See, the thing that bugs me about Dr. Who

[Orrex]

I tried--really I did--to get into it in the 80's, long before the SciFi Channel was available and Dr. Who could only be found locally on PBS at 11:30 on Saturday nights.

But the ultra-cheap, shot-on-video vibe of the whole thing, looking as though it was shot on a makeshift stage in an abandoned warehouse, really turned me off.

What's the secret? How do you get past the shockingly foregrounded shortcomings of the show to embrace this perennial favorite?

:shrug:

[Fire Walk With Me]

1. Apply the same sort of filters and partitioning which one must in order to survive BushWorld.

[blueraven95]

2. it's really easy...

just watch the new series first, fall in love with it, and then go back and watch the old - it's much easier to get into it.

Actually, that was one of the things they really worked hard on updating - making sure it didn't look so cheap and cheesy, while still keeping the flavor of the original show.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

3. It's called a suspension of disbelief.

Anybody who's ever read a fiction book, listened to a love song, or watched a TV sitcom (or Star Trek marathon :evilgrin: ) knows all about it.

Not everything used to be as slick and as believable as it seems today.

Besides, the old Doctor Who shot more scenes in gravel pits than in warehouses...

[Orrex]

4. There's suspension, and then there's expulsion...

I recall one episode in which the good Doctor faced that classic puzzle with two robots, one of which only spoke the truth, while the other only lied. He riddled it out, of course, because everybody knows that one.

But I swear that the robots were tall guys in gray sweatsuits with knit caps pulled over their faces.


I can suspend disbelief just fine when such suspension is necessary to accept the foundational conceits of the story (e.g., Transporters and Warp Drive are feasible), but when the basic staging of the show requires the viewer to ignore the boom mike on camera, I balk.

[quip]

5. I gotta say, Orrex, I am sooo with you on this one!

It's not just a cultural thing, either, because I took to Monty Python right off from junior high school. There is cheese, and gawd, there is Wisconsin on steroids. That's Dr. Who. Wisconsin on steroids. There, I said it. Parser beware.

[Fire Walk With Me]

6. No problem. You are perfectly within your rights, to be wrong.

;)

[Orrex]

8. This, from the Scott sycophant

Deckard is a Replicant! Dr. Who is cool! The check is in the mail! I'll respect you in the morning.


Lies, all lies.

[Fire Walk With Me]

9. You're right.

I'll recuse myself now.

[quip]

11. LOOK OUT, DR. WHO!!!! AN ALIEN IN A PAPER MACHE COSTUME IS ABOUT TO DESTROY

THAT CHEAP CARDBOARD PANEL BUILT WITH CHRISTMAS LIGHTS!

:popcorn: whatevah

[Orrex]

12. But. The. Alien. Is. Talking. Like. This.

Doesn't that make it suspenseful?

I admit that Daleks do sort of look cool, but that's where I draw the line.

[harmonicon]

28. it may never work for you then

I basically have no suspension of disbelief, and I love Doctor Who. I don't really like it when sci fi shows try to make made up shit seem believable - what I like about it is that it couldn't ever happen. I'm not dumb enough to think these things could actually be going on right now, so I don't care if it's made to look "believable". Doctor Who is different from other sci-fi in that way: it's not supposed to be some future or universe far away - it's happening right here and right now, just in a slightly different world.... like a Thomas Pynchon novel. I think you have to be ok with that idea, and if you're not, it's just never going to work for you - better costumes or effects would make no difference.

[Lisa]

7. I really have to admire the actors ...

Many of them were Shakespearian-trained, and to hear all those aliens and robots speaking in RADA accents ...

It did teach me from an early age that imagination was absolutely essential, for the audience as well -- even more so than budgets or special effects.

[Fire Walk With Me]

15. They're just trying to start a geek fight. Your point on imagination is excellent, BTW.

[Kutjara]

10. Imagine, then, how hard it was for me.

I lived just down the road from the rock quarry in which they used to film just about every "alien landscape" outdoor shot for Dr. Who, Blake's 7, Sapphire & Steel, Quatermass, and a host of other shoestring-budget sci-fi classics. Every time I saw a scene shot there, I knew there was a foreman's shack just off to the left and a whole fleet of dump trucks behind the camera.

[Orrex]

13. So you're saying that your quarry will not elude you?

That's pretty funny. I lived in Pittsburgh for several years, and I saw all kinds of landmarks that had popped up in various films. It's funny and impressive how they tweak the reality of the place to fit it to the scene's requirements.

