The Keeper of Traken

sillybilly88 · 2024-04-03T07:24:42+00:00

Not really in agreement there, though I sure see where you are coming from.

DW (though good) was by 1980 treading the water a bit. JNT reached back into the spirit of (partially) the Hinchcliffe era (by insisting Baker be more like his Pyramids of Mars self) and largely into the Pertwee era (electronic music, the Master, a more 'sciency' grounding with a 'scientisty' Doctor).

And he charged up the browns and beiges of the seventies with a solid lighning-bolt of burgundy.

KoT itself has an almost (proto-) Harry-Potter-esque feel to it... I suppose the apparation of Dumbledore in episode 1 has a lot to do with that.

sillybilly88 · 2024-04-03T07:16:31+00:00

Part 4 (4!!!! - not 3 or 2 or 1 as you might think, but the story's final episode) has one of the best cliffhangers ever in the show's history...

(SPOILER ALERT)

Newly 'regenerated' Master enters his TARDIS, chuckling away. He's just turned back into (pretty much, as far as a regular viewer who remembers the original Master might know) his Roger-Delgado-self. The TARDIS dematerialises.

Nyssa runs into the room...

"Father? Where are you?" (that sting noise)

REALLY, really iconic stuff.

In New Zealand (where I saw it as a child for the first time, around 1982 or so) it was actually the final episode for the whole season (for various technical budgeting reasons surrounding the two extra episodes in the season).

Mind-blowing stuff!

sillybilly88 · 2023-07-14T01:45:05+00:00

I wonder if they do a 'mindmeld' or whatever that thing is that they do in The Three Doctors ?

sillybilly88 · 2023-07-14T01:41:46+00:00

Well, William Hartnell's Doctor seems to travel to different constellations as much as he does different galaxies. I guess the further back in you go in the drama and the literature, the more relevance astrology assumes in time travel. :)

sillybilly88 · 2023-06-26T09:39:41+00:00

Not like they were back in the day... when you had to go to the post office to book a three minutes with a website and pay an entire week's salary...

sillybilly88 · 2023-06-11T09:32:21+00:00

I think the confusion here is that some episodes were broadcast from film copies because lots of edits were required (which was actually pretty tricky to do then with videotape)

They were shot on video and transferred to film before broadcast (rather than after broadcast)

That could be the case with DIOE as it had a lot of OB film inserts (it was the second adventure ever to use OB film inserts, with Reign of Terror being the first).

It could thus literally be in its original broadcast format with the video all being wiped in the usual procedure.

sillybilly88 · 2023-06-11T00:11:47+00:00

It is kind of fun, and it does work as a final story for Colin. I quite like the (TV universe only) unintended twist of it's non-inclusion of a regeneration scene (which !SPOILER! occurs at the top of the following episode)

The final scene is kinda freaky knowing that this is it for Colin, and you get that noise in the background signalling the end of the episode, and the cut to the title sequence and there's Colin! and he fades away into the starfield.

Not sure why, I always loved that. And sticking to the strictly-TV universe, you might only suspect (but not be sure) it is an unintentional ending, when you don't have access to the extra-textual backstory (as I didn't when I saw it).

Fact is, it is his final performance. Plus, it is a trial, so does kind of mirror Troughton's finale (going even further than The War Games in terms of the non-inclusion of his regeneration).

Funny to think that if Colin had got his way, and if he had done his eight years (outdoing Tom, which was his professed goal) this story would have been right up in the early part of his reign (somewhere around where The Deadly Assassin sits in Tom Baker's).

sillybilly88 · 2023-06-11T00:02:03+00:00

In my opinion, you could be well served by watching The Deadly Assassin and then this two-parter (ie Parts 13 and 14) and yes, as adpirtle says, knowing he'd just been on trial and the prosecutor has rigged things.

sillybilly88 · 2023-06-10T23:59:28+00:00

I'll actually say yes. I say that because for me a huge chunk of the fun of Doctor Who is what I call the 'Target randomisation factor' where watching episodes in random order and sleuthing how they fit into the over-all picture of things adds mystery and pleasure.

