Nyssa Of Traken

In my head, the first episode I saw was Genesis of The Daleks, but given that it was broadcast in 1975, when I was two, I suspect I might be misremembering that fact (unless it was a repeat? Or I am thinking of the wrong  episode?)

My first memory is of Tom Baker being electrocuted on a giant launch tower for a rocket, although I can not entirely remember what episode that is.

Either way – I started watching it at the tail end of The Tom Baker Era, and the first full series I can remember watching was The Keeper Of Traken, and the first "set" would be The Regeneration Trilogy – The Keeper of Traken, Logopolis and Castovalva.

And even with the return of the series in 2005, I think that these three episodes remain some of my favouritest of the whole show (from start to finish).

I remember being really pissed off that I couldn’t watch one or two episodes of Logopolis "live" (so to speak) because it was broadcast at the same time I was attending conformation class. 

I was also quite impressed that my maths teacher taught us the idea of recursion using The Master’s Tardis.

And, given that I was seven, I kind of had a crush on Nyssa, even if she was 19 years old than me.

I kept with it, but as the Peter Davidson era went on, I started to get a little less….. obsessed by it. And when it morphed in to Colin Baker, I more or less drifted away from it.

I tended to watch a few episodes – Peter -> Colin, Colin-> Sylvester. But mostly I thought it had got a little silly.

(Of course, it could be that I was growing up and the show was still aiming at the same audience)

I did watch the 25th Anniversary (wow – that seems like so long ago…..) and thought ti was absolutely brilliant. I am not so impressed by the remaster of it that they released – why do people insist on rewriting and changing stuff that was good to begin with?

(Just because you can now get better special effects than you had 25 years ago doesn’t mean you should remaster an entire film with the better special effects. Part of the reason I liked Doctor Who – and still like Doctor Who – is that it is about the story, not about the effects.

And in changing the effects – in upgrading them – it suggests that the people who make it think it is more about the effects than the story, which is kind of insulting.

The best stories told are in books, with no special effects other than what the reader can imagine. Stories – any story, whether it is a movie, a tv show, a play, a monologue – is about the story, the plot, the characters and so on, not about how good you can make it look.

And so – rant over with, and we return to your regularly scheduled post).

I thought the movie was pretty much appalling, but to be fair I haven’t seen it in a while, and I could be wrong. (But I suspect I am not).

Around this time I also entirely fell in love with a show called Press Gang, again because it was just so well written. But more of that later.

I was a bit antsy about the new series to start of with. The first episode didn’t impress me that much – I thought that The Doctor was just a grinning loon – but the second episode was pretty impressive, especially at the end (when he dragged Casandra back).

And "DALEK" was brilliant, although it started a trend that lasted through RTD’s stewardship of the show and REALLY pissed me off. Actually, it was about the only thing I could find about RTD’s time in charge that did annoy me.

His insistence on bringing back the daleks, then letting one of them escape in the nick of time. Once I could live with, twice was a bit tired, but at the third or fourth time it just got stupid and overused.

But – that aside – his plotting and his writing was excellent, and I felt like the original series had returned, because again it wasn’t about the special effects, it was about the story.

Then Steven Moffat took over, and if anything it has got exponentially better.

I am a tad worried that the 50th anniversary episode will try to do too much – that it will feel that it has to live up to the weight of history behind it, in a way that the 25th Anniversary (The Five Doctors, for those of you who missed it) didn’t seem to.

But on the other hand, I can count on one hand the number of episodes Steven Moffat has written of ANY show that haven’t been good, and maybe on one finger the episodes that have been abysmal.

"As Doctor Who turns 50, how long have you been watching and why? If you don’t watch Doctor Who, why not?" –User Submitted (modified)

I’ve been watching it since I was 7 years old – I would have watched it from the start, but I wasn’t born until the 10th anniversary, and it really wasn’t suitable tv for me until I was aged around 7 or 8.

Oddly, I am not a fan of the three doctors that were there before I started watching. Though that could be because I’ve never really sat down to watch a lot of the episodes together. Maybe that’s something to try?

Why do I watch it? Because of the writing. Because of the stories. Because of the plots. Because of the acting and the directing. Because it never fails to amaze. Because Sarah Sutton looked really cute in a Traken noble’s dress. (I got to meet her last year, and my girlfriend tells me I was blushing the entire time!).

And while a tiny part of me wants to argue that while this is the 50th anniversary, it is not the 50th year of the show (given all the hiatuses that it went through, I think we are on about 38, 39?), the larger part of me just goes "screw it".