The Greatest Sci/fi show of all (Doctor Who)

Member Name: The Solid Grey

Product:	Doctor Who
Date:	09/09/01 (130 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A really good show, very entertaining, superb stories, and its the most prolific science show of all, plenty of stories to watch, Loads of spin off videos/CD's and books to enjoy

Disadvantages: A few dodgy effects, and missing episodes

And that ain’t no lie.

Doctor Who began on the 23rd of November 1963, and like many other long running programs (such as Coronation Street and Grange Hill) it was only meant to run for a few episodes, but such was its popularity that it continued, and as other science fiction shows came and went (Star Trek, Blakes 7, the Tripods etc.), Doctor Who went on and eventually became TV’s longest running science fiction series, pretty good going really (for all the stick it gets).

The premise is that a man from another planet travels through time and space in a time machine that he can not properly control, meaning that he (and friends) could end up anywhere, anytime, and have all sorts of adventures.

In the early days it was not much more than any other sci/fi show of the fifties/sixties, black and white, not that real looking monsters, some very implausible science and such like. It was also experimental, it was said by the production team that having the ability to go anywhere, anywhen, meant that they could do any kind of program, sci/fi, historical, comedy, drama and so on.

It was originally made by the BBC and in black and white, and started off just as much an educational program as an entertainment program, with each story alternating between purely historical ones and futuristic ones, but as time went on the purely historical one’s were left behind.

The Beginning
In the first episode we learnt that the Doctor and his granddaughter were aliens from another planet and that they stole a time/space machine (called the TARDIS), and travelled briefly before arriving on Earth in London, the TARDIS capable of changing its shape to blend in with the back ground, arrived in the shape of a 1960’s police telephone box (it was also due to change shape in every episode, but this was discovered to be too expensive)(also its recently been said that the police boxes might make a come back, they were last used
in 1969), however this capability broke and it stayed in the same shape for the entire series.

Two teachers worried about Susan (the Doctor’s granddaughter) force their way into the TARDIS, and the Doctor takes off worried that the teachers will tell everyone about him. Unable to properly control the TARDIS they wonder through space and time encountering strange races and generally getting into trouble.

The first episode was repeated the following week just before the second, to refresh peoples memory (and also due to a power failure in parts of the country), but it wasn’t until the fifth episode, the beginning of the second story when the episode ended on a cliff hanger (as they all did), with the shot of something looking like a sink plunger approaching Barbara, it turned out to be a Dalek, the most famous of the Doctor’s adversaries, and it was these creatures that made the show really take off. With the Daleks and many other monsters Doctor Who got a reputation of children hiding behind the sofa, scared of what they saw.

Each episode was around twenty five minutes long, and at the beginning ran almost all year round, which meant that the regular actors didn’t appear in some episodes as they were on holiday, and in the Doctor’s case, on some occasions, the Doctor would be knocked unconscious at the end of one episode and didn’t recover until the beginning of one after the next!. However as time went on the seasons became shorter and the regular cast appeared in pretty much all of the episodes.

Evolution
As time went on we found out that the Doctor is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey and has two hearts. In 1966 William Hartnell became too ill to play the Doctor and so the production team came up with the idea that the Doctor could regenerate, thus allowing a new actor to take the role.

By 1989 seven actors had played the Doctor, these were,

Willian Hartnell 1963-
66
Patrick Troughton 1966-69
Jon Pertwee 1970-74
Tom Baker 1974-81
Peter Davison 1982-84
Colin Baker 1984-86
Sylvestor McCoy 1987-89

Also two films were made based on the series the Doctor was played in these by Peter Cushing. Many companions travelled with the Doctor over the years, in 1970 it changed to being recorded in colour, in 1985, for a trail season, it was made as a 45 minute program, but changed back to a 25 minute show for the next season, and generally speaking, the program evolved just like any other.

In 1985 Doctor who was cancelled for being too expensive, and many fans world-wide were horrified and appealed for its return and 18 months later it came back and continued until 1989, when, with the viewing figures gradually decreasing each year the program was cancelled.

After the End
There have also been three radio plays, four including a made for schools episode, an LP, a comic, a magazine (which still comes out to this day), an Appreciation society (The Doctor Who Appreciation Society (DWAS) web site - http://dwas.drwho.org/)(still running), and since (and before) the show ended, a number of spin off videos/CD’s/ books (Doctor Who has the credit for having the most spin off books from a science fiction show) /toys, based on the series, featuring actors/ monsters/characters from the show, also a huge number of conventions take place each year, and much much more.

In 1996 an agreement was made for an American Doctor Who, ‘made for TV’ movie, to be produced, this featured Paul McGann as the Doctor and continued from where the original show left off, but it never took off in the way that was hoped and no more were made.

