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Classic Doctor Who (1 Viewer)

The First Doctor - William Hartnell

Was in the tank corp at the beginning of WWII, but relieved of duty after a year and a half due to a nervous breakdown. Had health issues, was having difficulty with lines and extra-studio location filming, so was replaced. He thought the next actor was not only the best, but only choice to replace him. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hartnell

The Second Doctor - Patrick Troughton

Distinguished war record. The producer suggested a cosmic hobo look, thus the Charlie Chaplin-like sartorial sense (not sure who's idea it was for the Three Stooges Moe-like hair style?). Both Hartnell and Troughton played the role for three seasons and died at the same age (67).  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Troughton



 
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Troughton filmography highlights

Tyrell in Olivier's Richard III (the replicant manufacturing owner in Blade Runner had the same name - Tyrell, not Olivier or Richard :)  )



 
The Third Doctor - Jon Pertwee

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Pertwee

Like Troughton, had a distinguished war record. He was a senior intelligence agent and contemporary of James Bond author Ian Fleming and may have reported directly to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (another future Prime Minister was supposedly a kind of servant or butler for him). He was transferred off a ship just before it was sunk by the Bismarck, after which just 3/1,418 sailors survived. One of his jobs was to train commandos in spy-craft instruments. He broke a trend by portraying Doctor Who for five seasons, and died at 76. His era/episodes also started a trend by being the first in color.  

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2283542/Double-O-Who-Jon-Pertwees-secret-life-wartime-agent--years-did-battle-Daleks.html

article-2283542-1839E4FA000005DC-486_306x423.jpg
article-2283542-007243BB00000258-768_306x423.jpg


 
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Maybe a good time to take stock of the Doctors so far, as the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, had a seven season run, was oft-cited as the most popular and is a subject unto himself.

BTW, Hulu and Netflix used to have Classic Doctor Who streaming options (with the former by far the greatest number of episodes in their archive), but were recently removed with no immediate alternative. It is thought the BBC will soon have some form of subscription service like Hulu and Netflix to better monetize their Doctor Who property (among other assets in their archive).

Meanwhile, iTunes sells both bundles and "single", standalone stories of the Classic Series (and whole seasons or two halves for the more recent reboot series). Unlike the new series, which may have approx. hour long (with commercials) single episodes or sometimes two episode story arcs, the Classic series since the inception routinely used to run multi-episode story arcs or serials (typically four 25 minute episodes originally aired one per week, next most common six in length, but even two, three, five, seven and in a few instances - Baker's Key Of Time and the later Sixth Doctor Colin Baker's Trial Of A Time Lord examples of season length story arcs).

Of the bundles, there are both samplers and best of packages for all seven Doctors.

1) Hartnell

Sampler - A 25 minute Revisited bio, plus either a representative serial/s, or historically important for the run (first, last, or both in the case of Baker). Hartnell features the very first serial, the four part An Unearthly Child. The exec producer of the series, Sidney Newman, hated the execution of the first serial and almost canned the producer and director on the spot but instead had them redo it. The original air date was the day after JFKs assassination, so they re-aired it the following week. After just a few episodes of the first serial, the BBC controller and network's upper echelon bean counter were also ready to abort ("TERMINATE") the embryonic series for budget overruns, the producer had to explain the TARDIS (time machine that looks like a British police call box) interior set was a more or less one time cost that would be amortized over the length of the series if they gave it a chance. The exec producer Newman may also have intervened and prevailed on the higher ups to give it a fair chance. In not too long, by the time they got to the early second Dalek villain serial, the series had caught the imagination of the public, word of mouth buzz spread like a forest fire, ratings were surging and the future of the show was assured.

Best Of - The Unearthly Child (redundant to the above), four part The Aztecs (the series was originally envisaged to not be a clichéd presentation of so called "BEMs" or bug eyed monsters and tin robots, but in part an opportunity to intermix historical education for children) and six part The Dalek Invasion Of Earth. When they were starting to think about replacing Hartnell, they weren't sure if they needed to hire a look/sound alike actor. At some point they got the idea which is now an integral part woven into Doctor Who's backstory, that he had many "lives", and when he "died" he would morph or transform into a new doctor that not only looked and sounded completely differently, but even acted completely differently with new mannerisms, personalities, intellects, emotional profiles and behavioral patterns. Nonetheless, "they" (or he, as only one Doctor was embodied at any given time) maintained some vestige and common through line of identity over many re/incarnations. The transition episode to Troughton is part of a serial which I think didn't survive the BBCs barbaric, Draconian archival practices.       

2) Troughton - As alluded to above, the BBC had a nasty practice of taping over or otherwise destroying/discarding many episodes from the '60s (and even extending into the '70s and the Third Doctor Pertwee era). The hardest hit was the Troughton era. In a case of (mostly) bad news, good news, only about a half dozen serials survive, but iTunes has most of what remains.  

Sampler - The obligatory 25 minute Revisited bio, the four part Tomb Of The Cybermen and five part The Mind Robbers.

Best Of - Six part The Ice Warriors (some of this has been completed with animation for the visuals, since the audio survived), six part Seeds Of Doom, the Tomb Of The Cybermen serial (redundant to the above) and the four part The Krotons.

3) Pertwee

Sampler - Revisited bio, seven part The Silurians 

Best Of - Four part Spearhead From Space (noteworthy both for marking the transition from the second to third Doctor's regeneration as well as being the first color transmission in the franchise's history), the four part 10th Anniversary special serial The Three Doctors (sold separately but redundant if you have this, also the later Two Doctors, and the 90 minute Five Doctors marking the 20th Anniversary is available on DVD), and the six parters The Green Death (this Doctor Who epoch seemed to have more ecologically conscious-themed story arcs) and Planet Of The Spiders, the latter which ended Pertwee's run, and led to his regeneration into the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker. So no redundant serial with the Sampler, unlike the preceding first two Doctors.

Noteworthy unbundled "standalone" serials available - four parters Terror Of The Autons (marks the first appearance of the Moriarty to Sherlock Holmes-like arch villain "The Master") and Time Warrior (first appearance of classic villains, my favorites in terms of make up, The Sontarans). Don't think available on iTunes, but the last story arc of season seven, the seven parter The Inferno (last time a seven episode length story serial was transmitted) and the last story arc of season eight, the five parter The Daemons (similarly last time a five part serial was transmitted) are worth looking up. Pretty sure every Classic Doctor Who made it to DVD, though some OOP ones like War Games from the Troughton era and City Of Death from the Baker era (my favorite overall serial of all the Doctors, written by late, famed sci fi author Douglas Adams) can be hideously expensive. Alas, City Of Death was until very recently available on Hulu. BTW, the latter story is also available in book (including the e variant) form.                  

* Sydney Newman (Head of BBC Drama at time, he was the father of the series, The Avengers was also his brainchild)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Newman

Verity Lambert (first producer)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verity_Lambert

Waris Hussein (first director)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waris_Hussein

 
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I grew up on Star Trek (and Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, etc.), but really knew virtually nothing of Doctor Who until my 20s and 30s, and even then, sort of discovered the Classic Doctor Who after the new reboot series went on the air (after about a decade and a half hiatus).  

 
Fond memories here.  I vaguely remember Pertwee, but Baker was like a GOD to our geek/nerd clique back in Philly in the mid-70's.  Great thread!

ETA:Wow! Just realized my photo was missing....easily remedied :)

 
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Tom Baker was the product of alien gene splicing technology from the future (Bill Walton is in the final stages of regeneration)



 
This looks like a fairly comprehensive guide to the classic episodes.

http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/1doc.html

The A.V. Club has comprehensive episode by season breakdowns

http://www.avclub.com/tv/doctor-who-classic/?season=1

Both the above links found in the comments section of this article

http://www.tor.com/2012/07/30/how-to-who-on-starting-to-watch-classic-doctor-who/

No longer on Netflix, but a partial, selective guide to the Classic series from an author of the show's history.

http://www.themarysue.com/classic-doctor-who-netflix-guide/2/

 
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Fond memories here.  I vaguely remember Pertwee, but Baker was like a GOD to our geek/nerd clique back in Philly in the mid-70's.  Great thread!
Thanks, great handle! Baker was the best, like saintfool and you, enjoyed Pertwee, too. Tennant favorite of the new reboot series, but Capaldi growing on me (the long layoff prompted me to put some of this stuff in that thread, than create a separate one for the Classic series here). 

