A Question on Classic Doctor Who

I've decided to watch all the classic serials before moving on to the expanded universe and the new series. The problem is I'm blind so it might be dificult to follow what's going on. Usually, I can just listen to the dialogue and pretty much know what's going on, but because there's so much to watch I'm wondering if I shouldn't just read the novelizations? I know they're meant for kids, but it'll probably give me a better idea what's going on. Also, are there any good doctors in particular where I should drop the novels and listen to for their performance alone?

The novelisations are actually pretty decent. The prose is occasionally simple, but I think people mistake what that might mean. They're a completely worthy avenue, with some clever writing and extrapolations on the episodes they're based upon.

Additional edit: You'll probably want to get a sense of what each of the Doctors is like beyond the novels — particularly the second Doctor, who's notoriously hard to capture in print. I believe the DV Ds do have some alternate commentary tracks which read out some stage directions, but I can't remember for sure — I think that might just be the new series. If you're in a bind, go with Big Finish. They produce stories exclusively for radio, and work with all the classic Doctors they can (and some they can't).

edited 15th Oct '12 6:10:47 PM by Nicknacks

"For what it's worth, I've finished the novels with the first doctor though I've watched all the dalec ones. Also, aparently the Second Doctor aside from Tomb of the Cybermen doesn't have any intact serials?"

He has a few more intact, but they're all from his final season. The Dominators, The Mind Robber, The War Games, and The Krotons, I think — and most of them I find to be fairly poor.

If you can track down the audio recordings for Power Of The Daleks, The Web Of Fear, The Highlanders, and The Enemy Of The World, you should be in good company.

Edit: Plus The Enemy Of The World has great acting legend Carmen Munroe, playing a strong and sympathetic black woman years before Doctor Who would ever try something like that again, and two episodes after the more than slightly racist Tomb Of The Cybermen.''

edited 16th Oct '12 1:31:58 AM by Nicknacks

One thing I'd highly recommend: go and check out the BBC soundtrack releases. They started out with just the missing stories, but have now begun releasing existing stories as well. On each of these releases, there is narration to help follow what's going on when it's not readily apparent due to missing visuals. It's the only way you'll ever get to experience most of Troughton's first season, for example.

Tomb of the Cybermen is great, and it's intact. The Ice Warriors is missing episodes 2 and 3, but enough of the story is there that you can follow it. Most of Troughton's final season is intact, so there's enough to judge his performance and get a good sense of how his era felt.

edited 16th Oct '12 4:57:52 AM by andersonh1

Except for the racism, including blackface. And the plot.

It's memorable for its iconic imagery and a couple of nice speeches, that's about it.

There is no blackface in Tomb of the Cybermen. What are you talking about?

Look at Kaftan's make-up. She's clearly a white woman with some very, very shiny make-up on all over her. It can be hard to tell, but once you see it it's pretty clear.

That's really a stretch. You might have a case when talking about the various times that an English actor played another ethnicity (Marco Polo, The Crusades, The Talons of Weng Chiang), but Kaftan?

I don't have a problem with Kaftan or Klieg with their accents or ethnicity, whatever they're meant to be. There's no reason the villains have to be white to be acceptable. Seeing Toberman the strong, silent, subserviant black man is uncomfortable, and I can see where racist connotations might be drawn there, though nowhere is the man told that he is stupid or inferior due to his race. There's plenty of sexism on display with regards to the women, which seems odd given the story is set five centuries in the future. Tomb has its faults, but finding fault with Kaftan's makeup to the point of calling it "blackface" is really reaching.

edited 16th Oct '12 8:55:05 AM by andersonh1

Yeah, blackface is really no big deal.

The serial's certainly sexist (stay back here women, this is men's work), but it's racist too. The villains are foreigners with swarthy skin tones and broad accents and exotic names. Just because Toberman heroically sacrifices himself doesn't mean shit if he spends most of the story a) as a racist archetype b)working for the villains c) he sacrifices himself for some white folks (Americans and English people too boot) and d) they barely give a shit about him after he's dead. They just leave him!

That said, there's no good reason that a story set in the future shouldn't depict a society that's rascist/sexist/whatever. The episode's still casually racist and sexist.

There isn't any blackface in Tomb. I can't say it any more clearly than that.

There is nothing wrong with the villains being something other than white western Europeans. Villainy comes from all ethnicities, nationalities and accents just as heroism does.

