Urban's 'Doctor Who' Thing

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

Originally Posted by right-track

Just as well she's wearing splash goggles.

I'm glad you're here
I thought you might be interested in this. Peter Kay's character in this episode in human form is a guy called Victor Kennedy. A rich blowhard who spends vasts amounts of money looking for the Doctor and trying to take over a fan group dedicated to him.



It's heavily rumoured that by some people in the know that the similarities between him & Ian Levine are not there by accident.

[right-track]

haha I knew who you were referring to before the last sentence.
Is this inclusion of the character there by his influence, or because he's hated so much?
Either way, I'm glad that plank has other distractions besides my interests.

We should plot to kill him?

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

When the show was off air for all those years and survived in book form a lot of the authors of these books were fans who would occasionally put in some of the so called 'Professional Doctor Who fans' as characters in these books to make fun of them as a little inside joke. People like Russell T Davies & Mark Gatiss came from that movement before they became writers on TV.
Levine is such an egotist I doubt he even noticed.

I would kill him but he has this good knack of turning up missing episodes. Maybe I'll kill him when they're all found.

[right-track]

Originally Posted by Urban Hat€monger ?

When the show was off air for all those years and survived in book form a lot of the authors of these books were fans who would occasionally put in some of the so called 'Professional Doctor Who fans' as characters in these books to make fun of them as a little inside joke. People like Russell T Davies & Mark Gatiss came from that movement before they became writers on TV.
Levine is such an egotist I doubt he even noticed.

I would kill him but he has this good knack of turning up missing episodes. Maybe I'll kill him when they're all found.

I know what you're saying. His ability to 'find' rare NS vinyl in the past was invaluable to the scene.
However, his ego drives him to 'manufacture' and meddle with the genre far too much for purists tastes.
As for "missing episodes", it wouldn't surprise me if he was already sitting on them and has been for years. Apart from a massive ego, money drives him too. As you probably already know.

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

I don't think he's sitting on any episodes. These days rather than finding them he's more involved in using his knowledge of the film collecting scene to help negotiate getting them back to the BBC and giving advice to others looking for them. I think it's something like 20 years since he actually found one.
Plus any tapes found are technically property of the BBC I think all he would get is a small finders fee which wouldn't cover the costs of all the trips to Africa or Asia to hunt down these things.

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

218: The Twin Dilemma

Doctor : 6th (Colin Baker)
Companion : Peri Brown (Nicola Bryant)
Series : 21
Originally Transmitted: 22nd - 30th March 1984

In July of 1983 Peter Davison handed in his notice to the BBC that after the 20th anniversary special in November of that year and the following 21st series he would be leaving the role of the Doctor, taking the advice of previous Doctor Patrick Troughton who advised him to do it for 3 years and then leave. Davison was also unhappy with the quality of the scripts during the 20th series, when he did see the scripts for the 21st series he later said if they had been that quality the year before he would have stayed another year.

In August of that year it was announced Colin Baker would be taking over. Up until that point Baker's biggest role had been in a drama series called 'The Brothers' that screened during the 70s where he played the series bad boy Paul Merroney. He had also played the role of Commander Maxil, head of the Gallifreyan guard in one of Peter Davison's stories 'Arc Of Infinity' during the previous series. In that story he shot the Doctor leading Baker to say that he tried to kill the previous Doctor to get his job. A press call was held with Baker and another incoming actress Nicola Bryant playing new companion Perpugilliam (Peri) Brown. This press call is mostly remembered however for Baker wearing his best 'Saturday Night Fever' outfit.



As Baker was announced to the public so early and with Davison still contracted for another series there would have been anything from a year and a half to two years before the new Doctor would be seen on TV so the decision was made to have Baker's first story end the forthcoming series meaning that the public would only have to wait 6 months to see the new Doctor.

During the previous story (The Caves Of Andozani) both The Doctor & Peri are infected with Spectrox Toxemia which is slowly killing them. The Doctor finds the antidote (Bats Milk) Carrying Peri & the antidote back to the Tardis he is caught in a mudburst and thrown off his feet spilling most of the antidote. He drags themselves into the Tardis, gives Peri what's left of the Bats milk and dies....



