The latest Character Building toys for Doctor Who will explore the many variations of the classic Doctors in addition to adapting monsters from the BBC Wales series such as the Silurians and Judoon. Personally I picked up a few of the classic Doctors and a Dalek which my 4 year old son enjoys (when he is not gingerly playing with my Konami Eagle Transport replica).
It’s neat to see the William Hartnell First Doctor with his cloak and scarf and a variant of the Paul McGann Eighth Doctor… but which ones are you looking to get?
Via Merchandise.DoctorWho Doctor Who Character Building 2013
- A Refreshed 11 Doctors boxset, TBC
- Blind bags featuring all 11 Doctors (Different to the box sets) with super rares
- Monster Figure packs with Sontaran and Judoon variants
- Doctor / Companion Figure packs
- Dalek Figure packs
- Dalek Skimmer Mini Set
- Cyberman Speeder Mini Set
- New Console room set
- Cyberman Mask
BBC America will be screening classic Doctor Who stories starting with The Aztecs which should raise awareness of the good stuff. I wonder what other stories will be included, but am most interested in seeing how modern viewers respond to the 1996 TV Movie.
The Daily P.O.P. 
I actually didn’t watch Aztecs tonight… I watched the pre-show commentary about Hartnell, but since I have the DVD of the Aztecs I can watch that whenever I want.
I was strangely surprised at how a commentary advertised to be about the origins of the Doctor seemed to be somehow focused on the modern Doctor. I mean, they couldn’t go a few minute without reminding you how the “old Doctor is quite different than the one you are used to”… I had been holding out hope that these documentaries would treat the old Doctors a bit better than to just point out how they were different than now OR how they were the same… pointing out the Doctor’s first “romance” for example… and yes, somehow River song was mentioned in a commentary ostensibly about William Hartnell!
I almost got the impression that the Aztecs was chosen because of how they could point to it as the Doctor’s first “romance”… which leads me to think they probably will be picking other classic Doctor stories over the next 10 months that have some perceived connection to what is liked about modern Who. Of course, McGann only has one choice of story to air 🙂 But that at least means it will be on TV for the first time in probably more than a decade at least.
And we also get to imagine what stories will be picked to air from Eccleston and Tennant. Big money says they will be Moffat-penned stories since it seems like he might be doing the choosing 🙂
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I watched it. Aside from the story itself, which is great, watching it on BBC America was a chore. BBCA infamously airs commercials every 5 minutes. Its irritating enough trying to get through an hour new episode of DW but trying to get through a 4 part story with constant commercial interruption is borderline torture. They didn’t even give us the courtesy of showing the close credits. Instead they do that thing of where they run the credits off to the side while they play a promo for another program. And the promo they played was the Top Gear promo they’ve been playing for the last three f*cking hours! A better idea would be to air the first episodes of the serial one week and the following week air the last two, and keep the opening and closing credits in.
Also they had three captions on screen the entire time the show was running. The first two I can understand: the BBCA logo and a Tardis logo that says 50th on it. But on the bottom left was text reading: You are watching a classic episode of Doctor Who. As if people tuning into BBCA will freak out when they see a show in black and white.
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You know… you probably should have been the marketing person for this endeavor… For the longer multi-part classic Who, it really would have made more sense to run individual episodes complete with opening and closing credits for each… and run it over two weeks. People originally had to wait 6-12 weeks for stories to conclude, so getting half now and half next week would be fine… and it would put Doctor Who on the schedule for 2 weeks out of the month instead of just the one.
My only thing for not watching Aztecs was that I haven’t yet watched my DVD fully… so I try not to re-watch things on TV when I need to watch my DVD and make sure it plays. Otherwise I like that they aired classic Who.
I did think either the actual first episodes OR perhaps the first Dalek story would have been more appropriate for the 50th anniversary.
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@Chris – so they do the credits-squeezing thing over there too? I wonder if it started in your country as well? They do it all the time here, they probably copied you – because God Forbid they’d have the balls to say “No we’re not doing that, it’s stupid and insulting to the programme makers and the audience”! I’d also be pissed off if they ridiculously made a point of reassuring people that it was classic Doctor Who and that’s why it’s in scary black-and-white (there is nothing wrong with your television)! “Ooh, Monochrome, I can’t watch *that*. It be the devil’s work!” So dumb. Speaking of which : Top Gear. Aaargh.