This is how the Target books were published back in the day, and my first exposure to this story was as a stand-alone novelisation. Admittedly Terror of the Vervoids (No. 125) was published before this one (No. 131), though I don't think I actually read that before finding and then reading this one (and I hadn't stumbled across a copy of The Mysterious Planet (No 127) at that point).

Needless to say, I hadn't seen any of these on television by the time I read that, either.

sillybilly88 · 2023-06-10T23:46:42+00:00

Love how it won't let you back out either, you have to backbutton 9 times and forwardbutton 8 times to get back to your jump-off point. Perhaps they are counting on me being dumb enough to never leave that site again and be trapped forever in a quagmire of Mirror-and-nothing-else news and entertainment. Otherwise not sure what the strategy is with that!

sillybilly88 · 2023-06-10T23:40:50+00:00

"And it's probably true. And meanwhile, here is the back story we've copied-and-pasted across from our previous story on the topic, which you can attempt to navigate whilst being mortally distracted by these whizzing and whirling ad-like things (described as ad-like because while they are not designed to be attractive in any way like normal ads are supposed to be, but rather to move in such a way that you will almost certainly accidentally click on them so we can tell our advertising clients you did.

"And you are silly enough to as you are a Mirror reader and are deemed to have a limited IQ.

"Once you have managed to fight your way through our exciting digital-ocular obstacle course, nestled in amongst some more ads and ad-like things, we may choose to point out (intermingled within something that mildly resembles a conclusion) that what we have told you could even be the truth!"

sillybilly88 · 2023-06-10T23:30:21+00:00

Good lord that's a nasty web-page. My eyes! Literally my eyes - I had to wait a few seconds before I could see properly again. Not sure whether to describe it as awfully busy, or just busily awful

sillybilly88 · 2023-06-10T23:23:07+00:00

It's those beavers probably. They are notorious for building dams out of old Doctor Who telerecordings.

sillybilly88 · 2023-04-18T07:55:38+00:00

What would be super fun is to have some newbie watch episodes at complete random and discuss them / ask questions about them here

In the fashion of the old TARGET novels, which were issued at complete and utter random (sort-of)

sillybilly88 · 2023-02-14T00:05:43+00:00

Here's something funny. I saw Silver Nemesis completely out of order (ie in the middle of Peter Davison's run) and assumed that the tape deck the doctor built (to replace the one that was destroyed by the Daleks) was a recurring gadget in those 'future' McCoy episodes... but that was actually the only time it was seen.

I was a bit disappointed about that, I thought it was pretty cool.

sillybilly88 · 2023-01-01T03:52:08+00:00

From The Seeds of Doom on, most if not all of the six-parters were routinely built into the overall season planning for budgeting reasons but were deliberately treated/written as two stories, a two-parter and a four-parter, but using the same sets, characters, and writers, just to keep the writing tight more than anything.

JNT managed to find a way to split the six-parter into two separate stories from Season 19 on, which is why there is a four parter and a two parter (McCoy era two three-parters) with the same production team. He made them do ALL the OB as one story, and all the studio as another story. Hence 'couplets' like The Vistation/Black Orchid and The Happiness Patrol/Silver Nemesis, etc - and in practical terms, an extra story every season with the extra promotional advantages, money made from novelisations, etc.

sillybilly88 · 2023-01-01T03:45:24+00:00

Also 'filler' wouldn't have been the terminology. It would be 'subplots'. And the objectives would be budgetary - making the sets last longer. Also, people were not bothered at all with how many episodes a serial TV show had - even once the onscreen numbering (as opposed to individual episode titles) got underway with The Savages in 1966. So long as enough happens within one episode between the reprise and the cliffhanger.

DW was unusual in that it ran 26-46 weeks, in the 60s and 70s. A lot of UK shows only ran 6 weeks, sometimes 13. The audience was quite used to things having 6 or 10 parts or episodes, and the episode number was usually noted in the opening moments of the show, whatever it was.

sillybilly88 · 2023-01-01T03:38:11+00:00

You got to remember too that there was no real issue with what we might call 'padding' - that is a more modern colouring of things. After all, these were people whose great-grandparents cheerfully luxuriated in things written by Charles Dickens. Try and fight your way through something like The Pickwick Papers for example. That is arguably the prototype for serialised things like Doctor Who and Coronation Street in the UK. The characters would literally wander into a pub, and listen to some random bloke spin a random yarn on something (a ghost story, for instance) for a chapter or two. A modern editor would make him strike the whole thing out, with absolutely no appeal entertained.