And then comes back with a bad attitude.
The idea with the 6th Doctor was to start him off as being brash, arrogant & annoying and gradually have him soften over time and have people watching this series end by having the public not quite sure if they liked this guy or not.
The first thing he does after his regeneration is to pick out the most disgusting outfit he can find.



Then he calls Peri evil and tries to kill her



While she's being strangled she pulls out a mirror which stops the Doctor from trying to kill her. The Doctor says that his regeneration is going wrong and that he's becoming a danger to himself and to the universe and the only way to sort it out is to land the Tardis on an abandoned asteroid and become a hermit with Peri as 'his disciple'. Needless to say she's not thrilled with this.

Meanwhile a pair of twin boys who are mathematical geniuses are hypnotised and kidnapped by a Professor Edgeworth.



There was a rumour that the 2 boys playing the twins (Who weren't actors and boy does it show) also played the twins in the Matrix movies



Sadly this turned out to be a baseless fan rumour, much like the rumour that Kate Bush wrote an episode. But I'll cover that at the appropriate time.

So the twins are kidnapped, taken to Titan 3, a remote asteroid & set to work calculating the energy required to move planets. Also arriving on Titan 3 is the Doctor. He finds a wrecked ship belonging to Hugo Lang, Lang and his squadron have been charged with finding the missing twins, his whole squadron have died in the crash and he blames the Doctor for doing it. He attempts to kill the Doctor but passes out from the pain before he an pull the trigger.
Peri forces the Doctor to look after Lang and they leave him recover inside the Tardis while they go investigate a bunker that shouldn't be on an uninhabited asteroid. While inside a tunnel entering the bunker they're caught by 2 aliens at gunpoint



They're taken inside the building and the Doctor recognises Professor Edgeworth as Azmael, a time lord and one of his teachers. Azmael pretends not to recognise him and leaves with the twins and the aliens locking the Doctor & Peri inside the bunker with a shitload of explosives.

They just about manage to teleport back to the Tardis in time where they meet up with a recovered Hugo Lang who has decided to raid the Tardis wardrobe and ditch his uniform for a multicoloured bacofoil kimono.



They set the Tardis for the planet Jaconda as Edgeworth/Azmael is the leader of the planet. When they arrive they see a desolate planet with giant slimy slug trails everywhere.
They go to the Palace of Jaconda where the Doctor finds Azmael, eventually Azmael tells the Doctor that the planet has been taken over by Mestor the leader of the gastropods



He is using the twins to calculate how to move the planets in the solar system into a new orbit to power the Gastropods eggs throughout the universe.



The Doctor realises that the plan is doomed to fail and the solar system will be destroyed and they confront Mestor. the Doctor tries to attack him with a bottle of acid but it doesn't work. Mestor takes over the mind of Azmael who forces himself to regenerate. As it's his last regeneration he dies but takes the mind of Mestor with him. Lang decides to stay on Jaconda to help rebuild and the Doctor & Peri go back to the Tardis telling her that he is an alien and that he is the Doctor, whether she likes it or not. Then they both smile at each other.

In it's own context The Twin Dilemma while being a bad story isn't the worst example of 80s Doctor Who but given it came off the back of a great series of Peter Davison stories it is a massive disappointing introduction for the new Doctor. The idea of having the Doctor being unlikeable is a good one but this silly runaround with a load of giant slugs doesn't really give the chance to expore it any deeper. Also a lot of the acting is terrible from the wooden twins to the pantomime style villain Mestor who is essentially just a guy in a slug suit growling threats.
There are a couple of good moments in it, Colin Baker does ego & bluster brilliantly and the scene where he & Peri first step out on the asteroid is hilarious. As is Azmael's death scene where he & the Doctor reminisce about being on Jaconda during happier times, giving us our first look at the 6th Doctor's compassion & good nature.
Doctor Who would face a lot of turbulence & behind the scenes upheaval during Colin Baker's time as the Doctor and quite a few of the stories suffered as a result of that. The Twin Dilemma is a kind of foreshadowing of that.

