Part One:
1)"Leave the girl - it's the man I want." That's kind of sloppy - leaving a potential enemy just like that. I hate when characters do stupid stuff just to serve the plot.
2)I suppose they did the best they could with the regeneration.
3)The skeleton's pretty grisly.
4)The whole "Rani dressed as Mel" thing is goofy.
5)Thermodynamics was the Doctor's special subject in school.
6)"Mop my brow." Sometimes you can tell that this story was originally written with Colin Baker in mind.
7)The clothing scene is amusing, although perhaps not quite so amusing as I used to think it was.
8)Cliffhanger #1: Mel is caught in one of the Rani's traps!
Part Two:
9)So, Mel just happens to get the one trap that doesn't blow up?
10)"I'm overwhelmed."
11)The Tetraps obviously aim to give the Tractators a run for their money in the Goofiest Monster competition.
12)The Doctor knows how to do an airplane spin!
13)"I know about regeneration, of course."
14)"It doesn't bode well for my seventh persona."
15)"9-5-3." "That's my age - and the Rani's."
16)Cliffhanger #2: The Tetraps capture the Doctor!
Part Three:
17)"I've met your companion, Mel." "Don't hold that against me."
18)The Center of Leisure looks like an opium den.
19)Mel's just hanging around.
20)"A bird in the hand keeps the Doctor away?"
21)Cliffhanger #3: The Doctor is hooked into the Rani's machine!
Part Four:
22)"You wouldn't say that if you met my uncle."
23)"Loyhargil" = Anagram of "Holy Grail".
24)"Waste net, want net."
25)The Tetraps are revolting!
26)"I'll grow on you, Mel - I'll grow on you."
Overall: An OK story - first stories for new Doctors are always a little tricky, and this one obviously suffers from having been thrown together in a hurry in the wake of Colin Baker's firing.
Replies
I suppose they did the best they could with the regeneration.
I suppose. Still, that’s got to be the crappiest regeneration ever (even including Eight to Nine which was not shown). They could have added a line of dialogue to indicate the Rani somehow forced the regeneration. Tracy’s comment: “The Sixth Doctor went out as he came in: on the TARDIS’s control room floor.” She read the Target adaptation of this story but didn’t remember any of the episode from it.
Thermodynamics was the Doctor's special subject in school.
…and he can play the spoons! (Quite well, I might add.)
So, Mel just happens to get the one trap that doesn't blow up?
That’s because they don’t explode when they land in water. (I just made that up.) Interesting visual, relatively speaking (relative to other Doctor Who SFX, that is).
"I know about regeneration, of course."
Of course you do. And how did you become a companion, again?
I’m surprised they held off so long releasing this story. It’s not the best regeneration story (and McCoy’s portrayal is quite different than what it would become), but it’s an important story nonetheless. Not too long to wait until the next story in sequence (“Paradise Towers, August 9), but I’m most eager to see “Dragonfire” and the transition from Mel to Ace. Too bad Troughton’s first episode as the Second Doctor is among those destroyed; it would be nice to have a complete set.
Part One:
1)"Leave the girl - it's the man I want."
Someone is stealing River Song’s best material here ;)
3)The skeleton's pretty grisly.
Run into a lot of cheery looking skeletons, do you? Just kidding.
6)"Mop my brow." Sometimes you can tell that this story was originally written with Colin Baker in mind.
Yes, but that works well as a bit of a tie in to the regeneration just having occurred.
7)The clothing scene is amusing, although perhaps not quite so amusing as I used to think it was.
I think my favourite was Tom Baker’s clothing choices in Robot. I have found this one a bit self-congratulatory going through the earlier Doctor’s costumes much like Twin Dilemna was.
8)Cliffhanger #1: Mel is caught in one of the Rani's traps!
I wonder if anyone ever thought of casting her as Black Canary ? ;)
Part Two:
12)The Doctor knows how to do an airplane spin!
Well the First Doctor WAS trained in the art of fisticuffs by a wrestler as mentioned in The Romans.
13)"I know about regeneration, of course."
By the time of Time and the Rani it seems like pretty much EVERYONE knew about regeneration. Especially as it had been featured in so many stories in the Fifth and Sixth Doctor’s stories.
14)"It doesn't bode well for my seventh persona."
Now are we talking about the characterization or the story overall because honestly things will get better once Ace comes on board.
15)"9-5-3." "That's my age - and the Rani's."
I just wonder if the idea behind this was that The Doctor and The Rani are twin brother and sister? There was already all sorts of talk about The Master being his brother
Part Three:
18)The Center of Leisure looks like an opium den.
I was under the impression that was the whole idea of it. That the populace was being kept sadated & placated until The Rani had need of them and it helps to keep your hostages stoned to keep them from running off.
Part Four:
23)"Loyhargil" = Anagram of "Holy Grail".
Say what you will, Doctor Who LOVES its anagrams.
25)The Tetraps are revolting!
You said it! ;)
26)"I'll grow on you, Mel - I'll grow on you."
Now, how many people have had to warm up to the idea of the Seventh Doctor after dealing with the Sixth?
Overall: An OK story - first stories for new Doctors are always a little tricky, and this one obviously suffers from having been thrown together in a hurry in the wake of Colin Baker's firing.
