Finished The Sensorites yesterday. I thought it was quite a good little story. Little snippets trickling out about the Doctor and Susan now. Both are telepathic, that's news. Surprised they haven't followed that up through the series, but I guess little things get lost along the way. They still talk about their home planet, but nearly at the end of season 1 and still nothing known about it. The Doctor only mentioned one heart in this story, so I wonder when the two hearts came into it.

The Sensorites are very like the Ood in appearence without the spaghetti chops. Similar in disposition too with their telepathy and peaceful trusting nature. The story was very tense at times, there are instances where the music stops and the party are waiting for something to happen. The suspense in those moments really worked for me.

Looking forward to the final story in the first series, where The Doctor in his indignation over his driving skills has promised to leave Ian to make his own way home.

I think in planet of the Ood when the Doctor is showing Donna where the Ood Spehere is on the map, he mentions it's close to the Sensorites home

Yes I think you're right. I wonder when RTD first thought of them if he then imagined that they'd be Sensorite's neighbours.

He did exactly that. Watch the DWC that accompanied The Impossible Planet. RTD says he remembered the Sensorites and liked them and they inspired the look of the Ood. He says he likes to think of the Ood as neighbours of the Sensorites.

Oh thanks for that, it's interesting to learn where the ideas originate from.

I think we already had this conversation earlier in the thread...

Yes you did already explain that in Planet of the Ood it was mentioned they were neighbours, but I did not question at the time if RTD had this idea when they were first introduced in The Impossible Planet.

If memory serves (and it's aaaaaaaaages since I saw The Sensorites),the Doctor says he was hit "just under the heart". That doesn't necessarily deny him having two hearts. If you were hit in the leg, you'd probably say "hit in the leg" rather than "hit in one of my legs".

There are occasional hints of telepathy with the Doctor, later on ("CONTACT!" in Three and Five Doctors, for example), but it's oneof those little things that went by the wayside.

The Reign of Terror next, I think. The video fills in the missing two episodes (4 and 5)with approx one minute of narration, which is totally insubstantial and meaningless. It meant that, when the video picks up with ep.6 again, I had totally olost the thread of the story and had no idea what was happening. Definitely one to track down on CD.

Fair point actually yes.
I've just remembered also, that Susan gave an account of her home planet in this one, with orange sky and silver leaves on the trees. Very similar to how the Doctor described it in Gridlock if I remember correctly.
I have a loose canon copy where the missing episodes are covered by the narrative and accompanying photos. I think...I haven't watched it yet. I plan to start later on today.

I've seen the LC Reign of Terror and it's their usual type of recon with the stills and complete soundtrack.

I really must get round to getting some Loose Canon jobbies. Thanks to Tigger (and others) for PMing me about them. If it's as easy as sending a blank video in the post, I see no reason not to get stuck in. Fury from the Deep to start with, I think, as the soundtrack CD is outstanding.

Hope you get to see some Chuff they are really worth getting.

Started Reign of Terror, and as we've been talking about a non-violent Doctor in another thread, thought I'd just mention he does give one chap a right smack round the head with a shovel knocking him unconscious. Now that was pretty violent, but the scene was done with pretty comic undertones and very lighthearted background music.

Realised today that the history stories that they did back then did not feature aliens in any way. Well the ones I've seen so far with William Hartnell. It was just the companions dealing with whatever situation they got themselves into and trying to extradite themselves, without the necessity of aliens. I cannot off the top of my head think of any new series story where we have gone backwards in time and just had the era to deal with. There have always been aliens in there somewhere...I think. Happy to be corrected though.

When the show was conceived the idea was it was supposed to alternate between historical and future stories. So in the historical stories there are no aliens as it's supposed to be more "educational" This continues for the first couple of Hartnell's series before being pretty much phased out in favour of mainly alien and sci fi stories

Aah, I knew it was meant to be educational in the early stages. I've learnt loads since watching.

