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DoctorRy — The Doctor VII: Project Who 50
Published: 2012-06-10 14:25:58 +0000 UTC; Views: 1061; Favourites: 27; Downloads: 24
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Sylvester McCoy. What a guy. Labelled as the guy who killed Doctor Who, this is pretty much completely untrue. McCoy did a great job as the Doctor, getting better and better as time moved on. He was discovering his strengths and weaknesses, but sadly, the general public had moved on from Doctor Who, and McCoy was largely overlooked. Today he's still regarded as something of a joke, but I can't agree. McCoy was great as the Doctor, and I'm secretly hoping he'll get another chance next year to play his favourite character.Project Who-50: [link]
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Comments: 49
Both the Seventh Doctor as the Eleventh Doctor are unfairly criticized by the fandom. I know that both are not able to do convincingly fury, but are worthy of the title of Time Champions.
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There are worlds out there where the sky's burning.
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Cities made of smoke and people made of song
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Somewhere there's injustice...
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And somewhere else the tea's getting cold.
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Come on, Ace...
We should probably stop now
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Anyone else think Seven is kind of scary? Six was just a bit of a dick, but Seven could be really manipulative. He's actually kind of the opposite of Nine. Seven was funny and quirky on the outside, but was actually dark and mysterious. Nine came off as harsh and intense, but he was really just traumatized by the Time War and was often quite loving and sweet.
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Yeah I'd agree with that 
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I listened to the story Red which I liked. It was a nice twist about Celia and it was kind of fun to hear McCoy get caught up in the redlining. And now I'm listening to the second part of the Reaping. I like Peri all the more now- she's really come to life.
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Really liked Red...that was a great story. McCoy is awesome in it. And The Reaping...which is connected to the The Gathering and The Harvest...really liked that story. This is Big Finish pulling it back
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Oh yeah I really liked how McCoy rolled all those r's. It was pretty funny and I got to listen to it during school and all. So I finished The Reaping and that was really good. Oh wait I told you that in a different reply. Okay well I just finished The Gathering and I'm surprised at how cleverly tied in it all was. I had to pause and have a good think. Despite having heard The Reaping earlier today all the people still confused me a bit in Gathering til I got my act together.
This is all connected to the Harvest? When we met Hex??? Oh dear I cannot remember that far back. Hint please? And see I spent 150 USD but I've only got 4 new stories left until those other two come in the mail. Urgh if I just had more money... I guess I can catch up with the Harvest in the meantime.
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McCoy and his "r" rolling...he must love it. Yeah, The Reaping and the Gathering are the first two parts in the trilogy, The Harvest being the final part - even though it was released and written first. Timey-wimey!
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Just finished the story LIVE 34. I really really loved it. It was great. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I could play solitaire while I listened without trouble, but it was a very easy listen with a format handled well. It's a very Doctor Who story so hearing it from an outsider's perspective was cool- I didn't feel like I missed anything. I can just imagine what the Doctor, Ace and Hex did in the in-betweens. It's like cutting out the action and running bits and replacing them with media mood and political struggle. Fine by me. It was pretty easy to tell right off that the gov't was up to fishy business but I (perhaps naively) did not see the whole dead bodies thing coming. Nope. This story was definitely well worth the sacrifice of not getting to hear 7's theme all the way (I love the ending of 7's stories for that reason). And I liked that McCoy got to do some anger and outrage in this one- a good job. I'm glad about that because lately I've found that I look forward to Colin Baker's stories more than Sylvester's. Colin Baker just has such a great voice for it. Can I have more stories like this?
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Hahaha, the funny thing is that, at that particular point in time, most Doctor Who fans would have agreed with you - we were all more interested in the sixth Doctor's adventures than any of the others, but then a few turned up which started to remind us how good the other Doctors could be. Adding Hex to the team really shakes things up (and causes huge continuity headaches...I think it's the only occasion when I've never seen another Doctor Who timeline like mine, actually). But Live 34 was brilliant...I really enjoyed it.
