Which Who Stories Have you seen lately?

I agree!

The Twin Dilemma.

Not a particularly great story, but nowhere near as bad as it's reputation would suggest. Just like The Gunfighters, this story gets FAR too much undeserved hate.  

All these complaints I frequently see levelled at it such as the Doctor strangling Peri, and the Doctor having all these bizarre, schizophrenic-like mood swings can all be chalked up to side effects from his regeneration. So I'm not really sure what the issue here is. If anything, seeing the Doctor act out in such a volatile and unstable manner for once after regenerating is a rather refreshing and unique change of pace from all his other post-regeneration trauma recoveries.

Really, the only major flaws with this story would be the horribly acted twins, the villain's plan making absolutely no sense whatsoever, and some of the costumes looking utterly absurd. The 6th Doctor himself is great. His characterisation is excellent, and his interactions with Peri are highly amusing. His confrontation with Mestor is also excellent.

Not a great story, but certainly nowhere near the worst Classic Who episode of all time. I'd much rather watch this than something like, say, The Web Planet.

I like Twin Dilemma. Just an easy introduction to the Sixth Doctor that was heavier on character interaction than story. The novel by Saward is one of the best target novels ever. I even recommend it to people that don't even like the story. It is that bloody good. Nothing beats Eric Saward's vision of Doctor Who.

I think the abysmal reputation of the Twin Dilemma has more to do with context rather than the actual episode itself.

You just went from arguably the single greatest episode in Doctor Who history, the Caves of Androzani, to an episode that is mediocre at best with a deliberately unlikable and violent Doctor, who has easily the single worst outfit in the show's history. It's not hard to see why so many people would have been pissed off at the time of the episode's transmission and hastily labelled it "the worst Doctor Who episode of all time" in a state of anger.

When you actually examine it on it's own merits, then it really isn't that bad.

DeadManRising wrote:I think the abysmal reputation of the Twin Dilemma has more to do with context rather than the actual episode itself.

You just went from arguably the single greatest episode in Doctor Who history, the Caves of Androzani, to an episode that is mediocre at best with a deliberately unlikable and violent Doctor, who has easily the single worst outfit in the show's history. It's not hard to see why so many people would have been pissed off at the time of the episode's transmission and hastily labelled it "the worst Doctor Who episode of all time" in a state of anger.

When you actually examine it on it's own merits, then it really isn't that bad.

I actually consider both Twin Dilemma and Timelash to be average stories.

Oy, leave off Web Planet. It's criminally underrated in my book.
Mindwarp is complete shite though.

The Beast Below. Not great but not bad, Matt and Kazza make it fun to watch.
Blink. Still very good.

You're joking, right? The Web Planet is easily the most boring and sleep-inducing episode of Classic Who I've seen in my life. Literally, the only story that I had to switch off halfway through because it was so goddamn boring to watch. The pacing is just SO sluggish. The story just drags on and on and on...

No, I like it. It's hypnotically compelling and the TARDIS crew are great. I'd rather watch it than many "fan favourites" I could mention.

The Empty Child. Still an absolutely superb story, and still the best story of New Who. It frustrates me no end that the modern version of Who clearly has the potential to be like this, yet has chosen to spend so much of it's run being mediocre or just plain shit instead. 

iank wrote:No, I like it. It's hypnotically compelling and the TARDIS crew are great. I'd rather watch it than many "fan favourites" I could mention.

Time and the Rani is better I suspect you already know that by now.

The Chase.

With the exception of parts three and four, which is a very strong contender for the worst ever 60 minutes in Doctor Who history, this is a really fun story with a decent amount of variety and some good set pieces.

Part six in particular is excellent. Steven's introduction is really well handled, the scene where they rappel down from the tower while the Daleks are busy fighting the Mechanoids is pretty cool, Ian and Barbara's farewell scene is genuinely quite sad and the weird slideshow that plays showing Ian and Barbara frolicking around London like a pair of hyperactive teenagers is rather amusing. Hartnell's acting is also excellent. He genuinely looks really torn up about never seeing Ian and Barbara ever again. Great stuff.

But like I said, parts three and four are absolutely abysmal. I genuinely cannot emphasise just how bad they really are. If you ever plan on watching this story again in the future, I'd strongly advise you outright skip parts three and four entirely. They're horrible to sit through, and they don't really affect the plot all that heavily. The only real important thing that happens in them is that the Daleks make an evil clone of the 1st Doctor. So long as you keep that plot detail in mind when watching this, then you can easily follow the rest of the story just fine without having to watch either of them.

Overall, it's a really memorable and fun story. So long as you pretend that parts three and four don't exist of course.

I don't remember much from that. I do remember some of it taking place on the Empire State Building which was pretty cool. Nice stock footage of New York.

I highly recommend you go and watch parts three and four online to see exactly what I'm talking about. My words can't possibly do justice to how cringe worthy they both are. It's one of those things that you really need to see to believe.    

Not to spoil anything (lol) but here's a brief summary of what parts three and four contain:

- A retarded tourist with the worst american accent of all time who mistakes the TARDIS crew for movie stars, mistakes a Dalek for a film prop and looks around for a trap door on the floor where the TARDIS dematerialises.

- A pirate ship where a gang of pirates all instantly commit suicide and toss themselves overboard upon first seeing the Daleks. They don't stop to ask who they are or what they want first, they just immediately think drowning themselves to death is the best solution. Oh, and one of the Daleks launches itself off the ship and commits suicide too for some baffling reason. Maybe it just couldn't stand the silly plot any more.

- The TARDIS crew find themselves in an old carnival where they get attacked by android replicas of Dracula and Frankenstein.

I really wish I was making this shit up, but I'm not.

I don't know, there's a cheesy appeal to some of those sequences. I love the fact that Peter Purves (Steven) plays the tourist. The haunted house bit has that fun B movie feel.

Terminus.

Love the Black Guardian stuff.

Hate just about everything else.

I happen to love the "haunted house" episode, it's my favourite part of the entire story!

Guess I'm the only one who thinks having Frankenstein and Dracula in a Doctor Who story is just an eensy weensy step too far.

Whatever.

It was a blast. Should have been longer.

Should have been longer? Six parts isn't enough? Any more parts and it would have probably overstayed its welcome. The plot was nowhere near strong enough to last ten or twelve parts like say, The War Games or The Dalek's Master Plan. And even those stories suffered from having massive amounts of filler.

I'm talking about the haunted house stuff. I wish that had been longer and the scenes on the ship cut out to make room.

Doctor Screw - Time of The Dildoids

Starring:

Shav Ed-Tencunt, Billie Piped-Her and Freema Appleclam.

The Ribos Operation. For me it's one of the classiest stories, and is the perfect balance of everything - Tom injects humour without it getting out of hand, Mary Tamm is incredibly attractive but her character avoids cliches and plays well off Tom, the White Guardian scenes have real clout and set the season up nicely, Garron is a great, Falstaff-like rogue, the settings and sound effects are effective and even the increasingly barmy Graff is a 3 dimensional character - his obsession with loyalty makes him oddly pitiable. The subsequent Pirate Planet is inventive and fun, but it's where all the silliness started IMO.

Love the Key to Time trilogy. Tom Baker and Mary Tamm have such excellent chemistry with one another. And with the exception of The Armageddon Factor, which is a rather disappointing and anti-climactic end to the story arc, pretty much all the episodes range from very good to okay. It's just a shame that Mary Tamm never got a proper farewell regeneration scene, because she was such a good companion.

I love the Key to Time season, one of my all time faves.