In 1999, a company ‘Big Finish’ (http://www.doctorwho.co.uk/), set up by fans, started to produce Doctor Who adventures on CD, these feature the original actors, playing the Doctor and Companions, in new adventures, and remain the near
est thing to the actual program, apart from the show itself.

The Greatest tragedy for Doctor Who
In the mid 1970’s, the biggest tragedy (you may say that being cancelled was the biggest tragedy but everything comes to an end) happened to Doctor Who, with all overseas sales exhausted, the original contracts with the actors only allowing for one repeat (which rarely happened), and home video being nothing more than a fantasy, old episodes of Doctor Who, Dad’s Army, Steptoe and Son and such were doing nothing more than taking up much needed space in the BBC vaults. So what do you do with useless old junk that’s taking up space?, you throw it away, which is exactly what the BBC did for several years, until of course with the invention of the home video and satellite TV, they realised its importance.................unfortunately it was far too late.

Many episodes of Doctor Who had been destroyed, well hundreds (including the other
shows), and so the great hunt was on, at the start the BBC were only interested in whole episodes, this now has changed and they want pretty much anything that, at present, isn’t thought to exist. Many episodes were returned to the BBC from countries that bought the episodes and some have been returned from private collectors. The last greatest find was all four episodes of the Tomb Of The Cybermen, the last whole episode returned was ‘The Lion’, part one of The Crusade (it had been passed from collector to collector for many years no one knowing its value, or status as a missing episode that the BBC (not to mention the fans) were very much wanting), at this time there are 109 episodes still missing, and many more from other shows.

In 1992 a few Doctor Who fans approached the BBC to secure funding to attempt to re-colour an originally colour episode of Doctor Who, the story had been made in colour and a black and white copy was sold to a country still only broadcasting in
black and white, when the colour copy was destroyed the black and white version of good quality was returned, though very good in itself the original colour version would be nicer and luckily an American home video recording of the episodes had the colour version but the quality was poor, the fans wanted to take the colour from the poor copy and combine it with the quality black and white version, the result was a success and now (called) the Doctor Who Restoration Team handle pretty much all of the restoration work on all Video/DVD and broadcast versions of Doctor Who episodes.

Not only have they restored colour to three stories, but they have also helped in the recovery of missing episodes, and clips from missing episodes, they also clean up film prints, remove scratches, de-blob film prints, correct VT dropouts and well, there is so much they do to improve the quality that its impossible to go into such detail here (that’s what’s their web sites for), but basically they do a hell of a lot of work in getting the episodes back to the original quality (if not better), in fact the work can clearly be noted, I recently bought a Doctor Who video that came out in 1985, the story having itself been made in 1969, the story had been edited together into one ‘film’, and you can quite clearly see the scratches, lines, blemishes and dirt on the film.

In fact in one of the Doctor Who DVD’s due to come out is the Tomb of the Cybermen, which is to include a featurette of the before and after shots, to illustrate the remastering process, that the team take on.

Not Only That But........
Before home video the only way a director could demonstrate his work to a future employer was to have someone take photo’s of the action at regular intervals, these photo’s known as telesnaps, still exist and sometimes they remain as the only visual
record of some episodes.

Also in the sixties there were Doctor W
ho fans that recorded episode live on to audio tape, these recording of various quality, have survived and these recordings have been used sometimes to replace some of the dodgy audio quality on the BBC’s episodes, but have also been released on CD for fans to enjoy.

In recent years BBC worldwide have taken the decision to release stories with missing
episodes (after 35 years since the original screening it seems unlikely that the episodes will be found), at first they had actors do linking pieces now though, with the help of the Doctor Who Restoration Team they have utilised the audio, the telesnaps and any existing clips to ‘re-create’ the episodes, and although the actual episodes would be nice the result is pretty good.

One thing to note is that the Restoration Team do all the work in their own time, they
all have full time jobs, so they do a pretty damn good job, all said and done.

And So,
Many people talk about the wobbly sets, bad acting and such, well OK there are some
not so great episodes and some pretty laughable effects and plot lines, but considering the budget and time they had for a BBC drama they’ve done quite good, especially when you think about how much commercial TV stations pay for their science fiction.

But Doctor Who is a really good program, a very entertaining sci/fi run-about drama,
and in its time has stories that have been before their time and there have been some
superb episodes, with some really first rate effects, that have become science fiction
classics of their time.

One of the reasons I wrote this opinion (besides the fact I love the show) is to make
people aware of the fact that the missing episodes are still very much wanted, SO IF
YOU HAPPEN TO COME ACROSS AN OLD EPISODE somewhere, somehow (even if its not a Doctor Who but a Dad’s Army or such), it could be one that’s missing so check out the Restoration teams we
b site (http://www.restoration-team.co.uk/) or contact the BBC (the BBC’s Doctor Who web
site - http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/), because we’d love to see it again.

The Solid Grey

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