Look, what a nice rabbit hole!

[auroracloud]

This morning I finished listening to the latest weekly episode of Radio Free Skaro (a Doctor Who podcast), and in the news segment they mentioned a thing called Box of Delights, which apparently is a children's fantasy series from the 1980s which is something of Big Thing and stars Patrick Troughton as one of the leads. (The reason they mentioned it on the podcast is that the soundtrack is being released.) I felt curious and looked up what this is, and oh dear, it really sounds like something I would love to watch, even if Patrick Troughton looks very different in it than he does in Doctor Who, and why have I never heard of this before anyway?

I looked it up on Zoom.co.uk (I recently found that website when I looked for a way to find Doctor Who things at a reasonable price without buying them from Amazon) and they have it, and then I clicked on the Patrick Troughton tag there... And it kindly gave me all the Patrick Troughton DVDs they have. In addition to much Doctor Who, there's also a bunch of other TV stuff he made over the decades, including a lot of historical adventures, and ooh, look, I could watch him in a Scarlet Pimpernel adaptation! And apparently he's been in some Count of Monte Cristo adaptation as well - hmm, I've managed to steer clear of Monte Cristo adaptations so far as I really like the book, I wonder if that will hold... And look at all these other adventures and historical dramas and such...

... Oh, what was that phrase about rabbit holes... Something about falling down them...

I should probably get recommendations.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

so I'd probably manage to get my brain around him not being evil. Though he certainly was one of the most memorable people from the stuff I did watch.

It's not so much that, as that he's always evil in everything! So finding a good Roger Delgado is a rare TV event! Bless him, because as the Master, you always want to believe him when he pretends to be good, even though that never ends well. THree isn't my favourite era, either, but they used to keep showing some of them when I was a teenager, and Roger Delgado is just marvellous & it was v sad about his death.

[auroracloud]

Some actors just get shoved into certain types of roles, don't they? (It reminds me of a Finnish actor from the 1950s and thereabouts, who was always getting cast in bad guy roles, and he told in an interview about how some girls who met him on the street turned and ran away. I'm sure that's happened to other actors like him...)

Yeah, I get the impression that the Third Doctor era is something that used to be shown a lot when people were young. I'm probably eventually going to give it a proper chance, because I recognize that the Twitch marathon wasn't exactly ideal - the week after I'd just fallen in love with Two era, and was sad it wasn't still Two era, was probably not the best timing considering how extremely different the eras are. I'll probably check out the Liz Shaw episodes at some point, anyway, because I didn't really see any of her, and I'd probably like her. But it would be fun to see more Delgado, since he's so iconic. :-D

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, season 7 with Liz and the Brig is very good! Long serials, but interesting ones, I think. It isn't my favourite, but when I say the BBC used to repeat them - they showed a handful of classic Who serials when I was a teenager in the 90s, 1 for each Doctor, but then they just did about four Pertwee serials and two more Tom Baker ones, and none of the others, and that was very frustrating! So I still have a grudge against Three for that. But we didn't get a lot of him, either. The main way to get Classic Who back then was just Target novelisations until the videos and DVDs became more available, and in the US, it tended to be Tom Baker that the local stations re-ran, not Jon Pertwee.

I think they're often popular with people because it's more grounded on Earth, with the UNIT 'family' of Three, Jo, the Brig, Mike and Benton, plus the Master turning up every other episode, so it's cosier and more formulaic, and there's some quite good character continuity & growth across the seasons & I can get that. I prefer the more experimental eras, though! But there is no denying that the UNIT family is pretty great at times. Roger Delgado always improves things, though!

[auroracloud]

I reckon Liz would be a companion I'd enjoy, and possibly I'd be able to tolerate Pertwee a little better with her. But in the Twitch marathon they ran right after the end of the Two era, of course, and I was still reeling from War Games and just couldn't, for the first few days.

But ugh, only mainly running Pertwee serials! I'd have a grudge against him in that case, too - though I already do simply for the way he played the Doctor (he's just so... patronizing and patriarchal and no fun, everything I don't look for in the Doctor, and I wasn't exactly impressed with Pertwee's acting skills). Yeah, I've heard about how much things revolved around the novelizations for most fans. Thank goodness for modern technology in that regard! I'm quite lucky coming into the fandom now. I don't know if they ever showed the Classic series in Finland. I have seen, in my local library in the 1990s, something that must have been the Finnish translation of "Doctor Who and the Autons". So maybe they did show some parts of the series at some point, but not when I was watching, I think I'd remember...