[Kutjara]

17. Absolutely. But it can also be very distracting.

I've seen a few films set in places I know well (Polanski's "Repulsion" comes immediately to mind), and the way they sometimes cut together places you can't possibly get to from one another in a single scene can be so distracting it's hard to follow the plot.

[Orrex]

18. You're right, of course

A big scene in the movie Stigmata takes place on Pittsburgh's subway.

Well, Pittsburgh doesn't have a subway. It has a trolley line that goes underground for a brief stretch and through a tunnel, but it's not a subway, and certainly it has nothing like the dramatic flickering lighting as seen in the film.

[Kutjara]

19. That's hilarious.

I've seen some howling continuity errors in my time, but magicking up an entire subway network takes some beating. :rofl:

[CreekDog]

14. Beats me, I can't get past that or that their set design requires lots of tinfoil

:shrug:

[texanwitch]

16. I remember when Dr. Who came to America.

I really liked Tom Baker as the Dr.

I don't watch it now.

[harmonicon]

27. give the new one a shot

I watched the Tom Baker Doctor Who on PBS as a kid, and hadn't seen it many years until this past year when I started watching the new ones. I remember really liking it, but now I'm totally hooked. It also made me go back and watch the older ones, which I like even more now than before.

[TreasonousBastard]

20. That was the best part! Pie plates glued on...

the walls of the Tardis, flower pot helmets... Note that the gadget Bones waved over people in Star Trek was a salt shaker some prop guy stole from the commissary. Love those days of cardboard sets and kitchen gadgetry turned into tools and weaponry.

You're spoiled by digital wizardry.

Up until not too long ago there were no modern effects and TV shows had to rely on things like (gasp!) acting and writing. Unfortunately, we now seem to insist that a story about a Time Lord traveling about the universe in his Tardis should appear as realistic as possible.

This does not compute.

[texanwitch]

24. I agree with you.

That was what I liked about Dr. Who back then.

The shows didn't need any special effects to be good.

[Orrex]

25. It's all about

In terms of producing a complete whole, the effects are every bit as important as the acting or story. The problem is that studios too often forget that all are necessary, and you wind up with Independence Day or Transformers. But even with the top ten actors in the history of cinema, if your spaceships still look like pie-tins and sparklers, then the illusion will be unavoidably broken.

And I'm not pitching any sort of elitist sci-fi agenda either (if you'll permit me to coin that phrase); I've seen live stage productions of science fiction tales that were remarkably effective with no special effects whatsoever. But when the medium is film or video, a higher expectation is justified.

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. I blame George Lucas

Those of us who started watching Doctor Who before 1977 didn't really care if the sets, costumes and 'special effects' were a bit ropey. All of them were, on sci-fi series. Then Lucas splurges millions on Star Wars, and suddenly people want that in cheap TV series that are made with licence fees which run 2 TV channels, 4 national radio stations, and an entire network of local radio stations, for less than the price of a couple of cinema tickets a month.

Just sit back, luxuriate in a theme tune that was cutting edge electronic production when the Beatles hadn't progressed beyond 2 guitars, a bass and a drumkit, and ignore the dyed bubble-wrap used as futuristic clothing.

[Orrex]

23. Oh, the opening titles are fantastic--I've loved them for years

That theme song is killer, too.

And you make a good point about pre- and post-Lucas. Maybe if I'd been hooked earlier, I would have been able to see past the cardboard and crepe paper.

[Lisa]

29. my absolute favourite SF series was on ... the radio.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's "Johnny Chase -- Secret Agent of Space", in the late 1970s. I'll bet their budget was even smaller than the one for "Doctor Who".

[muriel_volestrangler]

31. And The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy really belongs on radio

Its first home. The books are OK, because Douglas Adams' prose gets an extended outing, but the TV series and film are worse than the radio - either because of bad special effects, or just the writing (in the case of the film). And while Red Dwarf isn't bad as sci-fi parody, HHGG is better.

Douglas Adams was also script editor and a writer on Doctor Who for a time. But he never got it as good as HHGG.

[philosophie_en_rose]

22. Try the new series.

It's fancy.

[Mojambo]

26. Yup. I've never seen any of the stuff before the new series. n/t

[Skittles]

30. I watched it in the 60's, in England

yes INDEED