Doctor Who: The Third Doctor Era (1970-1974) - Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, the second half of my Third Doctor reviews, covering seasons 10 and 11 (that's The Three Doctors to Planet of the Spiders if you're curious).

That also covers this surprise new opening title sequence that appeared at the beginning of season 11. I had no idea that the Tom Baker's diamond logo was introduced in Jon Pertwee's last series! I've never been keen on the logo itself, it looks like it belongs on a bottle of ketchup, but the people in charge of licencing were apparently keen on it. It ended up on VHS tapes, books and even a video game made long after the series itself had gone through its terrible neon tube and 3D logo eras (and then died). Man, I hate that neon tube logo, I hate it so much!

I love the psychedelic slit-scan time vortex effect though. It was created using the same technique they used for the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and by 'technique' I mean 'dark forbidden magic', as I've seen the process involved and it still seems like sorcery to me.

It's my duty to inform you that there will be SPOILERS beyond this point, but I'll only be spoiling the serial I'm reviewing and occasionally stories leading up to it, nothing that came afterwards. So for example, you won't have to worry about me ranting about the terrible neon tube logo from season 18 when I'm talking about the diamond badge logo from season 11. Oh, wait...

Doctor Who: The Third Doctor Era (1970-1974) - Part 1

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, my epic Doctor Who review saga continues.

I watched Twitch's classic Doctor Who marathon a few weeks back without any intention whatsoever to write anything about it, because reviewing 600 episodes in a hurry would be crazy, but then afterwards I decided to do it anyway. It wasn't too much work to write about the First and Second Doctor's stories, due to the BBC thoughtfully erasing all their tapes and giving me less to review, but from this point on all the classic serials have been recovered. Plus I found more to write about the Third Doctor's stories because I actually wrote some notes down for them while I was watching, sometimes even three or four sentences per serial! (It was something to do to pass the time).

That's a lot of opinions for one article, so I'm going to split the Pertwee era into two parts for both your sake and mine. I'll give you the first three seasons now and you can come back for the last two and my conclusion later.

There don't seem to be any notes here to let me know what I feel about the Third Doctor's flashy new opening titles sequence, but I'm going to assume that I like it. The effect was produced using the same black and white process as the first two opening titles, but when they tinted the footage it came out looking less spooky and more psychedelic. I definitely like this version of the title text as it's probably my favourite of the classic logos, and I guess the people who made the TV movie thought so as well as they brought it back for the 90s.

I should inform you that there'll be SPOILERS in every review, but nothing from serials later than the one I'm writing about. So there'll be no speculation here on who would win in a fight between Bessie and K-9.

Doctor Who: The Second Doctor Era (1966-1969)

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still dealing with the horrifying consequences of my past decisions!

My first mistake was to watch (almost) all of classic Doctor Who over eight weeks during Twitch's marathon. Actually, I'm kind of not regretting that even though it was very much not the way these stories were intended to be watched. My second mistake came afterwards when I let my brain even entertain the possibility of writing a short review for each and every serial I'd watched. That's the kind of thing you really want to prepare for while you're watching them or better still never because that's a lot of words, man. But I figured it was either now or never, I ain't watching them all again.

So I've written down what I remember thinking about the Second Doctor's serials, the ones that Twitch showed anyway (plus a couple of bonus stories). That's 13 whole reviews in one article, some of them more than a couple of paragraphs long! In fact, I'll even throw in an extra opinion right now: I like the way the new title sequence tears apart to reveal the Doctor's face, it's a clever effect. Not sure the plain logo's much of an upgrade though, but I guess they needed to keep it simple to make the video effects work.

There's going to be SPOILERS all over the place, but my plan is to only spoil things that happened either during the episode I'm reviewing, or the ones that came before it. So if you're reading about Tomb of the Cybermen you'll get no spoilers for The War Games, but I might spoil something about The Tenth Planet.

Doctor Who: The First Doctor Era (1963-1966)

I realise that I've been slacking a little bit when it comes to this sci-fi review site of mine. "Next on Sci-Fi Adventures I'll be writing about Deep Space Nine's Rivals," is basically what I said at the end of my last post, and then I disappeared entirely for six months.

What happened was that I got distracted with other things, some of them important, some of them less so. Like that Doctor Who marathon that Twitch was showing a couple of months back for instance. Until then my exposure to the classic series had been pretty pitiful, I'd seen maybe two stories from each Doctor, so I'd always felt like I'd missed out on an important part of British pop culture and there was a gaping hole in my sci-fi knowledge. Then Twitch announced it was showing the entire classic series (more or less) for free over two months and I figured it was an opportunity I couldn't miss. In fact, I even watched some of the stories that they skipped, if there was anything still surviving of them to watch.

Turns out that 8 weeks of 16 episodes a night is actually quite a lot to sit through. But I somehow made it through and my evenings were finally my own again. Then I had my second bad idea!

