The Doctor Who Book/Audio Club.

popebenny16

This is an idea that may get us through till Christmas.

We decide on a book and or Audio adventure and then we discuss it. Maybe we do one a fortnight or a week?

Who is with me?

nothing

I'm in... I think!

Doctor DooM

I want in on this, but I am time poor and I have no audio books or books to start with.

ixoy

Which books and which audios?

I'm most familiar with the books and we could be talking:
* Virgin Missing Adventures
* Virgin New Adventures
* BBC Past Doctor Adventures
* BBC Eight Doctor Adventures
* Bernice Summerfield Adventures
* Target novelisations
* BBC 9-11th Doctor Adventures
* Torchwood novels
* Sarah Jane novels
* Short Trips collection

And audios have a similar wide sweep, esp. if you go and include the likes of the Dalek empire series or the "Robots of Death" Kandor mini-series!

Daemos

Hey, great idea. A bit strapped for cash but I can definately afford a book every week or two.

ixoy

Also: What about watching something pre-Season 27? Pick a story each week and watch that?

Doctor DooM

ixoy wrote: »

Also: What about watching something pre-Season 27? Pick a story each week and watch that?

I'd LOVE this.

And it'd be pretty easy for people to... acquire the episodes perfectly legally compared to acquiring audio books.


Perfectly legally.

ixoy

Doctor DooM wrote: »

I'd LOVE this.

And it'd be pretty easy for people to... acquire the episodes perfectly legally compared to acquiring audio books.


Perfectly legally.

Yep. Just like my collection of every episode. All recorded off BBC Gold of course.

I think it'd be also interesting from the point of view of connecting to the new series in some ways. Think of it:
- see the Autons, Daleks, Cybermen, Silurians for the first time! Hell even get to see the Macra we briefly glimpsed in "Gridlock"
- Get to know the original companions, including Sarah-Jane in her early days
- See the original U.N.I.T and the Brigadier!
- See the sonic screw-driver in glorious B&W!
- Meet K-9! And meet him again! And again!
- See the Master done correctly - with proper black beard!
- And of course the Doctor: See him in all his various incarnations: cranky old man, wandering hobo, the dandy, the madman, etc.

Not to mention that it'll give some great perspective on how good and bad the show can really be.

Question is: Would people start at Season 1? Season 7 (colour episodes)? Skip over the missing episodes or watch the fan versions?

Jessibelle

I'd be up for the episode watching Although starting at the very begining may be a little tedious for people new to Who, as fond as I am of William Hartnell. Maybe start with some of the episodes that are more similar to the Who's (whom?) we know now like Baker, and Davison? And if we did go completely retro, then the fan versions do add a certain something to a season

nothing

Loving where this is going! I was supposed to have a summer of Who, but real life has gotten in the way, as it does. Def up for watching old eps!

pixelburp

The books might be a bit hard to come by, especially the old "New Adventures" line.

So how about either picking some classic old school TV stories, or some Big Finish productions? I could think of a few classic Big Finish stories to start us off with

nicowa

I'm liking the "watch Classic Who idea".

popebenny16

ok, lets leep it simple-ish.

the "missing year" of the 6th Doctor has been released on audio over the last year (in fact i think they are in the middle of the run) and should be therefore easiest to get. As far as i remember it is a shortish run, only 8 or so stories.

the reason why i was thinking these was because they were actually intended to be broadcast, scripts were done, directors assigned ect. in the end they were all scrapped and replaced with Trial of a Time Lord.

the first one is The Nighmare Fair, and features the return of the celestrial toymaker and dan be d/l for €12 or cd around €20

http://www.bigfinish.com/101-Doctor-Who-The-Nightmare-Fair

if we do one a month starting in August would that be ok economics wise?? I will allow anyone stuck to borrow my one.

pixelburp

I'm game

Doctor DooM

Actually, why doesn't one of the lads who's seen everything get a complete list of all the serials, throw them into a hat, and we do them randomly (excepting maybe the missing episode serials from the early days so as not to discourage the-er- less experienced whovians)

popebenny16

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Actually, why doesn't one of the lads who's seen everything get a complete list of all the serials, throw them into a hat, and we do them randomly (excepting maybe the missing episode serials from the early days so as not to discourage the-er- less experienced whovians)

stupid idea.

it should ahve been a fez.

nicowa

Well, someone needs to make a decision on what we do. If we go with watching old tv serials I'm going to need to find a place to um.. aquire them in a "river-like fashion"* and if we're going to go with the audio that was mentioned then I already have found a "river-like fashion"* to hear it from...


--

*not the character...

PM for the links if we decide the audio one.