Tiggs, did you know that when the Doctor was taking his country stroll in The Reign of Terror a double was used for all the location shots? Evidently they thought it would be too strenuous for Hartnell, or perhaps it was cheaper to use a stand-in. Not sure where I heard about this but the double was rather convincing.

It actually lasted longer than that. The last regular 'pure' historical was The Highlanders, in Troughton's first season. It has been done once more since then-Black Orchid, in 1982.

I did not know that. The double was totally convincing because did not have a clue about it.

That "country lane" scene is DW's first bit of location work. A stand-in was used as William Hartnell couldn't be spared the time out of the studio.

The same extra is used in The Chase, when we meet a "robot double" of the Doctor. As you'll see, when the DVD comes out in a couple of months, he's ratehr less convincing in close-up ...

Edmund Warwick. He really doesn't look much like Hartnell, so it's curious that in The Chase, when playing the Doctor's robot double, he's frequently shown facing the camera at fairly close range.

Nope, the Hartnell double in The Reign of Terror was Brian Proudfoot, the robot 'double' from The Chase was played by Edmund Warrick, who also played Darrius in The Keys of Marinus and had briefly doubled for Hartnell in The Dalek Invasion of Earth (when Hartnell had slipped a disk or something and couldn't appear in episode four).

Thanks: that would make sense. Proudfoot was an "extra", while Warwick was an "actor".

I think the ramp into the Dalek ship collapsed, and Bill Hartnell fell heavily, so needed a week out of the story in the middle of Dalek Invasion of Earth. Wouldn't be so easy to do that kind of rewriting now!

They may have been counting on the use of smaller screens in those days.

With all the DVDs and the ability to free frame the pictures it's easy to forget that back in 1963 TV programs were made to be shown once, on a small, low quality screen. The film itself was grainy - poor resolution compared with todays HD clarity.

So the simplistic effects, sets and sometimes acting would have passed by quickly, never to have been revisited. The viewers were also much less demanding than today's audience. I'm not saying that the programme makers would actually settle for second best - they obviously tried to make the best TV that they could - but expectations were not as high as today, and viewers were more inclined to suspend their disbelief. In the early 1960s households without TVs outnumbered those with, and the majority of viewers were far more used to radio drama, requiring a stronger imagination on the part of the listener.

There was never the expectation that TV should compete with Hollywood movies (whereas there is today) and so TV audiences were quite happy with the quality of the programmes that were shown.

That said - there are a number of unforgiveable lapses of direction in The Chase where the Doctor's robot 'double' clearly looks nothing him! Even in 1965 this would surely have been spotted!

Cheers,

Richard

Quite - I watched The Chase with my parents when the VHS first came out, and both of them said that they could remember seeing it at the time* and remarking that the Dalek robot looked nothing like the Doctor (although it's better whenever it gets a close up, as it's usually played by Hartnell then and the voice is good, as that's also Hartnell - except for one line, oddly).

The Chase is a very strange beast, though - when I watched all of Doctor Who in the right order, it felt like it was from a completely different program that just happened to have the same actors in it.

*Plus, my mum got to tell her story about how William Russell had brought his TV into be repaired by my uncle, so she'd sat on top of it** and had her photo taken. I get to hear that story whenever William Russell appears!

**The TV, not William Russell. You filthy swines!

I often think about that kind of thing: Vidfire and a telly the size of a wall are not conducive to viewing something intended to be in 405 lines. Little glitches, errors and details would so easily have been missed back in the day; the producers would have been much more content to let something slightly wobbly go past, safe in the knowledge that the telly viewer probably wouldn't notice it.

Also, these programmes were also intended to be watched just once, not srtudied as a historial artifact.

Telly is different now, and watching old DW even on new technology (let alone with a 21st century mindset) is a totally different experience.

You're right though: the robot Doctor and the Voord who trips over his flippers don't leave a lot to the imagination!