My Chinese wife watched the subtitles scene and reliably informed me that what Pertwee said in Chinese not only didn't translate to the subtitles but didn't translate to anything in any language 😂
I haven't tried your commentary tracks. To be honest, does it actually matter which episode you are watching or are they just random conversations about anything and everything? 🙂
Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker were THE definitive Dr. Who's for my generation (60's baby) ... Much like Sean Connery & Roger Moore were THE James Bonds that the others just couldn't quite live up to 😉
7:21 _"Locke, open the door"_ - Nominative determinism! BTW, (Don) Houghton actually rhymes with "Auton", not "Cowton"... which is presumably where milkmen come from.
The production team didn't think much of the dragon either. They called it "Puff, The Magic Dragon". The Master wasn't supposed to slip when trying to shoot the Doctor from behind the desk, but being a good pro, Roger kept going and they left it in.
Their view of China was radically shifting. This is 1971. 1972 was Nixon meeting Mao and making a Cold War alignment with China. Deciding to take advantage of its divergence from Russia and befriend the second communist great power against the first.
You certainly milked that joke dry - incidentally, this won’t be the last time a milk float turns up in the Pertwee era. There is a bit of a Season 7 vibe to this story, with its emphasis on gritty action, and the prison makes for a very down to earth, realistic setting. A bit too real for my tastes, as the sets are so good it looks like they could actually be in a prison, and for me it just feels a little bit humdrum for Doctor Who. Re the dragon, I gather Barry Letts instructed that the shots of it be kept to a minimum, which was I think a very wise move…
There was once a piece of musical equipment called the russian dragon. You'd connect a metronome and play along and it would tell you if you were rushin' or draggin'.
William Marlowe who plays Mailer is to me the UK equivalent to Jeff Goldblum; he had a very naturalistic, almost relaxed acting style. He will appear in Classic Who again and was a regular in the police series The Gentle Touch.
The is the last story that was commissioned before the 'soft reboot' for this season, so it's a bit more adult and violent than the show would be later. Also, Terror of the Autons received a fair amount of criticism for it having a 'killer doll'. You'll notice that Jo pops a cap in somebody's ass (or arse, if you prefer) during this episode when they're trying to take over the prison again-which is a pretty violent thing for a companion to be doing.
Pik Sen Lim was the story writer Don Houghton’s wife who also used to type up his scripts - as said, she taught Jon Pertwee to say a couple of lines in the particular language/dialect she knew but also said his version didn’t sound much like anything that would’ve been readily understood! The ‘dragon’ works better in closeup and as Terrance Dicks said “We asked for a terrifying dragon to be made for the show and when we saw it we were confronted by a quilted pyjama case.” Notwithstanding, I was terrified of the Keller Machine and its growing powers.
Love a man in a Superman T-shirt 🫢 oh and by the way, the dragon suit I believe was worn by Stuart Fell, they called it Puff, as in Puff The Magic Dragon.
Yep, always feel this is hugely underrated and personally consider it the best of this season, including the obvious fan favourite, which in an attempt to avoid spoilers I'll just refer to as "the one with Miss Hawthorne".
Nobody smokes cigarettes in coronation street anymore. I get why they do it but it just feels unrealistic to me. I don’t think they would get rid of it in who if it’s a period piece and it would look weird without it but I doubt we will see it in the modern day episodes anymore
1:00 The original version of the Keller Machine looked like shite, so Barry Letts decided to bin it. This version was thus a last-minute effort, which wasn't entirely satisfying, but it was apparently much better than the first attempt. PS: Lupin... a cross between Froot Loops and Alpen PPS: Terry Walsh's Chocolate Orange; only opens if you drop it from a sheer height of at least 40 feet.
I like the political intrigue element of this story, and as this episodes majors heavily on that it is probably my favourite out of the six. Fun to see the Doctor playing the perfect diplomat with the Chinese delegate, though the implication that he has been friendly with Chairman Mao is rather disturbing, given what a monster we now know Mao to have been (in fairness, this wasn’t so well known in the West back then). The callback to Inferno is a neat touch, doubtless facilitated by the two stories sharing the same writer, but it feels fitting given it only seems natural that witnessing up close such a ghastly event as the destruction of a world would leave a lasting mark on the Doctor.
The Nestene ‘radio spark’ creature is less obvious than last season, but how do you beat a creature whose bumhole explodes and nearly blows its tentacles off.
Pik-Sen Lim who played captain Chin Lee was married to Don Houghton, the writer of this story. He wrote Inferno which is why the Doctor is scared of flames at the end given the horrific events of the alternative Earth in that story.
What are the Gen Z folk going to do when they lose everything from a worldwide IT outage? It could happen any time. 😂 The Season Collections are superb including best restorations, new SFXs and masses of behind the scenes and interviews. The first Doctor Who VHS tape was released in 1983 at the very impressive cost of £39.95. (That’s £132 today). It even had the wrong version of the villains on the cover. The first DVD was the 20th anniversary story released in November 1999.
Liz was an scientist with a solid reputation whereas Jo is a late teen in her first job gained through nepotism. She was only hypnotised for about 10 minutes. Roger Delgado is the first and best Master who rarely chews the scenery unlike future incarnations. And let’s not forget Mike Yates in his first story. The 20th Century UNIT family is now complete except for the Brig's wife 😂
This is my favourite story of Season 8 and one of my favourite Pertwee stories overall. Some surprisingly brutal moments in this story considering this was Saturday tea time viewing.
The Tom Baker Years is on Season 18 Blu'. Some of the other Years video elements are now included on the Blu' sets - like Sylvester McCoy intro's for The Crusade 3, and Celestial Toymaker 4. 🙃
The location, near the park where London's UNIT is, in in Kensington, near the Vic' & Albert museum. It is in part, the same location used in "The War Machines in 1966. Where the Machine is captured by The Doctor, Ben, soldiers -is where Benton will pursue the Chinese Agent.
The plastic chair terrified me as a child but there is worse to come in this story. And just to educate Thomas, whilst the lilo went on sale twenty years earlier, the self inflating air mattress was not invented until 1972 - two years after this story was made. Doctor Who predicts the future yet again.
I went to see this in an arthouse cinema in Belfast some years ago before the colourisation was officially released. Got to meet Terrance Dicks there, very nice although I did get a bit star struck and forgot to ask him to sign my “Web of Fear” book😂 although he did seem genuinely tickled by my notion he re-do “The Three Doctors” with Chris, David and Matt for the 50th.
