jjpor | Hello

I’m not sure whether anyone is going to see this or want to respond to it, but hey, I’m still extant as they say.

Apologies if I disappeared while seemingly in mid-conversation with you. No real reasons or excuses, except to say that I’ve had a few rough moments these past couple of years (who hasn’t?) and the main effect of this seems to be a tendency to let work and life get on top of me and time get away from me, and an inability to keep up with just about anything.

But yeah, as you might have guessed, it’s not entirely coincidental that I resurface at this moment, because – you know, 60^th Anniversary and all that. Exciting…! I find myself looking forward to new Who, Beep the Meep and all, rather than experiencing a mixture of apathy and dread for the first time in some time, which considering how I used to trash-talk the first RTD/Tennant era while it was happening is bitterly ironic, or something. And at the same time people are shouting at the Doctor Who showrunner on the internet for things they imagine he said or meant or is secretly planning about something that doesn’t really affect most of them – just like old times!

So yeah, I’ve been watching some of the old Who that is now on the BBC iPlayer, starting at the beginning with Hartnell, according to the natural order of things. Too bad about the situation surrounding An Unearthly Child, but I have it on DVD. The original Dalek story remains quite something, with the Daleks themselves probably the best “acted” they’ve ever been, mainly thanks to the subtle touches injected by the prop operators inside them. The first time they interrogate the Doctor, with one of them “pacing” back and forth behind him in the manner of a cop in a hackneyed interview scene tickled me on this rewatch, and there were lots of little moments like that that I felt like I was noticing for the first time. Chesterton isn’t as slick as he thinks he is at this point in his hero career, and the Doctor’s callous self-centred attitude in these very early stories is kind of a hoot, as well as being wildly different from what we might be used to (and closer to the kinds of characters Hartnell tended to play in his career outside of Who). Following the development of all the main characters over these early stories really disproves the idea that character arcs were something that suddenly got invented in 2005. The moment between the Doctor and Barbara at the end of Edge of Destruction is lovely, and is also crucially important to how the show developed over the following years.

Watching the Keys of Marinus for the first time in a long time, I came to the conclusion that it isn’t anywhere near as bad as some people would have you believe, just a bit rushed (apart from the last-minute detour into courtroom drama, which is really fun with the Doctor going all Perry Mason for a bit and so on) and under-explained, but that’s part of the charm if you ask me. None of the little mini-adventures outstay their welcome, and at least two out of the four are actually quite interesting in their worldbuilding and themes. It’s funny how everyone seems not to care too much that the ostensible goodie Arbitan is actually a wrong’un who has coerced them into helping him fix his Mind Control Machine and the Voord, despite their great design turn out to be the blandest, most generic villains imaginable, especially when you’ve just watched the Daleks making their mark. To be fair, though, they hardly have any screen time. Overall, the story is just fine, even genuinely good in parts. Maybe my once-nitpicky standards have slipped a bit. I’ve got the Aztecs teed up next, which I have watched quite a few times more recently, or so it seems, but looking forward to noticing new things as I have been with all of these stories.

I guess I’ll probably be watching the new colour version of the Daleks, even if I’ve just watched the original version. Will be interesting with the full-length story fresh in my mind to see exactly which bits get edited out to bring it down to feature length. And the Tennant-fronted documentary from a couple of weeks ago looks like it could be good. I saw the clip of him watching McCoy’s audition tape, with McCoy nailing it immediately. Speaking of which, I also need to check out the Inside the TARDIS series but while I think it will be lovely to see the actors revisiting their characters I’m a bit worried about what they might have them saying. It’s bound to annoy me if it doesn’t conform to my weird idiosyncratic view of various characters and their relationships – but again, I sense that isn’t an uncommon thing on’t’internets at the moment. Still haven’t brought myself to watch Power of the Doctor, which is ridiculous I know. I could watch it on Saturday as a lead in to the new special. Who Double Feature? Sounds like a plan.