Doctor Who Original Series Season 2

For those interested, here are the links to my episode by episode reviews of Doctor Who's original second season. Each individual episode gets rated and usually the overall story rating is reached by averaging out the episode scores, though sometimes a rating will be nudged up or down for various reasons.

Links will take you to the day it was posted so you can see the non-spoilery overview. If you opt to look at the story itself, there will usually be some mild spoilers, and the occasional one that will completely destroy the story, though I'll usually warn you about them. There will usually be spoilers in the comments.

9. Planet of Giants 6/10

10. Dalek Invasion of Earth 8/10

11. The Rescue 7/10

12. The Romans 7.5/10

13. The Web Planet 7.6/10

14. The Crusade 8.5/10

15. The Space Museum 5.25/10

16. The Chase 6/10

17. The Time Meddler 8/10

Doctor Who 2nd Season Score - 7.1/10

Doctor Who 1st Season Score - 7.5/10

Doctor Who - Dr. Who and the Daleks Movie

Given the look of the new Daleks, this one's almost topical!

Dr. Who and the Daleks

The first of the big budget Doctor Who movies is... not very good. Don't get me wrong, it's lovely to see the Daleks in colour. The Dalek control room, the section of ground that opens during the Thal attack, and the forest all manage to look quite good, but overall the production feels rushed and cheap at almost every level.

I know a lot of people don't like that the Doctor is now human, not to mention actually being called Dr. Who, but I find all this quite forgivable. In theory the movie had to work for people unfamiliar with the series, so you don't want to load it down with tonnes of exposition - that's the mistake the telemovie made years later. The point of the story is to have the Daleks on the big screen and it achieves that quite well.

I quickly got used to the multi-coloured Daleks, and in fact grew to quite like the silver/blue/gold models. And then there's that lovely group shot with eighteen Daleks onscreen at once! I don't even mind the fire extinguisher guns.

I think one of the real problems with the film is that on a fraction of the budget, and in black and white, the original serial was more creative with its ideas and design. It feels like way more care was taken with Dead Planet's production design than with this. We never see a single creature in the lake of mutations, the Daleks' control panels have been mostly made from stock equipment, and the city interior design is colourful, but ultimately fairly uninspired.

The biggest issue for me though is Roy Castle as Ian. He's there purely for laughs and, well, the gags just aren't that funny. By the tenth pratfall I was over him.

Oh and special mention has to go to the look of the Thals. The first appearance by Antodus and all I could think was, "Wow, that's the one look Julian Clary was never brave enough to try out."

However, for all its faults, as a curio it's definitely worth a look.

4/10

"But why must you destroy the Thals? Why can't you live together in peace and share your knowledge?" - Peter Cushing (Dr. Who)

The Tweets of April

( Cut for non-Twitterites... )