Knights & Knaves Alehouse

They used to run them long (2 hours?) so you'd be wondering what the fuck is going on half the time if you stumbled on it. 9 out of ten I'd catch the last 10 minutes and they'd be trailing some alien weirdo along with them then all of a sudden...WAUWAUWAUWAUDOODADOO...Fuck, its over!!! Son of a...!!



I always recall some weird black and white episode with moth people freaking me out when I was a kid.

For maybe the first time in my life, I think the exact opposite of Trent. Go with old-who (because new-who spoils you for the old-who, since old-who had the infamous polystyrene rocks, monsters made of bubblewrap and special effects produced on a BBC micro). They made old-who on a budget of about fourteen shillings and sixpence an episode.

You don't need to watch them in any particular order. Each story's pretty self-contained.

Personal opinion: the best overall episode was City of Death. The best scripts were Talons of Weng Chiang, Horror of Fang Rock, Genesis of the Daleks, City of Death, Image of the Fendahl and Ark in Space, but some of those had very ropey special effects you need to look past. (I'd love to see remakes of those.) The best acting was also of this era.

Jon Pertwee always struck me as quite a weak realisation of the Doctor. First, that business with the Venusian Aikido is trying to make an action hero out of a cerebral character, and it looks so inappropriate with a grey-haired old man in a frilly shirt doing it; second, most of the stories are set on Earth in the 1970's which makes it more repetitive than the earlier or later doctors; third, the companions apart from Sarah Jane were annoying (and Sarah Jane doesn't really come into her own until Ark in Space either).

Also, Pertwee suffers by comparison with the doctors on either side (Troughton and Baker were both really excellent).

PapersAndPaychecks wrote: Talons of Weng Chiang,.

A great story. It was so good is spooked one of my girlfriends so much when she was a child she could not bear to watch Dr. Who when she was college age.

PapersAndPaychecks wrote:Personal opinion: the best overall episode was City of Death. The best scripts were Talons of Weng Chiang, Horror of Fang Rock, Genesis of the Daleks, City of Death, Image of the Fendahl and Ark in Space, but some of those had very ropey special effects you need to look past. (I'd love to see remakes of those.) The best acting was also of this era.

City of Death is wonderful. The rest of those solid Tom Baker stories. If one likes Call of Cthulhu, add Pyramid of Mars though the mummy robots are erm, weak. Talons of Weng Chiang is still scary though I slightly prefer Fang Rock despite it being more stagey and with the uh, effects.

Ark in Space dvd has the option to view with redone effects. So you can still watch the original version *or* watch a version with spaceships and such that don't distract the eye in a bad way. Not sure what other dvd releases have had this treatment but I thought it well done to offer both on the same disc.

I'm rather fond of Pertwee stores with the original Master, Roger Delgado. The Dæmons in particular for a Wicker Man type story. Silurians and Sea Devils are somewhat Lovecraftian though admittedly these early appearances are very rubber monstery. Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks had a less cartoony alien, the Draconians, but didn't return to them afterwards. Yeah I'm a UNIT fan, and would have preferred a UNIT show over Torchwood (or more UNIT on Torchwood).

Alternately instead of Pertwee, watch some Qatermass, Avengers or James Bond.

I like the cheesy special effects, especially on the DVDs where you've usually got interviews or running commentary with the special effects guys talking about how they did it ("well, you see, we took a roll of bubble-wrap and then we spray-painted it green..."). To me, it's a huge part of the appeal of the show, and I'd never want to see them redone and replaced with CGI effects -- to me that would be like Ted Turner's "colorization" experiment, or dubbing dialogue into a Buster Keaton movie.

Yeah, I suppose it can be a bit jarring to someone used to more realistic-looking effects, and could interfere with your appreciation of the show if you're trying to imagine that these are actually people traveling through time and space and not just a bunch of actors on a London sound-stage pretending to be people traveling through time and space, but with a sufficiently detached/meta approach to the show the home-made quality of the effects, if anything, heightens my appreciation -- that these scrappy folks were able to do so much with so little, and tell better stories than productions with budgets several orders of magnitude higher.

It's sort of the same argument about why I don't just tolerate but actually like the art of David Sutherland and Tom Wham...

Not being one to be scared away by dated special effects (Harryhausen>ILM by my math) I think I will start with Dr. Who, 4th Ed with Mr. Baker as the doc simply because that's the only guy I can visually recognize as the character. Having discovered another UK series a few years ago (Red Dwarf) and throughly enjoyed it, I expect I'll probably like Dr. Who as well. I also hear the theme song is tits.

