The JN-T Years

[hushicho]

hought I'd dive over this topic again since I feel an urge for some more JNT ranting after viewing some very good Pertwee storys recently.

Ahh, I suppose there's nothing quite like fueling the fire then is there.

Ah those malnourished bird legs you saw there were a typical example of the brit tourist complete with pasty white skin I used to see so often on hoilday in the english beaches.

*chuckles* Yes, or the typical example of the student actor I think; especially 80s male extras under 20 seem to have that same kind of build, it's quite odd.

I however have strong Scots legs built for tossing cabers.

You know, that's surprisingly fun too.

I could accuse him of being self serving in Timewarp and Revelation of the Daleks where he knownly led Peri into traps. But I guess other factors are at hand sometimes too.

Do you mean 'Mindwarp' or 'Timelash'? Either way, it's hard to use those as in 'Timelash' he was very concerned about Peri and tried everything he could to extricate her from danger. In 'Mindwarp' we can't even be sure that the events in it happened as they did, but at the same time it spoke highly of the Doctor's opinion of Peri that he found her competent enough to accomplish what she needed to do and even used this to his advantage, rather than being hampered by a companion's efforts as happened so often in the past.

In 'Revelation of the Daleks', he did not knowingly lead Peri into a trap, he was investigating just another weird happening. The Doctor really had no way at all of knowing that the Daleks were behind the oddness of Stengos' odd choice to be put in suspended animation; if you don't believe me, look at the first few moments of episode two when he sees a Dalek for the first time, just before he's rendered unconscious by a well-placed hand chop!

In fact, I'd say that 'Revelation' shows best of almost all his first-season stories the high esteem and great concern the Doctor shows for Peri. He tells her to go with Jobel because he wants to put her out of the main danger if there is any...he smells a trap only after the incident in the Garden of Fond Memories, before then it's just something odd and disturbing. Once he's able later to contact her because he knows where she is, he tries to get her to escape at once because he doesn't want her to be involved in such a dangerous situation due to knowing how ruthless Davros and the Daleks are. When he hears the incident with the DJ over the loudspeakers, it's plain to see that the Doctor is overcome with anguish and concern for his dear companion.

Even later, despite the fact that at first Saward and JN-T were determined to get away from the avuncular affection that the Doctor often showed his young friends, we saw the Doctor gently put his arm around Peri and reassure her, as well as apologise about the DJ. Peri, not to be outdone, helped the Doctor destroy a guard Dalek so that they could escape and absolutely refused to leave the final corridor without the Doctor with her, showing that she cared deeply about the Doctor too. Also, without Peri (with help from the DJ), the Galactic President's ship probably would have landed on Necros and the galaxy been plunged into turmoil if the Daleks had decided that he might be expendable!

So honestly I don't think that the sixth Doctor was as altogether callous as you might have me believe. Although he and Peri clashed from time to time, she really was the most suitable foil for his boisterous and over-the-top personality. He thought very highly of her because he knew she could handle herself in most situations, and he counted on this more and more during their various adventures. This, to me, was much more satisfying than how the fifth Doctor and his companions were not that kind of group, that oftentimes he criticised them for attempting to resolve the situation at all in their own way because he had a plan in his mind...even if he hadn't quite formulated it yet and most likely wouldn't until the last five minutes! The sixth Doctor, instead, used Peri's competence to his advantage and helped her blossom (see again 'Revelation of the Daleks' where he takes time out to chat with her about botany) into a more confident and even more competent person.

In many ways the Colin Baker Doctor mirrors the Tom Baker Doctor in temperment and attitude, now this may have been JNT's idea from the start but at least the Tom Baker Doctor displayed a high morale fibre, one we didnt see very often in the Colin Baker version.

I don't think he really intended to mix the Bakers, as it were, but as Colin had expressed that he would like to go at the role longer than even Tom Baker had...Colin really loves Doctor Who...they didn't really evolve him enough to where he could be 'Doctorish' in his own right until a couple of stories in, and never really got his personality down entirely until really the end of the first season.

All that aside, I think the sixth Doctor had one of the highest moral fibres of all the Doctors! He often dealt with a wider and bigger picture than most of the Doctors did, but at the same time he was profoundly aware of the problems in a society that he would have contact with. Most of his stories dealt with societies with problems and, rather than just fix the immediate problem at hand, he often tried to make a difference in the culture itself.

As for the fourth Doctor in comparison, there were plenty of times where he left his companion to fend for him or herself ('The Invasion of Time' comes to mind) because he knew they could. He also wasn't always absolutely attuned to moral fibres, although he could make some biting comments about people's priorities in a grave situation ('Horror of Fang Rock')!