[Dr_Rez]

Originally Posted by Urban Hat€monger ?

There was a rumour that the 2 boys playing the twins (Who weren't actors and boy does it show) also played the twins in the Matrix movies

That is racist. Not all us white people look the same you know.

[Tristesse]

I love this thread.

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

217: The Gunfighters

Doctor : 1st (William Hartnell)
Companions : Dodo Chaplet (Jackie Lane) Steven Taylor (Peter Purvis)
Series : 3
Originally Transmitted: 30th April - 21st May 1966

Take it from me Doctor Who and westerns don't mix.
However this story does have some semi-interesting facts about it.


.......

Semi-Interesting Fact No 1 - It was William Hartnell's idea to have a story set during the wild west.

Semi-Interesting Fact No 2 - The part of Johnny Ringo in this story was originally offered to Patrick Troughton. He turned it down and Laurence Payne took the role. Ironically Laurence Payne & Patrick Troughton would both appear together in the Colin Baker story The Two Doctors 20 years later.

Semi-Interesting Fact No 3 - The Gunfighters was the first ever attempt by a BBC TV series to do a western.

Semi-Interesting Fact No 4 - The final episode of the Gunfighters had the lowest ever audience appreciation figures for any episode of Doctor Who. Only 30% of the test audience rated it.

Semi-Interesting Fact No 5 - The actor playing Doc Holliday was Anthony Jacobs. His 10 year old son Matthew visited the set during filming. Matthew Jacobs would go on to co-produce The Doctor Who American TV movie in 1996.

Semi-Interesting Fact No 6 - This is the first ever Doctor Who story set in the USA.

Semi-Interesting Fact No 7 - Due to the poor reception of this story the production team decided to stop the use of well known historical figures in stories. Although the Doctor would name drop loads of them throughout the shows history it wasn't until the 9th Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) met Charles Dickens in 'The Unquiet Dead' this would happen again, 39 years after this episode.

.........

The story itself is very very dull. At the end of the previous story Doctor gets toothache from eating some of The Celestial Toymaker's candy. As usual with this period of Doctor Who, the Doctor has no control over the Tardis and is forced to take treatment wherever he lands. In this case Tombstone, Arizona in 1881.

He finds a local dentist who just happens to be Doc Holliday and has the offending tooth removed.



Meanwhile Dodo & Steven find the campest cowboy outfits they can find.



The Doctor also meets up with Wyatt Earp



During the whole 4 episodes of the story there's a really annoying song called 'Ballad Of The Last Chance Saloon' that is played and the end of EVERY single scene.
You can listen to it here, if you want to replicate listening to it during the story just put it on repeat for an hour and a half.


The song is sung by Lynda Baron, most known for her role as Gladys Emmanuel in the sitcom 'Open All Hours'. she also appeared in the 1983 episode 'Enlightenment' as the evil Captain Wrack



Her 2nd in command during that story was Leee John, lead singer of Imagination at the time.



Why am I telling you this now? Because it's a lot more interesting than the story, and I like that song.
Lynda Baron also played Val alongside Matt Smith during the new series too in the episode 'Closing Time'



Anyway there's some guff about the Doctor being used to fool the Clantons
that he is Doc Holliday, but other than that the regular cast are pretty superfluous to the main plot which is that of the Gunfight At The OK Corral between Earp & Holliday's gang and the Clantons. The Doctor attempts to diffuse the situation but nothing becomes of it and they all leave.

It feels like this story is history for the sake of it, it's full of bad clothes, bad American accents and just doesn't work. The sets look pretty good though.And then there's that really annoying song.

The Gunfighters was actually the final story of the original series I ever watched. I didn't own it until it was released on DVD last year. I think I fell asleep every time I attempted to watch it and in the end gave up bothering it was so dull. The DVD extras were interesting though.

[Unknown Soldier]

I'm surprised that this wasn't even lower down on your list, as I know it's often regarded as the worst Doctor Who story ever. Crap story with some shockingly bad American accents by second rate actors.