More than happy to add him to my collection of big finish audio adventures. The nice part is when most doctors start doing big finish, the process is so easy they tend to stick around.
That was exactly what I was expecting. I would've been very surprised if Eccleston would've appeared in the current series. He highly praised Moffatt in the past, calling Moffatt's story one of the best of his season (if not the best) and thus out of respect for Moffat talked to him for appearing in the 50th, but he still wasn't willing to return to the series unless very specific demands were met. And there's the things the BBC did to him after he left the series. But Big Finish isn't part of the BBC and it's an easy way for him to do this. (Wonder if not being able to work during the pandemic has anything to do with it.)
Probably, Tenneth has been doing a lot of audio work for big finish as well, far more that his usual one boxset every year or two. This month he's got a team up with Tom Baker audio coming. So we get a 4th and 10th adventure. Then he has a whole series of audios with River Song. I'm sure they will announce more surprises soon.
Am I the only one that thinks it odd that there's no trailer for this one yet? Especially given that it's due to be released this month?
The Hartnell era has a lot of ups and downs. There are definitely a lot of "who thought this story needed to be seven episodes long?" moments. It's also the show at its most experimental, though. There was no existing mythology and you can really feel that the producers were figuring out how it worked on the fly. The show tried a lot of different things in this era that it would never attempt today, just to see if it worked. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't, sometimes it did and didn't at the same time.
Yeah, and I totally get that as no show is going to know what it is exactly doing in its first season. Well, okay... no show that isn't The Twilight Zone since The Twilight Zone was perfect right from the getgo.
The Edge of Destruction - Not a bad pair of episodes, though I feel like the plot could have used another episode as it seemed like the last 10 minutes were really rushed. The first part had a lot of really fantastic lighting that seemed to not be present in the second one. Still, learning a little bit more about the Tardis was interesting, at least, getting to see the first time they went into some mythos about the machine. We also watched the 30 minute reconstructed version of Marco Polo. I am so glad they didn't do all 7 episodes in that format as my interest was waning by the halfway point. Nevertheless, I stuck through it just to at least get a sample of what this story entailed and it seemed like it was an intriguing one. Though, I doubt it needed to be 7 episodes long. I took out of the library The Key to Marinus today, so we will probably watch that tomorrow.
I just watched The Sontaran Experiment and Genesis of the Daleks. Sontaran is an enjoyably simpistic two parter, but god damn, Genesis was even better than it was the first time I watched it. It moved even quicker and there was so much happening that I couldn't help but just be totally engaged the only time. Someday I'm definitely going to have to watch the movie version so I don't have to constantly have my entertainment broken up by those annoying endings and opening credit sequences every 20-ish minutes. The Keys to Marinus - This was a well crafted, finely paced, solidly told tale. I loved how each episode featured a new environment for our characters to traverse in and each had an interesting story. I was also amazed at the Doctor not being featured in two episodes at all. Of the four stories I have watched these last few days for Hartnell, this is easily my favorite of them. If I had any complaint it was that the story with the brain slugs could have been slightly longer as I was really intrigued with that whole scenario. Very nicely done, bravo! A shame there was no making of feature involved, just the set designer's 10 minute bitchfest about how he hated this and hated that. Ugh. Well, now I have to wait for my library to get in the other stories from this season, which is probably going to take a week or so.
Curious, do you think the image of the Doctor looks a bit blurry and zoomed in compared to the other BD sets? It really sticks out to me.
Finished off Season 1 of Tom's run today. I enjoyed Revenge of the Cybermen a lot more this time around that I did the first time I watched it. I still think it is one of the weakest stories in the Hinchcliffe era, but it is still solid overall. I do like how they were able to utilize the Ark set without making it feel just like a total rehash and the Cybermen were threatening, though I wish the voice for the Cyber Leader was much deeper. Overall, not a bad finale to a phenomenal first season.
That's ALL of Classic Doctor Who. Every story has moments where nothing is happening that adds anything at all to the plot and could be edited down. But it plays like they didn't know what editing was and just showed EVERYTHING they filmed. Now days everything is edited down to remove anything that wasn't needed to tell the story. We don't need to watch a character just driving from one location to another, just cut away to the next scene. Unless there's a car chase or a conversation in the car that's important to the plot it doesn't need to be 3 hours of dead silence with someone just driving a car.
