[Summer Falls]

Originally Posted by Waldfrau (View Post) Apparently it's in the Master's villain portfolio to summon the devil and try to sacrifice Jo... Looking forward to the screaming Daleks in the next story. I'm curious about the younger version of Sarah, I only know her from her cameo with the Tenth Doctor. I think I still have a few stories with Jo till she'll turn up though.

Nice Sarah is cool

[DigificWriter]

After nearly two weeks, I'm about to get back to some Classic Who, but I realized that I hadn't posted thoughts on Invasion of the Dinosaurs, and so I figured I'd offer some brief thoughts on that story before I move on to Death to the Daleks.

* Give that I'm not keen on black-and-white film or television, Part 1 of Invasion of the Dinosaurs didn't quite have the 'oomph' that it was probably intended to, but I did find the story compelling enough to offset my issues with the presentation

* One of my issues with The Time Warrior was that Sarah Jane was written very much as 'Jo-lite', but IotD smartly remedied that, allowing Elisabeth Sladen to shine and develop a much better rapport with the Doctor

* I've appreciated the way that the series' production team found a way to loosen the Third Doctor's confinement to Earth, but I think I honestly prefer it when the show is able to get all of 'Team UNIT' involved in an adventure instead of just one or two members, and I also appreciated that the story demonstrated just how far the Third Doctor's relationship with both the UNIT organization and the Brigadier has come

I should be back tomorrow with my thoughts on Death of the Daleks.

[Waldfrau]

I just watched "The Mutants" and really enjoyed it. It's full of tropes, but quite entertaining and well acted. And oh, those colorful cave scenes are so far out.

[Summer Falls]

I love all this Imput I wish I could watch some of these episodes

[Waldfrau]

The Sea Devils is really good. There's a sword fight between the Doctor and the Master which is quite well done.

[Summer Falls]

Originally Posted by Waldfrau (View Post) The Sea Devils is really good. There's a sword fight between the Doctor and the Master which is quite well done.

Is he is a lot of the episodes the master mean?

[Waldfrau]

Yeah, there's many episodes with #3 and the first version of the Master.

[Summer Falls]

Originally Posted by Waldfrau (View Post) Yeah, there's many episodes with #3 and the first version of the Master.

That is good he is the classic one

[Waldfrau]

And I can see where the more "explicit" love/hate relationship between them in New Who comes from.

[Summer Falls]

Originally Posted by Waldfrau (View Post) And I can see where the more "explicit" love/hate relationship between them in New Who comes from.

that is good

[Waldfrau]

Originally Posted by DigificWriter (View Post) So, I'm on The Time Monster, a serial that Verity co-host and Big Finish contributor L.M. Myles thinks very highly of, and after watching it, I have to say that I share her high opinion of it This story is quintessential Doctor Who at its whackiest best, combining time shenanigans, pseudo-historical elements, the Master, and the involvement of the full Team UNIT crew. The relationship between Jo and Three was at its peak brilliance here, and both Pertwee and Katy Manning get to show off their charm and considerable chemistry. From Jo casually and playfully downplaying her own intelligence as a means of prodding Three for an explanation about something to both of them shutting down an argument using the 'job card' to Jo just balls-to-the-walls sacrificing herself when the Doctor hesitates, this story is a massive highlight of the Pertwee Era and a perfect example of the Three/Jo Doctor/Companion dynamic. Conceptually, the Chronovores are awesome, and really ought to have been reused in Modern Who (the Ninth Doctor story Father's Day would've been perfect for them to appear), and tying in Greek mythology and the legend of Atlantis made the whole thing ev n more compelling. Yes, the design of Kronos' initial form isn't particularly spectacular, but I don't think it really needed to be. I've also got to shout out the campy fun of Jo's furry/feathery jacket and multicolored Atlantean clothing and the Doctor defeating a Minotaur by playing Matador. I vacillate between using a15 and 1-10 ranking scale depending on my mood, but for this one I'm going to use the latter and rank The Time Monster a 9 out of 10 Minotaur Matadors.

Just watched it and agree with you. Especially considering that a lot of the six parters drag on this one is especially good.

