I think that’s right - perhaps deliberate: having Dr Who wander off leaving Steven is utterly in the dark while characters he never meets in “the room where it happens” chat about the history he has to stumble through is very weird
A story which sort of staggers from one bunch of people we’ve never heard of and will never see again to the next. Would love to have seen Lucarotti’s original script - I like his (probably unrelated) novel
Also remembering that mad year in the 1990s when The Massacre was suddenly the ultimate Doctor Who story ever
When I did my watch through it was greatly evident how Hartnell is effaced from his own show at the same time as the Doctor is being made as ineffectual as in a Saward script - standing around bleating about terrible wastes and senseless tragedies rather than doing anything .
Tosh, you say! Utter tosh!
🚨NEW EPISODE!🚨
The new #DoctorWho Target novelisations are here - and we take a look at Aliens of London with author @josephlidster.bsky.social and editor @stevecolewriter.bsky.social.
soundcloud.com/powerof3pod/...
“Have you ever read Shepperton Babylon…?”
My most controversial #DrWho opinion? The Brigadier blew up the Silurians and he was right to do so. They tried to kill us all twice in the space of a fortnight.
Notably the next time they wake up the Doctor’s first in line to blow them up.
Well I’ve just bought the Blu-ray as I am so intrigued by this
The Kickstarter for @crumpledlinenpress.com’s annotated Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad! begins at 5pm.
In this video, co-editor Dr. Mark Jones discusses the value of manuscripts and the changes that reveal the evolution of the story.
He looks like a Vervoid that’s flowered
Bluesky playing up but just dropping in to plug this brilliant #DrWho audio with the 9th Doctor and Rose. It’s excellent
12. I would love Episode 4 and 12 back. I think then you would have all the major beats of the story. But anything that comes back from it will challenge expectations (Devil’s Planet - screamers basically invisible, but that great flaming torches shot). I’m so grateful we’ve now got 5 episodes.
11. The Monk is incredibly Troughtonish I think by dint of looking at Hartnell’s performance, matching the comedy elements and introducing a level of slightly shamefaced cowardice. Butterworth is essentially playing a “second Doctor” (if not THE Second Doctor)
10. Spooner and Nation are an oddly effective pairing. Both have a background in comedy, and both do comedy episodes here. It’s a shame Nation seemed to be taking himself more seriously by the time Douglas Adams was script editor
9. The ending is horribly downbeat - a dead planet, only the Doctor and Steven left alive, “a waste. A terrible waste.” And they followed this up with The Massacre. Even Saward wasn’t that brutal.
8. Katarina’s weirdly placid demeanour is maintained in a way Sara’s pitiless assassin isn’t. You can’t imagine her running round a Hollywood set.
Pretty much nothing between the end of Coronas of the Sun and The Destruction of Time actually plays into the climax - if there had never been fake taranium and the Doctor had been forced into handing over the real core, you’d get to the same endgame. Spooner basically having to play Cheddar Gorge
7. The Dalek Supreme is fabulously bad tempered and vindictive. Love it banging the table with a sucker to emphasis its points and blowing up any of its subordinates that have a bad day. And you thought your boss was demanding?!
6. Spooner dropping in the Monk is genius as it provides a secondary focus for his half of the script - three solid months of extermination and Dalek plotting would be testing
5. The story has an outrageous amount of repetition including the fake taranium extending the plot for a month and concluding in exactly the same way with the real taranium, and tonnes of scenes of the Doctor saying “you can’t shoot me or you’ll explode this thing you need”
4. Sara follows the standard companion route of having a strong first episode then almost immediately slipping into standard companion. She’s laughing along with the people she was trying to shoot a few minutes before and apart from one “traitor” barely acknowledging she’s turned rebel
3. Steven is brilliant. His “I know where’d I’d be” when the Doctor asks him where they’d be if he’d blown them all up (Coronas of the Sun) is top tier stuff
2. Chen is a great villain, able to handle a lot of the political conniving the Daleks can’t. I love how he and his spin doctor have a conversation about how they can spin the disaster of letting the taranium core slip through their fingers - it feels very modern and sophisticated.
Listened to episodes 4-12 of The Daleks Master Plan on the back of seeing 1-3, and had a few thoughts.
1. Hartnell starts strong but sort of fades out as it goes along. It worked best in the penultimate episode as his absence is part of the sense of a creepy, Marie Celeste planet.
Tried one of the BBC Campions this evening.
Bit dull, sadly.
Tiny things that make me furious #128 - when they use the Davison theme tune on Colin Baker audios because “that’ll do”.
All part of the (Vis)lore
In other news - Jovanka? (I never touched her!)
Thanks all.