The decline of DW started more than 40 years ago when the late John Nathan-Turner became the producer.
He started changing things, starting with a new opening credit sequence and a rock version of the theme (which was based on the original rendition played by Delia Derbyshire.) The storylines took a darker turn, becoming much more violent than before.
I’m sure that was one reason why Tom Baker left the series a year after JNT took over.
As far as the Master, nobody beats the original, played by Roger Delgado, though the next one (Anthony Ainley) was quite menacing on his own.
Delgado was exceptionable.
Ainley… Not sure if it was the direction he was given or not, but was often a moustache twill away from tying the nearest companion to a railway track.
JNT was… dunno. Massively better then Chibnail (sp?) at any rate.
JNT came in on Tom Baker’s last season. I think Tom by this stage was getting a bit tired and had been in the role for a long time. Not sure the connection between JNT’s vision and Tom’s decision to leave is really that valid. When you are ready to move on you don’t really need much excuse.
JNT in his first season steered the show back towards a slightly harder science feel. The previous season was just a tad silly. This gave us The Creature from the Pit (“we call it… The PIT”) which had the Doctor come up against what was basically a large plastic bag. Mind you, this was Lara Ward’s era and Lara Ward was… yes… Always preferred her in the role over Mary Tamm.
but the show had already moved away from the neo gothic horror era of a few years earlier and had started to produce a few duds. I re-watched highlights of Underworld earlier this year and… yeah… wow… Grud it was BORING and that was the highlights.
The Peter Davidson era was… mixed. I was EXACTLY the right age when it came out, so that counted a lot for me, but in retrospect I am not completely fond of it. The idea of getting a young and full cast of companions (Adric, Tegan, Nyssa) seems good on paper, but in practice you now have a regular crew of 4 people who need to be given something constructive to do each ep. Case point Snakedance… Kinda… the first one with the giant snake, okay. Nyssa faints at the start and basically sleeps through the entire episode as she was not confirmed when the script was pitched and the plot was too tight to allow her a role in it.
So we get an era where a lot of the characters are just there and not really adding to the story.
I digress. Classic Who at it’s best is still VERY good television and at it’s worse it was just low budget and rushed scripts. Nu Who at it’s worse openly hates it’s audience. Main reason I gave up even before Peter C left – every episode was out there telling the viewers that anyone who supported the military could just piss off, anyone who supporting the mining industry could just piss off, anyone who was a white man could just piss off…
So I did.
Not seen any of this spin off stuff with the blonde woman. Twice bitten, Trice Shy.
I became disenchanted with DW after Davison took over the lead. I think, by then, the series had started to run out of ideas. Not just that, but the Doctor’s sidekicks became rather annoying.
By the time Sylvester McCoy succeeded Colin Baker, I had become bored with the show. I wasn’t at all surprised that the series finally faded into oblivion.
When the show was revived some 20 years later, I wasn’t optimistic that it would come close to the standard set during the time from Hartnell to Tom Baker. Unfortunately, I was proven right and I bailed part-way during Tennant’s run.
While I am having a mini rant about Classic Who can I just talk in defence of the production quality.
The Narrative on the Classic Series is that it was deliberately cheap cause the BBC didn’t care.
Well… sometimes. If you look at some of the Jon Pertwee era they are regularly having massive set piece action scenes with motorcycles, trucks and helicopters. Not Cheap. Sure there were stories where the budget had clearly run out. There were stories where the promise of digital effects never came good and looked AWFUL. But to claim this was *always* a cheap show doesn’t really hold up.
Classic Who could be amazing. Sometimes the Look, the Plot and the Characters always worked. Other times one or two of these were missing. Usually this was the Look, but usually the Plot and Characters carried. Unfortunately sometimes all three fails and you look back on an episode and just wonder where the last 26minutes of your life went. (Looking at YOU, Underworld).
So yeah. Some of the Classic stuff is still awesome. Not all. But some.
Fight me 😛
Actually, the show didn’t have a big budget to begin with. The producers had to be creative with the sets and special effects, often relying on the imagination of the viewers to fill in any blanks.
Another thing was that video tape was expensive and in short supply. When an episode was recorded and broadcast, the tape was often re-used. Nobody considered the possibility that someone in the future would want to watch them again.
Consequently, some episodes were thought to have gone missing forever, only to found gathering dust in a production facility somewhere in the colonies. One from the Troughton era believed lost turned up at the BBC offices in Hong Kong in the late 1990s.
