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

D'oh, it's just occured to me that your talking about the servant girl. In that case she's not got an English accent at all, she's got a Welsh one. It's a while since I saw the ep but from memory she's a Taff (South Walian) and is almost certainly from Cardiff (sicne that's where it's filmed). Shirley Bassey is also from Cardiff and Catharine Zeta Jones and Tom Jones are both South Walian as well so have similar accents (although CZJ is from wansea I think and Tom is from the Valleys so they have slightly different accents). It's a similar accent to me when I'm drunk since I grew up in mid Wales.

My Dad used to play ethinic Irish music on the weekends. Quite often, someone "fresh off the boat" would come up and ask, "S'tell me, what COUNTRY are y'from?" Apparently, in Ireland, people tend to be able to identify what COUNTY you're from just by your accent. (This reminds me of the opening sequences of MY FAIR LADY... heh heh)

The irony was, more than once, people would say the band was doing "the best Irish music they'd ever heard"-- but, the band consisted of (get this) an Englishman, a Scot, and a Polish guy (my Dad)!

does anyone know if the Cybermen will show up in Series 1 at all?
it's nice that the Daleks show up, but i was hoping for more 'classic/old' DR WHO villains...

There is a cyberman helmet in one episode (the first Dalek ep) but it's just part of a collection. That being said they are going to be in an episode in season 2 so you shouldn't have to wait too long.

I was talking about Rose. There's something about the "th"s becoming "f"s ("I'm wiff him").

Oh, she's full on Londoner then. Ermm.... if you've ever seen Eastenders (the world's most miserable soap opera) they've got the same accent. Can't think of anyone else famous with the same kind of accent, but there must be some. Like I say though Londoners could probably place her exactly to which area of London she's from.

It's not her natural accent, so it's probably just genericlondinium

"Dalek". WOW.

MORE DANGEROUS than ever-- and there was ONLY ONE of 'em! Whoa. I loved the parts where, repeatedly, people kept underestimating them, because of what they look like. To horrible results.

"You would make an excellent Dalek." Scary-- ain't it? The scene where Rose asks, "What are YOU becoming?" brought back memories of Colin Baker & Peri-- only, if they'd been "done right".

More than anything, this one episode proved to me, once again, that Terry Nation had NO IDEA what to do with his own creations. He was so busy getting RICH off the merchandising, he never bothered to put any thought into later stories. (The much-heralded "Genesis" was at least 50% Robert Holmes' work.)


An idea that really crossed my mind last night was, while most of the surviving Doctors are not probably far too old for return appearances, they could EASILY do a "flashback" story showing the "last Time War"-- and have Paul McGann star in it.

"NOW probably far too old" (damn typos)

I just finished the two-parter about the spaceship crashing in London. Some thoughts:

The aliens were much scarier BEFORE we actually saw them. The "ET on steriods" look is pretty...silly. The actors portraying them were creepier.

The most interesting thing about these two episodes were the ones left behind, the feelings that Rose had about her adventures, and the relationship developing between the Doctor and Rose. I found myself wondering how a 900 year old dude would get along with twentysomething...Since I feel like I have very little in common with most people under thirty.

Dalek episode: I assume that these guys have appeared before. Nice little light bulbs when they talk...I kept waiting for Rose to get suckered, but it turns out that she was more right about the Dalek than the Doctor was. It's good to know that the Doctor is not infallible.

Big slimy thing on the ceiling episode: Got a little confusing, but still entertaining. I really like this show. I'm glad to see that the pretty boy got dumped at the end--with a lovely hole in his head. Obviously, that guy's never going to any beatnik poetry competitions....

afob, is this the first time you have encountered the Daleks? Ooooh, they terrified whole generations of British (and American and Aussie and all teh rest children) with their scary voices and their trundly-ness. I'm not really sure why tehy were so scary (and still are) but they always scared the hell out of me when I was little. I also absolutely loved them and had a great dalek board game as well with red and gold and blue and silver daleks as the counters. That game rocked... Of course even more scary than the daleks is their creator Davros who is just terrifying. If you're liking this series of Doctor Who then it's worth seeing if you can find any the old series on DVD or video and watching them. As with most series some of the episodes are rubbish, some are great and you'll inevitably love some of the Doctors and hate others. That being said most of the dalek episodes are worth checking out just for the daleks themselves regardless of which Doctor features.