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Yep. But at least in the recordings I’ve seen from BBC the credits and theme song do play but they’re briefly interrupted by the announcer advertising the upcoming show. When the announcement is over it cuts back to the credits. On BBCA last night episode fades out, cut to red screen, plain white text scrolls to the right, Top Gear promo in the center. So the only time the old theme got to play was in the opening credits. It pisses me off that people really aren’t experiencing Classic Doctor Who if its edited into one chunk and constantly interrupted by commercials. It also makes the show’s pacing awkward because you could tell where a cliffhanger was suppose to be.
On the subject of Top Gear, I do find Top Gear entertaining even though I hope Jeremy Clarkson gets run over by public transportation or gets decapitated by a speed camera. Still its incredibly annoying that they ditch the closing credits and closing theme so they can play the same promo they’ve been airing all day.
I wonder what episodes they’ll do for the upcoming Doctors Revisited.
Troughton: Either Tomb of the Cybermen or The Mind Robber.
Pertwee: ? (Maybe The Three Doctors)
Baker: Probably Genesis of the Daleks but that’s a pretty long episode and with commercials its going to be well past midnight when it concludes. Pyramids of Mars is a safe bet.
Davison: Earthshock or Caves of Androzani.
C. Baker: Either Attack of the Cybermen or Revelation of the Daleks
McCoy: Remembrance of the Daleks
McGann: The Movie / Enemy Within (Obviously)
Eccleston and Tennant: willing to bet its going to be the Moffat penned episodes
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@SJV – The Hartnell/First Doctor documentary sounds a real disappointment. Would it hurt them to have respect for the past and treat the show in an intelligent way without constantly referring to the present (River Effing Song, indeed!). After all, no Hartnell era, no Doctor Who at all. You’d hope they’d praise the differences if they had any guts and didn’t consider everyone idiots. But then the BBC seems ashamed of the greatness and variety of its past and now likes to pander to morons.
Hey, at least you’re getting to see some classic Doctor Who, as yet we here in it’s home have got nothing! Boooo!
P. S. I liked your crack about Moffat. 🙂 Heh heh heh.
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Interestingly… they had 3 commentators during the ~40 min “revisiting” show… the actor who played Ian Chesterton (sorry I forgot his name), David Tennant, and Steven Moffat. “Ian” added good commentary, so that was good… Tennant actually has respect for the classic show, so I thought he was in line as well… but Moffat seemed to keep wanting to remind everyone that the old show was “weird”… it was just a strange vibe to me.
You mean this didn’t air in the UK? I thought this was something airing in the UK and the US… I didn’t think these were USA-unique specials.
Oh, and I forgot to mention… in the opening credit montage for the “revisiting” show… they do show images of all the classic Doctors… but for some reason it seemed like the enemy and companion images were not only new Who BUT also seemed to be mostly Matt Smith Who. Curiously, I don’t think I actually remember seeing an image of Matt Smith though… which was odd now that I think about it.
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Peter Purves (Steven Taylor) also contributed. And they did show Matt Smith during the opening credit montage.
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Nope. Not been shown here. *Jealous!* From what you say it’d probably piss me off – well, the “charming” Mr Moffat would – but I’d still like to see it! The man who played Ian is William Russell, nice that he got to contribute, and as much as I may not like his acting Tennant is an enthusiastic fan. Moffat’s attitude is… Odd. It sounds like he’s using “weird” as a pejorative, when in fact Doctor Who’s “weirdness” is what made it great. The things Moffat says make it appear that he’s frightened of appearing different or that he’s pretending to be decades younger than he is, so he has to call older Who “weird” so as not to seem as if he liked it too much. Strange from a fan. Weird is good!
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Chris, ugh that credits thing *is* terrible. They don’t tend to do that with Doctor Who over here, just every other programme!
Admission Time: I used to watch and quite like the relaunched Top Gear but it got bored with it even as more people began watching, and Clarkson became unbearable on it. Also, the knowledge of how disgusting he was off-screen meant it was like watching a smug insensitive Satan with no dress sense! I’ve watched it rarely for three years. Rant ends. And *breathe*…
Man, those fates you envisage for Clarkson would be poetic justice!
