I love Doctor Who, because it is great. It has been my favourite thing for years. It outlives Quatro and Quantum Leap. It reaches beyond childhood and adolescence. It bounces around my head constantly and brings me sustenance and joy.
Over the last couple of years I've been attempting to watch all of Doctor Who, in order, from the start. A daunting task. There are 851 episodes. That's a lot of television.
And 97 of them don't exist, because the BBC threw them away, like jerks. If you want to see these missing episodes, you have to watch a slideshow of photographs, running along a slightly warbly off-air recording of the audio. It is often not thrilling
And of those that remain, a great number of them are less than amazing. That's kind of the joy, though. Doctor Who is remarkably inconsistent. It veers from awesome wonder to tedious claptrap on a frequent basis. It makes no sense. And that's why it's great.
One thing I've been doing, as I've watched my way through the first bunch of episodes, is to take a photo of the screen, every now and then, when a particularly pleasing image came up.
To celebrate this, Doctor Who's 53rd birthday, I present you with a selection of these photos. Just season 1, for now. If you know the show, you can enjoy the familiarity. If you do not know the show, you can scratch your head in amazement that such a thing is loved by anyone, ever.
Season 1
1. An Unearthly Child
I took this picture because it reminded me of my friend Matt. It is, in fact, a caveman. Doctor Who's first adventure pits him against this guy, who might be called Kal.
Kal is not very smart. He tries to kill people with rocks and shouts about fire a lot. Doctor Who responds by trying to run away - a plan which eventually succeeds. The narrative is largely tedious, but it's hard for Who fans to recognise this, because it's the first story and thus dead important.
Here's Doctor Who himself. He looks a bit mad, doesn't he? Well, that's because he is. He doesn't really want to go on adventures and responds to the idea by cackling and being mad. I think the idea is that no-one will want to spend time with someone so irritating, so they'll leave him alone. It's also quite possible that he drinks a lot of gin at this point in his career.
And this is Susan. She lives with Doctor Who, in his spaceship. Her face suggests that this is a terrible experience and she is desperate for literally anything else to happen. She's thinking "Please can we go somewhere without gin."
2. The Daleks
Some Daleks. Seen here being space Nazis. Doctor Who defeats them by... well, he doesn't really do a lot. Other people do, and he takes the credit, confident in the fact that he will live longer than them and can say what he wants.
It's a pretty good story, full of cool designs and exciting deaths. Goes on a bit, though.
3. The Edge of Destruction
This story is not very good. Everyone in the TARDIS goes mad for a bit. You can see this in the picture, where Susan is trying to kill Ian with some scissors. Ian is just staring at her, evidently unbothered by her homicidal frenzy. Ian is very calm, and wears a cardigan with unusual dignity.
Later in the story Doctor Who gives a big speech about space. Ian is now wearing an exciting space dressing gown.
4. Marco Polo
Doctor Who meets proper historical guy, Marco Polo, seen here doing the MC Hammer dance.
It was meant to educate people about history. All it means, though, is that my primary understanding of Marco Polo is that he is a man who tried to steal the TARDIS. You suck. Marco.
Polo.
I'm not sure this is a real picture from the story. This is one of the ones that the BBC 'lost', so it's been put back together by fans, from photos and sellotape and, by the looks of it, publicity shots from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I do like the monkey, though. So as far as I'm concerned, this happened in the story. I like the way the monkey makes the eye-patch guy so happy. He loves the monkey, I think.
5. The Keys of Marinus
Many things happen on Marinus, including an attack by some ice soldiers, and a town controlled by hypnotic brains in jars.
For some reason I have chosen to represent the story with these three guys. I really liked their hats, I guess. They seem to be enjoying them too, especially the guy on the right.
6. The Aztecs
The Aztecs is just great. Easily one of the best stories. The best thing about it is chief villain Tloxtl. I've probably spelled that wrong. But if he can't be bothered having a proper name, I don't see why I should waste time looking it up. Tloxtl. Live with it.
Tloxtl is mental, and spends a lot of time shouting into the camera, which is bad etiquette, especially in Aztec times. I say he's the villain. Actually, he's the only one of the Aztecs who correctly works out that the TARDIS crew are a bunch of liars and not, as they have claimed, reincarnated gods.
7. The Sensorites
Meanwhile, in space, Doctor Who protects Susan from some old men in pyjamas. The story is every bit as exciting as this picture suggests.