- Wheggi

Wheggie, do yourself a favor, start with Jon Pertwee http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7tKAi-lDhM

JP is pure Magic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TxW-oXg ... h_response

Seriously, he's the only doctor that has that professor look while regularly does some fighting in that 70s Star Trek Wild Wild West sort of way... I mean come on he knows Venusian Aikido. Baker is good also, but he's no JP.

Incidentally, if you find you like 1970's/80's BBC sci-fi, it's well worth tracking down Blakes 7.

Unlike Dr Who, you DO need to watch those in order, though.

Wheggi wrote:Not being one to be scared away by dated special effects (Harryhausen>ILM by my math) I think I will start with Dr. Who, 4th Ed with Mr. Baker as the doc simply because that's the only guy I can visually recognize as the character. Having discovered another UK series a few years ago (Red Dwarf) and throughly enjoyed it, I expect I'll probably like Dr. Who as well. I also hear the theme song is tits.

- Wheggi

Harry Hausen rocks. Still he was by no means a low-budget artist - he just worked pre-digital. Models are still used extensively in VFX though, check out Kerner Digital (the non-CG wing of ILM, now a separate company). But Dr Who's effects are by no means in the Harry Hausen league - more the Ed Wood league.

Harry's site is definately worth a visit: http://www.rayharryhausen.com/

But Dr Who's effects are by no means in the Harry Hausen league - more the Ed Wood league.

I don't know Ed Wood was all about the direction (no sense of consistent visual quality but overriding feelings, etc. to say the least.). I'd say Dr Who's visuals are very creative and surprisingly tangible in a sense that it can sometimes actually eclipse fancier stuff.

Episode 1 part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjHaLThqJ9Q

Thanks for the suggestion. I think we are in for a treat.

Q

I first got into BBC sci-fi back in the mid and late 90s when the local BPS station played new and classic Japanese anime alongside Blake's 7, Red Dwarf, and Doctor Who. At first, I tuned in for the anime (I was initially introduced to Japanese animation in the 80s by the guy who also introduced me to AD&D), but quickly I found Red Dwarf to be really funny, and Doctor Who was fun to watch - even when all the background story went over my head. B7 was OK, but I only caught it half-way and at the point where it was not all the interesting (and the ending made me what to go shoot myself for just watching it!). I never really minded all the low budget BBC S/FX as I grew up watching late night creature features and countless other sci-fi TV shows.

I think I'm unanimous when I say that the forth Doctor - whom I called Dr. Bohemian - was the best Doctor - EVER!!! And while I'm at it, I much prefer the classic BBC Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy show over and above the newer Hollywood Hitchhikers movie. And yes, I know Douglas Adams wrote a number of Doctor Who episodes, which they where pretty awesome episodes!

Matt Smith looks like he's been spending too much time in Somalia. Eat a burger for gawd's sake!

geneweigel wrote:

But Dr Who's effects are by no means in the Harry Hausen league - more the Ed Wood league.

I don't know Ed Wood was all about the direction (no sense of consistent visual quality but overriding feelings, etc. to say the least.). I'd say Dr Who's visuals are very creative and surprisingly tangible in a sense that it can sometimes actually eclipse fancier stuff.

Yes that wasn't really a fair comparison. Still Ray Harryhausen was no low-budget guy - he was the big blockbuster effects guru of his day and still highly influential.

I guess a better way of putting it is that old Dr Who is to Harryhausen what the new Dr Who is to Weta or ILM.

Dr Who is strongest when it avoids effects altogether - like the Tardis - if it was functioning is would require modern VFX to make it look real, but by having it broken and stuck in the form of a Police Phone Box - that's sheer genius.

Thanks for the Blake 7 link - I'd never seen it before. It's amazing.

One thing to keep in mind when watching the older shows is the state of special effects esp. pre-Star Wars. For a good chunk of its original run Dr. Who actually had a fairly high effects budget* and pioneered several effects techniques in its day. Sure there's a lot of pasting cardboard, cabbage aliens and wobbly walls, but compare it to the shows on air at the time.

That being said, the effects are just one aspect of the show, which often showed great ingenuity and talent in script writing, directing and acting. At its best, story and character were key.

I've found The Key to Time : A Year by Year Record (Doctor Who) by Peter Haining a pretty good acount of some of the (esp. technical) aspects and challenges of the show.

As for Blake's 7, the more clips I see of it, the more I 1) really kick myself for missing it on PBS in the 80s 2) really want to see it fully now 3) think Farscape is (among many things) a 90s Blake's 7.
Blake's 7 Series 3 - Acceptable in the 80's?

(* ok, maybe for the BBC, though it'd be interesting to compare same year % of budgets and totals for say Star Trek or Lost in Space with Dr. Who)