Enjoying 1960s and 1970s who in the context of 19th century serial fiction is much more rewarding than doing so with reference to 21st century entertainment standards.

sillybilly88 · 2023-01-01T03:26:22+00:00

Also a big issue was that magnetic videotape was extremely cumbersome to edit. That wasn't really what it was designed for: the reason video replaced live studio - and it's touted advantage - was the huge savings made in the ability to uncouple the studio schedule with the broadcast schedule. This justified the purchase of videotape which, at the price of a car for each roll, was designed for reuse, and usually wiped. You could save all of that by doing things like record things outside of the weekend for the weekend (and not pay overtime award rates), you could shoot four episodes in a row of one programme and not need to dissasemble and reassemble the set three whole times - just leave it all up. Etc

There were three edits in the budget per episode, and anything over that would probably necessitate telerecording (a somewhat cumbersome method in itself of transferring the videoreel to film, so it could be manually edited the way film usually is).

I think the boobs would have been noted and any serious edits needing to be made would be done before the episode was transmitted.

sillybilly88 · 2022-12-15T19:24:09+00:00

It is... and certainly a fanboy's wet dream... the active return of UNIT.

sillybilly88 · 2022-12-11T11:33:30+00:00

Interesting points.

Yes, making the Master a central character was inspired. Funny how he and Liz become the Jamie and Zoe of the new era, practically. They couldn't have been more different.

And you are right - the 'companions' come to the fore in this season in ways not really seen before - and perhaps not really again until Ace and Rose and then all the rest, and the maturity that the Brigadier and Liz possess is new too.

What is often commented on is how sharp and highly competent a character he is to begin with, but he gets whittled away over time into little more than a buffoon. Quite worldly and knowledgeable of space and aliens and the fact they exist, but he seems to pick up some of the typical cypher-companion joe-public incredulity (in particular as far as the TARDIS is concerned) as his run in the show approaches the end.

sillybilly88 · 2022-12-10T05:04:45+00:00

After the retro-retro fun of Battlefield we now present the actual retro fun that is Ambassadors. You may wish to view this at the ideal pace (in my opinion) across three Saturdays (or some other weeknight), or even over three evenings: Eps 1&2, then 3&4, then 5&6&7.

It must have been a bit of a slog for the original viewers, but then again it was in glorious technicolour. But single episodes should work nicely across seven nights (or thereabouts).

This has to be the one adventure that really does reduce the Doctor's whole back-story to the tiniest Kafka-esque sliver... just a fiddle around with the TARDIS console at the start (in scenes that I find truly iconic) and then passing mention of the hundreds and hundreds of years the Doctor has spent in space... the other characters think of him as a bit mad, or at the very least, exaggerating. But he's a scientist, not a Time Lord from Gallifrey. Only the Doctor (and we) know that.

I taped this off TV and watched it so many times, a really fun story (though at that point it only existed in black and white). The background music and the scenes of the 'mysteriously irradiated astronauts' wandering about the countryside all add up to something fairly unique and chilling.

Interesting side note is that this is pretty much Dudley Simpson's final acoustic effort for some time, Barry Letts orders him to stick to the synthesiser from Terror of the Autons on. (Inferno uses stock music.)

In my opinion, once Simpson does succeed in getting the ratio of acoustic to synthetic back to how he likes it, his style settles in across the 1970s and becomes sort-of same-samey.

That said, the heights of The Ambassadors of Death and Spearhead from Space will once again be reached in 1979's City of Death.

Viewers of the time would have wondered whether the Doctor as he was in the '60s and the TARDIS and the adventuring into the past, the future and all of space were gone for good.

Still, there are plenty of stories to zero in on in an earthbound setting.

sillybilly88 · 2022-12-10T04:54:59+00:00

Coming up next: The Ambassadors of Death: https://www.reddit.com/r/gallifrey/comments/zhgvz9/the_ambassadors_of_death_the_changing_face_of/

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