Who knows, maybe George Clinton was a Doctor Who head, with the Sun Ra-inspired Afro-naut cosmology and mythos/backstory, lyrics and wild imagery of the Pedro Bell covers. A baker's dozen of Funkadelic/Hazel tracks, including a partial medley from that genius of electric guitar tone and master of feedback arguably second only to Jimi Hendrix, who put the *DELIC* in the Funka (like the old Reese's commercial, "Hey, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter!", "Hey, you got your peanut butter on my chocolate!"). If he didn't do a song called Purple Hazel, he should have. :)

Hazel and P-Funk from '69



 
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27 minutes ago, Bob Magaw said:

Thanks, great handle! Baker was the best, like saintfool and you, enjoyed Pertwee, too. Tennant favorite of the new reboot series, but Capaldi growing on me (the long layoff prompted me to put some of this stuff in that thread, than create a separate one for the Classic series here). 

Who knows, maybe George Clinton was a Doctor Who head, with the Sun Ra-inspired Afro-naut cosmology and mythos/backstory, lyrics and wild imagery of the Pedro Bell covers. A baker's dozen of Funkadelic/Hazel tracks, including a partial medley from that genius of electric guitar tone and master of feedback arguably second only to Jimi Hendrix, who put the *DELIC* in the Funka (like the old Reese's commercial, "Hey, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter!", "Hey, you got your peanut butter on my chocolate!"). If he didn't do a song called Purple Hazel, he should have. :)

Hazel and P-Funk from '69

Good stuff and I pretty much have most all of it:).  I like Tennant as well.  Haven't seen any episodes with Capaldi yet, but it's definitely on my TO-DO list after viewing this thread.

Cheers!

 
I've been watching all of the old episodes via Kodi.

It's amazing how much of a coward and a #### William Hartnell was compared to later doctors.
Only watched the first serial (Unearthly Child) and halfway through the second (The Aztecs). Hartnell was clearly a big advocate and proponent of what Star Trek called "The Prime Directive". Human sacrifice? Let those wacky primitives be primitives, must not rewrite history.

I take it in the first few seasons they were on the run from the Time Lords, but by Baker's Genesis Of The Daleks (I haven't seen any Troughton and only a few Pertwee, most of the Baker serials while they were still up on Hulu, only Caves Of Androzani from the Davison era and no Colin Baker or Sylverster McCoy - I did watch the US made for TV movie, failed pilot with Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, but not the two mid-sixties movies starring Peter Cushing of Hammer Horror and Sherlock Holmes fame), he works with and for them on occasion. I think the entire Pertwee run, he was trapped on Earth without a TARDIS as punishment by the Time Lords?

* Can I watch Classic Doctor Who with a hot rodded Apple TV (I have second gen, I think, but could get a later model), or is Amazon Fire the best vehicle/platform for KODI software? 

 
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Cool, thanks Bob, I've been meaning to check into that, my DirecTV two year contract ends this Summer, heavily weighing the cord cutting options.

Review of a DVD collection of orphaned episodes from the first two Doctors (alas, no complete serials, some attempted reconstructions with stills/audio).

http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/drwholost.php

From Amazon's counterpart page description section

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002OXVF0?keywords=doctor%20who%20lost%20episodes&qid=1458590952&ref_=sr_1_1&s=movies-tv&sr=1-1

The sad fact faced by all fans of the BBC's long-running science fiction series Doctor Who is that nearly half of the 200+ episodes are considered lost or incomplete due to improper storage. However, episodes and tantalizing glimpses of "orphaned" stories from the reign of the first Doctor, William Hartnell (1963-66) have been culled together from 16 and 35mm prints and restored for this set. The most noteworthy treasure is "Day of Armageddon," the second episode in the epic 12-part story from season 3, "The Daleks' Master Plan," which has been unseen by the public since its initial airing in 1965. Also among the recently recovered is "The Lion," the first episode of season's 2's "The Crusade." The only other surviving episodes from these stories--episodes 5 and 10 from "The Daleks' Master Plan," and episode 3 from "The Crusade" (audio tracks and narrative links for the second and fourth episodes of this story are also included), as well as the sole remaining episode (#4, "The Final Test") from "The Celestial Toymaker" (featuring veteran actor Michael Gough) round out the disc. The DVD extras include fragments from the lost episodes of "The Daleks' Master Plan" and season 4's "The Smugglers" and "The Tenth Planet," all rescued from a variety of far-flung places; also included is commentary by actor Julian Glover for episode 3 of "The Crusade" and actors Peter Purves and Kevin Stoney, along with designer Raymond Cusick for "Day of Armaggedon," and some 8mm off-screen footage from the Hartnell era. Viewers can also access introductions to and an afterword for "The Crusade" (taken from the original VHS release) by accessing the "Play All" option on the main menu.

As with the First Doctor, a number of episodes and stories from Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor tenure (1966-69) are also incomplete or missing altogether, so The Patrick Troughton Years attempts to reconstruct the "orphaned" stories through episodes and clips culled from a variety of sources. For Who historians, the most important footage here is from Troughton's first appearance as the Doctor in season 5's "The Power of the Daleks," which is missing in its entirety; a rough glimpse of the transition from actor William Hartnell to Troughton is included, along with other surviving fragments. The complete episodes offered here are the sole remaining episode from season 4's "The Underwater Menace" (fragments from this story are included in the extras), episodes 2 and 4 from "The Moonbase," which features the return of the Cybermen (audio from episodes 1 and 3 is featured in the extras), episodes 1 and 3 from "The Faceless Ones," and episode 2 from "The Evil of the Daleks" (which includes commentary by actress Deborah Watling, who played the Doctor's companion, Victoria). Disc 2 marks the only episode from the Yetis' debut in "The Abominable Snowmen" (Watling again provides commentary), two episodes from "The Wheel in Space" (with commentary by director Tristan de Vere Cole and story editor Derrick Sherwin) and just one apiece for "The Web of Fear," "The Space Pirates," and "The Enemy of the World." Chief among the extras is the 1998 documentary The Missing Years, which interviews several of the film collectors responsible for rescuing these lost episodes and fragments (the doc has been updated to reflect the 2004 discovery of two William Hartnell episodes); the supplemental features offer fragments and behind-the-scenes footage from "The Macra Terror" (with a rare clip of the monsters), "Fury from the Deep" (which includes a scene reconstruction), "The Highlanders," and the aforementioned stories.

 
There are a few box sets from the consensus favorite Tom Baker era for those interested, including making of features, behind the scenes docs and commentary tracks, among other bonuses and extras.

Key of Time (unusual season long, loosely connected story arc), including a sextet of tales, The Ribos Operation, The Pirate Planet, The Stones of Blood, The Androids of Terror, The Power Of Kroll and The Armageddon Factor - which reminds me, Armageddon hungry! :)  

http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/keytotimese.php 

The E-Space Trilogy, from near the end of Baker's somewhat difficult final season (Full Circle, State of Decay and Warrior's Gate), in fact, these were right before his final two serials - see immediately below

http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/espacetrilogy.php

New Beginnings, including the penultimate and concluding serials to the Baker era, Keeper of Traken and Logopolis, respectively, as well as the opening salvo of the somewhat maligned Fifth Doctor Peter Davison's run (albeit not as harshly as the reviled Sixth Doctor Colin Baker and original series run killing Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy, who's watch it died on - not that it was all or even mostly his fault), Castrovalva    

http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/drwhobeginnings.php

Shada three disc special edition, a reconstruction of the only Classic Doctor Who story arc that was incomplete and never aired (due to a then ongoing BBC strike), a reuniting of Baker and sci fi great Douglas Adams who collaborated on one of the most popular serials ever, City of Death - both are available in book form. This includes a 90 minute doc, More Than 30 Years In The TARDIS.    

http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/doctorwhoshada.php

* BTW, The Five Doctors celebrated the 20th Anniversary of the show when Davison was the latest, current, active Doctor at that time (Baker opted to not participate, so his brief beginning/ending cameos were repurposed footage from Shada, first Doctor Hartnell had passed so they used another actor who resembled him), The Three Doctors the Tenth Anniversary, The Two Doctors got nothing other than it was on Colin Baker's watch and therefore after The Five Doctors and featured the final appearance of Troughton (I thought it was OK, though probably the least essential in this sub-genre) and the relatively recent reboot series entry into the canon, Day of the Doctor celebrated the 50th Anniversary ('13? featured Doctors 10 & 11, Tennant and Matt Smith, as well as John Hurt as the War Doctor). IMO it was very well done.   

