#14 - Missing Persumed Wiped....Not for Two of Them

Sunday 11 December is an important date for Doctor Who fans as it was confirmed that two episodes of Classic Doctor Who that were presumed wiped had been found. Episode Three of Galaxy 4 and Episode Two of The Underwater Menace have been found which reduces the amount of episodes lost to 106. Being on twitter there seemed to be a tension to find out what the news was, I was initially excited by the news but then thought that it wouldn’t b e anything major. I had hoped it would be the missing episodes of ‘The Daleks Master Plan’ but in reality thought it would be that the Christmas Special of Doctor Who Confidential would air.

However just after 5pm, the news seemed to leak out from some of the people I am following that they had found these two episodes. I must admit that my initial reaction was that of perplexment. I knew it would be missing episodes found but wish it had been for a story that was missing one episodes. It was fun being on twitter after the news had broke because some had felt excited about this news, thinking it was the best news for a long time and an early Christmas present and then some thought it was a little bit of an anti-climax. I think after thinking about it, I am in the middle. Possibly because I had mentally prepared myself and being a pessimist.

The first episode found was episode three of Galaxy 4 which was when they named individual episodes and this one was called ‘Airlock’. It originally aired on the BBC on Saturday 25th September 1965 and was watched by 11.5 million people, it was written by William Emms and directed by Derek Martinus. Before today all four episodes were missing and only the audio recording existed. I think there is a very brief clip that exists which sees the Doctor, Steven and Vicki on the Dravhins ship so its good to see a bit more of this story. The next episode was Episode 2 of The Underwater Menace which was aired on Saturday 21st January 1967. It was watched by 7.5 million people, written by Geoffrey Orme and directed by Julia Smith. Now that this episode has been found only the first and last episode are missing. This is a story that would benefit from being seen in its entirety as opposed to just on audio with 25 minutes.

Been a fan of Doctor Who its one of the biggest bug bears and fans who haven’t seen anything pre-Eccleston will be wondering what the fuss is about but for completists like me its quite significant news. Over the last twenty years we have been treated to dribs and drabs of episodes. The first big release of missing episodes was ‘The Tomb of the Cybermen’ which was found in Hong Kong of all places. It’s a story that I was first introduced to via cassette tape (remember those days) and when I finally watched it on VHS some time later I was mesmorised. It’s only in later years that I have put it into context and whilst I think it’s a good story it has lost some of its shine since the early 1990’s. The most recent discover was in 2004 when an episode of the ‘The Daleks Master Plan – Day of Armageddon’ was found. It was great to see another episode from this epic as there were only two episodes to watch and ‘Day of Armageddon’ was from early on in the serial. It was an interesting episode and hopefully one day it will be found in its entirety.

I’m not a massive fan of these two stories but will appreciate that they have been found and hope that it wont be another seven years before we get more episodes. Hopefully we will live in a world where not one episode of Doctor Who is missing.

A guy can dream cant he!

The Tomfiles: #13 - 150 Not Out

Big Finish reached a milestone when they released their 150th Main Range release ‘Recorded Time and Other Stories’. In the 12 years since they were licensed to produce Doctor Who stories. Over the 150 releases the stories have varied quite a lot. Colin Baker, Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy were there at the very beginning and Paul McGann joined in 2001. We have also been reintroduced to classic companions with only Matthew Waterhouse not coming back as Adric (though have we really missed him?). But we have also been introduced to new companions and that is what has made these adventures more than just Doctor Who on audio. These are new companions that we have seen from the start. I only started watching Doctor Who properly in 1993 so until the show returned in 2005, the Big Finish companions were the only ‘new’ characters that I have seen in their debut stories.

The format of these stories has changed over the years. From 1999 to 2007, the stories would be released in random order with a Fifth Doctor story being released one month and then a Seventh Doctor story being released the next month. Then after Nicholas Briggs took over as the executive producer of the main range we started to get ‘three + one’ releases. They didn’t really work because very often the three episodes would be great as they cut out all the padding that accompanies a normal four part adventure but very often the single part story would let the whole release down. It has taken me a while for BF to get a handle on these single episodes. But it was in 2008 when the format of the main range releases would change. Due to a story arc involving the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Thomas Brewster, it was decided that starting in 2009 there would series of stories that would be released one after another. So there would be three series of three adventures with a single release. With the Eighth Doctor having adventures in his own series, it would be Doctors 5,6 & 7 that would get their own series of adventures.

