Anorak Zone Forums

[Anorak]

Tone, how old were you when you first saw Who btw? I first saw Tom episodes when I was a kid, which was a good age for those stories.

I can see where you're coming from with Nyssa, I just think her delivery is a little flat.

[TheodoreJFlicker]

Mary Tamm gets the same complaints though; perhaps it goes with the territory of playing a buttoned-down aristocrat.

[Tone]

Um...I stumbled upon Tom Baker midway through the premiere Aussie screening of Sontaran Experiment in the mid 70s, so I was about er...9. I instantly loved season 12 and then a rerun of season 11 confused the f*** outa me. The Doctor Whos, two totally different guys, were very cool old buggers in my eyes and I was in love with the monsters. 11 and 12 had two lots of Sontarans, two doses of Daleks, the Ice Warriors, the Wirrn and the Cybermen. It was pure kiddie heaven at the time.

I watched the premiere of season 13 and thought the Zygons were the most awesome things ever...scary as all Hell to a kid, but amazingly, mind-bogglingly cool at the time, too. But after that, the gothic horror stuff was all a bit murky and dark and focused on Frankenstein and Dracula and stuff like that...it all seemed more for my parents than me. I welcomed the arrival of k-9 and some return to space opera. I loved Robots of Death and the Sontaran attack on Gallifrey. But as a boy of about 14, I thought Horns of Nimon was just too damn silly...

For the whole of my 15th year, they never showed Doctor Who. I started reading Targets and fell in love with reading thanks to Terrance Dicks! (Yeah, I know...from Terrance Dicks to Shakespeare and a degree in lit is hard to believe, but Dr.Who was so exciting it made me want to read!)

When I was 16, 1982, the show returned and they screened seasons 18 and 19, 4 eps a week, in one long run. It was breathtaking. The new titles, the new music, the new style (from flares to shoulder pads etc) and finally, new Doctor, new companions, new style of stories and the exciting, indeed thrilling, return of first the Master, then the Cybermen. Oh, yes....and then just near the end of this 54 episode run, one of the heroes died! Shattered my fairy tale illusions of Doctor Who forever.

My first impression of Adric...loved him one week, thought he was a gigantic pain in the neck the next and wished they would get rid of him. And that literally seemed to alternate from one story to the next, only coming good in his last few stores. Then he died! And as that sank in, I actually started to see him in a less negative light.

Nyssa...I was 16 and working class Aussie, she was cool and upper class Lady Nyssa and I just had an instant crush on her. She actually looked a lot like a girl in my class at school who I had my first ever crush on, so it was a "type" as well. She was awesome!

Tegan...thrilled about an Aussie and loved the fact that she was a regular modern human like Sarah Jane had been...but appalled by her hysterics in her first few stories. She grew on me...Kinda was a high point for her and I loved when she put on the overalls and picked up a big gun and shot a Cyberman, that was much more standard companion stuff. Started to love her off the wall remarks like when she tells the Cyberleader he wont like Earth when he starts going rusty! Haha.

I felt they got off to a less than stellar start, so I can see why people see them as bad, but I do think they all progressed and that was part of it, there was a development there, and that was rare in Doctor Who. They were not exactly polished, no, but that bit more real for it.

Davo loses one, straightens out the other and swaps the most agreeable one for a slimy prick who wants to kill him...but Turlough's acting was so great it was worth it, I guess.

[Lance]

I'm beginning to see why you love that particular era of the series now, Tone. It was obviously a very shrewd move by the Australian broadcasters to show Seasons 18 and 19 back-to-back, because if there were any two seasons that you could conceivably companion together as one long American style mega-season it would be those two. On an impressionable mind it must have seemed like Doctor Who had become EPIC all of a sudden....

[Tone]

Well, it kicked off with new titles and new music (after not seeing ANY Who for 12 months I was hungry for anything) then we get a new companion, then Romana and k9 leave, then the Master gets resurrected AND takes a new body...two more new companions, one's from my country, the other is hot...then Tom comes to an end...heartbreakingly...and regenerates...a new Doctor...and did I mention Warrior's Gate and Kinda were the most "out there" stories I'd ever seen...then a trad monster story with the new creatures The Terileptils...then my fanboy wet dream, the Cybermen make a "wow" return, and then lo and behold, a companion dies for what seemed to be the first time ever...yup, it was the best year ever to be a 16 year old Who boy in my eyes. From a drought to a feast of thrills, surprises, crying towels, the fecking works, it just had the lot in my eyes.

[Shaft-o-Gigsville]

Yeah.. it's kind of "The Bidmead Era."

[Camus]

See it's all a matter of perspective. I'm Australian. So, whereas you see Pertwee being lazy, I see Pertwee as this ultra cool English guy, sipping his red wine as he casually karate chops a few bad guys and makes a quip, ala James Bond. From Australia, cultural desert, he looks like he's being sophisticated and cool, not lazy. Same goes for Nyssa. You see wooden, I see one of those uber cool upper class English girls with icy blue eyes and a pout.

I don't think it has anything to do with being Australian Tone. I'm Australian and I see Pertwee being a lazy fekker and Nyssa as being wooden just as much as English people.

Re: funny walks and tents in pants, yeah, it happens to teen boys, not 18-20 year olds who are being employed as supposedly professional actors on national TV.

[Tone]

No, I mean I personally see English people who are of that "upper class" type in movies and TV shows as "cool". I don't expect Pertwee's Doctor to get all emotional all the time and start screaming his brains out like David Tennant to Mr.Connolly in Idiot's Lantern.

[Shaft-o-Gigsville]

No, I mean I personally see English people who are of that "upper class" type in movies and TV shows as "cool". I don't expect Pertwee's Doctor to get all emotional all the time and start screaming his brains out like David Tennant to Mr.Connolly in Idiot's Lantern.

Ah, good point, Mr. Tone. I must say as an American that I have kind of the same reaction. I mean, as a kid I liked Roger Moore's James Bond for a lot of the same reasons. It wasn't until I grew up that I realized he was a candy-ass who was just phoning it in.

But the Pert... Yeah, he got lazy, but it really was part of his style. When he gave his all he was awesome, when he slacked off he was still all-Pert, and the American viewer in me still sees the suave Englishman who can't be bothered to get flustered even when the bomb is ticking down. At least a little bit.

Interesting that nobody's really tried to pull from his style as DW's gone ahead. I mean, there's Tom Baker quirkiness right and left, but we haven't seen shades of the aloof "man of action," have me?

But back to the Trio...

I didn't hate Sutton in "Keeper of Traken," but she was working minus Fielding and with Tom. I actually didn't "hate" her much at all, but she was just never terribly much beyond bland to me. She was a place-holder companion, so low-energy that she didn't really engage. She's the least offensive of the three, I think.

I can't think of a single Trio story not sunk by their acting with the exception of "Earthshock." Waterhouse has some creaky moments up front, "Don't wander too far, Doctor!" But really, they're all right. Maybe it's because they spend most of the episode running for their lives.

[Professor_Thascales]

See it's all a matter of perspective. I'm Australian. So, whereas you see Pertwee being lazy, I see Pertwee as this ultra cool English guy, sipping his red wine as he casually karate chops a few bad guys and makes a quip, ala James Bond. From Australia, cultural desert, he looks like he's being sophisticated and cool, not lazy. Same goes for Nyssa. You see wooden, I see one of those uber cool upper class English girls with icy blue eyes and a pout.

I'm American, and I agree with you about Pertwee. But Nyssa is wooden. Pretty, but wooden.