Russell T legacy
doctor blue box
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have mentioned this on another thread but thought it a subject worthy of a thread on it's own basically,if I've worked it out right, the crimson horror is the 100th episode since the return. wonder how many people would have believed it would have passed that milestone and still be going strong when rusell first brought it back. Even though I didn't know what it was befre it came back I remember the buzz about it's return in the media, and the general consensus was that it would be short lived, and people scoffing at such things as casting a washed up pop star as the companion. I think the success was very much down to the effort's of russell t davies and without his input the naysayers may well have been right. what does anyone else think, did you expect the return to be successful back then??
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One thing I was personally sure of was that if it had looked or sounded anything like it had done in the late 1980s, it would almost certainly have failed.
Of course within a very few episodes I realised that my fears had been groundless, and was totally convinced that it would be OK, but I must say i never imagined even then that it would go on to become quite as "big" as it did!
the doors thing is that an RTD idea then?
Having grown up in the 70's and 80's, I'll admit, the more mature take, design elements and new back story took some getting used to. When introducing people to the show, I alway advise them to give it another shot after "Rose" because it's certainly not the strongest pilot. However, it's crucial to the over all arc of the characters. The show was wonky for me until The Empty Child. Then I fell in love with sci-fi all over again.
The Stolen Earth story is a season finale by which all other finale's should be judged, a perfect intersection of character and story and if Tennant decided to end it there, I couldn't have dreamt of a more fitting ending. Although I'm a Steve Moffet fan, the show lost some of it's emotional potency for me. Moffet is just a different story teller and for the day-to-day managing of Doctor Who, it doesn't hold the magic it once did. I can watch Family of Blood, the Satan Pit or Girl in the Fireplace over and over and never get tired of them. I can't think of one Matt Smith story I can revisit with such fondness, so I think Russell T's legacy helped turn Doctor Who into that something special that speaks to us all.
I also loved the last of the timelords theme. I'm glad its sort of over now but it worked perfectly. Rose was also amazing. As important an element of the shows success as any other.
I cant imagine anyone could have done a better job in bringing it back than RTD. Yes on balance Moffats vision is more to my taste and what I want from Doctor Who but its a close run thing. And I realise that its only thanks to RTD blazing such a trail that was got to have Moffats vision at all. It wouldn't have worked the other way around.
But then everyone will respond differently. I find 'The God Complex' infinitely more moving than say 'Planet of the Ood' or 'Doomsday'. But many wont.
Yep. I have no idea why no-one thought of this earlier. The absolutely instantaneous change from a thick white door with roundels to a thin blue wooden door never looked in any way convincing and it always annoys me a bit when I see it happen in a Classic Who episode.
I disagree with some people's sentiments that Doctor Who no longer has the emotion or the ability to tug at one's heart strings. The Doctor talking to Little Amelia in The Big Bang is a lovely scene, the Doctor saying goodbye to Idris in The Doctor's Wife is very moving, The Girl Who Waited is one of the most sublime pieces of television I've ever watched, and no episode has brought me closer to tears than Vincent and the Doctor and the scene where the curator man talks about Van Gogh using his pain and torment to create ecstatic beauty.
on reflection when I talk about lack of emotion Im thinking of the majority of moffat's tenure, but day of the doctor and time of the doctor both seemed to have that resonance(especially old man doctor, so crippled with arthritis he couldn't pull a cracker) so im hoping that mean's that moffat has figured out how to do it consistently and if so then more reason to look forward to series 8
Lots of others...maybe I'm going soft in my advancing years!
All brilliant examples!
The idea to have the Tardis doors open out immediately onto the exterior in the modern series was a good one, it allows the drama to be more immediate than it was with the setup on the original series Tardis, where it was implied there was a sort of corridor between the control room and the exterior. As far as I know they never showed this on screen though.
The idea that the ship can project an atmosphere shell so the doors can be opened out into space is a good one too, you get some spectacular scenes there, even if it's mainly used for 11 to look up Amy Pond's nightie
I assume the only way it was set up with the "dead space" in the original series was they lacked the green screen technology to allow them to show the Tardis interior behind the characters every time they entered or exited.
It was probably much easier to assume the characters walked down a corridor to the control room instead of constantly worrying about the Tardis' real life police box interior ruining the amount of shots they could get of the Characters arriving at new worlds.
I'm just assuming this btw, if they've confirmed or contradicted this on a DVD commentary or behind the scenes special over the years, please let me know.
I think I see what you mean blue box but I dont want to (!)
However the ponds leaving was certainly resonant as was Vincents scene for other reasons, very beautiful. None of Rivers scenes resonated for me in Elevens' era, she was too smug to make me want to care.
Everything I was about to post (but in a considerably better worded way
There are indeed some episodes that seem to imply this "sort of corridor". The Claws of Axos is perhaps one instance of this, as there seems to be a short corridor between the TARDIS interior and exterior doors.
However, in the Hartnell era, there are several occasions where it is made plain that the doors open directly on to the exterior, and what look like thick white doors with roundels from inside the TARDIS look like Police Box doors from outside (The Edge of Destruction, The Sensorites, and The Web Planet, for example, all show this). This was usually done by shooting out of the TARDIS set onto a portion of the exterior set as the travellers went out, then cutting to a reverse shot on the exterior set with the Police Box prop in position behind them. The doors in this second shot would be closing, so that you could not see the TARDIS interior through them (as you say, this could not have been done convincingly with the technology available).
Later, in Pyramids of Mars, CSO is used to provide an outward-looking shot from within the TARDIS that seems to imply direct access to the outside ("1980, Sarah, if you want to get off"), and there may be others that I have forgotten.
The use of Police Box doors inside the TARDIS in the revived version has always seemed to me lazy and unimaginative. The very first episode was not afraid to have Barbara go through the external Police Box doors into an entirely alien environment in which the doors themselves have assumed an entirely different form. RTD funked it.
[The above is all done from memory, I'm afraid, so please excuse any errors of detail. I believe the general premise is sound.]
Otherwise a lot of people will never agree on RTD's style or Moffat's, as we all know from endless threads. I'm one who prefers Moffat's more adult emotional content to RTD's more sentimental style but they've both had sublime moments and some dodgier ones, and who knows what we'll get next time...
Your memory is more or less right. There were indeed several stories where the doors opened and the camera looked straight out onto the landscape, but the exterior of the doors that you could see did not look like the Police Box doors but were identical to the interior doors, white with roundals. The obvious stories where a corridor is implied, is the Baker series where they used the wooden gothic control room. Every time the crew left the Tardis they appeared to have to leave the control room and go into a corridor. I can't recall a single time when they left this control room and walked straight outside the ship.
Personaly I love the way you just pull open the doors now and walk straight out. I hated that stupid big red lever that was used in the Davison era to open the door.