My Whovian Adventure, Part 2

I think one of the best things about undertaking The Valancy Stirling Project is just how busy it keeps me. I can't help but believe that one of the reasons I have gotten over my ex and adjusted to my new life so much easier in the last few months is that I haven't had much downtime to over-think things. I am a thinker by nature, which you may think is a good thing, but I have to say that I rarely solve my problems by thinking about them. I can justify almost any decision I make if I think about it long enough, but I usually just succeed in making myself more miserable. Thanks to the Project I always have something to do. After the cleaning was done it was time for renovations. Then it was on to making Christmas presents and finishing up decor. And now I use a lot of my downtime to watch 'Doctor Who'.

I still have a lot of people who question this list item. They don't know why I want to start all the way at the beginning, and many people have questioned if I'll be able to finish all the seasons before the end of the Project. Clearly these people don't know the way I watch TV. Let's not forget, I watched all 5 seasons of 'Sons of Anarchy' in a week and a half, and all 7 seasons (plus all available from the 8th) of 'How I Met Your Mother' in a little over 2 weeks. I watch obsessively, most of the time while I'm crafting or finishing the apartment (kind of like killing two list item-birds with one stone). Ah, the joys of being single. 




With that, I am proud to say that I have finished watching all episodes starring the First Doctor, William Hartnell. I wasn't sure how I was going to post about this list item, but I think I'll just write a post on each of the Doctors as I finish them. I'll give a rundown of what happened and list the top 5 things that stuck out to me.

When 'Doctor Who' started it was designed as a children's show. I guess in the days before video games and the internet kids needed less stimulation to stay interested in things, because I don't know any kids these days who would sit down and watch this for too long. I have to admit that it was a bit of a challenge for me to get through some of these episodes, and as a huge fan of musicals from the 50's and 60's I'm used to watching black and white, technologically un-advanced films. The first episode was pretty interesting and I liked how they introduced the characters. It begins with 2 teachers, Barbara and Ian, talking about their student Susan and how, although she is very bright, she seems to be acting strangely at times an doesn't fit in well. They decide to visit Susan's grandfather, whom she lives with, but when they arrive at the address Susan has provided they find only a police box. Upon entering it they find Susan and her grandfather just before the police box (which we soon learn to be the TARDIS) takes off. We are then taken on the adventures of the group as they try to get Barbara and Ian back to their own time (at this point the Doctor is unable to control where the TARDIS goes). Other companions come and go and we get to see (or hear in some cases) Aztecs, aliens and Marco Polo himself (in a particularly long and dry 12 episode stint, which is almost entirely audio only).

Susan. And her weird hand dance.

Barbara

Ian

I liked some of the companions more than others. I didn't really like Susan, who screamed and cried a lot, so I was only a little sad when she left. Barbara and Ian were interesting. Barbara was pretty evolved for a woman of the 60's which was a nice contrast to Ian who was rather stuffy. Vicki was next, and although she started out annoyingly, I feel she improved after Barbara and Ian left (in a rather goofy photo-reel montage of the two running through London upon their return). Steven was my favourite companion by far. He was a man's man, but was also respectful of the women and accepted their actions rather than just try to shove them in a corner somewhere to keep them safe. Then comes Katrina, who doesn't even last a full story line before either sacrificing herself or being stupid, depending on how you view things, and shooting herself out of an airlock.  Next was Sara Kingdom, who I didn't really like. She was really combative and not very open minded, which caused to, among other things, kill her own brother. She didn't last very long either. And then came Dodo. Oh, Dodo. She has got to be one of the weirdest, most confusing characters ever created. She had the weirdest clothes, the weirdest personality...it is impossible to explain Dodo. You have to experience it for yourself. But more on that later.    After the Doctor left Steven to run a planet an eliminated poor Dodo without a very clear explanation, he was joined by Ben and Polly. They came and left together so I'll talk about them as a unit. Ben was a sailor and Polly was...well a girl who hung out at a bar a lot from what I can gather. These two stick around for the rest of the First Doctor's run and they're there when he changes into the Second Doctor.  

And then there is the Doctor himself. He was kind of like someone's grumpy grandfather. Apart from the grumpiness he actually kind of reminded me of my own grandfather. I think it was the hair. William Hartnell's Doctor Who wasn't as quirky as some who followed, but he did a good job of setting up the character in a manner that allowed subsequent actors to interpret the Doctor in their own way.  Here are the top 5 things I noticed about the First Doctor, in no particular order. 1. Screaming Girls; Maybe I'm influenced by my generation and the women's liberation I studied in university, but holy crap. With the exception of Barbara and Sara, most of the female companions just wasted a lot of time screaming about pretty much everything. Maybe you wouldn't have gotten into so much trouble if you'd shut the hell up and hid somewhere, or smacked the crap out of whatever man in a rubber suit was chasing you in that episode. I guess I don't really remember Dodo screaming too much, but she's an anomaly in every possible way.2. Creatures; Remembering, of course, that this was the mid 60's you have to expect a certain amount of cheese when dealing with creatures. But that didn't make the extreme crappiness any less hilarious. It seemed they were all either humanoids of some descriptions or some variation of a bug. Or, as seen in the moth-bee type thing seen here, a bit of both. Feet below the costumes and strings were also occasionally seen.3. British Cowboys; The serial called 'The Gunfighters' is one of the rare serials that is fully intact in video form. It takes place in the old west, where the Doctor is mistaken for Doc Holiday. Since this is a British show, you can imagine that most of the cast is British. This is usually not a problem, although it did not escape my attention that every person in every time and place they visit speaks English (provided of course they have vocal cords or can speak telepathically) and speaks it with a British accent. And although they tried admirably, those British actors just couldn't keep up their western American accents the whole time. I literally laughed out loud several times. It was great TV.4. The Doctor's Laugh; It was more of a snicker, or a chuckle, but it happened ALL THE TIME, even in the most inappropriate situations. I don't think he even realized he was doing, but it stuck out to me and I noticed it all the way through his run as the Doctor. It did give him that little something so that he didn't seem so straight-laced.5. Dodo's Accent; I was somewhat expecting this after reading Tansy Rayner Roberts' blog A Modern Woman's Guide to Classic Who, but you have to see it yourself to believe it. She switches between a high class British accent to a twangy lower class one, sometimes within the same episode. She's like Eliza Doolittle before and after...and then before again, but all at the same time. Her personality also changes at random, apparently just to fit whatever the writers needed her to be that episode. Sometimes she's goofy and hard to predict, sometimes she's very calm. But what else can you expect from a girl whose name is Dodo? Incidentally, my favourite serial, 'The Celestial Toymaker' is a Dodo serial. All in all I enjoyed my start into the world of Doctor Who. The hardest part is dealing with the audio only episodes (although 'The Celestial Toymaker' is made up of 3 audio and 1 video episodes and it was my favourite). I'm now well on my way into the Second Doctor's episodes but sadly the season I am about to begin (season 5) is almost entirely audio. It'll be a challenge, but if I can make it through that I will have survived. Most of season 6 exists in video form and after that they're all available in video. Off I go!