Agreed, not the finest hours of Doctor Who but despite my teasing, it is a story I enjoy on some levels and like I mentioned, things improve once Sophie Aldred gets on board. Bonnie Langford is definitely considered a light entertainment performer and has proved that during her run in Doctor Who. Mind you, during this time, the series itself was kind of considered light entertainment what with guests like Stubby Kaye and Ken Dodd on the horizon
24)"Waste net, want net."
Oh, Pip and Jane Baker, how I hate you. I have to admit, though, that even after 20 years, I'm still hoping for the chance to say "Time and tide melt the snowman."
"I know about regeneration, of course."
Of course you do. And how did you become a companion, again?
"A paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox ... '
My first time around, I somehow missed the beginning of "TIME AND THE RANI" and came in about halfway in. No way to watch a story (but this had happened to me before with Tom Baker on multiple occasions; it's always frustrating). I didn't quite know what was going on, but I REALLY liked McCoy as the Doctor. Bonnie Langford was another matter. I saw her in person about 8 months before seeing her on TV, and just about fell in love with her. But most of her time on the show, she got nothing. TERRIBLE writing. And you have to wonder who was picking out some of her wardrobe. And who was doing her hair? AAAA!
I'm pretty sure both of my PBS stations were running the show at the time, so I was able to catch this one from the beginning shortly after. The beginning is about as lame as it gets. It really picked up the moment The Doctor woke up. Unlike Peter Davison (who was almost in a coma for 4 episodes) and Colin Baker (who suffered from violent schizophrenic fits for his first 4 episodes-- and which seemed to reoccur, with less frequency, for some time after), McCoy's Doctor was INSTANTLY in control of his faculties. I LIKED that. But then he was given induced amnesia... oy. Oh well, at least it didn't last long.
The most maddening thing about his 1st story is that, like "MARK OF THE RANI", I found myself watching it multiple times, and having to come to the conclusion that Pip & Jane Baker had somehow forgotten to include an actual PLOT that made any sense amidst all their witty character scenes & dialogue. The only time they did a decent plot was "TERROR OF THE VERVOIDS", where they were doing a very blatent swipe-tribute to Alistair Maclean's "GOLDEN RENDEZVOUS" (but then insisted on trying to pass it off as an "Agatha Chistie", perhaps so viewers wouldn't realize just HOW much of a SWIPE it really was).
Mildly amusing is the reunion of Donald Pickering & Wanda Ventham-- the latter almost unrecognizable under her makup. They were interviewed together in DW Magazine, and talked about all the years they'd been friends, and how any time they wind up working together, they drive directors crazy because they can't stop laughing. I've seen Ventham on "UFO" (mostly in the later episodes, where she became a potential love interest for Ed Bishop) and also on "THE SAINT" (where she was so young and gorgeous it almost hurt to look at her).
Basically, I had very little trouble with the 1st story when it originally aired. Maybe not an all-time classic, but a whopping HUGE improvement over Davison's & Colin's debuts, and much as I liked Colin's Doctor, he rarely got decent writing. And here, even with 2nd-or-3rd-rate writing, I ALREADY liked McCoy's Doctor better than anybody since Tom Baker. This season, going in, looked to be a step back toward the style of Season 17, and to me, that was a DAMNED GOOD and long-overdue thing!!!
I swear, that has to be the very first time I've heard anybody else ever acknowledge "Golden Rendezvous" even exists.
I'm pretty sure that the book was made into a made for TV action movie that appear on cable in about 1979 on HBO... as I recall, it starred Richard Harris and had a Michael Lynch (of War of the Worlds) snappy soundtrack and I think they might have changed the ending a little bit. However, it's been too long and I only watched it once that I can recall. (A rare thing for a cable movie in the 80s...)
TERROR OF THE VERVOIDS, eh?
I'll have to go look that one up and see what I think.
I've been making repeated references to it for a few years now, but, I guess I must not have done it here.
"TERROR OF THE VEROIDS" was my favorite "Mel" story, to a large degree because it seemed to hark back to Tom Baker in style (particularly Season 17), and because she got the best writing (outside of "DELTA AND THE BANNERMEN"). I actually dug out the story to watch on its own, independant of the rest of the run, at least twice.
And then one day I sat down and watched "GOLDEN RENDEZVOUS". About 15 minutes in, it slowly started to dawn on me, the story seemed familar. By the half-hour mark, I realized where I'd seen so many plot details before-- on DOCTOR WHO! DW has a long tradition of re-doing other stories, "WHO" style. But nobody ever mentioned this one... mainly because, over and over, Pip & Jane kept saying (insisting in fact!) that they were "doing an Agatha Christie style story". It's easy to think that, with the murders and the mystery of who's doing it. But when I saw the movie-- which had such things as someone being kept in an "isolation" room, a group of armed terrorists taking over the ship, a mysterious cargo... I realized it was too big of a coincidence to be one.
GR is the film that finally made me a fan of Richard Harris!
I was just watching the DVD the other day. The Bakers say on the commentary track that John Nathan-Turner asked them to do a Christie-style story. I've not seen Golden Rendezvous but by the sounds of things you must be right. (The isolation room element is the clincher.)
"I suppose they did the best they could with the regeneration."
The real reason behind the Doctor's regeneration is revealed in the Big Finish audio "The Last Adventure."