Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Doctor Who: Series 1

Yeah- but it's in a Tardis shaped box - how cool is that?

Could someone rename this thread to Doctor Who: Series 1, please?

Actually, the US (R1) got lucky and got a normal-ish box.

And, given the ****ing booby-trapped, disc-scratching fall-apart-if-you-breathe-on-it Tardis box... I'd rather we'd got the same box as the R1ers.

I haven't read a single post in this thread yet... I've been trying my damndest to completely AVOID any news or discussions about WHO... UNTIL it finally debuted on the air over here. That was tonight! (The following copied from an e-mail I just sent a friend of mine in Wales.)


Having seen every TV Doctor and enjoyed all of them to varying degrees, I figured I'd be in a good position to have an opinion of this new guy (compared to many Americans who "only" know or like one guy-- whichever that one may be).

Right off the bat, I KNEW they "got" it righter than the last try (the tv movie) because they STARTED with the girl-- the "normal" person-- and then introduced The Doctor, but only let slip a few details here and there as they went. In a way, this was the BEST "introduction" of a new era that the show has seen... maybe ever. Maybe since Hartnell, which is what I was reminded of. Nothing in the 2 episodes they ran tonight openly contradicts anything in previous eras... but you DON'T need to have ever seen the series before to follow this.

In fact, that's another thing that really hit me about halfway thru the 2nd story. I found myself cursing at EVERY British writer who ever thought it was "clever" to keep the audience COMPLETELY in the dark about what the HELL is going on unless they watch the story 10 times. As FAST-paced as these were, as COMPLEX as they were, I understood EVERYTHING. Damn. It was like the old days-- except "on speed".

The Doctor is probably the only thing about the show I'm NOT crazy about, but even he was fun to watch in spots. Overall he's admirable, but not overly likeable. But then, neither was Hartnell (at first), Pertwee (for his first 2 years), Baker (I LIKED him, but at times he drove me NUTS with his out-of-control behavior). The new guy's quirkiness reminded me of McCoy, his abbrasiveness reminded me of Colin Baker... I keep thinking what a waste it was for such a good actor to have gotten screwed over so badly with terrible writing, directing, the worst costume in the show's history, etc...

I figured out very quickly that The Nestene was the villain in the 1st story-- they made it MUCH scarier than it ever was in the 2 Pertwee stories.

I noticed at the end the show was done by BBC Wales. (What, the "main" BBC couldn't be bothered with what had once been their biggest moneymaker worldwide?) One more good thing to come from Wales-- eh?

I decided up front NOT to tape the new show... partly because my 2 old VCRs are not working properly with editing, partly because the way tv stations run ANYTHING has become an aggravating nuisance, partly because the new show is ALREADY available commercially, and partly because they're running the shows several times a week, each time they do run them. Whole different world than the 80's, eh?

I made the right decision... too many "pop-ups" during the show, and the end credits COMPLETELY interrupted by coming attractions. Everybody seems MORE concerned with telling you about what's coming up than letting you enjoy what's on NOW. Grrrrrrrrrr. I'm used to 26 years of watching the end credits and being able to enjoy the music AND read the credits-- and you can't do either on the Sci-Fi Channel. Screw them... I figure, I'll be able to afford to buy the shows someday...


My all-time favorite TV show is back... and it looks like it's in the hands of people who KNOW what the hell they're doing. (Yay!)

I saw the two episodes last night. I thought they were good although I am not too sure about a complete story in each episode. I guess I am just too used to the multi-episode stories of the original series.

Story-wise, one thing I really did not like was when they had the Doctor say that all the other time lords & Gallifrey had been destroyed in a war. I think that was bad writing. If they don't want to use other time lords and/or Gallifrey, they don't have too. But now the writers are backed into a corner.

$100 isn't uncommon, even for a 13-ep season. All the HBO shows (Sopranos, Six Feet Under, etc.) carry that price tag.

I kind of have mixed feelings about Galifrey as well. On the one hand, I didn't want to see it in the new series. On the other, it seems a shame that it's gone, even if it does make this Doctor unique now. Of course, it's all time travel: If they want to bring it back, they can.

Thanks to a favorite blogger of mine, I caught the Sci-Fi Channel airing in the nick of time last Friday night.

I REALLY enjoyed the two shows. I had no idea how much I had missed the Doctor.

