Doctor Who in 2005

It was a mid-90's TV movie, designed as much for American TV as it was for British TV. There was no reason why it would have been filmed in widescreen. I'm sure it will be repackaged as a widescreen DVD one day, but it will just be a cropped down from the full 4:3 frame.


It's hardly much of a surprise that JNT made it for the fans in the end - he didn't want to make it at all in the late 80's. When it got t*tted about during the mid-80's, his commitment to the series dwindled and when it was put on hiatus for 18 months he tried to resign. He was then told that if he didn't persevere with DW he'd never work at the BBC again. With that in mind, the fact that the fans were there was probably the only thing keeping him going, so of course they were a major commitment.

JNT can hardly be accused of always making it for the fans - the sweeping changes he brought to the series in 1980 had the potential to backfire spectacularly, and very nearly did.

I was only born in 1980, so don't remember any pre-JNT era at all, yet I'm a Doctor Who fan. Therefore the "for the fans" way that the show was in that era, is the way that the show was for me. Incidentally, the JNT era was the whole 1980s, not merely the late 80s, as you've seemingly implied.

I get the impression that maybe you're older than I, and remember earlier eras, and hadn't considered "children of JNT" such as me.

If "no bugger" watched the show in the 80s (or late 80s or whatever), that must make me "no bugger" then. Well thanks for giving me that title!

Thought I'd just drag this one up for one last gasp...



Yes, I realise that, but it was really towards the end of the 80s that the show got so far up its own arse that it became unwatchable to the general public. However, it was heading that way long before!




That seems to be the case, but doubtless you've seen the videos, so you're quite capable of drawing that conclusion yourself... I was 5 years old when Graham Williams took over, and adored stories like The Invisible Enemy and Nightmare of Eden at the time, yet am quite capable of seeing that the latter end of his tenure on the programme (ie post Horror of Fang Rock! ) Dr Who became tired mush in need of a drastic overhaul and a new lead actor.

I think you're probably old enough to take those rose-tinted spectacles off...



Well, me too, clearly (although I'm proud to say that I got up and left the room during the Happiness Patrol). What I meant was "no bugger expect the die hard fans", who would have watched Dr Who and the Drying Paint if it had been previewed in DWM, and those who didn't have anything better to do (like watch Coronation Street, for example).

How's about these titles:

Dr Who and the Ultimate Plot Contrivance (sp?)

Dr Who and the Invasion of the Continuity References/Errors *

*(delete as applicable)

Once again people start criticizing something before it even starts. We've had this sh!te with abc1 and ITV3 etc, so could we please leave the DW-bashing until after it flops, if it does?

I've loved Dr. Who for many years and so will add my 2 pence. Continuity does matter, not necessarily 'for the fans', but for the stories to make any sense. People like shows because they like the stories they tell. If the shows have no sense of continuity then they have little sense at all. The reason I disliked the latter shows of Who had nothing to do with the actor playing the doctor, but the stories he was given. Political correctness crept into the plots and the companions making the shows very boring in my opinion and hard for even fans to continue watching. I know nothing about the new actor playing the Dr. or his companion and look forward to watching them. I just hope they give them good sci-fi stories to act out. I hope very much that they stick to the standard of Dr. Who - no expensive computer graphics, just decent stories and good hammy acting and of course the silly bad guys in strange costumes. It's all about good old-fashioned escapism and entertainment, not that far removed from pantomime, that can amuse us and take us away from reality for a while. We don't need expensive computer graphics , we have imaginations. My favourite, by the way, will always be Peter Davison, though I couldn't really tell you why. I'll also let you all know, if you didn't already, that Colin Baker is appearing in Panto this year at the Nottingham Theatre Royal. I have my ticket already and trust the other Dr. fans will soon!

What a ridiculous thing to say. Production values have moved on from the 80s so I'm quite sure we won't have ANY wobbly sets (were there actually any anyway?) and terrible costumes. Who can forget that pantomime horse in Warriors On The Cheap.

I doubt we'll see hammy acting either, and to be fair there wasn't a massive amount of it in the old days, with a few notable exceptions (Anthony Ainley springs to mind amongst others). Indeed I remember some excellent performances over the years from both the lead and supporting casts.

Continuity between episodes, yes of course that's required. But continuity relating to the old series or, god forbid, the awful "movie"? We can dispense with that thank you.

Anyway I'm really looking forward to it. I'm sure this new guy will be excellent and Billie Piper's fit if nothing else.

Why does political correctness get blamed for everything? It was nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with very uneven quality of stories and (at times) the sheer overloading of mainly irrelevant detail to keep the continuity hounds happy.



To be fair, there have been enough reports that Ainley tried very hard to bring some gravitas to the role but was constantly told by directors and producers to ham it up. I suspect he never wanted it to turn into a 'cartoon terrible' villain (as Eric Roberts, the Master in the TVM, described it) - look at the intensity of his portrayal of the character in Survival, for a clue to how he would have preferred to play it.

What the hell are you talking about? I don't think anyone's bashing the new series - we're all saying how crap DW was in the late 80s!

I think you didn't understand what I said. The wobbly sets (yes, there were many) and hammy acting are part of the charm of Dr. Who - fans love it! I think what we may have here is a gap between people who simply love the show as it was - even in the 80's - and those who work in the industry who insist on every show being perfect. And, yes, the continuity does matter - in a general sense. The programme makers need to understand that there is a history to this show and that to ignore the fans would be a big mistake.

I honestly don't remember "wobbly sets" and I watched it from Tom Baker onwards.

Sometimes the props looked a little 'hand made', but the rest looked ok to me. Occassionally sliding doors and the like didn't open smoothly.

A lot of 60's/70's DW acting was hammed up and, frankly, wooden but I don't see this as a specific problem with DW - it was indicative of the general state of acting on 60's and 70's TV.


Ah, cheap props. The first glimpse of a Dalek on Doctor Who was used as a cliffhanger to the end of part 1 of a story and all you saw was it's 'feeler' thing. I am almost 99% certain that it's just a stage hand weilding a plunger; it moves about far too much to be fixed to one of the models.

My favourite two dodgy props though both come from the same story, The Sea Devils (curious in TV presentation circles too because it has the 'BBC Colour' tag on the end but no copyright date, something I've not seen anywhere else).

This featured supposed military vehicles which were referred to in the script as 'jeeps' - but you can clearly see that they are Citroen 2CV's with all the doors taken off! The other piece of sheer brilliance in that story are the 'television monitors' which appear quite a few times in various scenes; they are clearly visible as venition blinds with an image badly chromakeyed onto them - in one scene the blinds aren't closed properly and you see the 'television picture' appear with horizontal strips down it!

Hopefully those kind of production values are something which won't be carried through to the new series.