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Doctor Who

Started by jazmunda, July 15, 2013, 12:43:20 AM

jazmunda

I noticed in another thread that we have a few Whovians here.

I thought this would be a good place to discuss the good Doctor considering this year marks the 50th anniversary of the show.

So I guess anything goes here. You can tells us who your Doctor is, your favourite companion, favourite story? When did you first watch the series or your earliest memories of it? Who is your favourite villain/monster? Did you hide behind the sofa?

Do you have any stories in relation to the fandom of Who such as meeting the actors? Or any other Doctor Who related stories.

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I'll kick things off.

Tom Baker is my Doctor but I have a soft spot for the first 3 as well. I love watching classic Who stories but I can see how the pacing of them just doesn't suit the modern era. I have enjoyed the rebooted series and an eagerly anticipating the announcement of the new Doctor.

My favourite companion is Sarah Jane Smith but I must admit I had a crush on Leela and Romana I.

My first memory of Doctor Who is the episode Planet of the Spiders which was John Pertwee's final episode. The Spiders on the backs and the chanting were so creepy and gave me nightmares for weeks. I had no idea that it was the Doctor's final episode and that he was going to be replaced and that this wasn't the first time this had happened. I was mortified and didn't want to accept it.

I must admit the Daleks are my favourite monster and I used to watch the first 1960s movie over and over as a kid. I also used to watch the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors on loop too.

I met Tom Baker in the late seventies or very early 80s when he came to Australia and appeared at a shopping centre. I had a photo of him which my folks still have in an album somewhere (I must reclaim it someday). He put his iconic hat on my head and wrapped some of his scarf around my neck too. I asked him if he came here in the TARDIS, as only 5 or 6 year old would, and he said yes and pointed over to a door that was marked staff only put his index finger to his lips and said "Sssshhhhhh". That literally made my year. To this day whenever I visit that shopping centre I still look at that door marked Staff Only and wonder ........

My other semi Who related story was when I was 8 or 9 we used to ride our bikes all over the neighborhood. There was this one lane way behind some houses that we used to ride down. One day my brother pointed out the big blue door that was visible behind someone's fence along with other junk and told me that that was one of the TARDIS' doors. I of course completely believed him. It was even still there up until last year. They must have had a clean out because the TARDIS door that I used to drive by even as an adult just for nostalgia's sake is no longer there.

Anyway enough from me over to you.

HorrorRetro

My first memory of the Doctor is watching it on PBS with my grandma when I was a toddler.  Jon Pertwee was the Doctor then.  We'd watch Doctor Who during the afternoon and Night Gallery late at night together.

Off the modern-day Doctors, David Tennant has been my favorite.  He was just quirky enough to really make it work.  I was not able to get into Matt Smith at all. 

We've been catching some of the vintage episodes with Tom Baker on the local PBS on Saturday nights.  We're watching The Hand of Fear episodes now.

Daleks speaking German are terrifying to me.  :o   

Daleks Speaking German



My family and I are real newcomers... our first Doctor was Christopher Eccleston.  I think our favorite was David Tennant (he had more gravity than newbie Matt Smith).  I got a little tired of Daleks, quite honestly.  They strike me as slightly beefy R2D2's.  I thought the stone angels were pretty freaky.  I also like the WWII episode where the little boy in the gas mask kept asking, "Are you my mummy?"

I like Rose Tyler.  Didn't like the ever-bossy Donna Noble.

We watched about the first half hour of the first Dr. Who episode -- gosh, that seemed dated and dull by comparison.

I suppose to lend a little context, I should say my favorite science fiction shows of all time are Star Trek, Farscape, and Eureka.  I liked the full ensemble casts, the growing, evolving character development, the exploration of big ideas, etc.

Shouldn't YorkshirePud be weighing in on this thread?


Favorite Doctor: hard to say...Tom Baker started well and then turned the series into a joke in his later years.


My first Doctor Who episode I remember was Terror of the Zygons.


Best companion: Leela


Best episodes: I liked most of the Tom Baker stuff where Philip Hinchcliffe went for the Victorian horror aspect of the show.


I like the new shows in general. Tennant was too angry for me but I thought both Eccelston and Matt Smith did a fine job.

Did anyone used to read the old black and white Dr Who comics? I thought those were quite good (well it was the early 80s)

Quote from: West of the Rockies on July 15, 2013, 04:36:48 PM

Shouldn't YorkshirePud be weighing in on this thread?