----
EDIT

Just realised that the free download for the audio is perfectly legal cos it's free anyway. They would just like a donation to the charity of their choice. I still won't post it online in case I'm wrong though.

ixoy

If we go with classic Doctor Who I recommend we'd start full on from Season 7. It's one of the first seasons in full, the first in colour, and also one of the best in the show's run. I would think though that selected episodes from previous years should be viewed too.

I've only listened to a few audios though so I'd need some guidance!

Daemos

Well if we're going with watching the old episodes I think I know a decent place to "watch the river flow" if nobody else has any better ones.

If anyone wants to check it out PM me for a link

ixoy

DaPoolRulz wrote: »

Well if we're going with watching the old episodes I think I know a decent place to "watch the river flow" if nobody else has any better ones.

It'll take a long time for all of it to flow by. There's over 250 giant buckets of water!

popebenny16

nicowa wrote: »

Well, someone needs to make a decision on what we do. If we go with watching old tv serials I'm going to need to find a place to um.. aquire them in a "river-like fashion"* and if we're going to go with the audio that was mentioned then I already have found a "river-like fashion"* to hear it from...


--

*not the character...

PM for the links if we decide the audio one.

----
EDIT

Just realised that the free download for the audio is perfectly legal cos it's free anyway. They would just like a donation to the charity of their choice. I still won't post it online in case I'm wrong though.

Ah god be with the days when i could tell you lot what to do .

personally i am in favour of the lost 6th doctor season simply because its cheap and it was mean to be Tv and therefore an interesting theme, and i will back the review of the 7th season for the visual, if we are doing that too (and no reason why not, it will be one discussion thread on each). that was indeed a good year and consisted of only four stories.

Now.... for an added and cheap alternative..... every two weeks there is the Doctor Who DVD files. Recently, for a tenner, you could have got vanillas of City of Death, Caves of Andiozoni, Revelation of the Daleks, and right now its Curse of Fenric.

Now, for a tenner its not a bad idea....

flazio

Or we could all go to blinkbox and look at the freebie stories there.

Daemos

So are we going with this idea or not? And are we going in any particular order or just pick ones at random?

ixoy

DaPoolRulz wrote: »

So are we going with this idea or not? And are we going in any particular order or just pick ones at random?

Well I'm up for it.

Ordering - It depends on how much we're going to watch. If we're watching one classic story a month, for example, it would take forever so we'd have to pick highlights only. If we were speeding it up we could look at more complete seasons.
As a starter, I'd recommend Season 7's "Spearhead From Space". Several reasons:
* First colour serial
* New Doctor
* Introduction to UNIT as a big role
* New companion for the audience
* Introductes the Autons, who were also the introductory menace for the relaunch
* It's a good story and only 4 parts

After that, I'm not sure where to go next but I think the subsequent serial - "Doctor Who and the Silurians" would be good because it deals with the Silurians intelligently, the Siluarians just featured in Season 31 (and so are fresh in people's minds), and again is a good story. Also is a very good showcase for the Pertwee's Doctor take on man's perchance for violence.

Other alternative is of course the first story: "An Unearthly Child". It shows its ages far more though and the Doctor is less recognisable in his characteristics. Would be more for a sake of completeness.

Doctor DooM

I back ixoy's idea.


EDIT: I do think we should jump around a bit though.

Daemos

I've only seen a handful of Classic episodes so I'm happy to go with the majority, and Spearhead From Space sounds like a decent starting point

+1 to jumping around a bit, I don't think we have to see them all in the right order, we all have a general idea of what happened

ixoy

DaPoolRulz wrote: »

+1 to jumping around a bit, I don't think we have to see them all in the right order, we all have a general idea of what happened

Well we'll definitely then have to look at "Genesis of the Daleks", "City of Death" and "The Caves of Androzani" as well as others that we can nominate.

How long do you think we should give a story? The number of parts vary - should we work from that? Or give say 2 weeks or something?

Daemos

I'd say a week would be enough for most stories, I'm sure most people could set aside half an hour a day so even if you only watched one part a day you could get through a 7-parter in a week fairly easily.

ixoy

So then, shall we get this moving?

Chose a first story: "Doctor Who - Spearhead from Space" (7x01) or "An Unearthly Child" (1x01).

Which should we pick?

Daemos

I vote Spearhead From Space

pixelburp

+1 Spearhead from Space
I like to pretend the 60s episodes don't exist - thank god most of them don't anymore

ixoy

pixelburp wrote: »

+1 Spearhead from Space
I like to pretend the 60s episodes don't exist - thank god most of them don't anymore

Ah I like some of 'em but there's a definite change in direction with "Spearhead From Space".

Okay, the story is set - how long will we allow? Let's say to discuss it by next Saturday?

Daemos

Sounds good to me

ixoy

Great! I'll let someone else decide on the audios which I'm not that familiar with (only on #6 - The Marian Conspiracy).

