London Gatwick Airport: Now Powered by Nightmare Fuel May 15 2017 2nd Doctor Ben Jackson Jamie McCrimmon Polly Wright After the giant crabby ridiculousness of The Macra Terror, I really wasn't expecting much out of today's new story. It turns out I was completely wrong. The Faceless Ones, at least so far, is fiendishly unsettling in all the right ways. It has certainly creeped me right hell out. Let's talk about that. Read more ...
Pay No Attention to the Crab Behind the Curtain May 14 2017 2nd Doctor Ben Jackson Jamie McCrimmon Polly Wright One of my all-time favorite pulp novels is The Captive City by Daniel Da Cruz. In it, an entire city of American oil workers in the Middle East are cut off from the West for nearly two decades. (I am now going to spoil the ending of this obscure forty-year-old pulp novel that you will never read.) Ultimately it turns out to be a long-term plot to breed an entire generation of Americanized janissaries who can be sent into the U.S. as completely undetectable and un-suspicious terrorists under Arab control. They spend a lot of time walking around saying, "Obey Control!" and waiting for orders. Today's episodes of The Macra Terror made me think of this book, because of all the times that characters in the story walk around saying, "Obey Control!" Unfortunately, I liked that book an awful lot more than I liked this Doctor Who episode. Let's talk about that. Read more ...
Oxygen May 13 2017 12th Doctor Bill Potts Nardole Modern Doctor Who is somewhat better at trapped-on-a-spaceship stories. I'm just sayin'. Read more ...
Knock Knock May 13 2017 12th Doctor Bill Potts Modern Doctor Who is not very good at haunted house stories. I'm just sayin'. Read more ...
I Got a Raging Case of Crabs! May 13 2017 2nd Doctor Ben Jackson Jamie McCrimmon Polly Wright Ah, The Macra Terror. It is a completely lost story, only telesnaps and very brief video clips remain to match up with the audio. I expected a story about a seaside town being invaded by giant crabs, à la Guy N. Smith's Crabs series of books. You can imagine my surprise when, instead, I got a dystopian 1984 pastiche... with giant crabs. Before I get to that, I should explain this post title since it is incredibly obscure. It comes from one of my all-time favorite web comics, Sluggy Freelance: Anyway, about those giant crabs -- let's talk about that. Read more ...
The Sexual Politics of Coffee Service May 12 2017 2nd Doctor Ben Jackson Jamie McCrimmon Polly Wright I finished The Moonbase this morning, and it was a rip-roaring finale as long as you don't spent much time thinking about the physics involved. I mean, really, the moon seems like a really impractical place to have any kind of terrestrial weather control apparatus, and don't even get me started about orbital deflection into the sun. So yeah, when I say that Kit Pedler writes more "hard science" stories, I only mean that as contrast to completely nonsensical stories like the previous one. That being said, The Moonbase is an excellent example of the kind of casual misogyny and sexism that is rampant in classic Doctor Who. Let's talk about that. Read more ...
The Phantom Piper May 11 2017 2nd Doctor Ben Jackson Jamie McCrimmon Polly Wright As soon as I saw Kit Pedler credited as the writer for today's story, The Moonbase, I knew I was in good hands. He pitched the idea that led to The War Machines, and he also wrote The Tenth Planet. Where The Underwater Menace was a mishmash of amateur science fiction tropes thrown into a blender with no artfulness or even logical coherence, Pedler writes stories with a hard scientific edge and clearly defined characters. The only downside to the story is that the scripts had already been completed before Frazer Hines was asked to join the regular cast as Jamie McCrimmon. That leads to some issues. Let's talk about that. Read more ...
You Fools! I Shall Destroy You All! May 10 2017 2nd Doctor Ben Jackson Jamie McCrimmon Polly Wright Ok, so, let's be honest: The Underwater Menace is... not good. I mean, it's no Planet of Giants, but it's really not good. In fact, I think it exemplifies all of the negative preconceptions of what classic Doctor Who is - cheap sets, tacky costumes, poor writing, pantomime storytelling, it's all there. Usually, for me at least, the show rises above its technical and financial limitations by presenting interesting ideas and captivating characters. But sometimes, like with this story, it's just cheap and badly written. Read more ...
A Half Million Steps! May 09 2017 2nd Doctor Ben Jackson Jamie McCrimmon Polly Wright As of this morning, I have taken more than 500,000 steps since the start of this project. When I began nearly three months ago, it was all I could do to last 55 minutes at 3 miles per hour, reaching a grand total of 2.4 miles per day. I have been gradually increasing the speed over time, to the point where this morning I was up to 3.9 miles per hour and a total distance walked of 3.57 miles -- that's over a mile further I am walking every day. I'm not sure at what point I will cross over from walking to jogging, but I expect it will happen before I meet Sarah Jane Smith. Anyway, today I watched the first half of The Underwater Menace on DVD. The first episode was a reconstruction using telesnaps, and I have to say that although the audio quality was superior I really do think that Loose Cannon does a better job with the video reconstruction. The DVD reconstruction was missing any descriptive subtitles during several passages where they would have been helpful to clarify the action. Also, all of the pictures were static and sometimes poorly timed, as opposed to how Loose Cannon frequently animates things by moving or panning the picture, or by cutting to facial closeups of the characters who are speaking. The second episode, however, was an honest-to-goodness real existing video. I was suddenly struck that, fully a dozen episodes into the Second Doctor's era, this was the first time I was actually seeing Patrick Troughton in action. Let's talk about that. Read more ...
Welcome Aboard, Jamie! May 08 2017 2nd Doctor Ben Jackson Jamie McCrimmon Polly Wright Sure enough, Jamie McCrimmon first appeared in yesterday's viewing. But really he had very little to do with the story, he was more than a background character but less than a guest star. With today's viewing, he finally came to the foreground - first in his determination on board the ship Annabelle and then later in his decision to throw in with the Doctor permanently. That's not surprising, given that originally he was not intended to be a companion. After filming had completed on The Highlanders, actor Frazier Hines got a call from producer Innes Lloyd asking if he wanted to join the show as a regular. "But I can't," Hines replied, "you've already filmed me waving goodbye." Lloyd replied back, "Oh, we can just re-shoot that bit!" And so he agreed, and went on to become the longest running companion ever in the history of Doctor Who (at least in terms of televised episodes.) Let's talk about that. Read more ...