** BBC Classic episodes guide indexed by Doctor, set to Tom Baker's page (of course)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/index_fourth.shtml  

 
I think the entire Pertwee run, he was trapped on Earth without a TARDIS as punishment by the Time Lords?





 
that fits my recollection of Pertwee. he had the vintage model-T ford or whatever that drove around. for a kid around between the ages of 7-9, Baker was a better fit. he was slightly goofy, had Sarah Jane, and K-9. i even remember watching an episode of Remmington Steele in my early teens where Baker played a bad guy.

 
I didn't find that episode taking a cursory look at YouTube, but did find these:

The evil sorcerer (is there any other kind? :)  ) in The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad, which Baker has cited as a primary cause of his being hired as the Fourth Doctor.



 
The Fourth Doctor - Tom Baker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Baker

He turned 82 in January 2016 (the first three Doctors have all passed, all the rest are still alive). Tied for the tallest Doctor with Pertwee at 6'3", broke his mark of five seasons as the Doctor by lasting for seven seasons, a mark that still stands. Had an important cameo as the museum curator in the 50th Anniversary Special, Day of the Doctor. Was in a monastery from the age of 16-21. At that point, a similar career arc and trajectory to someone else who made an impact in the world of TV and film -

Godfrey Reggio, director of the Koyaanisqatsi Trilogy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrey_Reggio

Baker on the UK/BBCs version of This Is Your Life (VIDEO nearly 30 minutes)


iTunes bundles

Sampler - The 25 minute Revisited bio, and his first (Robot) and last (Logopolis) serials, both four parters.

Best Of - Includes several of his greatest serials, two six parters Genesis of the Daleks (the back story of one of the Doctor's most dreaded nemesis and destructive villains) and The Talons of Weng Chaing (a Sherlock Holmes homage set in the London of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and two four parters The Hand of Fear and The Deadly Assassin (featuring The Master, anticipated the Wachowski brothers/sisters/siblings The Matrix by decades). Some other available standalone story arc/serials recommended, either on iTunes, DVD, KODI or whatever, include The Ark in Space (second serial after the inaugural Robot), Terror of the Zygons, Pyramids of Mars, The Seeds of Doom, The Robots of Death, Horror of Fang Rock, City of Death and Logopolis (The Master also figures in his final entry). I haven't seen all of Baker's serials, so take this list as representative and not exhaustive, hopefully others can weigh in with some of their favorite serials from this consensus favorite Doctor's reign.    

BTW, all 12 Revisited bios (seven Classic, the "Interregnum" US TV Movie Eighth Doctor Paul McGann and the first three NuWho reboot series Doctors, not including the latest, Peter Capaldi) are collected together in three multi DVD sets. They also include a representative single serial (in most cases not the same ones selected to be bundled with the seven Classic Doctor Who Revisited bios for the iTunes samplers) with a special introduction recorded by current showrunner Steven Moffat.

Doctors 1-4  four DVDs (Hartnell - four part The Aztecs, Troughton - four part Tomb of the Cybermen, Pertwee - four part Spearhead From Space and Tom Baker - four part Pyramids of Mars)   

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/60897/doctor-who-the-doctors-revisited-1-4/

Doctors 5-8 four DVDs (Davison - four part Earthshock, Colin Baker - two parts but double length episodes Vengeance on Varos, McCoy - four part Remembrance of the Daleks and McGann - Doctor Who: The Movie, arch villain and chief nemesis The Master played by Eric Roberts)

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/62831/doctor-who-the-doctors-revisited-5-8/

Doctors 9-11 three DVDs (Christopher Eccleston - longer format two part story arc Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways, David Tennant - two part The Stolen Earth and Journey's End and Matt Smith - two part The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon)

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/62238/doctor-who-doctors-revisited-ninth-to-eleventh/

There is also a 50th Anniversary bundle on iTunes (there was a more comprehensive DVD package that I think is OOP), which among many other things, includes the above made for TV movie An Adventure In Time And Space, as well as the Revisited bios for the Eighth through Eleventh Doctors. 

* Another list of all the Doctor Who serials from inception up to and including all the NuWho reboot series shows in their episodic format (with frequent two episode story arcs).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_serials

 
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Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Nation

"In 1998, readers of Doctor Who Magazine voted Nation's 1975 serial Genesis of the Daleks the greatest Doctor Who story of all time.[7] In the story, Nation introduced the character of Davros, the creator of the Daleks, who went on to appear in further storylines."

Fifth Doctor Peter Davison hosts a doc entitled, Daleks - The Early Years in three parts (VIDEO 20 minutes)



 
SacramentoBob said:
I've been watching all of the old episodes via Kodi.

It's amazing how much of a coward and a #### William Hartnell was compared to later doctors.
Just watched three Hartnell serials for the first time, Unearthly Child (first), The Aztecs and Dalek Invasion Of Earth. He actually didn't seem to have a lot to do in much of them. I hear you. Though, whatever his faults and flaws due to passivity (more on the producer/writers?), imo he lent a certain gravitas to the role that was arguably absent later, after Tom Baker, with Davison, Colin Baker and McCoy. Below were undoubtedly the best lines I heard the writers give him in the three serials I watched, and he rose to the superior material, maybe even elevated it, at any rate, an iconic early moment.    



 
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Top 50 Greatest Stories Classic & NuWho combined from The Telegraph (one man's list, not an attempted aggregated rankings)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2015/doctor-who-50-greatest-storylines-ever/

Tom Baker had four episodes make the top 10, Talons of Weng Chaing (#1), Genesis of the Daleks (#3), The Deadly Assassin (#6) and The City of Death (#7). No other Classic series Doctor had more than one. Davison's Caves of Androzani (#4) was highest among those, next were Pertwee's Inferno (#8) and Hartnell's The Massacre (#10). Rounding out the top 10, there were three NuWho stories, Blink (#2), The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (#5) and The Stolen Earth/Journey's End (#9), with the first and last by Tennant and middle by Eccleston.

My favorite Classic Doctor Who series scenario, City of Death

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Death

"City of Death was broadcast on BBC1 over four consecutive Saturdays beginning on 29 September 1979.[26] At this time, industrial action had blacked out rival broadcaster ITV and as a result, the serial scored very high ratings, averaging 14.5 million viewers over the four episodes; 16.1 million watched the fourth episode, the largest audience ever recorded for an episode of Doctor Who."

"City of Death was voted into seventh place in a 1998 poll of the readers of Doctor Who Magazine to find the best Doctor Who story; the magazine commented that it "represented the height of Doctor Who as popular light entertainment for all the family".[29] In 2009, Doctor Who Magazine readers voted it in eighth place.[30] In a more recent 2014 poll, the magazine's readers voted it fifth best Doctor Who story of all time.[31] A 2008 article in The Daily Telegraph named City of Death one of the ten greatest episodes of Doctor Who."