I remember eagerly awaiting the next weekly Doctor Who episode on TVO or PBS back when I was a kid.
The Ark in Space actually gave me a fear of needles that I have to this day, even though what happened to poor Noah was not caused by a needle. I was taking allergy shots at the time but never took one again.
I watched the first of the Star Trek “re-boot” series and I thought it to be dreadful. It suffered from lousy plot development and even worse–and cheap–writing. (Destroying the entire planet of Vulcan? Really?)
That’s why I quickly gave up on the revived Doctor Who a number of years ago. Again, the writers simply wiped out the Doctor’s home planet Gallifrey. His conflict with his fellow Time Lords served as the basis for plots of a number of stories in the original series and helped define the character from early on (I think it started with Patrick Troughton’s Doctor).
But that’s one of the problems. Writers have little imagination plus many of them want to push certain ideas and doctrines. Keeping the entire background of specific characters intact requires thinking as well as familiarity with who those characters are. Yes, it makes it difficult to get around certain parts of their pasts or their personalities, but it also makes it much more interesting. Those characters developed over a number of episodes or movies in a series and are almost like real people. There are certain aspects that need to remain intact and shouldn’t be tampered with.
It suffered from lousy plot development and even worse–and cheap–writing
Not unlike the various television series that preceded it, then.
I don’t get my panties in a bunch about nerd media getting short shrift in modern film adaptations because 1) all media gets short shrift in film adaptations (cf. Bones, My Sister’s Keeper) and 2) Sturgeon’s Law applies: 95% of nerd media was crap to begin with, and expecting Hollywood to polish those turds into something marginally watchable is a fool’s errand. Star Trek, Doctor Who, comic book superheroes – these are for children.
The original Star Trek didn’t set out to insult the intelligence of its viewers, often tackling subjects which, at the time, were controversial. A number of well-known writers contributed to the show and Harlan Ellison’s City on the Edge of Forever won a Hugo.
I wasn’t as impressed with the next series, which was rather lame by comparison. After that, I gave up on the franchise.
Doctor Who was originally meant to be a short-run children’s show. However, its impressive ratings showed that there was great potential and the original run, starting in 1963, went well into the 1980s.
“– these are for children.”
And that’s why they are so important. That’s why they are so attractive to the political activists.
Hollywood scriptwriters are the sort of hacks who couldn’t cobble together a readable novel. It’s the author version of teaching. Those who can publish novels, those who can’t turn those novels into vomit-inducing movie scripts.
The Critical Drinker offers up the best movie reviews I’ve ever read or heard about those movies I’ve watched that he has commented upon.
(note to self: put Jack Daniels on shopping list)
Life imitates Art Dept.
His comments about destroying the past because they could not live up to it…..denigrating those who constructed masterpieces, in order that their cheap, shoddy imitations could be viewed with more respect than they could ever honestly rate, applies with complete congruity to the SJW, Woke, Academia, Media assault on all that has made Western civilization great.
And replace it with…..?
First Timer – you beat me too it. +100
Ok, so, who in the actual fuck, even wasted time on this endless regurgitated shit?
I have hated Hollywood since 1974 at the least.
I haven’t been to a theatre since back then.
This is not “virtual signalling’, but rather stating the fact of the matter.
On your deathbed, will you be opining on wishing you had watched more endless hours of that dreck, or perhaps wishing you had listened to more pretty music?
Hans Solo, or Keith Jarrett solo.
carry on.
Let Hollywood keep stealing your hours away while they advance the things you rail against.
Wakey.
Sermon over, and I don’t care what you think. This shit and indulging in it has been part of the distracted problem, folks.
But go on and watch your next Net Flix shit series while writing angry comments.
The fuck out of here…
The last time I was in a movie theatre was to watch Jurassic Park in a second-run house during the December holidays in 1993. (Not a wise move, as it turned out, as the majority of viewers were teenyboppers. The girls shrieking at seemingly scary moments spoiled the movie for me.)
Since then, the number of movies that I wish I’d watched on the big screen I can count off on one hand. On the whole, I don’t regret giving up going to the cinema as there’s been little incentive for me to do so.
Thanks to the channel Turner Classic Movies, I’ve become a film buff, appreciating movies not just as entertainment, but art. One of the things I appreciate about TCM is that the hosts and commentators often provide stories and insights about them, such as how a certain scene was shot, making the presentation that much more enjoyable.
