Watched it last night, with the documentaries and DVD extras to be watched at the weekend.

It had never struck me before that the story is incredibly padded. All the faffing about in the Matrix for 1 1/2 episodes doesn't progress the story. It's weirdness for the sake of it, and all it manages to do is make the story the correct length. (That said, ep 1 is just 20 mins).

The Gallifrey stuff is rather good, and I loved Engin, Runcible, Borusa and the two little old men ... the Matrix stuff really isn't integral to the story. It's still the Master who gets rid of Goth at the end, so Goth having spent 1 1/2 eps running around a quarry/jungle in fancy dress hasn't actually achieved anything.

AND: all three cliffhangers are cheats. The first one (Doctor shoots President) is brilliant, until the recap sneaks in an extra shot of someone else (ie: Goth) with a gun which puts the Doctor in the clear. The second one has the Doctor's foot trapped in railway points as a train rushes towards him: but in the previous shot, the Doctor's foot was not in the points. The third one has the Doctor being drowned and looking dead ... but the recap has him immediately jumping back up full of life.

I was disappointed by whole chunks of this story. The Gallifrey stuff has moments of genius, but the Matrix stuff did nothing for me.

Remember thinking that at the time!

As you say though, the Gallifrey/Timelord stuff is interesting. I love the central conceit that, actually The Doctor isn't really a particularly 'good' Timelord and isn't that highly rated by his peers!

One thing I noticed when watching it this week for the first time in many years is that in this story Rassilon is a mostly forgotten figure from history which is completely at odds with the way he's been portrayed ever since.

I was also surprised to learn that at the time of its original showing they hadn't made any effort to keep the Master's return a big secret. (A big change from these days.)

Still love it though.

loved the idea but it all came across a bit "meh"

I too loved brusa though

It really is one of the biggest disappointments of the Tom Baker era for me. I had never seen it until UkGold showed it a couple of years ago. I couldn't believe how tedious it was.

To me it just serves as an introduction to many Time Lord ideas that have helped construct better subsequent stories.

Wow, I was expecting to be beaten to death for saying that!

I really don't understand what all the fuss is about with this story. The Matrix stuff is endless, and I think is done far more effectively in The Trial of a Time Lord. Borusa, Runcible, Engin and co are great fun, but they have very little to do as most of the story is spent fannying around in the quarry/jungle.

Mrs Chuff wondered if the baddie could be the Master, and then said "Oh, well there goes the surprise" when the credits announced "Peter Pratt - The Master". You wouldn't get that nowadays ...

The Matrix bits area bit serious and po-faced, but the Gallifrey bits have a lot more fun to them. I like my Dr Who to have a bit of fun in it. (Must see how that Nimon thread is getting along...)

I think it was last year, or the year before that I watched it....

I liked it.....a bit slow at times....but I have found that in most of Classic Who that I have watched so far....not that I mind.....unless the time is given to computers as if an advertisment campaign....Yes Castrovavlva....I'm looking at you!!!!!!!

Blimey, parallel dimension time. Here I was expecting to find a thread full of praise and instead I seem to have wandered into a thread full of people that think it's actually rather boring - just like me.

We need to form a club or something. And I'm not talking about a chocolate biscuit.

Halfway through the commentary now, which is rather nice as Tom Baker actually has some memories of the production (for once), and so is able to participate instead of rumbling "Who's that?" every five minutes.

I rather like Castrovalva, actually. It's quite ingenious, while Deadly Assassin's Matrix bits are just self-indulgent.

I personally think it's a work of art. It's in my top 4 Dr Who stories, along with Talons of Weng Chiang, Stones of Blood and City of Death (I can't decide which is best), but Deadly Assassin might possibly be the most important story in the history of Dr Who (except maybe for the first Dalek story).

The story seems to set itself apart from ALL other stories, especially with there being no companion and even the introduction read out by the Doctor at the start. The green sets are absolutely stunning, Gallifrey always looks incredibly cheap and dull in other Time Lord stories.

To me the Matrix sequence is the best part. Ironically it is taking place in a surreal dream world but is probably the most real Dr Who has ever been in terms of in-your-face violence. The Doctor having to use his wits to survive against a well-kitted-out hunter was exciting. I had a dream that was very much like the Doctor being hunted in the Matrix, which makes me even more fascinated by it.

I first watched this story when I was 8 and was absolutely terrified, especially of the Master. Amazing that the Master is a crippled mess yet through the power of his voice he makes his presense felt with very limited movement.

Deadly Assassin was significant in showing us the Time Lords for the first time, interestingly it also showed us that the once powerful race had become a bunch of doddery old men.
Deadly Assassin deserves it credit and reputation for changing Doctor Who like no other story has before or since.

More than "Power Of The Daleks"?

A couple of thoughts:

1. Why did the Master need Goth?

2. Tom Baker is much more effective in an all-male commentary. On Image of the Fendahl, he's far too busy flirting with Wanda Ventham and Louise Jameson to bother to make any constructive comments about the production. As he's not flirting with Philip Hinchcliffe and Bernard Horsfall on the Deadly Assassin DVD, he has a lot more to contribute.