 
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saintfool said:
that fits my recollection of Pertwee. he had the vintage model-T ford or whatever that drove around. for a kid around between the ages of 7-9, Baker was a better fit. he was slightly goofy, had Sarah Jane, and K-9. i even remember watching an episode of Remmington Steele in my early teens where Baker played a bad guy.
Pertwee was in some ways the most James Bond-like of the Doctors. A high level espionage operative in real life, aligned with the British military on the show, knew martial arts, drove a cool, vintage car and other exotic vehicles. Colin Baker stated of all the Doctors, he played it the straightest. Often, others played it tongue in cheek. It did, after all, begin primarily as a children's show. That said, I think the producers tried to strike a balance throughout the series like a good Disney film, that, while ostensibly geared to a younger audience, also contains a mix of some elements designed to appeal to adults, too. But the tone seemed to shift at some point from the beginning to a darker place in the Pertwee era (for instance, summoning infernal apparitions atypical kiddie fare). I think the story arc/serial The Daemons was sort of a watershed in attracting a lot of negative attention from Parliament that maybe it should be toned down. According to the principle of "There is no such thing as bad advertising", the producers and writers used to love it when future press of this nature surfaced, as it was almost always positive for ratings, in a kind of perverse inverse relationship (and maybe given this dynamic, they couldn't have been blamed if they were perhaps tempted to push the envelope even further :) ). This was an era when Dr. Who for the first time received accusations of being too graphically violent, and maybe this reflected a shift in collective social and cultural tastes and sensibilities, and a parallel departure for media practices that followed in its wake.

As to Tom Baker, William Goldman in the novel Marathon Man likened a history professor to leader of the Manhattan Project and "Father of the Atom Bomb" Robert Oppenheimer. He noted some people you could instantly tell were geniuses just by looking at their eyes, they were almost BACKLIT.  

* As noted, there was clear shift to a darker tone from Hatnell to Pertwee. I'm looking forward to checking out Troughton, to see if that era is closer in tone to the former (will always be partly more identified with Hartnell due to also being old school black and white), latter or somewhere in between. Maybe Troughton is to Bo Diddley a sort of intermediate evolutionary stage, as Hartnell is to Robert Johnson a more stylistically primitive origin form and Pertwee and Tom Baker to The Beatles, a kind of maturing, fleshing out and fuller expression of the potential and possibilities of the form, relative to preceding stages of development.   

 
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Top 10 Doctor Who stories of all time, combined Classic and NuWho (BBCs Doctor Who Magazine - 2014) 

http://www.doctorwhomagazine.com/the-top-10-doctor-who-stories-of-all-time/

1 THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR (2013)
2 BLINK (2007)
3 GENESIS OF THE DALEKS (1975)
4 THE CAVES OF ANDROZANI (1984)
5 CITY OF DEATH (1979)
6 THE TALONS OF WENG-CHIANG (1977)
7 THE EMPTY CHILD/THE DOCTOR DANCES (2005)
8 PYRAMIDS OF MARS (1975)
9 HUMAN NATURE/THE FAMILY OF BLOOD (2007)
10 REMEMBRANCE OF THE DALEKS (1988)

Four NuWho (including top two), of the remaining six, Tom Baker with four, Genesis of the Daleks (#3), City of Death (#5), The Talons of Weng Chaing (#6) and Pyramids of Mars (#8), Davison and McCoy had one each, Caves of Androzani (#4) and Remembrance of the Daleks (#10), respectively. 

 
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Changing lists as a function of evolving taste over time.

From the same source a half decade earlier (2014). This time Baker had five, Tennant and Eccleston two each and Davison one (albeit #1).

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/17/best_who_ever/

  1. The Caves of Androzani (1984 - Peter Davison)
  2. Blink (2007 - David Tennant)
  3. Genesis of the Daleks (1975 - Tom Baker)
  4. The Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977 - Tom Baker)
  5. The Empty Child (2005 - Christopher Eccleston)
  6. Human Nature (2007 - David Tennant)
  7. Pyramids of Mars (1975 - Tom Baker)
  8. City of Death (1979 - Tom Baker)
  9. The Robots of Death (1977 - Tom Baker)
  10. Bad Wolf (2005 - Christopher Eccleston)
 
Robert Holmes had to be one of if not the most important writers and later script editors during the entire Classic Doctor Who series run. He wrote many iconic stories, introduced The Master, the Autons and Sontarans, the first serial for Third Doctor Pertwee, last for Fifth Doctor Davison and many of Fourth Doctor Baker's best in between. He was partly responsible and played a large role steering the show into a darker and more mature (sometimes controversially so for ostensibly children's programming) direction.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Holmes_(scriptwriter)


Doctor Who scripts









 
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Great thread Bob. I have a hard time watching the new ones for some reason. 

My all time favorite is pretty widely revered and usually in almost everyone's top 5, top 10 lists and by far Tom Baker was my all time favorite Dr., Robots of Death has it all for me. An Agatha Christie style murder mystery set to space or sci-fi. It was ahead of it's time and the Robots themselves are fascinating to look at. Also some super psychadelic stuff in there as in many of the series. 

 
Thanks, MOP.

My interest was somewhat piqued by the first reboot season, but than I lost track. Later, a few Moffat (co-creator and producer of Sherlock)/Tennant vehicles, standalone episodes Girl In The Fireplace and Blink, as well as the two part Silence In The Library/Forest Of The Dead knocked me out by the quality of the writing, acting, special FX and overall production value and that was a turning point, I was a convert - Blink in recent polls places extremely high in the overall rankings of all time greatest episodes.  

Great choice, maybe not quite as well known as Genesis of the Daleks or City of Death (?), but also in my top 5-10. Baker also my favorite, but I really enjoyed a few Pertwee serials (Inferno and The Daemons), and am looking forward to revisiting them, and watching more from his era. Pretty sure he is my second favorite from the Classic era (Tennant second favorite OVERALL), but just starting to watch for the first time the first and last few, I seem to have gravitated to the approximately middle of the run and be more familiar with that era - Davison was good in his last serial, The Caves of Androzani, and may be underrated, some Doctors, especially at the end of the run, may have been saddled with less than top drawer stories.

What are some of your other top 3-5 favorites from the Baker era?

A few observations:

I don't recall Star Trek (Original Series) with many aliens as cool as the Zygons (speaking of psychedelic) and Sontarans (as well as the Jagaroth race, but no spoiler pictures on that)  :)

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&amp...hSFq7K0RXcJCGehnsfrA&ust=1458771489975803https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&amp...ZqVofsP49hU5iCBLnhjQ&ust=1458771634196210  

I also intended to note earlier, part of the charm was the at times cheesy makeup, costumes and FX (notwithstanding the above examples). Some of the early Dalek designs clearly seemed to incorporate toilet plungers! :)

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&amp...Qp7F750riQS3jw6ACKjQ&ust=1458771879098169

The Wasp-like creatures in Ark in Space featured a then novel material (now, not so much, dating it quite a bit) - bubble wrap.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&amp...iaLal7bXjlWwOqhTgzsg&ust=1458772177405973

Also from Ark in Space, an exterior shot of the exodus ship from Earth (due to solar flares) populated by many people in stasis or suspended animation looks like it was constructed of an off the shelf toy/model life raft and a plastic syringe.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&amp...p0YqmUtTWNPpZt-hAQtw&ust=1458777234263809 

 
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Top 10 Doctors (inclusive of NuWho), by the same writer for the Telegraph that did the top 50 stories list above. He has Tennant #2, as do many others, has Pertwee #1 (observing as others have that your favorite Doctor tends to be the one you grew up with - I thought Tom Baker was great, but a huge reason I like him and Tennant so much is the fantastic stories they were given to work with, though they are also great, extremely talented actors). He surprisingly has Baker at #4, and was also high on Troughton at #3. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/11537333/Doctor-Who-the-top-ten-best-Doctors.html?frame=3267887

* After watching the early Troughton serial Tomb of the Cybermen for the first time (first of his, period), it does seem more like Hartnell than Pertwee era, in terms of taste and sensibility of the production/writing team. So using the music analogy above, if Hartnell is like Robert Johnson and Pertwee/Baker like The Beatles, Troughton was more Charlie Christian than Bo Diddley, closer to the origin than intermediate evolutionary stage. 

