Tuesday 28 January 2014

DOCTOR WHO MARATHON 2nd MEET-UP - THE DALEKS

Sunday 26th January 2014

So we ploughed on unto our second tale or derring-do!  The first encounter with the Daleks!
This time we met up around Jim's house, this time at the slightly earlier of 1pm seen as we had a seven part serial to get through!

So after the usual greetings, tea AND a guide book (or THE Guide Book as we shall refer to it!) to all Doctor Who stories (barring some of the recent series) that Jason had brought round to show us (which confirmed what we said about the previous serial (it's a bit pants after episode 1!) we sat down to watch the first Doctor's encounter with his oldest enemy....

This time there were no cock-ups with wrong episodes etc, just some heavy duty watching, stopping, cigarettes (for those that like that sort of thing), tea and banter.
I think, although mainly enjoyable, the overall story was probably a couple of episodes too long.  There did seem a lot of padding out when there really didn't need to be.
It would have made an excellent 4 or 5 parter but then again I suppose they weren't originally shown all together.  So any slowness would have been forgotten by the following week.
I think we all agreed that the Daleks were excellent: devious, cunning and very mean indeed!  Plus it's always nice to have a cliff hanger of someone being menaced by a plunger!
The Doctor was also fun!  Mischievous, grumpy and rather petulant - the other TARDIS travellers didn't want to stay in such a horrid place and wanted to make the Doctor take them away.
The Doctor seems to love danger and wanted to stay - but rather than over-ruling them he sneakily broke a TARDIS part, on purpose, just so he could have his own way and explore the planet!


Photo 1: Jim, Leigh
 (kneeling), Mark and Jason
posing around Jim's house with the DVD cover and obligatory sign.


Photo 2: Jim, Leigh (kneeling), Mark and Michael
posing around Jim's house with the DVD cover and obligatory sign.

Anyway, some lovely characters in this - lots of fine stage acTORs - you could just tell by the over-the-top-edness!
Is that a word?  Well it is now....

....and with that I'm signing-off.  We can't meet in 2 weeks time and did talk about next week but that's still up in the air!
So, watch this (time and) space!

I shall return, yes, I shall return....

MJ - 28-01-14

Monday 13 January 2014

DOCTOR WHO MARATHON 1st MEET-UP - AN UNEARTHLY CHILD

Sunday 12th January 2014

Well we now have the first story under our belt.  Meeting up around Jason's house, we were joined by Leigh, Mark and Jim (after his wife, Shana, shouted from their nearby house:
"He'll be over on a minute!"
It was a bit like a Mum shouting to their son's friends that he'll be out in minute, after he's washed behind his ears.

Anyway after greetings and tea I got up in front of the gang and gave a little speech and laid out these important ground rules....

************************************************************************************************************

The Four Whores-men of the Apologetic-nature's Doctor Who Marathon Group Rules:

1) We have a lot to get through so let's not leave too long between meetings - I would say 1 a week or 1 every 2 weeks.
2) Some early serials are very short (2 episodes) so we may wish to combine them with another serial - this we will play by ear.
3) Some serials are very long!  We may wish to split these over a couple of sessions.
4) We're going to be watching them and try and imagine that we have no idea about Doctor Who - let's pretend it's a totally new programme which has come on and we have no idea where it's going and nor do we know anything about "The Doctor"!
5) Let's be a bit forgiving and try not to watch it through TOO modern eyes.  Some of the effects will be dodgy, no, REALLY dodgy.  Some of the acting will also be suss and maybe slightly hammy.  Remember that a lot of it was shot as live action and they couldn't afford many re-takes.  We may bore ourselves if we constantly take the piss!  Mind you I want us to be able to laugh our sphincters off if something is really ridiculous!
6) Let's have fun - yay!  Organised fun is the BEST!!!
7) No heavy petting.
8) No-no is a small robot you know, friend of Ulysses.

************************************************************************************************************

And after that we pressed "Play All" on Jason's "An Unearthly Child" DVD and away we went!  The first episode of Doctor Who was watched....

....except that it wasn't the first episode!  It was the "Pilot Episode"!  Why would the "Play All" option decide that it should play the un-aired pilot first!  Ridiculous!  We only realised the mistake when, what we thought was, episode two started and starts off pretty much the same way as the pilot!