During these 150 stories we have seen some classic monsters return via BF. These include the Daleks, Cybermen and the Master which were obvious ones but it some of the lesser popular monsters that have returned. They included The Axons (Feast of Axos – 2011), Omega (Omega – 2003), Ice Warriors (Red Dawn – 2003 and Frozen Time – 2008), Rutan (Castle of Fear – 2009) and The Mara (Cradle of the Snake – 2010). It’s always a curious decision to bring back monsters that only appeared once or maybe twice in the classic era but usually its with good intentions and whilst I may not have been wholly positive about a story (Robophobia) I am always open to them bringing back monsters that only made a single appearance as long as it is justified.

The big names that have appeared in these 150 stories over the years has also been impressive. Names such as David Walliams (Little Britain and swimming the Thames), Mark Gatiss (League of Gentleman), Joe Thomas (Inbetweeners), Anna Masey (Peeping Tom) to name but a few. It’s always surprising to see the sort of people that will appear in audio Who as opposed to TV Who. To appear on TV Doctor Who I could understand because of the exposure it would give them but I think that the fact their in a Doctor Who is more of a personal thing than a professional thing.

The stories that have been done over the last 11 years have used a large number of writers. Some had written for the TV series and some would go onto write for the new series. In fact the 2002 story Spare Parts was inspiration for the 2006 David Tennant stories ‘Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel’ and in 2005 Robert Shearman adapted his 2003 adventure ‘Jubilee’ to become ‘Dalek. Due to the contract that BF has with the BBC it means that BF can’t use a monster or villain or even story if it mirrors one that is being used on TV. That’s why in the 2009 Lost Story ‘The Hollows of Time’ the Master wasn’t used as he was appearing on TV. It seems that this only really becomes a problem when they want to use a classic villain/monster, otherwise they are free to do whatever they want and the only restriction is really on what they want to do. There have been tendencies when the story has been complicated. The most obvious example of this was in the 2008 adventure ‘Brotherhood of the Daleks’ which is quite possibly the most complicated story that BF have done. Even Colin Baker wasn’t fully aware of what was going on. Most of the time it’s just me that doesn’t understand what’s going on but on some rare occasions like BOTD, it’s a group thing.

I decided to do a massive poll to decide what was the most popular Big Finish story in the main range. I suspected that ‘The Chimes of Midnight’ would have a good chance because it won the Toms Tardis ‘Story of the Decade’ award in 2009. If you didn’t vote then the way then let me explain how it worked. Basically I opened the poll so that you could select your 10 favourite stories. Not just one because I know how difficult that can be but 10.

Here is what I voted for in this poll.

1 – Live 34 (2005) 9 – The Chimes of Midnight (2002)
2 – Project: Twilight (2001) 10 – Medicinal Purposes (2004)
3 – Project: Lazarus (2003)
4 – Son of the Dragon (2007)
5 – Nocturne (2007)
6 – Enemy of the Daleks (2009)
7 – The Reaping (2006)
8 – The Nowhere Place (2006)

After all the votes had been counted the (not surprising) winner was the 2002 adventure ‘The Chimes of Midnight’. It got 51 votes, second was another 2002 adventure ‘Spare Parts’ which got 43 and quite surprisingly ‘The One Doctor’ from 2001 was the third most popular story with 38 votes. Now it is an enjoyable story but I don’t think that its one of the top 3 stories ever.

Winners of the Best Story category in the Toms Tardis Stories did as follows;

1999 – Phantasmagoria #42 with 5 votes
2000 – The Marian Conspiracy #8 with 29 votes
2001 – Project: Twilight #22 with 10 votes
2002 – The Chimes of Midnight #1 with 51 votes
2003 – Doctor Who and the Pirates #7 with 30 votes
2004 – The Harvest #27 with 8 votes
2005 – The Juggernauts #49 with 4 votes
2006 – Pier Pressure #84 with 2 votes
2007 – Son of the Dragon #22 with 10 votes
2008 – The Haunting of Thomas Brewster #36 with 6 votes
2009 – The Magic Mousetrap #36 with 6 votes
2010 – The Wreck of the Titan #6 with 32 votes

Out of 150 stories, there were only 16 stories that didn’t get a single vote. They were Minuet in Hell (2001), The Rapture (2002), The Sandman (2002), Nekromanteia (2003), The Creed of the Kromon (2004), The Roof of the World (2004), The Last (2004), The Game (2005), Three’s A Crowd (2005), Red (2006), Valhalla (2007), The Wishing Beast/The Vanity Box (2007), The Dark Husband (2008), The Chaos Pool (2009), Lurkers at Sunlight’s Edge (2010), Recorded Time and Other Stories (2011).

