Second Doctor Part II

Continuing my ruminations on Classic Doctor Who.  Part I of my stuff on the Decond Doctor is here.

The Dominators

The robots in this one are a sad attempt to catch lightning in a bottle and recreate Dalekmania.  Only problem was, the robots they came up with suck.  On top of that, this serial famously ridicules the anti-war movement.  I’m not particularly sympathetic to hippies, but there’s a mean spirited glee in the script for this one that makes me feel a little sick.  In short: it blows.

Are you fucking serious?

The Mind Robber *available on Netflix*

The Doctor & Co. travel outside of time and space, and wind up in the land of fiction.  As you can probably imagine, they want to leave.  It’s a little ambiguous if they actually do, a fact further complicated by the fact that The Doctor is in actuality a fictional character IRL.  This serial is a little meta and very surreal, but not up it’s own ass like you’re probably picturing.

In this scene The Doctor has to reconstruct Jamie's face from memory.  He kind of fucks it up and Jamie is played by a different actor for a few weeks.  Like I said there's some pretty heady stuff going on here.

The Invasion

The new series episode Dark Water borrows heavily from this serial about Cybermen invading Earth.  In this one a tycoon/evil guy named Tobias Vaughn precedes the Master’s role in the modern serial, making an unholy alliance with the Cybermen.  The coolest thing about Tobias Vaughn as a villain is that he doesn’t blink at all.  It’s kind of subtly unsettling like a grown man self describing as a “chocoholic” or Papa John (of pizza fame, with his jet-black hair and leathery orangeness.)  The Doctor’s companion, Zoe is also wearing a skintight outfit in this one. Aside from the obvious benefits, you can plainly see actors trying their damndest to say their lines without just staring at her.

But...

The War Games

Basically, some aliens kidnap and hypnotize a bunch of soldiers from different eras in human history with the goal of finding the best warriors to make a super army.  If you think about it, there’s probably an easier way, but whatever. It’s a cool enough concept to overlook the fact that it only almost seems reasonable.  This is a good thing.  This one is ten episodes long, and any extra time spent on bullshit explanations of every stupid thing would just bog it down.  Despite the serial’s length The War Games manages to move pretty quickly.

These glasses are nowhere near the silliest thing from the Classic Series.

The War Games ends with the first appearance of the proper Time Lords of Gallifrey, which gives the first real glimpse into the Doctor’s past.  The Time Lord’s show up all pissed off that the Doctor has been traveling through the whole of space and time, fucking around, and saving people.  Seems they’re awfully stodgy for an omnipotent race.  The Doctor’s must pay for his crime of: doing stuff. They forced him to regenerate and sentence him to Earth until he could learn to behave himself.

Doctor Who returns soon with a cape and classic hot rod?  Pretty much.