Anyway after a lot of discussion ("Should we just watch episode 2 now?"  "Yeah."  "Okay.") we went straight to Episode 2 ("The Cave of Skulls").  A title that sounded promising, soon let us all down.
After an excellently weird and spooky first episode we followed up with 3 rather slow episodes of cavemen saying things like "You make fire!  Me like fire.  Me leader. Ug."

I think it was Leigh who, after the second episode, said something along the lines of "That was toss!".  Still, as I said to them, there will be lots of episodes that are far better and far worse and once you've seen them you never have to watch them again (unless you want to of course)!

Still we got to the end and finished with watching some comedy sketches (the best ones featuring Mark Gatiss and David Walliams) which the gang seemed to enjoy - even Jason who had no idea they were even on his DVD!
Clearly he's not a "DVD Extras" Slag like me!

With that I'm signing-off.  Our next meet up should be in 2 weeks time!  I shall return, yes, I shall return....

MJ - 13-01-2014
Photo 1: Jim, Jason, Mark and Leigh
posing around Jason's house with the DVD cover and obligatory sign.


Photo 2: MJ (Me), Jason, Mark and Leigh.
Same situation as above...but with me!

Lesson to be learnt from these photos:
Mark, open your eyes more.

Show less
P.S. And Jim says:
Really liked the first part and surprised at how mean the Doctor was.  The rest of the story was way too thin to put into three parts.  Great bit of history though and am looking forward to the second serial.

Thursday 9 January 2014

I have no idea how to write a blog but I'm writing a test now!

I have been a fan of the sci-fi show Doctor Who ever since I was a little chap.
I started watching the show at the back end of Tom Baker's tenure and back then I only ever watched the current stuff.  So when it ended in 1989 I pretty much forgot about it (barring the Children in Need special "Dimensions In Time" in 1993 & the Paul McGann TV Movie in 1996).

That was until a few years ago when I'd just started going out with my then girlfriend (now wife) Siobhan who cautiously told me that Doctor Who was back on that Saturday, if I wanted to watch it.  I leapt at the chance as it was the first I'd heard of it coming back!

It was brilliant, funny, fast-paced, exciting and I loved the new series.  After a while I started to think back fondly about the old series and thought it would be nice to dip my toe into the old series.  So I started by getting the first Doctor Who DVD - "The Five Doctors Special Edition" (Special features included "Chapter Selection" & "Music Only Option"!).


I enjoyed it more than I should have and decided to start buying more DVDs - including the earlier Doctors stuff that I'd never seen as a child...

This brings me to 2014 - the year after the 50th anniversary - and I get to finally start to achieve a long-held ambition.  To watch every POSSIBLE episode of Doctor Who from the start until now.  This will take years and I don't want to do this alone.

I didn't want it to be a massive group (as there would be more chance of clashes of availability etc) just a core gang of four.  I mused the idea to my friend Mark Bullock and he thought it a good idea and we thought it's be nice to have with us my best friend (Jason Smith) along with another fine friend Leigh Morris.

Also four members meant I could have the great group name of:

"The Four Whores-men of the Apologetic-nature's Doctor Who Marathon Group!"

And then my friend Jim Willisher mentioned that he would like to join us - I did invite him ages ago but thought he said no!  Anyway, as I liked the pun I decided to change the name to:

"The Four Whores-men of the Apologetic-nature's Doctor Who Marathon Group -

& Jim!"




Above: Us as the first TARDIS TEAM!Leigh (Ian Chesterton), Me (The First Doctor),
Mark (Barbara Wright) & Jason (Susan "Foreman")!
AND JIM!


So here we go - Sunday 12th January 2014 will be the start date around Jason's.  I shall try and keep this up to date and add photos as and when.  I'll also post about what we're doing about the missing episodes - we might have separate meet-ups to watch recons of these.

Anyhow that's it for now - I shall post more after our first meet-up.

All my best
MJ FOULDES - 09-01-2014

UPDATE (7th August 2015): Jim bowed out of the group after watching ALL the First Doctor stories with us.  It was a shame to drop the "AND JIM" part of the name so we did keep it a while, hoping he would re-join us.  Sadly as we approach the 2nd Doctor's final season this hasn't happened.

However all is not sad - our friend Shaun Clark joined us on our quest, on 20th July 2014, to watch the story "The Crusade".  Since then he has stuck with us - and has watched ALL the previous stories that he didn't watch with the group (including re-cons).  He's a trooper!