Review Info for Newbies to Classic Who.....

[alpha128]

A friend of mine whose opinion I trust has assured me, however, that the original Who is far better, and much more akin to The Avengers, which may well be favorite television show of all time.

So... where should a newbie begin?

Since you like The Avengers, check out "The Seeds of Doom" (1976). It was written by Robert Banks Stewart, author of two Avengers scripts. In addition, it is supposed to be similar to the 1965 Avengers episode "Man-Eater of Surrey Green".

 

[The Seeker]

I started with The Aztecs (1964) and fell in love with the program.

 

[Gavin]

I mostly didn't like the episodes of the new program I saw because I thought the acting atrocious, the style lacking, and the appearance cheap. (But mostly the acting...)

If these were the things that turned you off the new program, then the classic series isn't likely to be your thing. The acting is of variable quality (there are some good performances, but also many which wouldn't be out of place in a pantomime). Also the early serials were filmed almost like a play, with scenes filmed basically in order and few takes (and lots of things that wouldn't be considered acceptable takes were included due to a lack of time for refilming. And as for cheap, this show defines the word. They did some pretty amazing stuff on the budget they had, but the running joke was that the complete budget for an episode of Doctor Who was about the same as the catering budget for an episode of Star Trek.

 

[Salzmank]

Thanks for your comments, everyone!

Carol, I will try the new program again, but I did give it 2-2.5 tries on my own, and it failed to deliver for me. I have some friends who absolutely adore it and always try to rope me in to watch it, and I just didn't see the fascination. Probably says more about me than the show, of course!

Alpha and Seeker, thanks for the suggestions. I shall indeed check out "The Seeds of Doom" and "The Aztecs."

Gavin, while I appreciate good acting and a sense of style, I also appreciate clever plotting and storytelling. (I'd prefer all of those elements, of course!) As I wrote to Ant-Mac above, I'm not a big sci-fi fan, but I think some episodes of the original Star Trek fun, despite often hokey acting, because of plot and story cleverness and likable characters. The Avengers, with its emphasis on surrealism, also appeals to me--as I wrote, it may be my favorite TV series of them all.

With Who, many of the plots seem very interesting, and the concept--strange old man flies around in a police box with friends, righting wrongs--appeals to me. An episode like "The Daemons," of which I've read the description on Wikipedia, also intrigues me because of my interest in the plot material. I hope that makes sense. A friend of mine, Nick Fuller, also an Avengers fan, did a write-up of the original program on his blog that made me think it [the original series] was more similar to The Avengers than to, say, Sherlock (to continue reference to British TV series).

Thanks again, everyone!

 

[Carol]

similar to The Avengers

It that case I bet you'll love Jon Pertwee's Doctor in general, and him and The Master facing of in these episodes. Promise to tell us when you do.
And look for a short-lived but loveable action series called Adam Adamant as well.

 

[Doctor Omega]

There you go Carol and Salzmank.

Adam Adamant Lives! E1 A Vintage Year For Rascals

 

[Carol]

Wow, Doc - thanks for the nifty-quick cut and paste, my friend. Sometime, somehow, Mike Myers is going to admit he also saw this show at a formative age, right?

 

[Salzmank]

It that case I bet you'll love Jon Pertwee's Doctor in general, and him and The Master facing of in these episodes. Promise to tell us when you do.
And look for a short-lived but loveable action series called Adam Adamant as well.

Carol, Adam Adamant seems right up my alley! And not only Mike Myers, though that's certainly an influence, but perhaps modern Doctor Who scribe Mark Gatiss was influenced by it as well for his Lucifer Box novels?

 

[Carol]

Mark Gatiss was influenced by it as well for his Lucifer Box novels?

Ooh, thanks for the hot tip- clearly something I need to know more (than my current nothing) about- just found and loved his 2008 series The Crooked House - he certainly respects and celebrates the horror classics.

 

[Salzmank]

Ooh, thanks for the hot tip- clearly something I need to know more (than my current nothing) about- just found and loved his 2008 series The Crooked House - he certainly respects and celebrates the horror classics.

Thanks, Carol. I haven't seen The Crooked House, but Gatiss can be a good writer. By the way, have you seen his short film based on Robert Aickman's "The Cicerones"? One of the best movies Gatiss has made, in my opinion.

While I like the character of Lucifer Box--part Doc Savage, part James Bond, part Sherlock Holmes, a huge dollop of Oscar Wilde--I only really enjoyed the second of the trilogy, The Devil in Amber. (I'll be honest: I couldn't finish the first, The Vesuvius Club, despite its seeming the sort of thing I like.) Amber was an amusingly written cross between a Dennis Wheatley novel and an Ian Fleming novel. A rip-roaring romp, as they might have called it in the '20s (when it's set).

 

[Carol]

"The Cicerones"

New to me and OOF! That was amazing! Couldn't find it anywhere logical on IMDb but the cathedral location is now going to bug me till I figure it out. Thank you for the small but perfectly formed Welcome Weekend treat!