Given that they show the recording in the studio of extras, there are a lot of scenes that are cut out. The difference between then and now is that back then a story was decided to be 7 parts long before the scripts were even made. Barry Letts even said in one of the interviews back then they were commissioned to make serials whereas each episode of modern Doctor Who is meant to be a mini-sized movie. As such, if they're told they need to make a story be 7 episodes, they don't have much in the way of say when it comes to making a tighter tale.
They still kind of do that. Not nearly as long but the story length is decided before the scripts are even written. Yeah it doesn't need to be cut down that way... just take out all the scenes where nothing happens. It would still be a serial just with better pacing and probably only 4 episodes instead of 7... or 2 episodes instead of 4... essentially almost any classing serial could be cut in half. Coincidentally, when they released Shada that was edited down like a modern Doctor Who episode. Since it was originally meant to be a four part serials they actually edited out TOO much of the story... Plus they made some weird decisions about what to cut and what to keep. There was a scene where nothing really happens left in and another scene that actually is important to the story cut out... Reading Shada is actually better than watching it... plus it's just really annoying when it constantly switches from animation to live action. Just animate the entire thing. Maybe but they could WRITE better. If they're told to make the story 7 episodes long than write a story that is actually 7 episodes long. Don't fill the run time with padding where nothing happens.
Nothing against you, but you try to write a 7 story episode and not have a single moment of filler material within it. Sometimes scripts run short and you have to stall for time. It happens all of the time. The writings got nothing to do with it. Anyway, The Terror of the Zygons was just as fantastic today as it was when I watched it last year. Once again, it's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Doctor Who with a touch of the Lochness legend mixed in. Just perfect in every way.
I watched both Planet of Evil and Pyramids of Mars today. Like the last several stories, they still rocked, but god damn Pyramids is always a joy to watch as it is the best Mummy film Universal never made. These episodes once again remind me why Hinchcliffe should have never been allowed to leave Doctor Who. EDIT: The Android Invasion - A fantastic, yet, slow moving adventure that continues to bring out the horror-esque elements that make Doctor Who so fantastic. It is easily the weakest of the four stories I have watched for the season thus far, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. It just lacks some sort of substance that really elevated its trio of predecessors above and beyond the norm. Still, I enjoyed it even more than I did the first time, which was nice since I was left a little lukewarm about it in my initial viewing. My biggest complaint before revolved around the lack of a send-off for Harry, and now having watched all of Pertwee's era, I am going to say the same about Benton. They deserved some sort of final scene with the Doctor and Sarah instead of Sarah just teasing that she was going to get a taxi and go home. The Aztecs - That was an interesting tale that I can see being called out for cultural insensitivity these days the same way Talons of Weng-Chiang is. Ignoring that minute criticism, for the most part, I really enjoyed this story. I do think the second episode moved a bit too slow, however, beyond that, the only real negative I have towards the narrative is in its atrocious fight choreography. My god it was bad. Half of the time it looked like they were fighting in slow motion as if the video was lagging or something. I think my favorite moment is when the Doctor goes to make hot chocolate (or whatever it was he was making with the cocoa beans) and then the woman reveals that that is a sign of marriage. His reaction was utterly priceless. The biggest praise I have to give this story goes to the amazingly intricate sets as they all looked very believable as if they were actual Aztec architecture. The next four stories are waiting for me to pick up from my library, so I won't have to wait long to finish this season and start the next.
The writing has EVERYTHING to do with it... If the script... that was WRITTEN to be a specific length is running short forcing you to stall for time, that is inherently a WRITING problem. Besides that... there are shows and movies that make last minutes changes to the script specifically to extend the run time. Some times the actors just improv those scenes. That said most people have an understanding that when you need to stall for time something should actually be happening to fill that time. If literally nothing is happening it's not even doing anything to stall for time. Filler where nothing happens is still just bad writing. Especially when HALF THE ENTIRE STORY is just filler...
A script can not predict how long a scene takes to film. On average one page equals one minute of screen time, but that doesn't always work out in the case of a TV show that had to be recorded within exactly 3 hours with no retakes. And sometimes they did, but there wasn't always time to do something. Something is always happening, it just isn't quick and to the point. Not every second of every minute has to be important to the scene. Just like how not every episode to every show needs to be important to the main plot.