Heh, sounds like people like the Pertwee era for exactly the reasons I don't! I don't want earth-grounded stories, I want the Doctor to go around in time and space! I'm always complaining about the modern Who spending too much time in the 21st century Earth, too, and why are all the Companions from 21st century England... And I really disliked the UNIT setting. The UNIT are fine in small doses, but I even like the Brig better with any of the other Doctors. I just really dislike military settings, especially the old-timey sort where they're all men, and the script can mostly fit in just one female character who has more than three lines. And I couldn't stand Jo, she's such a bimbo. Having her as the only representative of the female sex in most stories made it worse, it felt like the show was purposefully disparaging my sex. Watching her with Three, after Zoe and all the other 60s companions I really liked, felt like having a used wet dishcloth thrown against my face. Repeatedly. So I wasn't exactly one for the "UNIT family", though of course I probably didn't get the same sense of family about it as someone who watched all the serials. I stopped when I no longer had Troughton to look forward to. :-P

Sorry, rant over. Three has the distinction of being the only Doctor to date that I don't like at all, and Jo the only companion... Some day I'll give that era a new chance, but it's not high on my list of priorities to watch. Hope I'm not offending anyone - I lack the childhood nostalgia many people have for that era, and it coming directly after the Two era in the marathon probably made its chances worse!

[thisbluespirit]

I lack the childhood nostalgia many people have for that era, and it coming directly after the Two era in the marathon probably made its chances worse!

I understand that you dislike it, but I don't think its popularity at this point is really due to childhood nostalgia! As I said, it really wasn't that available to most current DW fans at that age - generally people came in with one wave of New Who or the other and latched onto whichever Classic era they happened to prefer when they tried it. And no matter how unaccountable it seems, some people like Three! I hang around with an awful lot of them!

Jo is not Liz, and that step-down was undeniably sexist, but she's also not a bimbo - and an awful lot of her quirkiness is straight up Katy Manning herself, as you'll see if you catch any interviews or commentaries with her at any point.

Though I'm sure you will be delighted to see that whenever there is a multi-Doctor episode, Two and Three don't get on much, and bicker a lot!

[auroracloud]

No, I didn't mean it's the only reason, but I meant it may factor into it. And I know there are people who genuinely like Three, and they may even have good reasons for it - maybe I just haven't seen those episodes which bring out the good things about him, or for whatever reason X I'm not receptive to interpreting those things in the same way (I've really got a big problem with very patriarchal men of a certain type, so I might well have shut down to whatever else was there). Sorry if that came across as thinking people only like him for childhood nostalgia - I only meant to say I feel like that may be one thing that makes people predisposed to view him differently than I do. I don't know other Classic Who fans in RL, but I listen to a lot of podcasts, and there are several people among the podcasts I listen to who like the Third Doctor. And I do see people writing fics about him so they probably don't do it because they all hate him! Also he probably wouldn't have played the Doctor for so many years if he'd been totally unpopular. I slept crappily last night, so I'm probably wording myself all badly, and I apologize if I say anything bad as a result.

Also among the podcasts many people keep saying Jo is not stupid, but I can't help that every single time I tried to watch the stories with her and Three, she came across as really ditzy to me, in a way that made me really uncomfortable. And I genuinely went into it expecting to like her! I'd heard people praise her, and I wanted to like her. But I tried, and I just couldn't. Maybe there are stories where she's subtly intelligent underneath that flightiness, but I wish it came through enough that I had managed to pick up on it during the episodes I watched when I tried. As it was, it seemed to me that even when the script actually had her do something clever - I don't remember the details, but in The Three Doctors there was a point when she pointed out a solution while the men were busy bickering, and that should have been a good moment - she still came across to me as a ditz, in the way she said it etc. So I guess I just don't like Katy Manning's acting. The fandom seems to think she's nothing short of a goddess, so I may be excessively touchy about it...

I think a part of the problem is that the sort of humour that was going on with her is exactly the sort of humour that doesn't work for me. I was having really strong flashbacks to my childhood in the late 1980s and very early 1990s, and the kind of TV programmes people found funny then, and I'd just be "...but what are they laughing at? That was just annoying and boring!" I actually believed for some years that I somehow didn't have a sense of humour, and I was sad about it, but later it dawned to me that actually I just had a different sense of humour. (1980s Finland was a tad monocultural. It took me a while to be exposed to other sorts of humour that worked on me.) So, uh, anyway, I react a little strongly against that sort of humour because of personal history. Maybe there are other, better moments I didn't see. But I did try, only I didn't feel the show was giving me a reason to keep trying. :-( So I got back when the Fourth Doctor started, and from that on I liked everyone at least to some degree. (Well, I'm reserving judgement on Adric until I see more of him.)

But yes, I did find it utterly delightful in The Three Doctors when Two and Three bickered incessantly. It was very satisfying. :-)

[thisbluespirit]

But yes, I did find it utterly delightful in The Three Doctors when Two and Three bickered incessantly. It was very satisfying

LOL, good! And it's fine when things aren't to someone's taste, obviously, and I can totally get Katy Manning's style being alienating. It is a very particular thing! Jo's not my favourite, but I do have a fair amount of fondness for her, and some people - as you've obviously come across - adore her. Which is also annoying when you don't, but it takes all sorts. :-)