Then you missed out on “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. I still love that movie.
I have watched “Ladies in Black” and “The Seamstress” on Netflix, both made in Australia. I quite enjoyed them.
I totally agree with most of the commentators though and the post – you MUST exercise critical thinking as to what you are going to watch. My time is too valuable.
Smollettwood.
Stevie…
Well my first divorce from a form of entertainment was Cutting the chord from Network Television – 5 yrs now and don’t miss it one iota. Also saving some $75/mo streaming is awesome and STREMIO is the shit. ANY series ever – ANY Movie Ever. FREE no commercials….and best of all, no MSM. I can stream Fox on U-Tube all I want
2nd was Pro Sports. I used to be, up until ~2 yrs ago, a rabid Hockey Fan paid 200/ annually to watfh tons of
Games…NO MORE…Now when I see this disgusting leftist ass kissing to get along rabble be it hockey, football, soccer, baseball, Olympics etc all pulling this leftist Bullshit of Knee bending,Trans admitting Country trashing, Covid ass kissing…20-30 yr olds – Fk em all….They receive ZERO $$ & ZERO looks from me – forever.
I don’t pay for Netflix – I don’t use it…same with Crave and any other pay per view.
My attitude is that I get snowballed under everywhere I go by unwanted Advertising ad Nausea. Let the advertisers Pay…..Like they did when we had the Indian Test pattern.
I do admit to AMAZON Prime mainly cause I read on a kindle and we do use the service on occasion…and every now and then a decent film will come up.
As for Hollyweird – have not gone to a theatre since long before Covid. LIkely Never will now. Am thinking however that Drive-Ins aught to be able to make a comeback…?? for the Unvaxxed.
The Critical Drinker is a gem.
A hard-drinking, cynical gem.
Anyone who pays to go to a movie these days is an idiot, and your date will figure that out.
Rescued by non diverse female space Jesus. LOL!
Wokism degrades or destroys everything it touches, but especially media and entertainment.
I probably should watch this vid…
NAARRRR. It’ll be fine!
(also…)
Go away now.
BREAKING NEWS——-BREAKING NEWS——–BREAKING NEWS—–BREAKING NEWS
This just in
Aex Baldwin has killed more people than the omicron varient!!!
Gay
Tatiana seems nice..
And he’s not a big fan of the new Dr. Who episodes.
https://youtu.be/VlGQgfXtC40
Somewhat NSFW..
The decline of DW started more than 40 years ago when the late John Nathan-Turner became the producer.
He started changing things, starting with a new opening credit sequence and a rock version of the theme (which was based on the original rendition played by Delia Derbyshire.) The storylines took a darker turn, becoming much more violent than before.
I’m sure that was one reason why Tom Baker left the series a year after JNT took over.
As far as the Master, nobody beats the original, played by Roger Delgado, though the next one (Anthony Ainley) was quite menacing on his own.
Delgado was exceptionable.
Ainley… Not sure if it was the direction he was given or not, but was often a moustache twill away from tying the nearest companion to a railway track.
JNT was… dunno. Massively better then Chibnail (sp?) at any rate.
JNT came in on Tom Baker’s last season. I think Tom by this stage was getting a bit tired and had been in the role for a long time. Not sure the connection between JNT’s vision and Tom’s decision to leave is really that valid. When you are ready to move on you don’t really need much excuse.
JNT in his first season steered the show back towards a slightly harder science feel. The previous season was just a tad silly. This gave us The Creature from the Pit (“we call it… The PIT”) which had the Doctor come up against what was basically a large plastic bag. Mind you, this was Lara Ward’s era and Lara Ward was… yes… Always preferred her in the role over Mary Tamm.
but the show had already moved away from the neo gothic horror era of a few years earlier and had started to produce a few duds. I re-watched highlights of Underworld earlier this year and… yeah… wow… Grud it was BORING and that was the highlights.
The Peter Davidson era was… mixed. I was EXACTLY the right age when it came out, so that counted a lot for me, but in retrospect I am not completely fond of it. The idea of getting a young and full cast of companions (Adric, Tegan, Nyssa) seems good on paper, but in practice you now have a regular crew of 4 people who need to be given something constructive to do each ep. Case point Snakedance… Kinda… the first one with the giant snake, okay. Nyssa faints at the start and basically sleeps through the entire episode as she was not confirmed when the script was pitched and the plot was too tight to allow her a role in it.