Stark

Count me in for watching classic Who eps.

nicowa

Wait... hang on, I missed that. Did we make a decision? Cool. "Spearhead..." is this a book? (I'm assuming yes, since you said story...)

Daemos

No it's the TV serial Spearhead From Space from series 7.

We'll be talking about it tomorrow, but I assume it'd still be okay to talk about for another week at least

ixoy

nicowa wrote: »

Wait... hang on, I missed that. Did we make a decision? Cool. "Spearhead..." is this a book? (I'm assuming yes, since you said story...)

Nope. In fact, to make it more confusing, the novelisation for this serial is called "Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion".

Stark

Ah balls, I missed the post where the decision was made.

Daemos

So, who did their homework?

I thought it was pretty good, took a while for things to get going but then they always do when there's a new Doctor

I loved the escape by wheelchair, probably my favourite part of the serial

Also good that he found a decent enough way to defeat them (similar to the way Ecclestone's Dr disabled the arm in Rose's apartment IIRC) and not "antiplastic"

Liz was good, I saw her in Inferno as well so had an idea of what to expect from her

However it did feel like things ended a bit abruptly, it seemed he only came up with a way to defeat them in the last 10 minutes, and the ending felt a bit rushed

Also, what was that octopus-thing supposed to be?

ixoy

Here's a suggestion of what we should do for the next few:

Take a classic story from each Doctor.

That way we get to see what each one is like. Any takers?
For the first Doctor, I've a number of suggestions:
"An Unearthly Child": First ever DW story. It's actually not that good but it might be interesting as a curio.
"The Daleks": First ever story about... Anyway it's interesting to see it setting the template for the many Dalek stories to come.
"The Aztecs" - A good solid DW historical, dealing with the repercussions of time travelling.
"The Gunfighters" - The Doctor visits the O.K. Corral. One of the funniest of the Hartnell era and well written (and you want to hit some of the characters less often!). Also, I believe, the only serial to feature singing within the show.

Any other suggestions or approach of course are welcome!

Daemos

I like the idea of going Doctor to Doctor

Out of those stories I'd like to see The Aztecs but that's because I'm fascinated by time travel in general, I'm sure others have much better reasons to watch the other stories, so I'll go with the final decision whatever it is

Also Starring LeVar Burton

I've had a hectic week, so won't get a chance to watch Spearheads From Space until later tonight/tomorrow afternoon, but will be in there discussing it asap...

Love the idea of picking out the best from each Doctor...
Out of the four you've named for Hartnell, I've seen An Unearthly Child and The Daleks - both are amazing and I'd highly recommend them, and the other two serials - Azteks and Gunfighters both sound great, so I'm cool with whatever...
For all intents and purposes though, I'd like to watch and discuss The Gunfighters, but I'm good with whatever decision...

Doctor DooM

The McGann film should be watched too.

Stark

Okay decision time, I'm looking forward to watching a new serial over the coming week

Let's start with a First Doctor serial and go through the rest in order (skipping the Third Doctor until the second round of viewings) so that way we're not going round in circles arguing over what Doctor every week.

My vote goes to either "An Unearthly Child" or "The Daleks" as I'm curious to know how things start off both with the Doctor and his "greatest foe". We could watch the "Aztecs" or "The Gunfighters" when the second round of viewings comes round.

ixoy

Stark wrote: »

My vote goes to either "An Unearthly Child" or "The Daleks" as I'm curious to know how things start off both with the Doctor and his "greatest foe". We could watch the "Aztecs" or "The Gunfighters" when the second round of viewings comes round.

I think that's a good idea! "The Daleks" is probably the better story but "An Unearthly Child" is interesting because we get to see people discovering the Doctor rather than the other way around. Admittedly it's mostly a pre-historic caveman story but the first episode is worthy of viewing anyway.

Doctor DooM

My votes for the daleks simply because we've just watched a "first" episode of a doctor.

Stark

Okay, let's go for the Daleks, it'll probably give us more to discuss. I can watch "An Unearthly child" in my own time

ixoy

Stark wrote: »

Okay, let's go for the Daleks, it'll probably give us more to discuss. I can watch "An Unearthly child" in my own time

Yep. And maybe a Cyberman story for the 2nd Doctor (pickings there are slim enough - a lot of the good stories are lost).

Doctor DooM

Soooo... should I watch the Daleks over the weekend?

I'm stuck in Germany with work so I am sure it won't be a problem

ixoy

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Soooo... should I watch the Daleks over the weekend?

I'm stuck in Germany with work so I am sure it won't be a problem

Yes, yes you should. It's a good choice because I think it's far more typical Who than "An Unearthly Child". Just remember - it's from 1963.