See Ian and Barbara, in the background, looking glum. That's because they can't skip bits of this story, and have to watch it all.
I took this picture because I thought it looked a bit like Barbara and Susan met Peter Capaldi in a corridor. Which would be exciting, because he is Doctor Who as well. But I think it's just some guy. He appears to be drunk.
Susan looks horrified by him, which seems rude. Maybe the other side of his face has sick on it or something.
8. The Reign of Terror
More history, this time featuring lots of death. It's pretty good, this one.
This is the second time we encounter missing episodes, thrown away by the BBC in the 70s because they failed to predict the advent of the DVD market, and also because they hate me personally. To compensate, they commissioned some guys to reanimate the missing bits.
Looks nice, doesn't it? Not a patch on Danger Mouse, but then what is?
That's season one. Tune in again, for more of this, a rather random ramble through Doctor Who.
Click here for season 2.
An Unearthly Child. Or should that be 100,000 BC, or even The Tribe of Gum? None of these titles encapsulates the whole story. Only the first episode is about an unearthly child, and the cavemen don’t come into it until the second episode. Storywise, this plays like a one-parter followed by a three-parter. True, the TARDIS lands in prehistoric times at the end of the first episode, but lots of Hartnell stories end with the TARDIS arriving at the location of the next adventure.
ReplyDeleteIf I had to come up with a title for the whole four episodes, I would go for something like The Primitives (The Savages is already taken). During episode 1, Ian and Barbara are the primitives, in the Doctor’s view at least. He considers himself to be far more civilised than the thickies who can’t grasp how the TARDIS can be bigger on the inside:
DOCTOR: Remember the Red Indian. When he saw the first steam train, his savage mind thought it an illusion, too.
IAN: You’re treating us like children.
DOCTOR: Am I? The children of my civilisation would be insulted.
In episodes 2 to 4, the primitives are of course the cavemen, and Ian and Barbara experience similar frustration at their ignorance (though the writer doesn’t really explore this thematic connection).
I will return to comment on other stories. But before I go…
Kal is sad because he has no gin.
The Daleks AKA The Dead Planet AKA The Mutants AKA The Survivors AKA whatever:
ReplyDeleteBack then viewers didn’t know how long each story would run for. The end of the fourth episode must have really seemed like it was the end. Our heroes have escaped from the evil Daleks. They head back to the TARDIS. But wait, there’s more – three episodes more!
The Doctor smoked a pipe in the previous story, but not in this one – or ever again. I guess being knocked unconscious and dragged back to a cave might give a chap an aversion to the filthy habit. Useful to know if anyone out there is trying to quit…
The Edge of Destruction AKA Inside the Spaceship AKA Beyond the Sun AKA whatever:
The Edge of Destruction is really just the title of the first episode. The Brink of Disaster is the title of the second. It’s a good job this isn’t another seven-parter, or the writer might have run out of synonyms: The Verge of Catastrophe… The Threshold of Doom… er, The Periphery of Peril…?
Ian looks as though he’s auditioning for the role of Arthur Dent. “Is there any tea inside this spaceship?” he asks.
Marco Polo: I made this! Well, I made episodes 2 to 7 of the reconstruction you watched. Fascinating behind-the-scenes fact: the man with the monkey is a real picture from the story, but in that particular shot I rather amateurishly changed the daytime background to night, because I was reusing it from another scene.
ReplyDeleteI like the music in this story. You wouldn’t guess it was by the same guy (Tristram Cary) who wrote the electronic score for The Daleks. The setting is completely different, so he composed something in a completely different genre. That’s Tristram Cary – not to be confused with Carey Blyton, whose music (for The Silurians, Death to the Daleks and Revenge of the Cybermen) is not so good.
The Keys of Marinus: Is that an early version of the Prydonian Seal on the front of their desk? I’m very surprised that you didn’t photograph the brains.
The Aztecs: Tloxtl is cross because someone just ran a paint roller over his mouth.
The Sensorites: I think Susan is looking horrified because the man has an offensive message on his tie. Or an unpleasant stain.
The Reign of Terror: The cliffhanger at the end of the first episode goes on for blooming ages. The house is on fire. The Doctor is trapped in the house. The house is still on fire. The Doctor is still trapped. Flames burning. Doctor trapped. Lots of smoke. Doctor trapped. Roof on fire. Doctor trapped. Flames still burning. Doctor trapped. House still on fire. Is that 25 minutes yet?