The shows have an energy and drive to them that is pleasingly contemporary. As much as I loved the slow, soap-opera like pace of the original, I think this approach works fine. It certainly keeps you glued to your seat like Battlestar Galactica does.

I found the end of the world episode delightful, poignant, wry, clever, funny and moving. Hauntingly beautiful, too -- the decadent, art deco interior of the viewing station seems perfect for watching "earth death." A real accomplishment given the likely limitation of funds at BBC.

The lead characters were written and performed brilliantly, as were the supporting characters. The wonderful thing about good sci-fi is its ability to blow open the minds of the earth-bound, and that's exactly what happens to Rose in this episode. The wireless phone call from the end of the world was just awesome. And Clarissa the last human, the facelift without a body, just brilliant.

I don't mind that the Doctor is the only survivor of his species. This seems to be setting up some larger background plot, which is cool. And, since they are Time Lords, they can always pop up again, right? Some split-second shard of the past, subjected to cosmic inflation and duplication (SW-6, anyone)? Anyway, it gives a real sense of urgency and poignancy to the Doctor's character. He never seemed to like his homeworld much, but no one wants to alone in the universe. And, he wants to keep earth and humanity from suffering the same fate. Also, whatvever his personal feelings about the old hometown, its destruction seems to represent a profound personal failue, something the Doctor has a hard time accepting.

I can't wait until my son is a little older. I think he will enjoy watching this new Doctor Who.

It's not a minor detail. Wait for Ep 6 (and, to a lesser extent, 8)...

Speaking as someone who never could get into the original Dr. Who series (I tried and tried since it is on PBS here all the time), I really loved this new version. It ranks right up there with the new BSG for me as one of the best sci-fi series around. Eccleston, to me, was a great choice and I'm not sure I'm going to like Tennant as much. I've seen the Christmas Invasion episode, which is Tennant's first full one, and, while enjoyable, didn't quite like Tennant's Doctor. I'm hoping he'll grow into the role for me as the second series begins. Meanwhile, I need to make Caroline watch these showings on Sci-Fi with me since I think she'll like them.

The pacing of WHO has been slowly getting faster and faster over time... Many of the Hartnells & Pertwee stories dragged terribly (the 6-parters, at least) while Tom Baker's only occasional 6-parters all felt like they deserved to be extra-length. Starting with "The Five Doctors" and "Ressurection of the Daleks" you suddenly had what felt like TWICE the amount of story being CRAMMED into the space of a 4-parter. McCoy's 2nd & 3rd seasons ALL felt like they had too much story for the time available, and in some instances they actually cut so much of what was filmed they wound up releasing "expanded" videos to try and make up for the fact that you couldn't completely follow the plot as broadcast. Yeesh!

Eccleston's first 2 stories seemed every bit as lightning-paced as the fastest McCoy's-- maybe more so-- and yet, I didn't get lost anywhere! THAT's good writing!


Still trying to avoid finding out anything before I get to see it myself... On the basis of only what I've seen, I'd have to take a guess that The Doctor has only just recently regenerated, and the Nestene threat was his first adventure in the new body. Also, it strikes me that a war that destroyed Gallifrey may have been what led to his latest regeneration. I find it an interesting parallel that in the earliest Hartnell stories we knew he was from some really advanced civilization, but for some reason he couldn't go back there, although he hoped he might someday.

The Time Lords have had a long history of not doing what they could to help the rest of the universe... and of actually forgetting their own history and technology... not to mention being a breeding ground for immense corruption and evil themselves. There's a number of races to whom they're NOT a mystery, and at least once they were almost taken down by an invasion-- on another occasion, by one of their own. Someone wiping them out would almost seem inevitable... although it DOES bring to my mind, wouldn't this cause a major change in the status quo of how The Doctor lives / regenerates and how his TARDIS even works at all? Time Lord power was supposed to have come from the balancing of the gravitational forces of their home planet with a collapsed star held in statis on the surface of their planet... (That Robert Holmes...!!!)

While it's true The Doctor could travel "back in time" (so to speak) to visit Gallifrey before its destruction, Time Lords generally do seem to avoid crossing their own time-paths (anniversary specials notwithstanding... heh heh heh).