Dalek creator Terry Nation said he was "offended" by the very idea of writing for a "children's" show, and decided to give them the scariest thing he could come up with. When the show, in its infancy, kept running into production problems, one script after another was not ready to go before cameras, and so the 2nd story they ever did turned out to be the one they didn't WANT to do-- one featuring "bug eyed monsters". Wouldn't you know? THAT's what made the series a hit! Designer Ray Cusick came up with something as alien as he could with almost no budget. They wanted something that could not recognizably be a human actor in a suit-- so, no arms, no legs, no face... The initial story was an allegory for Nazi-like racism, 2 races surviving a horrible atomic war and mutating. The Doctor pretty much explained their origins in the new story, very clearly in very few words. (DAMN that's good writing!)

The Daleks became so popular, they made the show a hit, a merchandising bonanza resulted, and Terry Nation, who'd somehow got it in his contract, made a FORTUNE!!!! Ray Cusick, a BBC employee, was paid a one-time fee-- and HE's the one who came up with what they looked like. Criminal, isn't it? The BBC, meanwhile, made sure such a contract detail would NOT be repeated, so, for instance, the guys who came up with the Cybermen a few years later did NOT get filthy stinking rich like Nation did.

The 2nd season they had the nerve to try doing a big-budget feature-film-like sequel, "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", but on the same miniscule budget. The NERVE of some people! (It was originally meant to be the 1st season finale, especially as Susan left the show at its conclusion, but the first 2 stories were "held back"-- something I've seen happen in recent years with shows like KUNG FU: TLC). The 2nd season also featured "The Chase", where things got perhaps a bit too comical. The 4th season featured a 13-part serial, "The Daleks Master Plan" (never seen in the US) which depending on opinions was either a masterpiece or utter rubbish.

Nation departed for America to try to sell a Dalek tv series (which never happened) and story editor David Whitaker did the next 2 Dalek stories, "Power Of The Daleks" (which introduced the 2nd Doctor, Patrick Troughton) and "Evil of The Daleks" (which introduced the "Emperor Dalek" and supposedly killed all of them off... heh heh) Neither was ever seen in the US, though reports are Whitaker's stories were much better than Nation's.

Nation's first 2 stories were both adapted into color feature films starring Peter Cushing as "Doctor Who", a human scientist who built a time machine. (Think of it as the "Earth-2" version!) DOCTOR WHO AND THE DALEKS was a huge success in british cinemas, though it was far too jokey. DALEKS' INVASION EARTH: 2150 A.D. was a vastly superior film-- to this day, my single favorite Dalek story, in fact! --but didn't do nearly as well at the theatres, so a 3rd proposed film, an adaptation of Nation's "The Keys Of Marinus", never happened. Too bad. Can you imagine if the film series had continued? Cushing's Doctor might have one day faced his own "Master", played by Christopher Lee!

I just saw THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT on TCM today. Much clearer print than the video I rented about 15 years back. For anyone unfamiliar with it, this is an early Hammer Film (Anthony Hinds producer, James Bernard music score, etc.), and was an adaptation of a tv sci-fi serial. It featured Brian Donlvey as Prof. Bernard Quatermass, an egotistical, short-tempered scientist in charge of Britain's space program, who's faced with a growing mystery-- and growing horror-- resulting from an early space mission in which 2 of the 3 returning astronauts have died, and the 3rd is mutating into something other than human.

This story looks a lot like an episode of THE OUTER LIMITS-- and also served as the inspiration for SEVERAL different DOCTOR WHO stories many year s later, including "Spearhead From Space", "The Ark In Space" and "Seeds Of Doom". Quatermass himself seems to have served as the inspiration for the personality of the 3rd Doctor (Jon Pertwee) whose early bad tempter often hindered his actions more than helped.

