Doctor Who rewatch (142/365)

[white_hart]

I'd run out of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, so I decided to subscribe to Britbox so I can watch classic Doctor Who.

So far, I've watched An Unearthly Child (oddly familiar from the Target novelisation though I'd never seen it before), The Daleks, and Edge of Destruction which I thought was terrific.

Well worth the £5.99 a month, and it's going to keep me going for ages.

Comments

[strange_complex]

The Edge of Destruction is indeed terrific! It doesn't get the same automatic level of attention as the more plot- and action-focused stories around it, and I'm sure it wouldn't have been made at all if there had been more budget available to play with. But as with so many other things in Doctor Who, the budget constraints were a blessing. A story set entirely on the TARDIS and with only the core cast turned out to be just what was needed at that point in the season to really bring the characters into full focus and let the audience see new angles on them. You've made me want to watch it again, in fact!

[sir_guinglain]

I was just going to post on The Edge of Destruction (or Inside the Spaceship, but only DWM calls it that...) and say something similar. It is determined to be odd and attention-grabbing despite all its disadvantages. David Whitaker knew when writing it he might have been writing the final two episodes of the series. He decided to do his absolute best to serve his colleagues in front of and behind the camera so they had something to point to as they looked for their next jobs, I suspect.

[white_hart]

It is really good.

[sir_guinglain]

Apparently the dates don't quite work for my theory, in that any script would have been written aftet the go-ahead was given to make Marco Polo and what became The Keys of Marinus on 1 November 1963, but concepts in it (see 0tralala) such as the Fast Return Switch (perhaps to be used to take Ian and Barbara home) might remain from ideas when it was conceived as the last story of the series.

[white_hart]

From a distance of nearly 60 years a lot of the plot-and-action-focused stories are fun but quite forgettable, but The Edge of Destruction really has something. And it's clearly the seed of so much of the modern TARDIS mythos, and interesting to see that was sown so far back.

[oracne]

I love classic Who!!!

[white_hart]

I grew up on later classic Who, and am really looking forward to revisiting things I haven't watched since childhood, but I'm also really enjoying the opportunity to watch stories which I only knew through novelisations or plot summaries. (I could have bought videos/DVDs, but the cost of getting a full set was prohibitive so I only have a few favourites.)

[oracne]

I find it AMAZING that we now have some Troughton material that was thought lost.