We need him for All Creatures Great and Small
(Well I All Creatures did have Peter Davison in it)

Sardondi

Not a huge fan, but I think I'd rank them....
Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor)
John Pertwee (Third Doctor)
Matt Smith (?! Such a change in personality!) (Eleventh Doctor)

Eddie Coyle

 
      Was that the Space People show with the British talking people(sounding all gay and smart) on the PBS? Never sawed it. Mama's Family on WTBS is more my thing.

Matt Smith and Pat Troughton are my two favorite Doctors in all the years of the show, followed by Pertwee, Hartnell and Eccleston, but then I swear Matt's channeling Troughton a lot. I have a soft spot in my heart for the very first companion, Susan Foreman, and also for Leela, Romana, Amy Pond, Donna, Clara and Adric. And, oh my, the Brig! Brigadier Lethridge-Stewart: "Chap with the wings, five rounds rapid!"


Yes, you might say I'm a fan and have been almost all my life.  ;D


My favorite monsters: Daleks, of course, and the Silurians old and new, the Weeping Angels and Whisper men freak me the heck out, but the old, classic claw handed monsters are still the best, in my book.


The Doctor Who Proms was held on Saturday with a lot of the really nice music for the current series written by Murray Gold and some old ones as well from the classics. It's still available for the next couple of days on BBC3radio.


Quote from: jazmunda on July 15, 2013, 12:43:20 AM[/font]I met Tom Baker in the late seventies or very early 80s when he came to Australia and appeared at a shopping centre. I had a photo of him which my folks still have in an album somewhere (I must reclaim it someday). He put his iconic hat on my head and wrapped some of his scarf around my neck too. I asked him if he came here in the TARDIS, as only 5 or 6 year old would, and he said yes and pointed over to a door that was marked staff only put his index finger to his lips and said "Sssshhhhhh". That literally made my year. To this day whenever I visit that shopping centre I still look at that door marked Staff Only and wonder ....
[/font]


That is the best story ever. I've never been lucky enough to meet any of them, although they filmed in NYC last year but there were crowds of hundreds of people so I didn't bother making my way down to Central Park. I kind of regret that, though.

onan

Quote from: Eddie Coyle on July 15, 2013, 08:48:19 PM

      Was that the Space People show with the British talking people(sounding all gay and smart) on the PBS? Never sawed it. Mama's Family on WTBS is more my thing.


Pearls before swine, Eddie. Pearls before swine.




I could never get into Dr. Who. Mostly because, I didn't see it until the late 80's. But the shows I saw were from the 60's I think and god awful production values. So I never gave it another thought.


My daughter thinks it is the best thing ever.


The only British Sci Fi I always recommend is Misfits. That show got it right every time.

valdez

     Started watching it (on demand/season 7) a few weeks ago.  Hooked.  Matt Smith Rocks.  Is that how it is?  Your "first Doctor" becomes and remains your favorite?  Good writing.  No sense going back and trying to catch up, in that there's 50 years of this stuff.  Just move forward, with a little bit of backwards thrown in for good measure.


time lord

jazmunda

Quote from: West of the Rockies on July 15, 2013, 04:36:48 PM

Shouldn't YorkshirePud be weighing in on this thread?

I'm surprised that YorkshirePud and Usagi haven't responded to this thread.

Yorkshire pud

Quote from: jazmunda on July 17, 2013, 02:07:10 AM
I'm surprised that YorkshirePud and Usagi haven't responded to this thread.


Not a big Who fan; I watched it as a kid and hid behind whatever was to hand (vaguely remember Troughten; and later Pertwee). I can't get into cult things.. I liked Star Trek and Thunderbirds, but didn't get too wrapped up in them. I read above 'British talking'..No such animal I'm afraid.. ;D

Sardondi

Quote from: Yorkshire pud on July 17, 2013, 03:23:14 AMNot a big Who fan; I watched it as a kid and hid behind whatever was to hand (vaguely remember Troughten; and later Pertwee). I can't get into cult things.. I liked Star Trek and Thunderbirds, but didn't get too wrapped up in them. I read above 'British talking'..No such animal I'm afraid.. ;D
That poses an interesting question. In American tv, film and theater, the use of British accents (or sometimes a throwback to the extreme Philadelphia Main Line accent of Grace Kelly) is a shorthand way of signaling urbanity, education, formality or old wealth. So what do you guys do? The same thing? Is that just so obvious that it never arises, due to the remnants of the old class system with its built-in answer of the upper class Southern (England) accents still used by the Eton/Harrow-and-thence-to-Oxford/Cambridge crowd?