 
Terrance ##### was another extremely important writer in Classic Doctor Who series history, and was also the script editor for more than a half decade from the late '60s to mid '70s, during the show's golden era (he was the predecessor of Robert Holmes, who he selected to be his successor). Among many other things, he wrote Tom Baker's first serial (Robot) one of his last (State of Decay), as well as the story commissioned for the 20th Anniversary celebration (one of only two 90 minute single episodes/features during the classic run), The Five Doctors, after initial choice Holmes struggled and eventually gave up trying to incorporate myriad Doctors, Companions and Villains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrance_Dicks

In 1968, ##### was hired as assistant script editor on the popular BBC science-fiction TV series Doctor Who.[1] He was appointed head script editor the following year, and earned his first writing credit for the programme when he and Hulke co-wrote the 10-part serial The War Games, which concluded the series' sixth season and the Second Doctor's (Patrick Troughton) tenure. ##### had, however, been the uncredited co-writer of the earlier serial The Seeds of Death, having extensively re-written Brian Hayles' original scripts.[2]

##### went on to form a highly productive working relationship with incoming Doctor Who producer Barry Letts, serving as script editor on all of Letts' five seasons as head of the programme from 1970 to 1974. In 1972, ##### embarked on a parallel career as an author with the publication of his first book, The Making of Doctor Who (a history of the production of the TV series), which was co-written by Hulke.

After stepping down as script editor, ##### continued his association with Doctor Who, writing four scripts for his successor, Robert Holmes: these were Robot (1975, Tom Baker's first outing as the Fourth Doctor), The Brain of Morbius (1976, for which ##### was credited under the pseudonym "Robin Bland" after his displeasure at Holmes' re-writes prompted him to request that it be shown "under some bland pseudonym"),[3] Horror of Fang Rock (1977) and State of Decay (1980).

State of Decay was in fact a re-written version of a story originally titled The Vampire Mutations,[3] which had been due for production during season 15 until the BBC decided that the vampiric theme would clash with the plot of its new adaptation of Bram Stoker's Count Dracula, which was due for transmission at roughly the same time, and replaced it with Horror of Fang Rock. ##### penned his final Doctor Who script in 1983, when he wrote the programme's 20th anniversary special episode, The Five Doctors.

* Douglas Adams serials City of Death and the (only in the history of the series) never completed/unaired story arc Shada (parts of which were used for Tom Baker's inconsequential early and late cameos on The Five Doctors) are available in novelized form, completed by another author who did his best to remain faithful to the literary style of Adams.

Douglas Adams Doctor Who script to regenerate as a novel




City of Death, a Tom Baker-era tale of time travel, intrigue and holidays in Paris dashed off in a weekend will get lengthier consideration by author James Goss




http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/20/douglas-adams-doctor-who-script-city-of-death-novel-james-goss  

Douglas Adams’s celebrated Doctor Who script City of Death, written over the course of a weekend after the producer, in Adams’s words, “took me back to his place, locked me in his study and hosed me down with whisky and black coffee for a few days”, is being turned into a novel by the author James Goss.

Featuring Tom Baker as the Time Lord, City of Death aired in 1979, and remains one of Doctor Who’s most popular serials, watched by over 16 million viewers when it was first broadcast. It finds the Doctor on holiday in Paris with Romana – played by Lalla Ward – and embroiled in the alien schemes of Count Scarlioni. Splintered into multiple aspects when his ship exploded over primeval Earth, the villainous count has been attempting to guide the planet towards inventing time travel ever since, so that he will be able to go back, and save his ship.

The final stages of his evil design are due to be financed by selling copies of the Mona Lisa which the villain forced Leonardo da Vinci to paint. But the Doctor realises the count has to be stopped, because the explosion of the Jagaroth ship was the spark for life on Earth.

The script was produced at breakneck speed and represents a “hair-whitening display of Adams’s ingenuity”, according to the writer’s biographer, Jem Roberts. Adams was working as script editor on the 17th series of Doctor Who when it emerged one Friday that there was no script for a four-episode shoot due to begin the following Monday.

Adams was drafted in by the producer to work on a storyline left unfinished by one of the show’s writers, David Fisher, due to family problems. According to Roberts, Adams recalled how the producer “took me back to his place, locked me in his study and hosed me down with whisky and black coffee for a few days, and there was the script”.

Now Goss, who has written two Doctor Who novels and produced a BBC radio adaptation of Shada, an unfinished Adams Doctor Who story published as a book in 2012, is turning the work into a novel, out in May.

“It’s a book Douglas Adams was supposed to write,” he said. “In the 80s, they wrote to him, and asked if he would like to write [his scripts] as novels - they even said they’d pay double. But he thanked them politely, and declined, and used his ideas in other books.”

Goss admitted to “slight performance anxiety” when taking on the work of the late, much-loved writer. “I knew people would be looking and saying: ‘Well, it’s not going to be as good as what he’d have written’ ... But in a way it was great, because I knew that every decision I’d make would be wrong,” he said. “When you’re essentially ghost-writing, and for someone as good as Douglas Adams, you know readers will say: ‘That’s not how Adams would have done it.’ It took a lot of pressure off.”

According to Goss, Adams’s enthusiasm waned markedly in the final episode of the four-part series. “It just basically says: ‘People running around in Paris’, and writing that is not as exciting as doing it,” he said.

But the rapid construction allows for much greater freedom in filling in the back story. “Because City of Death was so hurriedly sketched out, we don’t know who many of these characters really are.”

He pointed to Count Scarlioni, who resembles a squid, but has a wife who seems to have never noticed his true appearance. “She’s quite incurious about it. But with modern eyes, we wonder did he never take his clothes off and reveal the horrible secrets beneath?” he said. “It’s one of those things Doctor Who fans will worry about, late at night – and rightly so.”

Goss has thoroughly enjoyed digging into the mysteries left behind by Adams, whom he met after helping to adapt Adams’s novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency for the stage.

“He came to see it, and he was incredibly generous with his time,” said Goss. “He would say: ‘Why don’t I take the entire cast out for a meal?’ He was very pleased with the play we’d done. You could tell – he was basically a giant, and when we seated him in the Oxford Playhouse, we’d be able to see him there, laughing at his own jokes. It was quite a sight to see.”

 
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This guy does some nice discussion on Doctor Who (along with his tremendous collection of Star Trek reviews) including several on how to start watching the series for beginners (Doctor Who 101) and the history behind the lost episodes (Lost in Time).  I liked his Star Trek stuff so much, I got into Doctor Who, watching classic stuff on Netflix DVDs.  Brought back a lot of memories of casually watching on PBS back around 1980 or so.  Robots of Death was also one of my favorites that had stuck in the back of my memory for all these years until I saw the DVD again recently.  

http://sfdebris.com/videos/doctorwho.php

 
Barry Letts, exec producer for Doctor Who from 1969-1974, overlapping/coinciding with his friend Terrance ##### script editor stint. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Letts

"Letts' first involvement with Doctor Who was in 1967 when he directed the Patrick Troughton serial The Enemy of the World. This was a complex serial to direct as Troughton played both the Doctor and the Mexican dictator "Salamander" in the same story and sometimes in the same scenes – a rare and demanding directorial requirement for the 1960s.

He became the show's producer in 1969 in succession to Derrick Sherwin. Jon Pertwee had just been cast as the Doctor. Letts' first story as producer was Pertwee's second, Doctor Who and the Silurians, and he remained the producer for the rest of the Pertwee serials, becoming the father figure in the 'family' atmosphere that had developed on the show at that time. It was an exciting era for Doctor Who, with episodes broadcast in colour for the first time and an improved budget which enabled more location filming and action sequences than had previously been seen. Letts also embraced the technological innovations which came with moving the series into colour, most notably his enthusiasm for Colour Separation Overlay.[2] He also oversaw the celebrations of the programme's tenth anniversary in 1973, uniting the first three Doctors in the first multiple Doctor story, The Three Doctors.