Of course not. But that's not what's going on here.

I can accept that Kaftan might not be blacked up. But I can't accept that the episode isn't casually racist.

I personally agree that Tomb of the Cybermen is overrated. I also second The Enemy of the World - it's like a random "Doctor Who does James Bond and The Prisoner" in the middle of an entire season of generic base under siege stories.

At the risk of sounding like a major newb which I am, why is this show so popular? I mean, where's the continuity? I'm just about to finish up the First Doctor so maybe I'm at a point where the mythology hasn't been worked out yet, but what's the point of watching tons of stand alone adventures if they don't amount to anything?

You're at a point where there's no continuity to refer back to. At the time of the First Doctor, angry cyclops trash cans were the height of entertainment.

It's episodic television. The individual serials amount to entertaining stories in their own right, or they don't. And there is continuity, there just aren't season-spanning storylines like the modern version of Doctor Who.

edited 16th Oct '12 1:49:40 PM by andersonh1

Tomb of the Cybermen was produced in Britain in 1967. Saying it's 'casually racist' is a bit ... well, of course it was casually racist. Do you realise just how racist Britain was back then?

To give you some timeline: Britain's first ever Race Relations Act was in 1965 and the first conviction under that Act was in 1967. Oh, and you were still allowed to say 'No dogs, No Irish, No Coloureds' if you let out rooms. Or you could refuse to serve someone in a shop because of their colour. Those weren't made illegal until 1968.

I realise I've not demonstrated knowledge of the period in my posts, but I really know all that. Just because "everyone" was doing it (and they really weren't, see The Enemy Of The World) doesn't mean that it shouldn't be criticised. The racism gets in the way of the storytelling, for me, and I think having a strong racist vein within it means that it can't be a classic for the world we live in. Just because something was a classic doesn't mean it always will be (The Unquiet Dead), nor the fact that an episode wasn't loved means that it will always not be loved. (Horns Of The Nimon, anyone?)

Don't get me wrong, quite a few of the serials are pretty fun. I'm just curious if nearly 50 years of broadcasts create an engaging story over time. I'm not asking for continuity porn, just a nod here and there would be nice. Granted, I still got 6 doctors to go at this point. As an aside, does Susan ever get mentioned after she leaves the Tardis? I know she didn't really do much, but being the Doctor's granddaughter has got to count for something?

Toberman was the only character who came off as racist for me. Didn't get any sense the woman wasn't white.

...In the seasons and years to come, you will be getting plenty of Continuity Nods, I can promise you that.

Although, granted, it might not be until the Nu Series in season 28 or so. Most of the Nu series episodes are absolutely full of nods. The classic series not so much usually.

...And no, Susan is pretty much never important again. Even when there is the occassional reference, it's as the Doctor's "Children and Grandchildren" plural, meaning she wasn't the only descendent of the Doctor, and the reference is always more about the Doctor than it is about Susan herself.

That's interesting to me, considering that the three Cyberman stories before and after Tomb make a clear attempt to show a multi-national, multi-ethnic future. It seems odd to me that a set of writers and a production team would descend into racism after going the opposite direction in The Tenth Planet and The Moonbase. If anything, I think it would be a case of them not being as aware of the stereotypes as they should have rather than deliberately playing to them. Or maybe it was unfortunate casting since the script calls for a large, strong man and Roy Thomas certainly fits the bill. If the character of Toberman had been played by a white actor, would anything about the character be offensive?

Casting Toberman as a white man is something I wouldn't recognise as offensive. But see, I think they are quite deliberately playing to stereotypes here, given the way that the story goes out of its way to play up all the other mainstays of the Egyptian Tomb horror sub-genre.

I do wonder if the villains were at one point meant to be German/European, given the names. But at some point they decided to cast the guy that always plays the villainous priest guy as the leader of the villains, and told the actress playing Kaftan to pull off the kind of non-specific accent that this kind of part requires.

The other Cybermen stories suggest some of this, I find. The Americans there (and here) are brash and unco-operative, and Jaime suddenly starts behaving very stereotypically/superstitiously in The Moonbase.

He was hit on the head.

Yes, but a bump on the head doesn't lead people to perform acts of ethnic superstition, does it?

Besides, Pedler/Davis could have performed Jaimie's concussion and hallucinations in any number of ways. They chose a way that's essentially dubious.

edited 17th Oct '12 7:30:10 AM by Nicknacks