 

[Salzmank]

New to me and OOF! That was amazing! Couldn't find it anywhere logical on IMDb but the cathedral location is now going to bug me till I figure it out. Thank you for the small but perfectly formed Welcome Weekend treat!

Very welcome, Carol! The original story is a favorite of mine, so I enjoyed this adaptation very much too.

 

[ant-mac]

Well, Ant-Mac, thing is, I don't hate science-fiction, I'm just not the biggest fan in the world.

That's fair enough.

I am a science fiction fan, but I am very, very picky about what I do and do not like in the genre of science fiction.

However, unfortunately, a lot of DOCTOR WHO - both Classic and New - also seems to fall into the genre of fantasy.

I especially don't like it when action and technology take the place of genuine character and story; that's why I like the original Star Trek series, which offered clever plotting and likable characters, more than Star Wars and its ilk.

I also like genuine characters and strong plots, but I don't mind when these are combined with action and futuristic technological aspects.

I am also a major fan of the STAR TREK franchise, as you probably deduced from my current avatar. I own the DVD box-sets for STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE, STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES - both the original and the updated versions - STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE, STAR TREK: VOYAGER and of course all of the films too. One day, I hope to get STAR TREK: THE ANIMATED SERIES.

I have seen the first six films of the STAR WARS franchise, but I can't say that I'm in any great hurry to catch up on the latest releases. I'm just not that much of a fan.

I mostly didn't like the episodes of the new program I saw because I thought the acting atrocious, the style lacking, and the appearance cheap. (But mostly the acting...)

Many - if not all - of those complaints can also be levelled at Classic Who. However, as with New Who, Classic Who has its fair share of successes and failures.

I was not emotionally invested in the characters or particularly interested in the plots (though I thought the concepts were good, just not the executions).

I have struggled from time to time to care about the characters, plots, style or anything else to do with New Who. However, I continue to watch and I continue to hope. Occasionally, I am pleasantly surprised.

I saw--let me look 'em up--"The Wasp and the Unicorn" (2008) and "Army of Ghosts" (2006).

THE UNICORN AND THE WASP was a standalone serial. ARMY OF GHOSTS was the first part of a two-part serial.

I also saw brief clips of an episode with the "Crying Angels," I think? Those angel statues? But I didn't see the whole thing.

The Weeping angels have appeared in several serials, beginning with the standalone BLINK.

However, in general, I consider the Weeping Angels to be one of the better concepts of New Who.

Again, someone did tell me that the feel of the classic episodes is very different from that of the moderns.

Oh yes, they are very different.

New Who is all rush, rush, rush, with scarcely any time to stop and smell the roses or enjoy the view. Combine this with frequent embarrassing sexual tension, not to forget wall-to-wall emotionalism that is so overt and overpowering that it often gets in the way of a decent story and it just gets annoying and tiresome after a while. Of course there is also the wall-to-wall soundtrack music that prevents you from hearing all the dialogue and a smart-arsed attitude from the show-runners who seem to think it's funny to poke fun at themselves and the TV series in general.

Meanwhile, Classic Who has a more gentle pace with very rare instances of sexual tension or emotionalism - which makes them all the more powerful and effective when they do occur. There is a lot less soundtrack music - which allows you to hear what is actually going on - and the production teams actually took their job seriously and did their best to take the TV series seriously - despite the shoestring budget and various other constant and overwhelming handicaps.

For me, New Who simply cannot compete with the best that Classic Who has to offer.

"The Daemons" looks particularly interesting.

THE DÆMONS is often considered to be the epitome of the Jon Pertwee years. It features the entire UNIT family - the Doctor, Josephine Grant, Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, Captain Mike yates and Sergeant Benton - and the Master. It is a very fine DOCTOR WHO serial, which has obviously borrowed some of its ingredients from some very superior British science fiction sources and has managed to meld them all together into an entertaining story.

It is up to you where you choose to start on Classic Who, or if you wish to start at all. There are 26 seasons to get through - 1963 to 1989. And although several of the early serials are currently missing, you can still watch visual re-constructions of them online, because all their soundtracks survive intact.

I wish you luck.

 

[Salzmank]

Thank you, Ant-Mac. Very informative and detailed, with everything I could ask for in a response. Much appreciated.

What you wrote here

New Who is all rush, rush, rush, with scarcely any time to stop and smell the roses or enjoy the view. Combine this with frequent embarrassing sexual tension, not to forget wall-to-wall emotionalism that is so overt and overpowering that it often gets in the way of a decent story and it just gets annoying and tiresome after a while. Of course there is also the wall-to-wall soundtrack music that prevents you from hearing all the dialogue and a smart-arsed attitude from the show-runners who seem to think it's funny to poke fun at themselves and the TV series in general.

is what annoys me about many modern television series (Nick's article, to which I linked above, makes many of the same points). If the original Doctor Who avoids these aspects, I'd probably prefer to the modern series.

Many thanks again!