@severino - that would be the legendary liz hurley, ha ha ha ha.

@h8kurdt - im in the middle of season 2 and have seen no pippa. so went to imdb and there is no such character. who do you mean? do show

anyway i googled MARK SCHWANN who is the show's creator and it turns out it's an american producer who made a cw thing called "one tree hill" (never seen it). but yeah, it totally has a cw aesthetic ha ha ha--the writing anyway, so cheesy. and yet...!

I don't really watch it anymore, but a few years ago I really became entranced with BOY MEETS WORLD. Easily one of the worst shows ever made. And yet...

I kinda like the "...and yet" shows.

Can you believe Hugh Grant hired a hooker when he was married to that goddess? Really pretty tepid actor, but my god... the bubs and face!

I can honestly say that the only reason I remained in the theater for Austin Powers was because of her. Bad movie. Super unfunny. But... my god.

My bad. I had it in my head you were talking about The Windsors which is a send up of the royal family.

Well you were right on one count there.

However, Austin Powers is a great film

fantastic body, but i'm not really into her face, which these days reminds me of whitnail's




oh, i've never heard of that, but this one is also a send up of... something! it's a scripted production of the e! channel (the one that's all about celebrities. lol.)


austin powers was very funny!

anyway back to tv, i just watched the first episode of THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH. old old old dr. who with an old toothless man who looks plucked out of the XIX century and calls everyone "my boy".

it's terribly made but quite intriguing actually. the story opens in the middle of some other plot, when he's traveling with a 60's couple and a 60's girl who called him "grandfather" (?). but anyway it starts as a kind of mystery or puzzled to be solved, kinda like in h.g. wells's "the time machine" when the protagonist (i forget his name) lands among the elois.

this is basically the whole set for that first episode, plus a couple other junky looking places



it's really primitive, and the dialogue is annoying ("my boy" this and "my boy" that) but the story is good so far...

----

eta: sooo.... i finally located the first doctor who serial ("the unearthly child") and will be ordering it soon. wooohoo! AT LAST.

Yah! I know the scenes on those early episodes were pretty suffocating, but I'm glad your finding something to like about it.

Just DONT STOP watching the new Who. If you haven't finished that first season I'm kickin' your ass, plain and simple.

haaa haaa haaaa

deep breaths man, deep breaths!

inhale... counting to 10...

exhale... counting to 10...

and stop talking like a sycorax

The unearthly child is either the empty child or the unearthly dead

this one:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Unearthly_Child

Oh OK, I was thinking you were talking about series 1 of the reboot. I don't think I've ever seen that one. I'm not a big Hartnell fan. It took Troughton to establish the Doctor as we now know him. Hartnell was really just doing his own thing.

hartnell is a kinda ebenezer scrooge looking guy to me ha ha ha

the thing is though it bugged me not knowing who this susan was or this couple in the tardis so i cancelled that to rewind to the very beginning cuz im a lunatic obsesso

yeah... :(

Yeah, he's a Victorian throwback. There's an element of that in most of the Doctors (Eccleston's the only one who has no trace of it) but they brought other things to the mix. Hartnell's just very one-dimensional.

I get the chronology thing, I sometimes do it with bands, but I'm not sure how useful it is with DW, or even possible, given some of the earlier episodes are lost altogether.

If you want to stick to chronology but don't mind skipping the less important episodes, I'd recommend:

Hartnell:

The Daleks - 1st time we see them.
The Tenth Planet - Introduction of the cybermen and 1st regeneration of the doctor.

Troughton:

The Invasion - Introduction of UNIT (key to the Pertwee era)
The War Game - Shows Gallifrey for the 1st time. The Dr exiled to Earth

Pertwee:

Spearhead From Space - Introduces the Autons (crap) and the start of the earth-bound Pertwee era where he works alongside UNIT.
Terror of the Autons - Introduction of the Master (If you find you like The Master, much of the Pertwee era is dominated by stories involving him)
The Three Doctors - End of the doctor's exile on Earth

Tom Baker:

Genesis of the Daleks (I know, Netflix!)
Ark in Space - Some still argue that, in terms of canon, it renders certain stories from of the modern era problematic (mainly End of the World, from the Eccleston era) It doesn't but still a good source of debate and an absolutely cracking story anyway.
The Deadly Assassin - Lots of political backstory. Sort of DW's Dune.