When he was offered the chance to become producer on the series, Letts asked that he be allowed to also direct some of the stories. The BBC agreed to this and Letts directed several Doctor Who stories during his period as producer: Terror of the Autons, Carnival of Monsters, Planet of the Spiders and the remaining studio scenes of Inferno after Douglas Camfield had been taken ill. He returned in 1975 to direct The Android Invasion during the era of Philip Hinchcliffe as programme producer.

Barry Letts formed a particular partnership with two other contributors to the programme: Terrance #####, who was the script editor on the programme at that time; and Robert Sloman, with whom he contributed four stories to the Pertwee era: The Dæmons (credited as Guy Leopold); The Time Monster; The Green Death; and Planet of the Spiders, which was Pertwee's swansong. Indeed, he provided an official obituary to Sloman in December 2005. Letts was a Buddhist and also held liberal political views. This influenced his contribution to Doctor Who, which included commissioning stories which reflected issues including ecology, colonialism and apartheid.[1]

He was still producer when Tom Baker was cast as the Fourth Doctor. Letts cast him after the actor was recommended to him by Bill Slater, an experienced director and Head of Serials at the BBC. After one story with Baker, Robot he left the position of producer in 1974, having been the longest serving producer on the programme to that time.

In the 1980–81 series, he returned to be executive producer alongside John Nathan-Turner as the producer. This was for one season between The Leisure Hive and Tom Baker's final story Logopolis. Letts' return to the programme was because Nathan-Turner had not previously served as a producer and a restructure of the BBC Drama Department meant that Head of Series & Serials Graeme MacDonald was unable to offer the support previous producers had received. As it happened, 'JNT' (as he was known) stayed for nine years, overtaking Letts as the longest serving producer on Doctor Who. When the programme returned in 2005, Letts was involved in the hectic round of interviews to promote the show, most unusually appearing for a lengthy discussion piece on The Daily Politics with Andrew Neill on BBC2.

Barry Letts also wrote two scripts for two radio plays broadcast in the 1990s: The Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space. He wrote the novelisations of the TV story The Dæmons (Target Books, 1974) and the radio plays The Paradise of Death (Target, 1994) and The Ghosts of N-Space (Virgin Books, 1995, published as part of the Virgin Missing Adventures line). He also wrote two original Doctor Who novels published by BBC Books: Deadly Reunion (co-written with Terrance #####, 2003) and Island of Death (2005).

He continued to record commentaries and interviews for DVD releases of his Doctor Who episodes up until his death in 2009. In June 2008 he recorded a long in-vision interview covering his entire career, and his Doctor Who years in particular, excerpts of which continued to be widely used on future DVD releases, most notably on an obituary documentary "Remembering Barry Letts" which was included on the BBC DVD release of The Daemons, a serial Letts co-wrote.

Letts' work on the show is inextricably linked with the character of the Third Doctor, as played by Jon Pertwee. With the exceptions of The Enemy of the World, Robot, The Android Invasion and his one season as executive producer in 1980–81, every Doctor Who story regardless of media in which Letts has been involved – whether as producer, director or writer – has involved this version of the character."

A tribute to actor/writer/director/producer Letts, from a former actor on the series (from the UNIT military shows during the Pertwee and Baker eras).



 
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Philip Hinchcliffe (produced Doctor Who from 1974-1977)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Hinchcliffe

In Spring 1974, at the age of 29, he was approached by the BBC's head of serials to take over as producer on Doctor Who, his first full production job, initially trailing and then succeeding long-serving producer Barry Letts. Although he trailed Letts on Tom Baker's first story Robot, he was first credited on The Ark in Space. Throughout his first year he was mostly producing scripts that had been commissioned by the previous production team prior to their departure and it was not until a year later that Hinchcliffe's full influence came to bear, with Planet of Evil in late 1975 — Tom Baker's second season in the title role of the Doctor.

Hinchcliffe, together with script editor Robert Holmes, ushered in a change in tone for the television series. The series became darker and more adult than previously, with a gothic atmosphere influenced by the horror films produced by Hammer Films.[1] This horror influence is especially evident in serials like Planet of Evil, Pyramids of Mars, The Brain of Morbius, The Hand of Fear and The Talons of Weng-Chiang, all of which have content which directly recalls well known horror novels and movies. Hinchcliffe also aspired to give the programme a more literary feel with a stronger science fictional basis.[2]

Hinchcliffe was reluctant to use characters and monsters from the series' past: the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Sontarans only appeared once during his tenure, and these stories were commissioned by Barry Letts. The Master and the Time Lords returned for one adventure, The Deadly Assassin, at the suggestion of script editor Robert Holmes, but were portrayed very differently from their previous appearances. The character of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce were written out of the series.

Hinchcliffe produced more episodes to achieve over 10 million viewers than any other producer in the series' history; only during the "Dalekmania" spell of the mid-Sixties had the series gained a comparable reception from the public. However, the BBC received several complaints from Mary Whitehouse of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association that the series was unduly frightening for children and could traumatise them. The NVALA had been critical of the series before but the complaints reached their height in the Hinchcliffe period. Her strongest criticism was for The Deadly Assassin, where an attempt is made to drown the Doctor at the end of an episode. While the BBC publicly defended the programme, after three seasons Hinchcliffe was moved onto the adult police thriller series Target in 1977,[3] and his replacement Graham Williams, who had created Target, was specifically instructed to lighten the tone of the storylines and reduce violence. Screenonline states that this resulted in "the start of an erratic decline in both popularity and quality" for Doctor Who which led to its eventual cancellation.[4]

Hinchcliffe also wrote several novelisations of Doctor Who serials for Target Books, adapting The Keys of Marinus, The Seeds of Doom, and The Masque of Mandragora.

Tom Baker's seasons 12-14 trailer



 
Why did Amazon pull the old ones? 

I had slowly been making my way thru the old ones and then suddenly around November they all went away.  

 
May have been a licensing issue with the BBC. NuWho returning this Sunday night after a brief absence (per Tom Servo in the other thread). There have been rumblings that a BBC launch of a subscription service similar to Hulu and Netflix is likely looming. 

 
Great thread Bob. I have a hard time watching the new ones for some reason. 

My all time favorite is pretty widely revered and usually in almost everyone's top 5, top 10 lists and by far Tom Baker was my all time favorite Dr., Robots of Death has it all for me. An Agatha Christie style murder mystery set to space or sci-fi. It was ahead of it's time and the Robots themselves are fascinating to look at. Also some super psychadelic stuff in there as in many of the series. 
Forgot to mention,

after watching many of the Baker era serials in the few months leading up to their being removed from Hulu, I recently got a few of my favorites on DVD (for the docs, behind the scenes stuff and commentaries), and between being so recent in my memory and checking out a few best of lists, I clearly recalled many of the more well known and lauded Baker episodes - City of Death, Genesis of the Daleks, Talons of Weng Chaing, Pyramids of Mars, Terror of the Zygons, etc. But the one I couldn't match the scenario to a title in my mind, was Robots of Death. But after doing a lot of digging and research for this thread, once I stumbled on the title that matched the scenario, the recognition was unmistakable and immediate. Great story.

A testament to how great the Baker era was, is that I have City of Death #1 and Robots of Death #5-#10, and you have Robots of Death #1 and may have City of Death #5-#10 (or even lower?), but there just are that many great stories/serials, not just in the Classic Doctor Who series as a whole, but just in the Baker so called "golden era", it is that hard to come to a consensus.

BTW, in addition to Inferno and The Daemons from the Pertwee era (which I saw, liked a lot and want to revisit soon), I also want to check out Time Monster and Carnival of Monsters, which I haven't yet seen, but if I like, will recommend to the attention of the thread. The former was a season ending serial, and some of the better episodes could be at the beginning or end of seasons. For instance, during Pertwee's stint, the five season-ending serials, in order, were Inferno, The Daemons (reportedly Pertwee's single favorite story arc), The Time Monster, The Green Death and Planet of the Spiders (his last). But also some great season openers - Spearhead From Space (his first), Terror of the Autons (introduces the Master), Day of the Daleks, The Three Doctors (Tenth Anniversary Special) and The Time Warrior (introduces the Sontarans).       