The stuff with the two tardises intersecting was great and I loved the shot with the colorful background and Kronos at the end.

And yeah, Kronos' white costume looked like an oversized cockatoo, but the ep had enough stuff to make up for it.

Also I start to get where the bat**** craziness of the New Who era masters is coming from. He's much more tangible megalomaniac than in the other episodes.

[DigificWriter]

I had fully intended to post my thoughts on Death to the Daleks last week, but real life got in the way, and I also had a harder time figuring out what I wanted to say than I had anticipated that I would, so I'm going to just briefly hit on a few things now:
* Sarah Jane really came into her own with this story and Invasion of the Dinosaurs, and I think you can draw a direct archetypal correlation between her and Donna Noble, which is neat

* I'm somebody who doesn't mind writers sticking to a stylistic formula, and Terry Nation definitely did both with this story and Planet of the Daleks, although I do think he gave Sarah Jane and Jill Tarrant much more to do than Jo and Rebek got in the latter, which I appreciated

* I cannot figure out why Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks let Robert Holmes name the serial Death to the Daleks, but that's literally one of my only complaints about it

Death to the Daleks wasn't the most spectacular Dalek story I've seen, but I'd still give it a solid 3 out of 5.

I'm currently halfway through The Monster of Peladon as I type this post, and fully intend to get a full review posted later today, so stay tuned.

[Waldfrau]

Watched the first 4 eps of "Frontier in Space" yesterday, the Doctor & Jo as a prison break team crack me up.

[DigificWriter]

The Monster of Peladon:
* Most of my favorite stories from both Modern and Classic Who (thus far) have either been multi-parters or linked sequels, so I was really looking forward to this one

* Most of the podcast reviews I listened to for this story panned it as being a simple (and less coherent) retread of Curse of Peladon, but I think such thinking is missing the point. Curse of Peladon was a story about Peladon joining a wider community and rejecting isolationism, whereas this story is about the validation of that decision and the perpetuation of it; the narrative mechanics of telling the two stories may be the same, but that doesn't mean that the stories themselves are the same

* In my last post, I briefly noted that Sarah Jane reminded me of Donna Noble, but I was also struck in this story by how similar her role in it was to the first of the Tenth Doctor's Companions that she met, Rose Tyler, especially early on when Rose was traveling with the Ninth Doctor and would almost always end up personally connecting with somebody she and the Doctor encountered

* I was initially going to deduct points from the story for seemingly undoing Curse's subversion with regards to the Ice Warriors, but upon further reflection I've come to the realization that the decision to use those characters as antagonists does in fact work because of the fact that they are merely a rogue group acting in their own interests

* I loved Queen Thalira and thought that her evolution from largely powerless Figurehead to actual Authority was conveyed quite well, even though I wish she would've gotten the courage to own her station slightly sooner. I also quite enjoyed her interactions with both Sarah Jane and the Doctor, especially her conversation with the latter at the conclusion of the story where she clearly understands that he's about to unceremoniously vanish again and makes a tacit decision not to protest despite wanting him to remain

* All but one of the podcast reviews I listened to criticized the Doctor's behavior towards Sarah Jane at certain points in the story, such as the final scene where he physically pulls her into the TARDIS by the ear, as being sexist, but the fact that she doesn't object at any point to how he treats her and is in fact laughing during said final scene undercuts that criticism considerably

* Alpha Centauri returning was a nice bit of connectivity for the story, but they ultimately didn't really do all that much, which kind of made their presence meaningless

I gave The Curse of Peladon an enthusiastic rating of 9 out of 10, and this story easily earns the same score, although I half-jokingly want to give it a half point more simply for the addition of Queen Thalira. I'm not going to actually do that, though, so this one gets 9 Queen Thaliras out of 10.

Next up is Planet of the Spiders, the end of the Third Doctor's era and the debut of the Fourth Doctor, and I'm both saddened by and looking forward to that story because I have thoroughly enjoyed the Third Doctor's era and the ways it expanded and reinvented the formula of the franchise but am also ready to once again expand the number of Doctors with which I'm familiar.

[Summer Falls]

Thanks for that