Ackk, thats my thick fingers I dropped the 'O' in trying to type fast....Bad choice of words there really, reminds me of one night when I wished a new member at Koei "Hope you enjoy it here" unfortunately I dropped the "P" by accident. And made a slightly less friendly greeting for a female member, luckly I caught it fast...

(That typing position is still open... )

My rates are still cheap! ;D

I'll have to look out for that book hushicho it sounds like a fun read. And as far as Sylvesters get-up I found it very difficult to take him seriously in later storys that required me to think of him as a powerful, knowledgable man after the mockery he made of himself in season 24, wasnt there a saying about the clothes maketh the man? How very true.

I think initially they tried to make him more like the second Doctor in that the second Doctor often made obvious mistakes and bumbled around at least superficially so that his enemies would underestimate him and then he could just get serious and stop them with ease. What irritates me is that they weren't consistent with their characterisation and decided to change it markedly in his second season and then even more in the third. At least the sixth Doctor had a gradual change; the seventh's was practically overnight, from 'Dragonfire' to 'Remembrance of the Daleks'.

I think the change in attire from a grey coat to a brown one (although the brown one never looked right) was to indicate the more sombre attitude of the second and third season seventh Doctor, and possibly partially to hide that gaudy sweater too!

Honestly though, I think that his attire was an interesting bit of contrast even with my reservations about it. If you underestimate someone by their appearance, you're leaving yourself open to be shown up by this person who isn't dressed how you'd think someone impressive and knowledgeable would dress, so you're bound to make mistakes.

It was a rather sad moment to see the beginning of the family break-up in Dalek Invasion of Earth when Susan left and then Ian and Barbara leaving the next season in The Chase the first Doctor never seemed the same after they all left, it was the end of an era really.

It's very true, the first TARDIS crew was the one that worked best of all with the first Doctor. It was obvious after they left that it never was quite the same, for actors or writers.

[hushicho]

Well the only thing I really found irritating about 'Mel' was her squeaky voice, other than that she was just as good a screamer as Jo Grant (Katy Manning screams weird by the way, I think) or Sarah Jane Smith, well lets not go too far there...
I just wish they had fleshed her background out more, we never saw her place of origin or her arrival on the Tardis, or what she did before she joined the Doctor in his travels. More characterization might have endeared her more to the fans, I guess JNT was feeling lazy that day, or do we blame Saward there?

I thought Mel was a great companion for the sixth Doctor in that he got to care for her a great deal more than Peri but still gave her a lot of latitude as well. I really would've liked seeing a lot more development of the relationship between these two, but...well, thank the idiot BBC controller at the time for pushing Colin out of the part!

I thought the seventh Doctor and Mel got on quite well actually, and I really liked their rapport. It was a shame to me that as we had discussed before, Mel got horned out of some good parts of a story because this writer or that writer wanted to present his ideas for a new companion.

She was competent and spirited, but not so much so that the Doctor wouldn't have to pull her out of a sticky situation now and then. However, her courage is undeniable, especially in serials like 'Delta and the Bannermen' where she faces death more than once unflinchingly.

And Mel's departure had to be the worst going away ever, when will the Doctor learn to put people back where he found them? What ever happened to cosmic purpose in the universe and all that cant interfere with anyone incase they do something important in the future?
Or was that Star Trek I'm thinking of..?

I think that's Star Trek. The Doctor knows the fluid nature of the time stream...that's why it's called a stream after all!...and I think he more or less understands that people have to go where they want to go, that plopping most of them back home wouldn't work. Surely Susan would not have been pleased to be returned to tumultuous Gallifrey, Romana either! And Nyssa refused to leave Terminus, just to name a few.

But yes, Mel should've at least got her things before leaving! That's a bit ridiculous that she didn't, although the Doctor's dialogue during her departure is very poignant and reflects how sad he really is that she's leaving him.

You just have to imagine afterwards that he popped in and left her bags and whatnot in her room on Iceworld before going along to 1963 Earth with Ace.

Sly seemed very ill at ease on the Bike, and after Doctor 3 loved riding motorbikes too, forget something Doctor in a few regenerations? I actually discovered later that Sylvester has quite bad eyesight and cant wear contacts so he was pretty much blind in those scenes.

Well, each Doctor also has his own likes and dislikes, so I don't find it too surprising that the seventh Doctor wasn't so keen on motorbikes as the third one was. We saw in several instances that at times, the Doctor's different incarnations didn't even get along in terms of personality! So it's really not surprising.

But it's even less surprising when you consider that Sylvester was blind as a doorknob during those sequences! I'd be pretty unsettled too in that situation!