Some of these I kind of understand, I’m not wild about Minuet in Hell, Red, Valhalla or Nekromanteia but then there are some that I think should have at least got a vote such as The Game which has William Russell in it. I also thought that Recorded Time and Other Stories and Lurkers at Sunlight’s Edge should have received a vote. How something like …ish (111th with 1 vote) or Renaissance of the Daleks (60th with 3 votes) managed to score higher I will never know.

Big Finish have achieved a lot in 150 stories, they have used new and old monsters in these stories and also bought some popular combinations back. 2012 looks like being another good year with Tom Baker joining the Big Finish family but when/if we do a poll for the Best 200 stories I suspect that ‘The Chimes of Midnight’ will win. Congratulations to Big Finish, you were there when Doctor Who was on TV and you show that you can produce stories just as good as the ones on TV with a fraction of their budget.

To use a cricket term to describe my feelings about Big Finish -150 not out

The Tomfiles: #12 - Death of Doctor Who Confidential (2005-2011)

The news that Doctor Who Confidential has been axed has come as a great shock and sadness to a great deal of people. It has even prompted a campaign to get set up on twitter to try and bring the show back. This is due to the fact that the BBC has had its licence fee frozen by the Government until 2016. As a result this means that the BBC has to cut its budget by 16% as well as having to take control of the World Service and some of the costs of the Welsh language channel S4C. Over the last few months, the BBC has around 2,000 job losses as well as loss of sports coverage including Formula One.

The show was created in 2005 purely as a way that new fans to the show could understand its history and why the Doctor is the way he is and why the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than on the outside. It last around 45 minutes and in recent years has focused on interviewing the cast and looking at some of the people that make the sets and other stuff. Ok this is mildly interesting but after about 25 minutes I have found myself getting restless and wanting to change channels. In the most recent series, I have not even watched them because I have found them to be very poor in entertainment.

BBC Three has had its budget cut by 10% or £8.5 million pounds. According to the BBC website it’s “to nurture and develop shows for BBC One with some reduction in drama, music and entertainment”. Now this means that we are supposedly getting more original programming which will be worthy of the licence fee but considering this is the channel that gives us ‘Lee Nelson’s Well Good Show’, ‘Snog Marry Avoid’ and ‘Don’t Tell the Bride’ I’m not holding out much hope. However despite these shockingly bad shows they do show ‘Family Guy’, ‘American Dad’ and ‘Russell Howard’s Good News’ so if they do more of these shows as opposed to bridal vanity shows then that will be ok.

No other drama gets a behind the scenes show apart from Eastenders which occasionally and I mean occasionally gives us a one hour show. So why is Doctor Who so special? Most shows that are released on DVD get a behind the scenes disc and even when they release Doctor Who on DVD they present the cut down version of Confidential. Ultimately the main reason why DWC was axed was because it was probably too expensive. When you think about how much time is spent interviewing people, recording what’s going on and more then it must stack up to a whole lot. Considering what the ratings are for this show it’s a very poor return rate.

As long as Doctor Who is on the air, should we really be bothered that DWC has been axed. No, Doctor Who was and still is the main priority and the fact we are all getting so het up about it is frankly baffling. If the show were to come back in some shorter format then that would be fine but I won’t miss DWC. Let’s not forget that people are losing their jobs and some of them may find other jobs but some won’t and if you compare some job losses to the cancellation of a mildly interesting show then you should see which the inferior problem is. Doctor Who Confidential has been a supporting show to the main show but lets get our priorities right. DW is the show we should be enjoying and when they decide to cut that then we should get angry until then, let’s pause for a moment and wave goodbye to DWC.