<span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">Unless their airhead companion forces them to. </span></span>

Wow. That was quite nice. I haven't seen any Doctor Who episodes in at least 10 years but that really took me back. It just "felt" like Doctor Who. When I saw Eccleston with the cropped hair and the leather jacket I thought he had no chance, but he really pulls it off quite nicely. He kind of had the Tom Baker sense of fun, combined with the Colin Baker sens of doing something horrible at any moment. In a good way. Can't say much on Rose yet after the first two episodes, beyond that she meets the standard Plucky Girl companion type pretty well. I guess I'll always be pretty nostalgic about this show. My dad and I used to watch it every Saturday night, when the local PBS station would show the old shows with the multipart stories edited into one long movie. This is quite a departure from Battlestar Galactica that normally has that timeslot, but here's hoping that Sci-Fi stays with the series beyond this season.

There should be plenty more "plucky gal" types on the new series - and a Doctor who should regenerate every five years or so, instead of just doing it once (Eccleston supposedly getting bored with his new role).

so far, so good.

I approve.

I heard Eccleston only ever intended to do one series and the fact was kept quiet by the producers. He was afraid of Typecasting and I have never heard of him leaving because he was bored.

It’s a shame really because by the end of the series he had turned into possibly my favourite Doctor. The final episode has a poignant melancholy about it that give a genuine sense of loss and parting. Tennant has potential but I need to see more, we know that Davis is a good writer and enjoys working with Tennent so the chemistry may still be there.

And in the ultimate irony I think Eccleston, because of the success of his portrayal is going to be referred to as “Eccleston –ex Doctor Who” for many many years to come.

Yup, that's what I heard too. The Beeb signed Eccleston for just teh oen series to relaunch it with a 'name' attached but the intention was always that he'd leave at the end of the first series and that Tennant would take over. In fact the Beeb announced the Christmas special originally with Eccleston mentioned as the Docotr even though there was no intention of him doing it so as to keep the final episode change a secret. But then Eccleston let slip in an interview about half way through the series that he was leaving. The Beeb apparantly weren't happy about that because it spoiled the big surprise but there wasn't anything they could do about it. A shame because that would have made then end of the last episode even more 'wow' than it was. Kind of like in Buffy where they didn't say Angel was going to make a reappearance for the last couple of episodes but then included David Boreanaz's credit in the opening sequence. D'oh.

Wrong way around Bevis.

Ecclestone was exceedingly pissed off that a junior at the Beeb let slip 'accidently' that he was only there for the one series. He hadn't wanted to be type-cast, but hadn't wanted the public to think he was jumping ship.
They even apologised publically to him.

I always thought that it was a deliberate ploy by the Beeb, 'cos it was the week before they showed 'Casanova', which they could then state had 'the next Dr Who, David Tennant' in it.

Hey Darden,

Thanks for clarifying that misconception which I had read about in one of those grubby sci-fi tabloids. So Eccleston was only contracted to do one series? What's all this about typecasting?

LAM

Some snippits of Information taken from a website Pride of Manchester

Give a flavour of what he is trying to do to avoid typecasting

Meaningful work was hard to come by for about three years but he then made his film debut in the true story Let Him Have It . This film was about Derek Bentley, a mentally retarded 19-year old epileptic, who was hanged for supposedly inciting his accomplice to kill a policeman in 1952. The execution was seen as a miscarriage of justice for many years

Consequently he has always enjoyed working in TV and whilst he prefers gritty working class roles to "pissing about doing Noel Coward" he is anxious to avoid being type-cast. He cites Alan Bleasdale, Ken Loach and Siegfried Sassoon amongst his influences and would like to work with Martin Scorsese and John Sayles.

Credits includes a lot of classy work but stand-outs in terms of his career progression must be his role as Detective Chief Inspector Bilborough in Cracker, as the title role in Jude, and as David in Shallow Grave .

He has played roles in Elizabeth and 28 Days later would be a hit for Eccleston

Chris has made a strong mark already and interest in him is so strong that his future must be assured. He has starred alongside Cameron Diaz in 'Invisible Circus', shares the billing with Nicole Kidman in 'The Others' and played a homeless person in the highly acclaimed '24 Hour Party People'.

To me it was this interest in gritty, realistic and working class roles that made me have doubts about him when he announced he was taking on Doctor Who.

the 3rd (1869) episode is just finishing up here on the East Coast. It was a lot of fun, and Charles Dickens saves the day!