So we get an era where a lot of the characters are just there and not really adding to the story.
I digress. Classic Who at it’s best is still VERY good television and at it’s worse it was just low budget and rushed scripts. Nu Who at it’s worse openly hates it’s audience. Main reason I gave up even before Peter C left – every episode was out there telling the viewers that anyone who supported the military could just piss off, anyone who supporting the mining industry could just piss off, anyone who was a white man could just piss off…
So I did.
Not seen any of this spin off stuff with the blonde woman. Twice bitten, Trice Shy.
I became disenchanted with DW after Davison took over the lead. I think, by then, the series had started to run out of ideas. Not just that, but the Doctor’s sidekicks became rather annoying.
By the time Sylvester McCoy succeeded Colin Baker, I had become bored with the show. I wasn’t at all surprised that the series finally faded into oblivion.
When the show was revived some 20 years later, I wasn’t optimistic that it would come close to the standard set during the time from Hartnell to Tom Baker. Unfortunately, I was proven right and I bailed part-way during Tennant’s run.
While I am having a mini rant about Classic Who can I just talk in defence of the production quality.
The Narrative on the Classic Series is that it was deliberately cheap cause the BBC didn’t care.
Well… sometimes. If you look at some of the Jon Pertwee era they are regularly having massive set piece action scenes with motorcycles, trucks and helicopters. Not Cheap. Sure there were stories where the budget had clearly run out. There were stories where the promise of digital effects never came good and looked AWFUL. But to claim this was *always* a cheap show doesn’t really hold up.
Classic Who could be amazing. Sometimes the Look, the Plot and the Characters always worked. Other times one or two of these were missing. Usually this was the Look, but usually the Plot and Characters carried. Unfortunately sometimes all three fails and you look back on an episode and just wonder where the last 26minutes of your life went. (Looking at YOU, Underworld).
So yeah. Some of the Classic stuff is still awesome. Not all. But some.
Fight me 😛
Actually, the show didn’t have a big budget to begin with. The producers had to be creative with the sets and special effects, often relying on the imagination of the viewers to fill in any blanks.
Another thing was that video tape was expensive and in short supply. When an episode was recorded and broadcast, the tape was often re-used. Nobody considered the possibility that someone in the future would want to watch them again.
Consequently, some episodes were thought to have gone missing forever, only to found gathering dust in a production facility somewhere in the colonies. One from the Troughton era believed lost turned up at the BBC offices in Hong Kong in the late 1990s.
I remember eagerly awaiting the next weekly Doctor Who episode on TVO or PBS back when I was a kid.
The Ark in Space actually gave me a fear of needles that I have to this day, even though what happened to poor Noah was not caused by a needle. I was taking allergy shots at the time but never took one again.
I watched the first of the Star Trek “re-boot” series and I thought it to be dreadful. It suffered from lousy plot development and even worse–and cheap–writing. (Destroying the entire planet of Vulcan? Really?)
That’s why I quickly gave up on the revived Doctor Who a number of years ago. Again, the writers simply wiped out the Doctor’s home planet Gallifrey. His conflict with his fellow Time Lords served as the basis for plots of a number of stories in the original series and helped define the character from early on (I think it started with Patrick Troughton’s Doctor).
But that’s one of the problems. Writers have little imagination plus many of them want to push certain ideas and doctrines. Keeping the entire background of specific characters intact requires thinking as well as familiarity with who those characters are. Yes, it makes it difficult to get around certain parts of their pasts or their personalities, but it also makes it much more interesting. Those characters developed over a number of episodes or movies in a series and are almost like real people. There are certain aspects that need to remain intact and shouldn’t be tampered with.
It suffered from lousy plot development and even worse–and cheap–writing
Not unlike the various television series that preceded it, then.
I don’t get my panties in a bunch about nerd media getting short shrift in modern film adaptations because 1) all media gets short shrift in film adaptations (cf. Bones, My Sister’s Keeper) and 2) Sturgeon’s Law applies: 95% of nerd media was crap to begin with, and expecting Hollywood to polish those turds into something marginally watchable is a fool’s errand. Star Trek, Doctor Who, comic book superheroes – these are for children.
The original Star Trek didn’t set out to insult the intelligence of its viewers, often tackling subjects which, at the time, were controversial. A number of well-known writers contributed to the show and Harlan Ellison’s City on the Edge of Forever won a Hugo.