There's some great stories from the Peter Davison, Colin Baker (well maybe not) and McCoy eras but I wouldn't say any of them are really essential in terms of the Who-mythos.

If you want to see them at their best, though:

Peter Davison:
Caves of Androzani

Colin Baker:
OK, just skip him

Sylvester McCoy:
Survival

After those you could jump straight into the modern era, which is best watched series-by-series, with a pretty good grounding in Who-lore.

yeah, chronologies, i do it with music too. can't help it. "where does this come from?" sorta.

thanks for all that info! i'll investigate those names. first time i spot them.

i red that many of those lost episodes have been reconstructed, apparently they kept audio recordings and have been able to animate some of them or something. i'll have to look into that because it's kinda of a fascinating project. i mean whether it's well done or not i'll have to check out how they've done it. not for the episodes but the project itself. the wikipedia pages on the subject seem chock-full of information (nerds!) and i've only skimmed through them. got the impression that the serial on gengis khan is the only one really really missing data.

the other thing (you'll laugh) is that my wife really liked that black and white bit that we saw (first chapter of dalek invasion of earth--or was it london? ha, i confuse so much) so it's possible we'll wade through all that mess for a while, ha ha ha, regardless of usefulness.

and speaking of old and cheaply made tv shit, if i could get "strange paradise" in time for halloween season it would be awesome. i only have the vaguest memories of it and never understood wtf it was about but im sorta haunted by it. or at least curious as fuck.

I just finished re-watching DW series 1 (Eccleston)

I was hard on it when it came out but in retrospect it's not that bad. Still can't stand Mickey or Rose's mum, and the Slitheen will always be shit, but ... Eccleston. OK he misjudged the comedy but really comes into his own in the more dramatic stuff.

Something I still don't like - and which is true of nu-Who generally - is it seems far more preooccupied with making some often pretty cliched social comment - like the idea that mankind is being manipulated through mass media. Not to say there wasn't social comment in the classic era but it was always, first and foremost a sf series. There's something a bit too preachy about the new incarnation. And did we really need all the nudge-nudge-wink-wink suggestions that the Doctor is bisexual? And fuck off with trying to make the Daleks appear 'misunderstood'. And what's with three stories given to the Slitheen (who will always be shit.) but no room for a single episode with the Master? That's just wrong!

Fave stories from Series 1:

Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways.
The Empty Child/Doctor Dances
Unquiet Dead

Anyway, all this DW chat has inspired me to go back through the reboot series so I'm on series 2 now, with Tennant.

i think the role of mickey or rose's mum is to provide a contrast with what's out there and why it should be so dismal to return. like when they're sitting at some half empty fast food talking about pizza down the corner.

i had no problem with eccleston, though maybe he was a little goofy for those accustomed to something else?

what was shit on season 1 actually was the writing, i thought. possessed mannequins? come oooooon! worst pilot ever.

im too close to it to give a full appreciation of the season, but i'll say this:

1) the ending was fucking great
2) the beginning was awful

Remind me to comment a bunch when I'm less driving! :)

Dr. Huh?

I understand why they're there, but they could've achieved that without making them so bloody irritating. They just kill every scene they're in Although in fairness Mickey does improve a bit in series 2.


Yeah, as the season evolved I thought he grew into it a bit more, especially the last stories/finale when I thought he was superb. I'd have liked to see him do at least another series. He's said himself in interviews he just got it wrong in that 1st series.


The Autons. Terrible! But yeah, the writing. I think this will always be the issue for those who prefer the classic era. The strength of the modern era is its attention to character. It does psychology and emotions far better than the classic era ever did, but the classic era (especially the Pertwee/Baker period) had far more going on in its stories. A lot of that is down to most stories in the classic era being 3-5 episodes long, so were able to get much more involved.


I agree.

And what did you think of Jack? I remembering him getting a lot of stick but I quite liked him.