 
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The Fifth Doctor - Peter Davison (he was the youngest Doctor ever, at the time - before Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith, also maybe counterintuitively, one of the more widely recognized in the UK before being hired). After Doctors One (Hartnell) and Two (Troughton) had three year stints, and Doctors Three (Pertwee - five years) and Four (Baker - seven years) followed with progressively longer tenures, Davison represented a return to the three season interval, as did later Doctors - Seventh (Sylverster McCoy), Tenth (Tennant) and Eleventh (Smith) and possibly Twelve (Capaldi, after 2017?). Davison arguably had the toughest gig after the First Doctor establishing the entire series and ALL the future Doctors, as Baker must have been an extremely hard act to follow (hard to imagine).  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Davison

"In 1980, Davison signed a contract to play the Doctor for three years, succeeding Tom Baker (the Fourth Doctor) and, at age 29, was at the time the youngest actor to have played the lead role, a record he retained for nearly thirty years until Matt Smith (the Eleventh Doctor) took the role in 2009 at age 26. Attracting such a high-profile actor as Davison was as much of a coup for the programme's producers as getting the role was for him, but he did not renew his contract because he feared being typecast.[9] Patrick Troughton (who had played the Second Doctor and whom Davison had watched on the programme as a teenager) had recommended to Davison that he leave the role after three years, and Davison followed his advice.[10][11] The Fifth Doctor encountered many of the Doctor's best-known adversaries, including the Daleks (in Resurrection of the Daleks) and the Cybermen (in Earthshock).

After leaving Doctor Who, Davison would come back to the franchise on a few occasions. He presented the special videotape documentary release Daleks – The Early Years (1993), showcasing selected episodes of missing Dalek stories from both the First Doctor and Second Doctor's eras. Davison did, in fact, return to play the Fifth Doctor in the 1993 multi-doctor charity special Dimensions in Time and in the 1997 video game Destiny of the Doctors (audio only). He continues to reprise the role in a series of audio plays by Big Finish Productions. He returned once again in "Time Crash", a special episode written by Steven Moffat for Children in Need; in the episode, which aired on 16 November 2007, the Fifth Doctor met the Tenth Doctor, played by future son-in-law David Tennant.[12] Tennant later presented a documentary, Come in Number Five, which examined Davison's Doctor Who years in some detail, and which was included as a special feature on the 2011 DVD re-release of Resurrection of the Daleks. It is one of many DVD releases of his Doctor Who serials in which Davison has appeared as an in-vision interviewee or in DVD commentary recordings.

In 2012, Davison expressed further interest in returning to the role of the Doctor for the series' 50th anniversary,[13] but he did not take part. He did, however, write and direct The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, an affectionate and comedic account of Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and himself attempting to get parts in the Anniversary Special, featuring cameos from numerous Doctor Who cast, crew, and famous fans.[14]

In 2014 Davison pre-recorded a video cameo appearance as himself in Benjamin Maio Mackay's touring comedy show "50 Years of Doctor Who: Preachers Podcast Live 2!" which played Adelaide Fringe and Melbourne International Comedy Festival to great acclaim. This was recorded after the interview Peter conducted with Benjamin's podcast surrounding the Dr Who Symphonic Spectacular.

Davison has been critical of the original series of Doctor Who and has expressed great admiration for the 21st century revival. In 2008, Davison spoke unfavourably of some of the writing for the series during his tenure, claiming: "There were some very suspect scripts we did, knocked off by TV writers who'd turn their hand to anything. Fair enough, but they weren't science fiction fans. You do get the impression, both with the television series now and Big Finish, that they are fans of science fiction and that's why they are doing those stories."[15] Davison has also praised the sexual frisson between the Doctor and his companions in the revived series and claimed: "They were struggling for many years to make the companions more rounded characters and... they never once thought it was a good idea to put any frisson or sexual tension – even in its most innocent form – between the Doctor and companion. I think it would make it easier to write a better character. All I know is they've struggled for many years to write a good companion's part. I don't think they've ever really managed it till Rose, when the series came back."[16] Interviewed in 2013, Davison stated that The Caves of Androzani, The Visitation and Earthshock were his favourite serials from his time on the series, and that Time-Flight was the biggest disappointment because of a lack of budget."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Davison

iTunes

Sampler - Revisited bio, four part Earthshock

Best of - four part serials Castrovalva (his first), The Visitation, Earthshock (again) and The Caves of Androzani (final), which includes his three favorites plus his debut. Earthshock is redundant.  

 
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Best Doctor Who episodes of all time - 2013 list from The Guardian (reverse chronology by Doctor) Dan Martin

Most avail on iTunes (not serials The Sea Devils and City of Death)

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/series/the-best-doctor-who-episodes-of-all-time

18) Dalek - Eccleston

17) The TV Movie - McGann

16) The Happiness Patrol - McCoy

15) Remembrance of the Daleks - McCoy

14) The Trial of a Timelord - C. Baker

13) Timelash - C. Baker

12) The Caves of Androzani - Davison

11) Earthshock - Davison

10) City of Death - T. Baker

9) The Talons of Weng Chaing - T. Baker

8) The Deadly Assassin - T. Baker

7) Genesis of the Daleks - T. Baker

6) The Green Death - Pertwee

5) The Sea Devils - Pertwee

4) The Mind Robber - Troughton

3) The Tomb of the Cybermen - Troughton

2) The Dalek Invasion of Earth - Hartnell

1) The Unearthly Child - Hartnell

Another Guardian List from the 2013 50th Anniversary celebration (chronological by Doctor) Andrew Harrison

(Classic Doctor Who serials/story arcs Power of the Daleks, The Daemons, The Seeds of Doom and Curse of Fenric unavailable on iTunes)

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/gallery/2013/nov/09/10-best-doctor-who-stories

1) An Unearthly Child - Hartnell

2) Power of the Daleks - Troughton

3) The Daemons - Pertwee

4) Pyramids of Mars - T. Baker

5) Seeds of Doom - T. Baker

6) The Caves of Androzani - Davison

7) The Curse of Fenric - McCoy

8) The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances - Eccleston

9) Human Nature/The Family of Blood - Tennant

10) The Doctor's Wife - Smith

BBC America Best of Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Poll: 10 Greatest Stories

Skewed heavily to NuWho - top three stories are by Tennant, among my favorites, including Blink #1 and Girl in the Fireplace #3, highest rated Classic Doctor Who include T. Baker's Seeds of Death #5 and Genesis of the Daleks #7, as well as Pertwee's Inferno #10 

http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2013/11/best-doctor-50th-anniversary-poll-top-ten-stories

 
Incidentally Speaking: Appreciating Dudley Simpson

Guest contributor Shane Spangler celebrates one of the biggest composers of the classic era. 7-14-13

http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/incidentally-speaking-appreciating-dudley-simpson-51282.htm

The Music and Sound of Doctor Who

http://www.mfiles.co.uk/doctor-who-music.htm

"Dudley Simpson is an Australian composer who became the backbone of Doctor Who music for many years. He first served on the William Hartnell stories "Planet of Giants", "The Crusade", "The Chase" and "The Celestial Toymaker", nicely complementing the Toymaker's sinister games. He scored even more Patrick Troughton stories including "The Macra Terror" with electronic keyboard music and holiday-camp style jingles (and a stock track called "Musak" created by John Baker of the Radiophonic Workshop), "Evil of the Daleks" where he gave new companion Victoria a romantic theme on oboe, and "Fury from the Deep" where a heartbeat was added to the music for the seaweed creature. A feature of some 60s stories was that the episode title and writer credits sometimes appeared on screen after the title music had faded. In some stories this served as a short prologue to remind viewers of the setting for the story. This prologue sometimes featured music or sound effects such as a stock drum roll in most episodes of the "The War Machines", some stock bagpipe music in "The Highlanders" and some battle sounds in "The War Games". But the best example of this was "The Seeds of Death" whose opening sequence at the start of every episode showed the sun, the moon and the earth accompanied by Dudley Simpson's dramatic music. This sequence was almost certainly inspired by similar sequences in the film "2001: A Space Odyssey" released the previous year.