And that raises another question - I'm amazed at how good so many British actors - almost all of them young - are with American accents (and by "American" I mean the "American tv accent", and certainly not the American South and Southwestern voices, which are routinely massacred and desecrated by even American actors). I don't think that Americans are likewise nearly as expert in copying British voices. Is this the general view as well on your end? (Forgive me if I may have asked something like this before - I can feel my brain slipping into decrepitude daily.)

Yorkshire pud

Quote from: Sardondi on July 17, 2013, 07:17:05 AM
That poses an interesting question. In American tv, film and theater, the use of British accents (or sometimes a throwback to the extreme Philadelphia Main Line accent of Grace Kelly) is a shorthand way of signaling urbanity, education, formality or old wealth. So what do you guys do? The same thing? Is that just so obvious that it never arises, due to the remnants of the old class system with its built-in answer of the upper class Southern (England) accents still used by the Eton/Harrow-and-thence-to-Oxford/Cambridge crowd?


I know what you mean, and it does drive us mad that because of what we call BBC English (as was, less so now) has given the impression to the world we all sound like Noel Coward/ Trevor Howard/ Basil Rathbone/ Celia Johnson et al.. I think it's largely because the drive to make received pronunciation with a clipped accent a staple requirement too get a job in anything that involved radio announcements (They also wore Dinner suits--on radio!) reinforced the false impression we all sounded like that. It didn't help (and there are still remnants  of that ) that the BBC was London centric. If it didn't happen within a 50 mile radius of Buck house, it didn't happen. The woman (name escapes me) who was in Frazier is from Manchester; her accent is quite a typical Manchester accent. But of course, those with breeding (ahem) send their sprogs for elocution lessons so they can speak proper like what they do. Rounder vowels, sharper consonants, and no dropped H's!


It's funny really, because a few years ago I went to my former school's leaving year reunion; and one woman I knew at school as a real masher of English; had the most beautiful voice! But then her job was in PR, so I guess it came with the career. 



Quote
And that raises another question - I'm amazed at how good so many British actors - almost all of them young - are with American accents (and by "American" I mean the "American tv accent", and certainly not the American South and Southwestern voices, which are routinely massacred and desecrated by even American actors). I don't think that Americans are likewise nearly as expert in copying British voices. Is this the general view as well on your end? (Forgive me if I may have asked something like this before - I can feel my brain slipping into decrepitude daily.)


The bloke in the Sherlock Holmes films made by Madges ex? He made a decent fist of an English accent so does the one in Pirates of the Caribbean (I'm terrible for names of actors). Hugh Laurie plays it well in House apparently? But then he went to Cambridge, so a pretty clever bloke anyway. Doing blues now..Quiet well received.
Dick Van Dyke murdered any pretence of a Cockney (or indeed any English region) in Mary Poppins. Not many English people can do a good Welsh accent.. Irish is dependent on where you're aiming it..South is much softer and mellifluous than say, Belfast. Scottish accent again; going for a heavy Glaswegian (incomprehensible) or the light lilting gentle highlands up to Aberdeen. Youtube I'm sure will have demonstrations..look up Geordie.. (Newcastle)!   

SR-71

I enjoy dr who. Its one of the best shows on this side of the milky way.

I have been a Who fan since the 80's watching the whole (what was saved of it  from the beginning) on an Orlando PBS station and recording the lot on my ole top loader. I liked Tom Baker the best and hated the 6th Doctor  for his constant cruelty to his companion Perry.
I thought Tom Baker was excellent in Nicolas and Alexandra as Rasputin. Pertwe had a small part in A Funny Thing Happened on the way to The Forum.
I liked that they edited each story  in a continuum rather than as a serial. When I visited my mom in NC the PBS station played Who as a serial.

