Doctor Who - The Day of The Doctor - 50th Special.

[Hawkmumbler]

An Unearthly Child is an odd beast. It's set up episode is amongst the greatest opening episodes of a TV series, sci-fi or other wise. But the other three episodes are utterly baffling as they straggle the line between dreary and bewildering.

[pictsy]

Just finished watching An Adventure in Space and Time on iPlayer.  It was OK, pretty standard for this type of dramatisation.  I will agree that Matt Smith's was jarring.  I'd go so far to say as extremely misplaced and totally unnecessary.  I will also agree that Reece Shearsmith does not make a convincing Patrick Troughton.

I saw there was a documentary on BBC2 tonight on something to do with Doctor Who.  Might check it out... I prefer docs for finding out about history of things, although docs can be very hit or miss.  I saw an excellent BBC4 doc about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop - I think it may have been called The Alchemists of Sound.  Relevant because it's the department the iconic Doctor Who sound effects emerged from, most notably the theme tune.

[The Adventurer]

If they wanted to include Matt Smith they should have tossed in a flash forward involving the current real world crew on the set of the current Tardis. Or something. I understand the sentiment of how they did it, but it did feel a bit of projection by modern fandom.


I'm not going to lie though, this doc made me mist up a bit by the end.

[Zanti Misfit]

Quite enjoyed 'An Adventure..' - not as sentimental as I'd feared, but spoiled a bit at the end by Matt Smith's appearance.  Although this drama was about Hartnell and Sixties' Who in general, the BBC still couldn't resist taking the opportunity to promote the new series.  

'An Unearthly Child' straight after was pure TV gold; my fave episode from my fave Doctor. Beat that, Moffat!

[TordelBack]

If they wanted to include Matt Smith they should have tossed in a flash forward involving the current real world crew on the set of the current Tardis.

Think you put your finger on it there - a simple transition from Hartnell on the 1966 set to Smith on the 2013 set would have been great, you could even have had them -as actors- performing mirrored actions on opposite sides of the two consoles, even if it was only squinting at the same piece of technobabble on their respective scripts.  I have no problem with the drama affirming the amazing fact that the series that Hartnell led was still in rude health 50 years on, but Adventurer's suggestion would have made the point without suggesting a mystical connection through time, or what have you.

Again though, 98% brilliant is still brilliant.

Continuing that theme, we watched the 2012 Christmas Special (The Snowmen) last night, which was very good indeed.  Richard E Grant was a superb typecast baddie, the Calvin & Hobbes visuals were nicely scary and that Jenna-Louise Coleman really is insanely cute (although it remains to be seen whether full-on perkiness will become grating week-to-week).  I was a little taken aback to find that married lesbians were still considered a punchline (twice, if you include the web prequel), and the Doctor's out-and-out racist/species-ist attacks on the hilarious Strax were also a bit much (if funny). Vastra and Strax's make-up jobs are truly fantastic, the equal of anything I've seen.

Glad we didn't watch it on Christmas Day, mind - bit bloody grim at the end, little kids watching their governess die on Christmas Eve.

Not going to get the whole 7th season watched now (curse you Masterchef!), so I think I'll defer watching the Special until next week. 

[Mattofthespurs]

So, to watch the special tonight in 3-D or not?
From what I understand it was filmed with 3-D in mind.
Anyone watching it this way?

[Mattofthespurs]

Ignore the above.
Looks like it's only available in 3-D in the cinemas. 

[golledge100]

if you have a 3d tv you can watch in 3d via the red button

[Mattofthespurs]

if you have a 3d tv you can watch in 3d via the red button

Ah, cheers! My Son wants to watch it in 3-D.
I'll get the glasses out then 

[shaolin_monkey]

if you have a 3d tv you can watch in 3d via the red button

Bugger! If I'd known that, mabe I wouldn't have booked cinema tickets.

[golledge100]

I've booked the cinema anyway as you can't seem to rewind on the red button and my daughter is like Foghorn Leghorn in our house! She shuts up when shes at the cinema.

[SmallBlueThing]

I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that An Adventure In Space And Time was the single greatest thing I have ever seen, full stop. Yes, it was in no sense historically accurate- melded several important people into one and then did the same thing again several times over, jumped important bits of the narrative, exaggerated some people beyond belief and played down important charactertistics of others to keep the plot from being distracted... but I don't give a bucket of buggery, because I watched the whole thing through permanently weeping eyes and loved it beyond anything else I can remember seeing, ever. Barnes Common! The recreations of the sets! The Menoptera! The cyberman fagging it! *That* roboman, subtley hinting on what came next, just everything. Wonderful. I started crying from the off, and didn't stop til hours afterwards- and started again, watching the online "making of" docu on the BBC site.

Yeah, Shearsmith was horrible as Troughton- but maybe that was the point, maybe we were supposed to be seeing it as as jarring and awkward and "wrong" as it seemed to Hartnell and the crew at the time. Had they got a decent impersonator in, the "fan" part of the viewer's brain would have taken over and it would have seemed "normal" and "right". This way it stuck out like Gary Downie's cock at Longleat.

Yeah, the Matt Smith sequence was odd- but honestly, it was just another twist of the at-this-point-sodden snot rag, and left me in bits. Job done. Anyone who uses the word "cheesy" deserves immediate fornicating with anti-radiation gloves and a buggering in Spain.

In regard to the "rest" of 'An Unearthly Child'- it really is a masterpiece. Those three episodes are glorious- it's beautifully shot, getting the most out of the tiny sets, it's atmospheric as all hell (has Dr Who ever been more brutally scary than the flaming skulls and the fight between Kal and Za?) and has there ever been a more convincingly alien landscape than that prehistoric plateau on which they run for their life and into the Tardis at the very end? The script is fascinating, full of lovely character dialogue- and if you don't believe me, my two kids watched it this week, over two nights, and absolutely bloody loved it. They found it as thrilling, exciting and scary as audiences did 50 years ago. But we didn't watch it at midnight- time has rendered all old tv slow to modern eyes- stick it on at 6, and watch it in episodic form, and you'll be amazed. It's certainly one of my favourite stories, anyway.

Tonight, we all- as a family- don our 3D glasses and go off to the cinema to watch 'The Day of the Doctor'. My inner 13 year old, who toasted 'The Five Doctors' in 1983 with lemonade and a copy of the RT special, is astonished. It'll no doubt be a pile of shite, but it doesn't matter: the anniversary has already had the best special possible, in AAITAS. All this is just garnish. Unless it's very, very good, I will remember the 50th for the Hartnell biopic and our few weeks watching classic stories with the kids: Zygons, Morbius, Genesis, Carnival, Delta, Ressurrection... and tomorrow I actually finally get to watch a Tom Baker story I've somehow never seen: The Masque of Mandragora. Happy fiftieth, indeed!

SBT

[Mattofthespurs]

Well said SBT.
And I think you'll love The Mask Of Mandragora.

[Modern Panther]

It was hugely enjoyable, if a bit light-weight (although given the kiddies in the audience, that's not unsurprising). 

The big thing that struck me was how much more depth of feeling there was in David Bradley's portrayal of Hartnell, compared to the brief glimpse of Hartnell's own performance show towards the end. 

As a bit of shameless self-pimpery, I've put my own unpublished DR WTF script online at tempunautical.blogspot.co.uk.  It's from a story which was due to appear in issue 2, but the artist disappeared into the time vortex...

[SmallBlueThing]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUtH_CuEWuo

And- maybe, maybe- Marco Polo announced by tonight..?

SBT