While I think most WHO fans should give the film a look, I hate to say on its own terms it's DREADFULLY dull, in a way only some old British films can be (as I once read some critic say). I wonder if the original tv production (which, presumably, no longer exists) was better?

There were, over the years, 3 sequels, and while I've never seen the 2nd film (also with Donlvey) I have seen the 3rd, FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH (based on the tv serial, "Quatermass and the Pit") which itself served as the inspiration for the Pertwee WHO story, "The Daemons".

Hmmm...it sounds like the current version might be the most entertaining. I did enjoy some of the PBS reruns back in the 80s...is anyone still rerunning them in the States? Seems like a natural for SciFi Channel.

With "Father's Day", DW finally got around to doing the kind of story THE TIME TUNNEL did 40 years ago-- in its 3rd episode! (Tony finds himself in Pearl Harbor just before the attack, and meets his father, who he knows DIED in the attack!) Amazing how after so many years, this series seems fresher than ever.

It kinda hurt when The Doctor went off at Rose like Tom Baker (or Colin Baker!) on a bad day... but I could see it was called for. And he DID apologize, something I can't picture Colin's Doctor doing with such ease.

At any rate, NOW we know what Peter Davison was talking about at the beginning of "Time-Flight"!!!

Often the toughest thing about watching this show is AVOIDING the coming attractions. Unlike those for BG, with DW, I DON'T WANT TO KNOW what's coming! More fun for me if it's just as much of a surprise as possible.

Okay - silly question -

Is there a difference between the version (Season 1) of Doctor Who that's currently being shown on Sci-Fi and the British Season 1 episodes?

Such as maybe scenes being cut to make it fit to the American television schedule and such?

I'm horrified at the thought of that myself.

Back in the 80's & 90's, SHERLOCK HOLMES and POIROT were run on PBS. But reruns turned up later on A&E, and it became obvious after awhile that they were cutting the shows a bit. Not NEARLY as much as when A&E cut 8-1/2 minutes out of every AVENGERS episode, but still... When the new POIROTs are run-- on A&E-- I wonder if they're being run uncut, or butchered.

When the Jon Pertwee DOCTOR WHO episodes first made it over here, my local Channel 17 was running them. It wasn't until more than 10 years later that I got to see them again on PBS, and suddenly got to see scenes that had been CUT before by the commercial station. (Of course, some of the stories seen on PBS were in B&W, while the earlier broadcasts had been in color-- but it's the BBC we have to blame for that, actually DESTROYING original copies of shows they believed had no further commercial value (and figuring the licensing department had copies anyway-- while the licensing department also destroyed THEIR copies, figuring the originals were still in the vaults. GOVERNMENT BEAURACRACY at its worst!)

Yes. They cut around two-three minutes from each episode for adverts. There'll be a for-comparison list somewhere - on Outpost Gallifrey 's forums if nowhere else.

Or you can just head over to the thread started on Sci-Fi\'s boards about the trimming of the episodes. Outpost Gallifrey currently has their registration disabled and you have to be registered to even read the forums there.

Okay. I'll have to give that a shot.
Thanks Reboot and Scott!!!!!!

NOW, the version that's to be released in the states on July 4th - is that the British version, or the Americanized version?

The DVD set? It will be the uncut, same edition as the British version. I believe the only difference is in how it is boxed.

More and more these days, TV is becoming like radio. You're not even supposed to watch the shows on Tv anymore... with all the pop-ups, etc., what's broadcast is becoming just an advert for buying DVDs. Oy!

COOL!!!!!!
(Okay, okay, okay - I'm a geek.)

It seems bizarre that they've cut anything sicne here each episode is 45 minutes long, which is the standard length of US shows when they're shown without adverts so I would assume that they'd done it that length specifically so that it could be shown with adverts, run an hour and not have to ahve cuts.