Why do they have to screw around with the credits like that? It serves no purpose. I hope they choose some of the better Doctor Who serials in Doctors Revisited for you and the rest of the audience. Great as Genesis of the Daleks is, it’d be miraculous if they chose *another* great Tom Baker story rather than the most obvious.
Anyone have any preferences for the Modern Who stories they should choose? As much as Moffat gets on my nerves I think The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances would be a good choice for the Ninth Doctor story, despite its flaws. I imagine it’ll be an RTD story though.
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What’s a shame about Top Gear is that they have a amazing crew and the stuff they do on the show is inventive. But it all goes down the tube when Jeremy Clarkson opens his mouth and says something stupid and his little toadie Richard Hammond laughs.
For the 9th Doctor, if Empty Child isn’t used then I imagine it will be The Parting of the Ways. For 10, we can rule out Blink due to it being a Doctor-Lite episode.
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I forgot about Purves… sorry about that! I guess I blinked with Matt Smith’s image flew by.
My gut says that Moffat is picking the episodes OR has a final veto… so I would bet on classic stories that somehow tie-in to things he has done… He introduced Aztecs and was quick to point out how it was the first time the Doctor was almost romantic… as if to say “see, I only did what the old series did.” So… where he has more episodes available (obviously only one choice for McGann and only a few to choose from for Troughton) I expect him to choose episodes that contain some element easily comparable to modern Who.
It would be kind of neat though… if we got to see Three Doctors from Pertwee, Five Doctors from Davison, and Two Doctors from Colin Baker… that would seem an appropriate thing to do given the celebration of the anniversary, showing previous celebratory stories. IF they did that, then probably Genesis of the Daleks from Tom Baker… and then I bet something like Dragonfire or another part of McCoy + Ace since it looks like Moffat has borrowed a lot of ideas from that period of Who.
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I nearly forgot… For Eccleston, probably Empty Child/Doctor Dances.. for Tennant I’d bet money on Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead because of River Song!
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Maybe Remembrance of the Daleks if they want a good 7th Doctor story? Or else something like companion-centred such as Curse of Fenric or Survival because of the influence on – and likeness to – Modern Who?
You had to do it didn’t you, SJV, you had to mention the Song woman?! I would hope they wouldn’t choose Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead as that was seen as the weakest of Moffat’s 8th Doctor stories – but as River runs through it… If they chose a Moffat perhaps it’d be The Girl in the Fireplace?
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I have only seen a few of the 7th doctor episodes but Remembrance was very done. They say Mccoy’s first season was pretty bad but starting with that story they reinvented his doctor from the serial onwards. Curse of Fenric was also good. Some I have see Ghost Light and Survival. Any other recommendations?
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The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is weird and good with some (slightly nasty) satire thrown in. Ghost Light is marvellously strange with nice characterisation for Ace; it’s also slightly confusing because they cut it to fit three episodes though it’s actually a fairly simple story about evolution and change with some fairly clumy but sometimes apposite satire. The dvd clears things up as you probably know.
Season 24 has its flaws (and the opening story is pretty embarassing apart from Kate O’Mara’s camp Rani) but is a refreshing change compared to the preceding season. The characterisation of the Doctor is all over the place but Paradise Towers, Delta and the Bannermen, and Dragonfire have good things among those that don’t work.
Season 25’s Remembrance is great and does see the emergence of a stronger seventh Doctor character. Happiness Patrol has worthwhile elements, and I include the Kandyman in those! Silver Nemesis is unintentionally funny at times, but some choice moments aside feels like a weak Remembrance knock off when it’s not being nuts!
Check out Dailypop’s very good reviews for many of these stories which also have some fine comments – especially from me ;).
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Great run down! I have a pending review of Ghostlight kicking around. And I agree that Silver Nemesis is hilarious. Because of his accent, throughout most of the story it sounds like the aged Nazi war criminal is anxiously searching for Aloe.
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Yes, the actor playing DeVries, Anton Diffring, had played so many nazis he was probably in a daze! “How shall I play *this* one. Ach, who cares!” I vaguely remember he took the role for a particular reason, it may have been to do with watching football, er, I think… I also seem to recall he died not long afterwards, sadly (hey, I’m not blaming Silver Nemesis!). And what was all that business with Dolores Gray in the car?!
Looking forward to the Ghost Light review.
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