I had no intention to write about any of the serials for Sci-Fi Adventures because I wouldn't be able to rewind to the stories to check things, getting good screencaps would be a pain, and there was something like 140 of them, so I didn't bother writing up proper notes, or coming up with reviews as I went along. But then afterwards it occurred to me that this was it, I'm never going watch all these stories again, this was my one and only chance to ever write about the whole of classic Doctor Who like this. So I've gone and written mini-reviews of every story I watched using whatever notes and screencaps I did take, the chatlog of conversations I had while watching, and anything that was left in my brain after a few months. I can definitely relate to the Doctor's memory problems now; a lot of the series is still in there but it took a bit of prodding to come out.

What you'll find below are my first 19 reviews covering the whole Hartnell era. I didn't write a synopsis for any of them but I did include some SPOILERS. I'll only be spoiling up to the serial you're currently reading though, so I'm not going to go into a rant about Dodo or whatever midway through The Aztecs.

Star Trek: Discovery - Season 1 Review

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I feel like I need to write a few more words about all those episodes of this poor troubled space show I just watched. For closure and stuff.

Discovery's not the only Star Trek series to have massive behind the scenes problems during its first season; Star Trek: The Next Generation in particular was famously a mess at first, leading to two of the worst seasons in the franchise's entire run until Michael Piller took over as head writer and got the series on track. Deep Space Nine and Voyager, on the other hand, entered their best seasons when Piller left, and Enterprise finally began to shine when Manny Coto took over. You can kind of see this for the Original Series as well, as many of the best episodes came after Gene Coon was brought on as a producer.

So after analysing this pattern I've determined that for Trek series behind the scenes issues are bad for overall episode quality and a change in showrunner is typically good. But for Discovery the behind the scenes problems included creator Bryan Fuller getting kicked out before filming even started, so does that count as good or bad? I had some opinions on that subject while watching the episodes, but now that I've finished the whole season and I've had time to think about it I'm ready to revise those ratings and decide whether the series is really as terrible as people on the internet think it is, or if it's actually as great as other people on the internet think it is.

It probably goes without saying that this is going to include huge SPOILERS for events in the first season taking place between The Vulcan Hello and Will You Take My Hand? but I'll leave this warning here just in case. Plus I may end up spoiling parts of earlier Trek series and movies as well.

Babylon 5 2-15: And Now for a Word

Episode:

37

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Air Date:

03-May-1995

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about an ISN special report called 36 Hours on Babylon 5, except not really, as the text on screen gives away that it's actually Babylon 5 episode And Now for a Word. It's the series' first format-breaking episode but they didn't break it quite far enough to leave the title off or change the opening credits sequence. It's a bit disappointing really.

Oh, by the way, it's Babylon 5's 25th anniversary! The pilot movie The Gathering aired on the 22nd of February 1993, just one month after Deep Space Nine's pilot Emissary. I was late for the DS9 anniversary and I've missed Red Dwarf's recent 30th anniversary entirely, but this time I finally got it right! (Though to be honest I was planning to have reached the slightly more monumental In the Shadow of Z'Ha'Dum by this point).

Okay, this is one of my regular length reviews, which means I'll be sharing my thoughts on the entire episode and throwing out massive SPOILERS along the way. I'll likely end up spoiling a few of the earlier B5 episodes as well, but I won't even hint at anything that happens after it. Except for just then when I said that Shadow of Z'Ha'Dum is one of the more important ones.

Star Trek: Discovery 1-15: Will You Take My Hand? (Quick Review)

Episode:

15

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Writer:

Gretchen J. Berg & Aaron Harberts

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Air Date:

11-Feb-2018

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm sharing my opinions on Star Trek: Discovery's first season finale: Will You Take My Hand?

There aren't actually all that many Star Trek episode titles with question marks in. I'm sure it's not something you've ever wondered or cared about, but out of 707 titles, this is only the 6th to have a question mark in the title, after the Original Series' What Are Little Girls Made Of? Who Mourns for Adonais? and Is There in Truth No Beauty? and Deep Space Nine's Doctor Bashir, I Presume? and Who Mourns for Morn? Hey, that Morn title is a play on the other one! I never realised that.

The episode's written by showrunners Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts, and directed by Akiva Goldsman, so they've got the Context is for Kings team back together for this one, more or less. There's only one episode of Discovery so far I haven't been keen on, and it wasn't that one, so no warning signs there for me. Though whenever Akiva Goldsman's involved I can't help but be just a little concerned that Mr Freeze and the Riddler are going to pop up at some point and have a pun battle.

By the way, it says (Quick Review) up there, but that's basically a lie this time. I won't be going through the story scene by scene like I usually do, but you'll be getting a similarly epic mountain of text. Plus I'll be throwing out massive SPOILERS for the whole episode, so please factor that into your decision to read any further. I'm also going to be considering the whole rest of the franchise up to this point fair game, so don't be shocked if you find spoilers for things like Deep Space Nine, Star Trek III, Star Trek IV and Star Trek Into Darkness underneath as well. But not Alice in Wonderland this time.