Like that awful 'cliffhanger' for episode one of Dragonfire's conclusion? "and here for your entertainment the Doctor will take his 900 year lifes in peril and hang himself over a sheer drop for no particular reason!"

Yes, I was never quite sure about that, but I ended up explaining it away that it was just a dramatic shot and there was a ledge below him that he was trying to get to. This happened frequently in cliffhangers, that we just got a dramatic angle and it wasn't really what was going on exactly!

I was more than slightly annoyed, though, that they never really made it clear what was going on there. And the writer apparently said that you'd have to wait for the novelisation to see what was going on there...the Completely Useless Encyclopedia mercilessly poked fun at this, suggesting that along those same lines, why not just televise the first three episodes of a four-part story, and then include the fourth in the novelisation only?

Have you seen the extended version hushicho? They added about 25 minutes of extra stuff that padded the story nicely, too bad the ending still seems a bit rushed.

I did indeed see that, it's the only version I've actually seen all the way through! I'd like to get the recently-released (in the US anyway) DVD of this, as it has the 'director's cut' movie-style compilation that was actually closer to what had been envisioned for it, with even more footage that never made it into the final version. The ending was a lot more like a fifth Doctor story, with the rushed confrontation of the main villain, who spent most of the time plodding around puzzling out a chess move that would've taken telepathy to figure out!

I totally agree hushicho, I watch Dr Who to see the Doctor develop as a character, not his companions, and although some development is nice, the amount Ace got made me think I was watching the Adventures of Ace, with guest star the Doctor.

It did seem like that, and I was very unfond of it. I really wish she had taken a back seat instead of being such a strong feature character. I like Sophie Aldred, she's very fun and interesting, and I love Sylvester McCoy, but where the series was going was not in keeping with where it had been, even as recently as the sixth Doctor. Would anyone have paid much attention had we been forced to sit through a laborious expedition into Peri's past, with the Doctor goading her on to get over some inconsequential fear that he has pulled out of her history without her knowledge? I think it's about the same here...I dearly love Peri, but if her running around with the Doctor wasn't enough to show me who she is and why she does some of the things she does, then I don't find them pertinent and I just get on with life. With Ace, we really were treated to too much of her past, making her difficult to sympathise with at times.

Hmm I'm getting some strong anti-Ace sentiment here, and it is in some ways quite true, they tried to do a modern day Leela and ended up with something not quite the same, seeing Ace beat up a Dalek with her baseball bat, (even if it was powered up somewhat) was quite degrading to the Daleks fear factor established earlier in the same story, just as watching her bullseye Cybermen with a few gold coins and a length of knicker elastic, brought the silver giants down a notch in their fear factor too, and since when did the Cybermen treat gold like Kryptonite?

Well, I'm not really anti-Ace so much as I'm anti-Ace-centric-stories. She was probably best in season 25, where every story didn't revolve around her and she was still a companion rather than apparently the main character. They stepped across a line in the next season, where everything somehow always had to do, at least partially, with Ace.

With Leela it was more understandable what the Doctor tried to do because she was entirely ignorant of most everything in his world yet he was stuck with her for the time being. With Ace, she was perfectly knowledgeable about the basics and didn't require the kind of attention that the Doctor gave her. It made the Doctor seem either extremely bored or unpleasantly manipulative, and I don't like that aspect of the stories in that season.

What that the Doctor is God and created all time, well frankly it wouldnt suprise me knowing the production team, kinda makes the whole struggle of the Doctor against all evil pointless really if he is that powerful.

Well, Cartmel actually had a lot in store that was total crap, mainly along the lines of what we got in the 'New Adventures'. Thank goodness the show ended when it did, because I didn't want to see Ace in a solo adventure with the Doctor watching from Gallifrey! Eventually I think the Doctor's manipulations were to result in Ace leaving him on not-so-prime terms, unlike the circumstances outlined in the novelisation of 'The Curse of Fenric', where she went off to fulfill the bit of her past-future they saw in 'Silver Nemesis' by marrying a noble ancestor of the Russian officer she had become so enamoured of.

Bah, give me the lost, fallable, in over his head Doctor of old anytime over this superhero infallable god that Cartmel designed.

Yes, I think it's more suspenseful if you feel that the people can get into trouble they might not be able to get themselves out of, rather than thinking 'oh, well, how is the Doctor-god going to superpower his foes this week?'

ha ha I am off overtime now for awhile, so even though I have less money to spend on dvd's games etc I at least now get mostly proper rest.

I now look foreward with great anticipation to your next post, I intend to enter more things in the Dr Who topics this week too, so you may have your work cut out for yourself checking them all out.

I look forward to that too! I hope to hear from you very soon.

Love!
Hushicho