Watched some more classic stuff over the weakend I hadn't seen before.
Firstly got around to watching the DVD release of The Tenth Planet with the Reanimated episode 4. Gotta say really good episode, I hadn't seen the early Cybermen on screen before only in pictures and I always thought they looked goofy as. Seeing them in motion though looked awesome. The voices came off as really weird at first but I really grew to like them, much better than how the Cybermen were in the 1980's (heck I'd go so far to say that the only good Cybermen are the 60's ones). The costumes did look bulky and over the top but when you realise its the Cybermen at a very early point it kind of works. Although I did see some sticky tap on the headgear holding everything together which was way too noticable.
Hartnell was awesome and knowing now what I do about his health and his commitment as an actor I have to applued him for the performance he put on, its a shame he had to miss one of the episodes due to getting really ill, its a shame they had to write him out of that episode but it also works in well with him regenerating at the end. When he is on screen, he's awesome, the more I see of Hartnell the more I come to like him and his ways.
Not a huge fan of Ben or Polly to be honest, Ben just grates me with the way he talks and Polly just seems like a screamer and doesn't seem to add anything unlike later female companions.
Animation on the final episode was great, its a shame they can't get one studio to do all the animation for the missing episodes, you end up with alot of inconsistency with stuff like this one looking amazing while the animation in The Ice Warriors looks really subpar and almost Flash animation like.
Story was good if not alittle cliché, the whole guy in charge willing to put millions of lives at risk to save his son thing was silly as well as the whole we have a bomb that will destroy Mondas but ruin earth if we do it. I did like that in the end it just came down to the Doctors smarts of just trying to buy time and wait the Cybermen out till their world destroyed itself and they stop functioning. The sets looked great and I really enjoyed it.
Good episode and I would suggest everyone check it out, its a shame the last episode was lost, I'd love to see the whole final serial of Hartnell complete, but for what we have its awesome and a must watch.
Next up I decided to continue with The Cybermen and watch Earthshock, not much to say about this, typical 80's Doctor Who. I'll admit I'm not the biggest Davidson fan going around, he's OK, but not anywhere near my favourite Doctor. Also spoilers ahead if you don't know anything on the episode.
So going into this episode I already knew all the big key points about. Looking at it I imagine had the whole death of a companion not been known to me or the fact it was a Cybermen serial like it was when the episode was shown it would have blown my mind. Like in the series finale to Season 2 of New Who with ZOMG Dalek out of no where. So yeah had those 2 things not been spoiled for me I think I would have enjoyed the serial a heck of alot more than I did.
I look at this and I still scratch my head about why they decided to get rid of Adric, I get that having 3 companions was too much, but why Adric I honestly feel like Nyssa would have been the one to go, she just sort of stands around doing nothing, plus you already have Tegan to be the female companion so just makes more sense to me to have one female and one male companion over 2 females. Minor gripe I know.
Its a really hard episode to describe because I feel not much really happened, The Doctor and Adric have an argument, they go to some tunnels, find army people in tunnels, the usual misunderstanding, robots attack and then off to space ship to confront the Cybermen, fights against Cybermen and then debates with Cybermen about why feelings are useless, foil plot and Adric dies crashing into Earth, plus his death is meaningless. Yes he did manage to make the ship go back and crash on earth at an earlier timepoint thus meaning no people die, but he could have been saved. He had a point to leave with the survivors of the ship but he choose to stay around just to prove how smart he was and it was all for naught. Had he died in a way that caused everyone to be saved then that would have been fine, but everyone was already saved, his death was pointless and just for shock value.
Cybermen where there, didn't really feel like a decent Cybermen story, could have been any random threat to earth. The best Cybermen stories are really the ones where they threaten to take over people and use their bodies for more Cybermen. This was just lets slam a rocket into Earth because we don't like people. The best Cybermen stories are really the early ones, I can't wait for the release of Moonbase next year.
So yeah the more I think about this episode, the less I like it, it was good, but not great, much like most of Number 5s run. I still have Caves of Androzzi to watch, to impress me. At this stage the only serial I like from Peter was Resurrection of the Daleks, which I've seen heaps of times anyway.
Lastly watched more to Colin Bakers Trail of a Timelord, only 3 more to go, I hate Mel already -_- but really like Colin, you can tell he is a good actor and his Doctor is an interesting take, just god awful stories. Will try and finish that up over the coming weekend.