Padding is an accusation that is always made against the old shows because people cannot help but judge them against the standards of the new one. I recall what one member of the forum, Robbo222, said about Frontios recently:

I saw Frontios a few weeks ago for the first time since it had been shown back in '84. Frankly it brought home the superiority of the modern show. Not just in oodles of cash that JN-T clearly didn't have back then but in the pace of scripting. The story is basically a strong two-parter drawn out for 50 minutes too long, in other words put Tennant in the same story and make it a single episode and it would be great. (It has to be said that the ending with the good citizens of Frontios starting life anew is particularly limp, and the modern take on 'what happens after the Doctor leaves' very much comes to mind when watching the show now. Not a classic IMHO!

I think the Time Lords had already been in The War Games and The Three Doctors, hadn't they?

Tom was probably just making up for neglecting Louise when he actually worked with her. However, I'm sure Philip Hinchcliffe and Bernard Horsfall were pleased Tom didn't flirt with them.

As for the Fendahl DVD, I was especially disappointed by the total absence of Chris Boucher and using most of the same people on the documentary as the commentary.

But people thought certain stories were padded back then, too. And there are plenty of old series stories that aren't padded.

I meant that we learnt things about them that we never knew before and got to see what life was like on Gallifrey.
All we had seen before was brief glimses of Gallifrey and a couple of Time Lords talking.

Is that because it was the first story with a new Doctor?

Though you could credit The Tenth Planet for having the first regeneration taking place, and also the fact that it shows the Cybermen for the first time.

Hmmm, it is a tight race.

Deadly Assassin does provide us with alot of information that had not been known before about the Doctor, The Master and the Time Lords. Plus, another thing working in its favour is that it still exists now. I'm not sure if there's barely anything left of Power of the Daleks or Tenth Planet.

A few stories back then did feel padded, but I definitely prefer the old format. The story length back then made the stories more involving and of a higher quality with more ideas buzzing around and more character-building.

The new Doctor Who feels like a comic strip brought to life.

But if I were to use a story as evidence of how good the old stories were I wouldn't use Frontios. I find it incredibly dull. I always thought it had 6 episodes the way it dragged so much so I was surprised to find out it only had 4 episodes.

A very overrated story, I can't understand why fans rave about it so much, it always makes me fall asleep.

I made no comparison between OLD and NEW Who, and pacing of the two series. I wouldn't ever make that comparison, as the two are totally different things. I am much happier with the old stuff than the new, and am very aware of the occasionally poor pacing of old DW. That's why I loet hs how so much.

I just don't see that the Matrix stuff in Deadly Assassin adds anything to the story, and it seems that very few fans have noticed this! (In fact, the comments agreeing with me in this thread really surprised me!)

By the end of the Matrix scenes, the story is no further on than it would have been before, other than the Doctor knows Goth is the baddie. He could have found that out in any number of other ways that don't involve chasing round a quarry/jungle for 40mins.

At the end of it, the Master just kills off Goth anyway, so what was the point of Goth's presence in the story? Why was the Master using him? The Master seems quite capable of being lithe and physical at other points in the story (witness his killing of Hilred, even though the Master is lying down at the time and Hilred is standing up and perfectly able to get away), so it can't just be to use Goth's physical abilities. I just don't get it.

Was Goth going to have some Presidential powers that he could have handed over to the Master? He was probably going to be president anyway, without assassinating the incumbent just monments before the incumbent's resignation, so what did the assassination achieve?

The Matrix stuff is a terrible distraction from the story's real strengths: the Time Lord stuff (especially Engin and Spandrell).

The mystery of the assassin is potentially very gripping, but it sidesteps conspiracy theories, suspicion, a spy in the ranks, etc, and gets caught up with the Matrix stuff (poisoned rivers, low flying aircraft, Japanese samurai warriors, plastic spiders). This is not what the basis of the story is about. It doesn't add anything to the assassination story. Just what is this story "ABOUT"?

And that DVD documentary, about The Manchurian Candidate, does not make things any clearer. It doesn't draw enough comparisons between DW and Manchurian Candidate, and is far too caught up with going on about the Communist / McCarthyist basis of the film ... none of that in DW. Another self-indulegnt documentary that thinks it's art, but certainly isn't Dr Who. (same as the blood/vampire docs on the E Space box).

The Doctor asks Goth before he dies what was the point in assassinating the president when he was the favourite for the job, and Goth says that he wasn't the chosen one. How he knows this I don't know.

All in all I think the Matrix sequence is the most interesting development ever in Dr Who. Which is why on numerous Dr Who clip shows it is used quite alot. I can't count how many times I've seen the clip of the Doctor's foot trapped in the train track or Goth holding the Doctor underwater as an example of how exciting Dr Who was.

Interesting. I love "Talons" but really have little time for "City of Death". Too jokey, flippant and always felt like Adams was trying to stamp his mark on the show. "Deadly Assassin" I haven't seen for years, since the VHS release and at the time I loved it (having viewed it aged 6 or 7 on original broadcast and been somewhat bemused by the lack of monsters!).
It seems that one man' favourite is another man's most hated. "Image of the Fendahl" has always been my top Tom Baker story (followed by "Talons", "Pyramids", "Ark" and "Genesis") but I know of few others that would place the Fedahl story so highly.