Lord in Colony in Space and The Three Doctors) aged 64
2004 - Max J. Rosenberg (producer of the two Dalek movies from the 1960s) aged 89

2006 - Jay Neill (Pikeman in The Masque of Mandragora, Silvey in The Invisible Enemy and Klimt in Underworld; extra in The Enemy of the World, Doctor Who and the Silurians and Colony in Space) aged 74
2014 - Sam Kelly (Big Finish actor - Eugene Tacitus in The Holy Terror and Acheron in Return to the Web Planet) aged 70

Episodes
1969 - The War Games, Episode Nine: 4.1 million viewers
2008 - Midnight: 8.5 million viewers

Documentaries
2008 - Doctor Who Confidential: Look Who's Talking

Releases
1984 - Issue 90 of Doctor Who Magazine (Marvel)

1990 - Issue 162 of Doctor Who Magazine (Marvel)
2004 - Time Hunter: The Clockwork Woman (Telos Publishing)
2006 - Issue 6 of Doctor Who Adventures BBC Magazines)

2012 - Issue 273 of Doctor Who Adventures (Immediate Media Co.)
2016 - The Trouble with Drax (Big Finish)
2017 - Subterrana (Big Finish); issue 6 of Eleventh Doctor Year Three (Titan Comics)

Behind-the-Scenes
2012 - Recording of the Big Finish audio The Fourth Wall took place
2013 - Recording of the Big Finish audios The Abandoned and The Time Machine took place
2016 - Recording of the Big Finish audio The Contingency Club took place
2017 - Recording of Big Finish's UNIT story Encounters took place

[TYTDReviews]

xD! I still have the Doctor who cook book on my shelf! I'll have to do a video about it at some point. I really cant wait to sample "Adrics Ocka balls"

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Callieach from The Stones of Blood (1978)

[Gothmogxx]

The Ark in Space is a good story. Not a masterpiece, but it does what it sets out to do.

We now have a new tone. Since Spearhead we've had the cosy UNIT family setting on Earth. Not now. It felt a bit different. I couldn’t imagine Jon Pertwee appearing in that story.

Episode 1 is a masterpiece in itself. I really buy this TARDIS team, which is a good thing, because they are the only people in it. Kinda reminds me of a William Hartnell era episode, like The Daleks, only darker.

This is where the Tom Baker era establishes itself most dramatically under Phillip Hinchcliffe's guidance. The series takes a turn toward horror: good! Horror is about the only thing that could credibly follow the UNIT setting.

Even with the restrictions of the day, the sets for the space station are some of the best in the series history and they did a lot with it with a variety of slow scenes to build the tension. Noah and the further transformed Noah actually is a pretty good effort from an acting perspective. I mean there's no escaping the fact that its bubble wrap but the actors performance sells it to me.

Its not a favourite of mine by any means but its a good start to the era. The best: Genesis, Revenge (I look very forward to defending this one), Zygons, Pyramids, Talons etc is yet to come.

[Gothmogxx]

The Sontaran Experiment.

Meh.

Its not a patch on The Time Warrior for a start.

Styre is also nowhere near as good as Linx. Kevin Lindsay is a good actor but he had so much more to do in Time Warrior. Here he's barely in it! In fact the cliffhanger to Episode 1 is just a copy of the one we've already seen with Linx unmasking himself. Except this time the Sontaran looks only half as good. Sarah believes the Sontaran is somehow Linx from The Time Warrior (I would have preferred that, you could have designed the mask to have scars or something). In fact she reckons they’re identical... Is she blind?!? They aren’t identical. This one doesn’t look half as good as Linx The mask is cheaper and less detailed. They don’t even have the same number of fingers (!!!!!!!!!!!).

Its too short a Story and just sort of feels thrown in for the sake of it. You could have easily cut to Genesis at the end of Ark. We had no need to go through this.

Long gone is the tense rivalry between Irongron and Linx: this guy is just here to experiment on the resistance or something. I don't buy it: they could have easily kidnapped a bunch of humans and experimented on them that way. We don't need to be seeing this.

I just don't see why this exists. The plot is pointless, its too short (if it had been tweaked writing-wise and had another episode or so: good scenario).

Is it offensively bad? No... I'd rather watch it than The Space Pirates for instance, or the Web Planet.

The one solid thing here, besides some nice location shooting, is Tom Baker. The poor guy with his broken collarbone giving it his all. I did like the fight between the Doctor and Styre…

But this is the first Story I'd consider below average in a long time... Since 1969's The Space Pirates to be precise. It took me two sittings to get through it and its a 2 part Story. It took me a day to binge watch all 10 episodes from The War Games...

Still I finished Genesis an hour or so ago and its a masterpiece, so that should be fun to write about.

[Susan Foreman]

June 15th: Today in WHO-story

Births
1941 - Nicolette Pendrell (Tolata in The Dominators)

1945 - Michael Bertenshaw (Mr. Cole in The Next Doctor)
1946 - Roy Holder (Krelper in The Caves of Androzani)

Deaths
1990 - Leonard Sachs (Admiral de Coligny in The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve and Borusa in Arc of Infinity) aged 80

Episodes
2007 - The Infinite Quest, Episode Ten

Documentaries
2006 - Totally Doctor Who: Series One: Episode Ten
2007 - Totally Doctor Who: Series Two: Episode Ten

Introductions
1995 - First appearance of the Seventh Doctor's companions Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester

Releases
1987 - The Brain of Morbius (Target Books - "Junior" edition)

1989 - Mindwarp (Target Books)
1995 - Original Sin and System Shock (Virgin Books)

2006 - The Albino's Dancer (Telos Publishing)
2010 - City of the Daleks (Apple Macintosh - OSX edition)

2016 - Issue 11 of Tenth Doctor Year Two (Titan Comics)
2017 - The First Doctor: Volume Two and Toby Hadoke's Who's Round 204 (Big Finish Productions)

Behind-the-Scenes
1969 - Malcolm Hulke was commissioned to write The Monster (later renamed Doctor Who and the Silurians)
2005 - Whilst planning the 2006 series of Doctor Who, The Runaway Bride was rescheduled for that year's Christmas special. The episode was replaced by Queen Victoria (later renamed Tooth and Claw)
2009 - Recording of the Big Finish audio Castle of Fear took place
2014 - Recording of the Big Finish audio The Worlds of Big Finish took place
2015 - Recording of the Big Finish audio The Fourth Wall took place
2017 - Recording of Big Finish's UNIT story Encounters took place

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Derren Nesbitt as the warlord Tegana in 1964's Marco Polo.

[Susan Foreman]

In memory of Leslie Grantham (1947 - 2018)

[Susan Foreman]

Luigi Cozzi in the Profondo Rosso shop as featured in the documentary 'The Genesis Of Caltiki' from the Arrow Films release of 'Caltiki The Immortal Monster'

Notice what is behind his head...