The Tomfiles: #11 - Doctor Who Abroad

Doctor Who is a thoroughly British affair. Over the course of 32 series, the show has filmed all over the UK where in recent years the show has been filmed in Cardiff. However sometimes the show decided to get on a plane and film as Matt Smith said ‘Somewhere new’. Remarkably in the first 26 years, the show only ventured on foreign soil three time and that was over the space of six years. Recently the Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory have been having adventures in the good old US of A but is filming abroad a good idea or does it ruin the flow of a story or even a season?

The first time that Doctor Who was filmed abroad was in the 1979 adventure ‘City of Death’ where the Fourth Doctor and Romana travelled to Paris in France for four episodes. The story itself is a very good story despite it coming from the Douglas Adams era where comedy was a big part of the show. There are large chunks of location filming to help establish the show’s setting, however it is essentially just the Doctor and Romana running around Parisian landmarks but its filmed beautifully.

Arc of Infinity was the second adventure to travel abroad but the show still stays in Europe by filming in Amsterdam. Like City of Death, the story features a lot of running around but there are still the familiar sights. To be fair to AOI, there is a bit more to the filming that running around. There is some standing about and sitting in a café but more importantly the big finale scene is on location with the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa catching up with Omega and shooting him. In terms of purpose to the story, the scenes in AOI are far better than COD.

Two years later The Two Doctors would be filmed in Seville Spain for reasons no-one can work out. It doesn’t offer anything to the story and you could have filmed it anywhere in the UK. There are some beautiful shots of Seville which makes it look a beautiful place. However ultimately the purpose of the location is dubious at best as a result it’s not entirely satisfactory.

It was rumoured that Doctor Who would have gone to Asia in the abandoned 1986 season which would have seen the Autons running amok in Thailand or somewhere near. Who knows whether this would have been a good idea or not but we’ll never know.

It would be eleven years before Doctor Who would film abroad and this time it would be different because it would be in the TV Movie where the story was filmed in Canada doubling for San Francisco. It feels more like a US drama than a British one which makes it stand out in the history of Doctor Who. There are some lovely scenes but as most of it is filmed at night unfortunately I don’t think it shows off the city as well as it could have done. Had the ‘pilot’ turned into a series then there would undoubtably have been more location filming and chances to see more of the scenery.

During the early years of Doctor Who’s return featured filming switching between Cardiff (and surrounding areas) and London and during the Tennant era there was only one time where it was based outside of the UK and that occurred in Fires of Pompeii where the show went to actually went to the same studio in Italy where the HBO/BBC drama Rome was filmed. This was a fantastic idea and one of the reasons why the story is so good is because of the location stuff. It would have been silly to try and replicate those scenes in the UK because it wouldn’t have been as good. It’s one of the best uses of foreign filming so far. The Eleventh Doctor would be the Fifth actor to film abroad with two episodes being filmed in Croatia. The first episode was Vampires in Venice where the filming is beautfil and does create a different impression to the series. Despite Vampires of Venice and Vincent and the Doctor being filmed in the same place it doesn’t show in the stories. It’s quite impressive how they manage to do this and the best thing is that I wasn’t thinking about whether it made sense but just being bowled over by the story and enjoying the filming.

The most recent excursion out of the UK saw the show go to the country with the biggest fan base outside of the UK. The show went to America and filmed in the Utah desert. Despite it being a desert the filming was very good and helped create the impact that the show needed to set the current series up. The reason for the story being set in America was plausible and so the location stuff needed to compliment it and it certainly did that in this story with some fantastic arial shots. Much better than what you would get here.

The issue of coincidence occurs whenever the show films abroad because some argue that its convenient that the aliens would invade/attack in a foreign country but then I take the approach that it’s no more convenient than aliens attacking/invading just the UK when there are bigger and more powerful countries that they could pick. I think that providing the reason for setting a story in a foreign country makes sense then it doesn’t make it any less plausible setting a story in South Africa or Finland or even Vanuatu than it would be setting it in the UK.

Filming abroad always gives a Doctor Who story an international feeling and with the show popular in all corners of the world it’s only right that occasionally the show ventures outwards to embrace that popularity and more importantly the cash. Recently Steven Moffat said in a newspaper article that £300,000 of the £1 million that it costs to make a Doctor Who episode comes from merchandise. I wonder how much of the remaininig £700,000 comes from international TV stations. Going beyond that the issue of filming abroad shouldn’t really exist and occasional excursions outside of the UK are a good thing and should be a regular thing.