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....
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
Next stop, Geek City!!! ;P
ReplyDeleteHaha! Cheeky Shana! But you are correct, Geek City here we come!! :D
ReplyDelete