Usagi

David Tennant is my Doctor.  He’s hot and has charming freckles.  I’m comfortable with this answer.  Why?  Doctor Who is pure fluff. ;)

Actually, I’m not really a Whovian per se; my son is.  He’s been Doctor Who obsessed.  He’s so much of a completionist that he’s been listening to the audio recordings of the lost episodes from the sixties that the BBC erased.  We’ve bought him a bow tie, suspenders, and a tweed jacket for his ninth birthday next month.   He’ll be wearing that while going to see Pacific Rim in Imax 3D â€" tell me that’s not a dork.   He’d like a gaudy scarf, too, but maybe next year. He’s also trying to build his own Dalek.  I’m curious how this is going to go…

In any case, Doctor Who has become just a part of my normal daily life at this point.  Dalek’s are, of course, swell.  (Love the “Exterminieren” clip, HorrorRetro.)  My favorite Dalek line: “Daleks have no concept of EEEEEE-LEGANCE.”

Actually, I like Sontarans, but they don’t make for nearly as cute of an avatar.

By the way, Jo is my favorite companion.  “The Green Death” is just so perfectly early seventies.

Usagi

Quote from: Yorkshire pud on July 17, 2013, 03:23:14 AM

Not a big Who fan; I watched it as a kid and hid behind whatever was to hand


You mean it's not always a sofa?

HorrorRetro

Quote from: Usagi on July 17, 2013, 11:11:53 AM
David Tennant is my Doctor.  He’s hot. 

^^What she said.   ;)

Tom Baker era for me.  The more recent incarnations are too well produced, if that makes any sense.  The charms of the older show were the spartan set designs, awful special effects, and poor audio. It had a campy claustrophobia.

Re: accents, linguistics has always fascinated me, and it was very close to my area of study as an undergraduate (I was a math nerd, then realized all the skirts were in psychology classes, hence my odd dual focus). York/Sard have mentioned who does accents well or poorly, and I've wondered how one might quantify the "closeness" of an approximation, i.e., what makes an impression good or bad.  Can speech be broken down into components, and does high-quality mimicry simply match more of these?  I suspect pronounciation of key phonemes is #1, as that is what seems to most reliably discriminate regional accents in the USA, but also speech cadence and the degree to which vocal range changes from syllable to syllable would be important.

I recently tried a crude test of this idea on a native Korean colleague.  After several years of enjoying films made in South Korea, I had a feel for the language.  Not knowledge, mind you, but "feel" - couldn't speak a lick of it (aside from a few high frequency phrases learned by association), but could "sing" the melody.  So I rattled off a sequence of nonsense sounds to my colleague, attempting to match both the cadence of a neutral emotional state, as well as the vocal range shifts typical of Korean.

Amusingly, I was told that it wasn't too shabby an impression of a Korean schizophrenic (disorganized subtype).

Yorkshire pud

Quote from: Flaxen Hegemony on July 17, 2013, 11:27:06 AM

Re: accents, linguistics has always fascinated me, and it was very close to my area of study as an undergraduate (I was a math nerd, then realized all the skirts were in psychology classes, hence my odd dual focus). York/Sard have mentioned who does accents well or poorly, and I've wondered how one might quantify the "closeness" of an approximation, i.e., what makes an impression good or bad.  Can speech be broken down into components, and does high-quality mimicry simply match more of these?  I suspect pronounciation of key phonemes is #1, as that is what seems to most reliably discriminate regional accents in the USA, but also speech cadence and the degree to which vocal range changes from syllable to syllable would be important.



Have you heard of Michael Sheen? He's a Welsh actor. He played Tony Blair in 'The Deal', 'The Queen' and 'The Special Relationship'.. also played the famous (if you're a football fan over about 45) manager Brian Clough in 'The Damned United', but his capture of David Frost in 'Frost and Nixon' is exceptional.. All completely different voices. In interviews, Sheen says he tries to get the essence rather than an exact facsimile. Maybe a good mimic of regional/national accents is putting the idea into the listener,and the listener just joins the dots and it sounds real?

Sardondi

Quote from: Yorkshire pud on July 17, 2013, 07:51:33 AM...Hugh Laurie plays it well in House apparently? But then he went to Cambridge, so a pretty clever bloke anyway. Doing blues now..Quiet well received....
Actually, I think it's an American accent that Hugh Laurie does so well. Damn well apparently, because, uh, isn't he British?