I'm liking the series, not nearly as much as BG, but liking it nonetheless.

Like last week, I sat thru the entire episode thinking how REALLY GOOD the writing on this new show is... MUCH better than ANYTHING Sylvester McCoy had (and Eccleston REMINDS me a lot of McCoy's character). It proves that adage, "There's no such thing as bad characters, just bad writing."

I KNOW Mark Gatiss has done some WHO before... but was it the old show, novels, spin-offs, or audio adventures?

It's amazing how they manage to cram a lot into each story, yet have room for slow, liesurely chartacter moments, like at the end. Wonderful stuff. I was also reminded of a favorite incident some years back. I got to see a local production of "The Mystery Of Edwin Drood". The play worked on a few levels, because it was done as a "play-within-a-play". You had the cast playing a fictional Victorian-era acting troupe, putting on a production of Dicken's UNFINISHED play, and when they ran out of script, members of the fictional troupe would circulate thru the audience with a questionaire, with the audiences (supposedly) deciding HOW the play should end! (It was a a cleverly-constructed ruse... all the IMPORTANT stuff was out of their hands and never changed.) The title character was played by a fictional ACTRESS known as a "famous male impersonator", and while everyone else was a working stiff SHE was a prima donna that everyone hated. So when the question came up, "Should her character be found to be alive or dead, the ENTIRE CAST (who got that question themselves) all voted "dead". So a few minutes into the last act, the actress, now in her street clothes, suddenly stormed thru the theatre on her way out the door. HILARIOUS!!! I enjoyed myself so much I went back to see it again 2 weeks later, and managed to get a better seat, too.

caught that episode last night for fun and gave it a try....so far I liked it. will watch again next week. good show.

Enjoyed the second half of the show. Caught a few Who's on late night PBS back in the 80's, enjoyed them more or less. I'll get fished in just to fill my BSG jones, I'm sure...I really liked the realism of the girl's reaction. Suddenly she realizes she's stuck at the end of the world with a guy she doesn't even really know, surrounded by aliens, life in danger...Oh, sh#t!

As soon as they figured out, 12 months, not 12 hours, I started thinking, now THIS is the kind of time-travel-related stuff you'd EXPECT a time-travel show could deal with more often than this one ever did.

"900 years and this is the first time I've ever been slapped by someone's mother!" I've also noticed they keep bringing up the subject of sex-- if only to push it aside. This was 3 episodes in a row where they did that... I guess it's to be expected, but it's still a bit jarring being on THIS show-- kinda like when curse words first turned up in the STAR TREK movies!

It's amazing how clear and straightforward the storytelling is, yet they still manage to include some genuine surprises-- like WHAT the driver of the crashed spaceship looked like. (GO SEE FOR YOURSELF!!! heehee) The whole story, I kept waiting to UNIT to turn up. Did they really need ALL those weapons just to "invite" their top expert to help them? (Who would have thought Rose's mother was actually doing everyone a FAVOR by calling the cops?)

And whatta ya know... I kept sensing this would turn out to be a 2-parter (the equivalent of an old 4-parter). As FAST-paced as the shows got in the 80's and even FASTER-paced as they are now, I swear, the last minute or two seemed like time just FROZE in place, as the suspense-- SLOWLY-- BUILT-- UP-- until the cliffhanger. I love how they manage to include slow, even liesurely scenes, in addition to all the frenetic ones.

I'm behind, just watched the Dickens episode. They are really doing a great job of emphasizing the amazing aspects of time travel. Misquoting: "Christmas day comes and goes...but we can go back and relive the day. No wonder you do what you do." Brilliant.

The "zombies" were pretty creepy. I did, however, see ahead of time that the "angels" were not nice. Good to know that the Doctor is not infallible (does that mean he IS fallible?).

"I'm so glad I met you." Hmmm.

I was listening to the girl's accent--I've heard it before, but it's pretty distinct from other English accents. I found myself wondering if her accent would place her for an English audience, like a Brooklyn or Southern accent would place someone for Americans. Anyone?

Which girl are we talking about there afob? If it's Rose (the Doctor's assistant) then I'm pretty sure she's a Londoner. Londoners might be able to place her more specifically than that but to me most London accents (and a lot of Southern ones to boot) sound the same. I can place Manchester accents and North west accents quite closely though.