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Watching Second Doctor era
Aug. 28th, 2018 08:08 pmAfter the Twitch Classic Who marathon ended, I've been gearing up to start properly viewing the classic series, with time rather than rushing through 26 years in two months. Because I fell in love with the Second Doctor era hard, that's where I've been starting from. I've been buying DVDs and now have got nearly all the stories that exist enough to have been released on DVD (I still need to get the Power of the Daleks animated reconstruction, and The Seeds of Death), and I also got the Lost In Time DVD set that includes the "orphaned" episodes of the First and Second Doctor eras - the ones where the full story has been lost due to the BBC clearing up its storage in the early 1970s, when they didn't think they might one day actually want to have all of the stories, but some individual episodes have been preserved through one reason or another.
Oh, it figures that I should love that era of Classic Who most that most stories have been lost from. I've recently watched all that we have from the stories where Polly, Ben, and Jamie are the companions, and have concluded that I bloody well adore Polly and Ben as well. Polly especially. She's awesome! I really wish more of their stuff had been preserved!
Other notes about the early Two era: I still adore Jamie, even in the episodes where the script writers clearly had no idea what to do with him because he'd suddenly been added to the regular cast and the scripts had already been written without him. He's wonderful all the time. It's odd watching really early Patrick Troughton because he's still clearly looking for how to play his Doctor, but I love him anyway. He does start to find it by the end of the Ben and Polly era, though. Also, there are so many times in the old series where the Doctor would need his psychic paper.
Also: The Underwater Menace is quite a terrible script. The Moonbase is really quite excellent, and I hope the missing episodes turn up one day, though the reconstructed animations help bridge the gap. And Faceless Ones seemed to be awesome from the existing two episodes, I really wish we had all of it!
Now I'm moving on to the era with Victoria and Jamie as the companions. I just watched Episode 2 of The Evil of the Daleks (the only preserved episode of the first story Victoria appears in), and damn, it's so good, so good, why can't more of it exist? I'm obviously going to have to start hunting down the soundtracks and the novelizations that exist of all this missing stuff. Luckily I realized iTunes has the soundtracks with linking narration on quite affordable prices. But finding some of the novelizations I really want, like The Highlanders (Jamie's first story!!! and the last historical! And I happen to have a thing for failed rebellions and suchlike and I just really want it!), or The Macra Terror, seems to be a bit tricky, because the existing copies that aren't audiobooks are from the 1980s. You can get them second-hand here and there, but a bit more expensive than I'd like. Well, at least some others exist as newer printings or e-books.
But oh, damn it - I knew there were these Doctor Who fans who are pining after the lost episodes from the 1960s and keep fantasizing about lost stories turning up. Now I've become one of them. After all, they found The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear only a few years ago! And there are constant rumours about private collectors having missing episodes. Maybe something will turn up!
Still very much shipping Two and Jamie.
I guess I'm now going to watch the existing episode of The Abominable Snowmen and do some more handwringing about missing episodes. (The Tomb of the Cybermen comes first, but I already rewatched that one earlier, because I had issues with my DVD player and couldn't select episodes, so it didn't make sense to try to watch anything but full stories.) But then I can go onto The Ice Warriors, which at least mostly exists (with animated recon to fill in the rest).
Oh, it figures that I should love that era of Classic Who most that most stories have been lost from. I've recently watched all that we have from the stories where Polly, Ben, and Jamie are the companions, and have concluded that I bloody well adore Polly and Ben as well. Polly especially. She's awesome! I really wish more of their stuff had been preserved!
Other notes about the early Two era: I still adore Jamie, even in the episodes where the script writers clearly had no idea what to do with him because he'd suddenly been added to the regular cast and the scripts had already been written without him. He's wonderful all the time. It's odd watching really early Patrick Troughton because he's still clearly looking for how to play his Doctor, but I love him anyway. He does start to find it by the end of the Ben and Polly era, though. Also, there are so many times in the old series where the Doctor would need his psychic paper.
Also: The Underwater Menace is quite a terrible script. The Moonbase is really quite excellent, and I hope the missing episodes turn up one day, though the reconstructed animations help bridge the gap. And Faceless Ones seemed to be awesome from the existing two episodes, I really wish we had all of it!
Now I'm moving on to the era with Victoria and Jamie as the companions. I just watched Episode 2 of The Evil of the Daleks (the only preserved episode of the first story Victoria appears in), and damn, it's so good, so good, why can't more of it exist? I'm obviously going to have to start hunting down the soundtracks and the novelizations that exist of all this missing stuff. Luckily I realized iTunes has the soundtracks with linking narration on quite affordable prices. But finding some of the novelizations I really want, like The Highlanders (Jamie's first story!!! and the last historical! And I happen to have a thing for failed rebellions and suchlike and I just really want it!), or The Macra Terror, seems to be a bit tricky, because the existing copies that aren't audiobooks are from the 1980s. You can get them second-hand here and there, but a bit more expensive than I'd like. Well, at least some others exist as newer printings or e-books.
But oh, damn it - I knew there were these Doctor Who fans who are pining after the lost episodes from the 1960s and keep fantasizing about lost stories turning up. Now I've become one of them. After all, they found The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear only a few years ago! And there are constant rumours about private collectors having missing episodes. Maybe something will turn up!
Still very much shipping Two and Jamie.
I guess I'm now going to watch the existing episode of The Abominable Snowmen and do some more handwringing about missing episodes. (The Tomb of the Cybermen comes first, but I already rewatched that one earlier, because I had issues with my DVD player and couldn't select episodes, so it didn't make sense to try to watch anything but full stories.) But then I can go onto The Ice Warriors, which at least mostly exists (with animated recon to fill in the rest).