I wasn’t as impressed with the next series, which was rather lame by comparison. After that, I gave up on the franchise.
Doctor Who was originally meant to be a short-run children’s show. However, its impressive ratings showed that there was great potential and the original run, starting in 1963, went well into the 1980s.
“– these are for children.”
And that’s why they are so important. That’s why they are so attractive to the political activists.
Hollywood scriptwriters are the sort of hacks who couldn’t cobble together a readable novel. It’s the author version of teaching. Those who can publish novels, those who can’t turn those novels into vomit-inducing movie scripts.
The Critical Drinker offers up the best movie reviews I’ve ever read or heard about those movies I’ve watched that he has commented upon.
(note to self: put Jack Daniels on shopping list)
Life imitates Art Dept.
His comments about destroying the past because they could not live up to it…..denigrating those who constructed masterpieces, in order that their cheap, shoddy imitations could be viewed with more respect than they could ever honestly rate, applies with complete congruity to the SJW, Woke, Academia, Media assault on all that has made Western civilization great.
And replace it with…..?
First Timer – you beat me too it. +100
Ok, so, who in the actual fuck, even wasted time on this endless regurgitated shit?
I have hated Hollywood since 1974 at the least.
I haven’t been to a theatre since back then.
This is not “virtual signalling’, but rather stating the fact of the matter.
On your deathbed, will you be opining on wishing you had watched more endless hours of that dreck, or perhaps wishing you had listened to more pretty music?
Hans Solo, or Keith Jarrett solo.
carry on.
Let Hollywood keep stealing your hours away while they advance the things you rail against.
Wakey.
Sermon over, and I don’t care what you think. This shit and indulging in it has been part of the distracted problem, folks.
But go on and watch your next Net Flix shit series while writing angry comments.
The fuck out of here…
The last time I was in a movie theatre was to watch Jurassic Park in a second-run house during the December holidays in 1993. (Not a wise move, as it turned out, as the majority of viewers were teenyboppers. The girls shrieking at seemingly scary moments spoiled the movie for me.)
Since then, the number of movies that I wish I’d watched on the big screen I can count off on one hand. On the whole, I don’t regret giving up going to the cinema as there’s been little incentive for me to do so.
Thanks to the channel Turner Classic Movies, I’ve become a film buff, appreciating movies not just as entertainment, but art. One of the things I appreciate about TCM is that the hosts and commentators often provide stories and insights about them, such as how a certain scene was shot, making the presentation that much more enjoyable.
Then you missed out on “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. I still love that movie.
I have watched “Ladies in Black” and “The Seamstress” on Netflix, both made in Australia. I quite enjoyed them.
I totally agree with most of the commentators though and the post – you MUST exercise critical thinking as to what you are going to watch. My time is too valuable.
Smollettwood.
Stevie…
Well my first divorce from a form of entertainment was Cutting the chord from Network Television – 5 yrs now and don’t miss it one iota. Also saving some $75/mo streaming is awesome and STREMIO is the shit. ANY series ever – ANY Movie Ever. FREE no commercials….and best of all, no MSM. I can stream Fox on U-Tube all I want
2nd was Pro Sports. I used to be, up until ~2 yrs ago, a rabid Hockey Fan paid 200/ annually to watfh tons of
Games…NO MORE…Now when I see this disgusting leftist ass kissing to get along rabble be it hockey, football, soccer, baseball, Olympics etc all pulling this leftist Bullshit of Knee bending,Trans admitting Country trashing, Covid ass kissing…20-30 yr olds – Fk em all….They receive ZERO $$ & ZERO looks from me – forever.
I don’t pay for Netflix – I don’t use it…same with Crave and any other pay per view.
My attitude is that I get snowballed under everywhere I go by unwanted Advertising ad Nausea. Let the advertisers Pay…..Like they did when we had the Indian Test pattern.
I do admit to AMAZON Prime mainly cause I read on a kindle and we do use the service on occasion…and every now and then a decent film will come up.
As for Hollyweird – have not gone to a theatre since long before Covid. LIkely Never will now. Am thinking however that Drive-Ins aught to be able to make a comeback…?? for the Unvaxxed.
The Critical Drinker is a gem.
A hard-drinking, cynical gem.
Anyone who pays to go to a movie these days is an idiot, and your date will figure that out.
Rescued by non diverse female space Jesus. LOL!
Wokism degrades or destroys everything it touches, but especially media and entertainment.