The fact that they were taking it 'seriously' was what was wrong with it.

Doctor Who is a show that is built on fantastical and imaginative ideas; in many ways it's completely daft, but it works because the world it creates is stylised in a way that the characters can interact with it naturally because they too are equally as stylised.

Hence, when the Doctor encounters a silly monster, because the Doctor is silly too, it just clicks.

In my view, it's far, far sillier having characters go through the proceedings in an earnest, po-faced manner when the situation they're in is so fundamentally silly and fantastical. That's the sort of thing that Star Trek does, and it's one of the reasons I don't like that show so much. I think it's just the sillest thing in the world watching an extremely serious Captain Picard deliver a pithy morality speech to an alien with a big brown splat for a face - in fact, I question how on earth Patrick Stewart managed to hold back the roars of laughter.

The beauty of the very best Doctor Who is that it recognises itself for what it is, and doesn't play for 'realism' which it stands no chance of achieving it given that it's about an alien that travels around in a police box that's bigger on the inside. The very best writers for Doctor Who cottoned onto this, and realised that it's far, far cleverer to embellish a silly situation with consciously farcical moments, because that's inevitably what the bulk of the audience are thinking.

That's where Doctor Who gets it right whilst so many other similar shows get it so very, very wrong.

It's when the show takes a daft idea, and plays it out in a deadly serious manner that it starts to come across as a little pretentious, trying to be a house of intellect which, in truth, is built on sand - that's one great way to alienate the casual viewer.

Regards,

Cypher

I do, yes.

I think it's vitally important for the success of the drama that its players should be convincing, whether it's a serious role or otherwise.

Hence, I do find it terribly off-putting watching some Classic Who, where we get a big dramatic scene that utterly falls flat because the cast just do not have the acting talent to pull it off.

Although I do love the Classic Series (more than the New One as it's what I grew up with), the quality of some of the acting is just so bad, it's actually frustrating. In some stories, it doesn't matter so much as the 'acting void' in question maybe only has a bit part. As such, it can be more endearing than annoying,

But, latter Classic Who brought the acting deficit into the TARDIS with the likes of Adric, Tegan, Turlough, Nyssa, Mel and Ace, to the point where even the actor playing the Doctor was missing the mark all too regularly.

I just ruins it for me, and there should have been even *less* excuse in the eighties!

I agree that some of the acting in New Who has missed the mark from time-to-time (usually involving Martha - no offence Martha fans!), but I personally don't feel that it's anywhere near as bad as what went before.

Regards,

Cypher

I agree with you regarding Adric, Nyssa and Tegan (Who wouldn't!) not a fan of the others either

I agree with you concerning the latter Doctors

I disagree with you that on average New Who's acting is not as bad as the old series. I would say overall they are the same. Just over 26 season their is more crap to remember wheras New Who has only had four years so far.

Two out of Three aint bad

£5.85 at 101cd and blah.

For me, DR WHO ended with "Invasion of Time"....it just lost its charm after that episode (for me). I did enjoy the new series more than I expected at first, though rolled my eyes quite a lot because of the stupidity (micky in the trash bin, farting, lack of subtlety) of some of it (to be fair, the dumbing down is why it is now mainstream popular)- however, I stopped watching 3 episodes into the last series, though returned for the final ep.

I wish people would stop bringing up things like the farting, Mickey and the bin, etc. etc. All of these toilet gags were almost all in the early stages of Series 1, when New Who was still finding its feet, and we've had nothing which comes near that in the last few series (I'm one of the few defenders of Love & Monsters, but even that was two years ago now).

And even in Series 1 we had Dalek, Father's Day (some disagree because it was "too soapish" ), The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and The Parting of the Ways. And if you look at the other three series we have The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, School Reunion, Human Nature/The Family of Blood, Blink, Utopia, Midnight, The Fires of Pompeii, Turn Left, The Stolen Earth, and countless others, which give the likes of The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Genesis of the Daleks, The Ark in Space, The Caves of Androzani and all of the other classics a run for their money.

I'm enjoying watching the catalogues of Old Who episodes (as someone who started with Ecclestone) immensely, but I do think people have a tendency for rose-tinted spectacles. Pyramids of Mars, for instance, I found extremely overrated, and is memorable mainly for the excellent interraction with Sutekh towards the end (which is all too brief). But it suffers from a lot of pointless running around, and also the same problem people hate RTD for: the Deus Ex Machina. It's certainly above average and Episode 4 is fantastic, but then again, so is most of New Who. And New Who has never plumbed the utter depths of Logopolis or The Keeper of Traken.


As for Inferno, it's certainly one of my favourite Who stories, and I didn't find it padded at all. It needed 7 episodes to flesh out both of the parallel worlds. Definitely pick it up.

I did get it, ive watched Episdoe 1 & 2 so far.

I would argue myself that very little New Who could ever come close to scaling the heights of The Keeper of Traken but its all opinions.

Well each to his own, but frankly I just saw it as a good idea gone awfully wrong. The concept of a planet which survives on its people being nice to each other was fascinating, but they seemed to forget about it very quickly. Most of it just seemed to be Tom and crew running in circles, while encountering a group of people speaking in irritating pseudo-Shakespearian dialect, who have absolutely no personality (Nyssa included), other than the only sympathy the fantastic Ainley could scrounge from his part. The Master just seems to teleport in and out of rooms for most of the story, and there is very little threat, and since it's edited by Bidmead we have a bit of pseudo-science thrown in there for good measure. It was extrememely poe-faced and lacking in humour, scares, suspense, and adventure, which are more important than science or half-arsed politics will ever be in an entertaining story. It just left me cold in almost every way, and only looks good when compared to the utterly abysmal story which came after it.

How anyone can say it's better than, for instance, Human Nature, is beyond me. But I suppose we're all different!

To be fair I was being a bit of a git there to wind you up a bit in a good natured way of course , I like Keeper of Traken a lot but i agree it is a perfect example of a very good story badly told.

Its got a nice fairy tale feel that I like but the most unforgivable thing about it is that the most important thing (Tremas being told he must take the Keepers place on his wedding day) is only alluded to not actually shown

I do prefer Human Nature to it as well

Keeper of Traken became known as Kipper of Traken as it stank so much
I like the first ep but the rest is pretty dire, to be fair a lot of Classic Who doesn't stand up, I preferred the early Target Novels and when I finally got to see the actual TV show it was a novel of it just never lived up to expectations. 2 examples being Green Death and Day of the Daleks. Great novels but patchy at best on screen.
Inferno is one of the few that still grips and its a very interesting idea, parallel worlds etc.

Inferno is great, I picked it up when it came to DVD and I was hooked. It's soo much darker than some New Who stories, evil Brig and Benton are great and the actors do good portrayals of the darker sides to these two. thankfully the Slitheen's unfortunate Gas problem has now been solved in the SJA's so we shouldn't have to suffer lines like "that line" again! it would be good if they could return 'Who, may be The Doctor could make a remark like "No gas this time?" or something like that, it would be a nice nod to Aliens of London.

Does anyone wonder how with all the times we've had the "parallel earth" idea laboured in New Who (Rise of the Cyberman/The Age of Steel, Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, The Stolen Earth/Journey's End), they've never come near to pulling it off as well as they did almost 40 years ago? That is if you don't count Turn Left and Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?, but I don't think they really count as parallel worlds, they're just the same world minus one character.