Was the RTD era good television?

[burrunjor]

Apr 20, 2024 18:17:09 GMT rushy said:

I don't know, I feel like there's a very clear throughline from Hartnell to Pertwee, but then it kinda gets lost somewhere during the UNIT era.

Okay two things 1/ I just saw I wrote the exact same thing above about the Doctors character LOL. To be fair they were written months apart, but yeah I really am the most tedious bore of them all. 

2/ You're not entirely wrong about Pertwee being more different. Physically Pertwee is obviously a huge departure from Troughton and Hartnell. They were both short guys, who naturally favoured the more trickster approach to fighting enemies and could be usurped as the main hero at times by Ian, Barbara, Jamie and Zoe as a result, where as Pertwee was a big, powerful action hero who was always at the centre of things. In that respect Pertwee kind of opened the door for guys like Tom Baker and even Peter Davison to play the part. 

Had they got their original choice for the Third Doctor, Ron Moody who physically was more like Hartnell and Troughton in terms of being a short guy, and therefore would have most likely been another trickster type then it's easy to see how that image of the Doctor would have been cemented after three versions and it might have been too difficult to cast a guy like Tom Baker who would have seemed too jarring physically. 

Still again I still don't feel that's such a big departure that it no longer feels like the Doctor anymore. Ultimately Pertwee did still embody all of those characteristics I mentioned above, and him being bigger and therefore stronger and more direct isn't beyond the realms of what we think would happen if the Doctor changed his face. Also I might add that even then Hartnell's Doctor could be an action man despite his age and kicked some serious arse in his era at certain points, so it's not like Pertwee's fighting skills came out of nowhere. 

[rushy]

I think it's because Tom is much more outlandish, whereas Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee were relatively straightforward. They had their eccentricities, but I could still imagine each of them being real people (and the same evolving person).

Tom is so idiosyncratically Tom that it kind of broke that for me. There's absolutely nobody else like Tom. He's a unique phenomenon even in the franchise, and a lot of the incarnations after him try to replicate what he brought to the table.

[burrunjor]

Apr 20, 2024 18:48:40 GMT rushy said:

I think it's because Tom is much more outlandish, whereas Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee were relatively straightforward. They had their eccentricities, but I could still imagine each of them being real people (and the same evolving person).

Tom is so idiosyncratically Tom that it kind of broke that for me. There's absolutely nobody else like Tom. He's a unique phenomenon even in the franchise, and a lot of the incarnations after him try to replicate what he brought to the table.

That's certainly not what anyone who made the show thought. 

Barry cast him because he felt his personality was such a good fit for the character. Bob Holmes mentions in his autobiography that Tom was his favourite as he felt he combined the three main qualities of the first three. 

Like Jon he was a big, physical, action man, like Troughton however he could be silly, funny, pretend to be an oaf to lure his enemies into a false sense of security, and like Hartnell he had that wild, unpredictable, yet aristocratic sense of authority and more eccentric persona.

I think that's a fair assessment to be honest. 

Meanwhile a lot of Pertwee writers and directors worked on Tom's first few years and all said they didn't notice that much of a difference in terms of making it? They'd throw in just as many action scenes, use Pertwee tropes and characters etc. Tom has 4 UNIT stories in his first two years, and his first companion for two and half years are a UNIT man, Harry and Sarah Jane Smith, a Pertwee companion. 

Honestly I'd say the changeover from Tom to Jon is actually the smoothest there ever was in Classic and New Who, and to be fair the viewers seem to reflect this, given despite Pertwee having been there for so long, there was no drop in viewers for Tom's first year. 

Again I'm sorry I can't think of anything other than surface personality that makes Tom stand out from the first three, the same way that the new who Doctors do from the classic and even each other?

Does Tom fall in love with his attractive young companion, slap her on the arse, French kiss her, and mime getting an erection at her hot arse? Does he say I WILL NEVER, EVER, EVER USE A GUN NO MATTER one week and then sadistically torture a villain for no reason other than his own enjoyment the next? Does he make the character a flaming homosexual? Does he reveal he was secretly the god of the Time Lords? Does he go insane when someone dies and threaten to blow up the universe and explode into a "NOOOOOOOO IT'S NOT FAIR!" 

Nope he does all of the classic Doctor things, it's just that now Tom brings his own sense of humour and eccentricities to it.