Quote from: Yorkshire pud on July 17, 2013, 12:03:00 PM

Have you heard of Michael Sheen? He's a Welsh actor. He played Tony Blair in 'The Deal', 'The Queen' and 'The Special Relationship'.. also played the famous (if you're a football fan over about 45) manager Brian Clough in 'The Damned United', but his capture of David Frost in 'Frost and Nixon' is exceptional.. All completely different voices. In interviews, Sheen says he tries to get the essence rather than an exact facsimile. Maybe a good mimic of regional/national accents is putting the idea into the listener,and the listener just joins the dots and it sounds real?

Unfortunately, my familiarity with Mr. Sheen is limited to his ex-girlfriend, Kate.  :)

I think you're spot on when you talk about joining the dots.  If my memory serves, there was a famous mimic that once said the key to doing imitations is selecting three very prominent vocal characteristics of the person and then absolutely perfect them.  The listener will be awed by these, and fill in the blanks for everything else.  Our brains are wired for efficiency, so the idea would make sense.

Yorkshire pud

Quote from: Sardondi on July 17, 2013, 12:16:29 PM
Actually, I think it's an American accent that Hugh Laurie does so well. Damn well apparently, because, uh, isn't he British?


Yes he is British; but he doesn't speak British. He speaks English. You know the make up of Britain, which is why earlier I was discussing the regional accents.


A side point (and you'll love this)...when you put your ethnicity (as you do I guess) on a job application, and they ask for your country<sic> of origin. It says 'British'..not English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish..British. It's more complicated by Shetland Islanders who point blank refuse to be known as Scottish! Geographically they're nearer to Norway.

Yorkshire pud

Quote from: Flaxen Hegemony on July 17, 2013, 12:47:15 PM
Unfortunately, my familiarity with Mr. Sheen is limited to his ex-girlfriend, Kate.  :)

I think you're spot on when you talk about joining the dots.  If my memory serves, there was a famous mimic that once said the key to doing imitations is selecting three very prominent vocal characteristics of the person and then absolutely perfect them.  The listener will be awed by these, and fill in the blanks for everything else.  Our brains are wired for efficiency, so the idea would make sense.


The late great but deeply disturbed Peter Sellers was an incredible mimic..If you get the chance (I've no idea if it ever came out on cd, I have on a 60's LP) listen to his interview with Mike Parkinson (famous Yorkshireman, sort of started chat shows in the UK-look him up on YT to get his accent. Born and brought up in Barnsley, son of a miner,and a journalist on his local newspaper);;I digress.: Anyway, Pete Sellers was on his show and was hilarious, rarely was he 'himself'..hiding behind his characters, and a fantastic impression of Sir Alec Guinness and Michael Caine. He said that he was often viewed as boring company because he spent most of his time listening to people talking, and if they had an interesting voice, he's go home and mimic them.. Bluebottle was the voice of a scout leader he met!

Sardondi

I actually enjoy a Northern accent, all those huge "ooo"  sounds coming out in everything they say. I sense that Northern English dialect is looked askance at just as accents from the American South are here.

Yorkshire pud

Quote from: Sardondi on July 17, 2013, 01:07:35 PM
I actually enjoy a Northern accent, all those huge "ooo"  sounds coming out in everything they say. I sense that Northern English dialect is looked askance at just as accents from the American South are here.


Pretty much! It's odd really. I don't think I have a strong accent; and compared to places not that far from me (15 miles) I sound like Lawrence Olivier; but when I lived and worked in Bristol a few years ago, I was simply 'the northerner'! Until we had a guy from Newcastle come to work there..all of a sudden I didn't sound so bad! Sheffield (nearby city) has a broad difference from north to south, a distance of about 10 miles. BUT, to my ear, anyone who lives from about 20 miles north of London and east of that line, and south east of the southern edge of London all sound the same.

Some soundclips of accents. http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/index.html


No one else read the black and white Dr Who comics or things like 2000 AD?


valdez

     Watched the season seven series final this morning.  I'm surprised at how quickly this show has become one of my favorites.  The last tv show to catch my attention and keep it was/is The Walking Dead, and the writing there is not as strong as it could be.  I think they may have succeeded in grabbing me on an emotional level once or twice, whereas Dr. Who does it consistently.  Sad to see my Doctor go, and I was prepared to be dead set against, and disappointed with, whoever would be the next Doctor, but when the mysterious figure in the last scene turned around and revealed himself there was a peaceful, reassured, oddly satisfied smile on my face. There has always been something about John Hurt that I liked. I think I'm gonna give him a chance.
 

SR-71

I love watching Doctor Who. It is one of the collest shows like Star Trek.

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