When Jon Pertwee assumed the lead role, Simpson was effectively the house composer scoring the majority of stories through most of the 1970s until near the end of the Tom Baker era. Due to budget restrictions, his music was usually played by a small handful of musicians and then often augmented with synth sounds by members of the Radiophonic Workshop to make the sound thicker and more complex, essentially more orchestral. In total he composed the music for 60 stories, including many stories now regarded as classics such as "Genesis of the Daleks" (dramatic with great characterisation), "The Pyramids of Mars" (with its Egyptian sounds and memorable organ sound for Sutekh), "The Invasion of Time" which has a variety of different moods (both dramatic and wryly humorous) for the different locations and groups of protagonists, and "City of Death" (full of fun with the Doctor and Romana almost in holiday mood) a story written by Douglas Adams (who also wrote "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") and set in Paris (Simpson's theme suggesting car horn traffic noises is surely inspired by Gershwin's An American in Paris). A number of stories from the "Key to Time" season have largely acoustic scores: "The Ribos Operation" uses a small group of instruments and an organ to create a convincing atmosphere for the planet, and "The Stones of Blood" and "Androids of Tara" also benefit from an acoustic sound and some wonderful music.

The Master became a recurring character in the Jon Pertwee era (equivalent to Sherlock Holmes' Moriarty), and Simpson introduced a theme for the character which had a characteristic 3 note motif. A few years later during Tom Baker's time, Simpson was to develop some musical ideas which briefly became the Doctor's Theme. In the Tom Baker story "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" Dudley Simpson also had an on-screen part as the music hall conductor.

Ironically, given his huge contribution to the series, there is not a lot of Dudley Simpson's music available on CD. One of the best albums of his music is a recreation by Heathcliff Blair of Simpson's music, since the original tapes no longer existed at the BBC but some manuscripts were kept. The album has several tracks from classic stories of the Tom Baker era: "The Ark in Space", "Genesis of the Daleks", "Pyramids of Mars", "Planet of Evil" and "The Brain of Morbius", plus the aforementioned Doctor's Theme. Simpson also comments on his music among the special features on the DVDs for "The War Games", "The Sun Makers", "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" and "The Brain of Morbius". Outside of Doctor Who, Dudley Simpson had a busy career writing music for many other television productions. He scored the BBC mini-series adaptation of "The Last of the Mohicans" and wrote themes or incidental music for "Paul Temple", "The Tomorrow People", "Target", "Sense and Sensibility", "Supergran" and Terry Nation's other famous creation "Blake's 7". The album "BBC Space Themes" has Simpson's themes for "Moonbase 3" and "Blake's 7"."

The Doctor Who Column: The (occasionally excessive?) music of Doctor Who

Wednesday, 25 April 2012 18:41 | by John Bensalhia
http://www.shadowlocked.com/201204252567/opinion-features/the-doctor-who-column-the-occasionally-excessive-music-of-doctor-who.html

"... However, one composer was to make a distinct impression – Dudley Simpson. Simpson would go on to become one of the most prolific and talented composers of Who. One or two fans have said that his music sounds a bit too samey (particularly in the late '70s), but I think that it's more a case of sticking with his own inimitable style. After all, it never did Status Quo any harm, did it?

For me, Simpson's music succeeds on a number of points. For one thing, he can create tension when there isn't really any on the screen. The Fendahl Core, for example, is no more than a woman in gold paint, swishing robes and fake eyes painted over Wanda Ventham's closed eyelids. What Simpson does is to disregard this and create a strange, eerie howl over the top of a doomy church organ. The end result adds a lot more to the drama, and makes the Fendahl Core just that bit more unearthly and creepy. The ending of Part Two of The Power Of Kroll sees poor old Harg pulled to his doom by a fake rubber tentacle. Sounds silly? Well, in fact, not only do we get some great agonised screaming from actor Grahame Mallard, we also get a big, bold, dramatic scoring from Dudley Simpson – all culminating in Philip Madoc's memorable bellow of “HAAAARRRGGG!!” What could have been a ridiculous cliffhanger now works rather well, and Simpson plays an important part in this. The Nimon, the Mandrels and even the Taran Beast boost greatly from Simpson's music, and considering that they're not among the top-tiered monsters, that's some accomplishment.

Another trick of Simpson's is to subtly reflect what's going on on screen in his music. The Robots Of Death is one of the best examples of this. The throbbing heartbeat theme for the Robot attacks perfectly sums up the thumping pounding of the heart in a stressful situation of fear – and just as cleverly, the music suddenly stops at the point of death, just like the luckless victims on board the Sandminer. Then there's the clever chord sequence at the end of City Of Death's Part Three, which rapidly goes through a progression of chord changes until the big sting at the end – just like Kerensky's rapid ageing which culminates in a rotting skeleton, a smug grin from Scarlioni and the crashing cliffhanger scream. And let's not forget the ominous Who riff for the Daleks' arrival in The Evil Of The Daleks.

The Who theme itself was regarded as one of those things that sent the kids behind the sofa, so Simpson cleverly parodied this to heighten the fear in the Daleks' victims (as seen in the great cliffhanger to Part One, as a pepperpot threatens a quaking Kennedy). Simpson pulls this trick out of the bag time and again, showing not just a talent for great tunes, but also an intelligent understanding of what's actually happening on screen (as opposed to just random big, dramatic chords for the hell of it).

Not only that, but Dudley's music just somehow helps to create the atmosphere. Whether he's spreading fear on the streets of Victorian London with gongs and mournful brass, providing romantic canoodling music for Jo and Cliff to swap test tubes over, or creating a filmic, joyous celebration of Paris for The Doctor and Romana to run around in, Dudley Simpson just gets it. The one composer that knew Doctor Who inside and out, front and backwards, Simpson still remains my favourite composer.

Mind you, I'll agree that his Season Eight scores occasionally leave a little to be desired (although the Keller Machine riffs works brilliantly in upping the scares), but then a good counter-argument is that they are simply reflecting the times. Looking back at the Who scores, the interesting in that by and large, they reflect the popular styles and trends of music in each age. The Invasion, for example, has twangy guitar and Hammond organ, making it so Sixties, you half expect UNIT to mellow out in kaftans and Jesus sandals at the story's conclusion. The Season Eight stories, along with The Sea Devils and The Mutants may comprise oddball electronic burbles and squeaks, but the early 1970s saw many a musician and pop group dabble with this style. The early Roxy Music toons, for example, feature odd electronic burbles – same goes for Tangerine Dream and even some of the early 1970s Pink Floyd albums. The early 1970s Who stories were just following what was in vogue, even if the results didn't always come off.

By the mid 1970s, the trend for mixing brass and orchestras with modern instruments was growing ever more popular – whether it was in soul (Stevie Wonder's Superstition and You Are The Sunshine Of My Life or Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On album, for example) or the burgeoning success of American jazz rock (Joni Mitchell's Court And Spark and Steely Dan's Pretzel Logic were doing the rounds to great acclaim in 1974). And likewise, in the groovy sounds of Doctor Who World, this mixture of brass, woodwind and modern synth held court for most of the mid to late 1970s, whether it was Dudley Simpson, Carey Blyton or Geoffrey Burgon, who provided two, haunting, lilting scores for Terror Of The Zygons and The Seeds Of Doom."

Creating Ron Grainer's original Doctor Who Theme

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkIEkLww3lg

**** Mills and Brian Hodgson's Doctor Who sound effects (including the famous materialization/dematerialization sound design)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE7DIcX_I9k

 
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