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Next up was Catch-1782 which I also liked a lot. Poor Mel though- becoming a victim to a grief-stricken nutter. I think I just like how it was a classic time travel story. And by classic I mean that stories that aren't from Doctor Who would've done this too. It went by really fast in fact, by the time I finished it felt like only half the time.
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Oh, I did like Catch-1782. I remember thinking I wasn't going to, but was surprised that I did. Again, one of the few times that Doctor Who uses time travel as a device...good stuff.
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That's funny. I didn't think I was going to like that story either. Though I find that I am generally dubious about a story unless it's premise sounds good. More often than not, I am pleasantly surprised.
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Most of the times the stories are better than you expect them. Though I think around the Catch 1782 period, Big Finish were getting a bit "same old same old", so I wasn't really excited about any of them. Thankfully that's all changed
I'm still working my way through Companion Chronicles at the moment...then my wife went and got me some more stuff, so I have that to look foward to as well
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What are the companion chronicles like? Are they purely narrated or do they have sound effects. How can they be told or done without the original Doctors? Do they have stand-in actors or just narration for the Doctor's part and actual acting for everybody else?
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It's always two actors (well, OK, not always - on one occasion it's been one, on others it's been three), and they are a story told, but they do have sound effects, and sometimes alteration to voices to give certain effects. So, because it's always a story that is told, and because there's only really two actors, no, there are never stand in actors.
That said, Frazer Hines' impression of the second Doctor is so dead on you could be forgiven for thinking he recorded it with Pat Troughton. The stories are usually written to accomodate the style of the audio, so invariably the companions are remembering the story rather than actually going through them. Sometimes (and this I really like), it's the older versions of characters looking back at a story, so it even takes into account the older voice (though that said, most of the time the actors are really good at pitching their voice a bit higher to make them sound younger). A few of them form little sub stories - some of Leela's are told by Leela as a prisoner toward the end of her life recalling adventures that relate to the situation she's currently in. Sara Kingdom's are even more interesting because in some ways it's not even her. I listened to a new one recently which was the first to feature two companions - Steven and Vicki - recording themselves telling of a recent adventure, and there's some fun stuff as they pay each other out about doing the other's voice, and doing the Doctor.
So, they do lots of different styles and try different things to make the stories really worthwhile. And three centre around people who weren't companions - one is a Jago & Litefoot adventure, another is told by King Peladon, and a third is told by a character from Project: Destiny. The one I'm hanging out for is a new one with two UNIT soldiers (played by Daphne Ashbrook and Yee Jee Tso) meeting with Steven, Zoe, Jo and Romana I
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Okay well I'll have to get those one day then. After the 4th Doctor Adventures and the 8th DAs and so on. At least I'll know to use the subscription system. Bookmarked.
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Yes...yes you will
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Well I listened to Scaredy Cat. All I can say to that one is "meh". It was just...there. My problem with it is the "science" or logic. What's up with a phrase like "scaredy cat" that is very human in origin? I don't mind things from our culture being inserted into "alien cultures" except that this story was all about a planet's special memory and stuff. And what role did the savage natives play other than some random scary moments? And the criminal at the end, I knew he was going to be destroyed by the planet the moment he became linked to it. So that story was just blah.
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Yup, I remember Scaredy Cat as being pretty meh as well. It's pretty much drained from my mind...all I remember is that drab red cover and thinking...god, is this it for the McGann adventures? Thankfully there was much better stuff to come
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I'll go further, and say he was the best Doctor ever. Yes, ever. Some of his stories not so much (Happiness Patrol may be a good critique of Thatcher, but is not a good story in and of itself; and let's not talk about his entire first season), but his performance was spot on.
And insomuch as the blame for old Who's demise can be laid at any one person's feet, that one person is Michael Grade.
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Well, firstly thanks for the fave
I'm gonna have to take you to taks on The Happiness Patrol, which I just watched last week, and have to say it is simply superb. The design and direction of that thing are brilliant, and while Helen A is a spoof of Thatcher the story itself is more satirical of Pinochet, than anything else. That story is severely underrated.
And, I think probably a combination of Jonathan Powell (who hated science-fiction, in general) and Michael Grade (who hated Doctor Who, in particular) saw the end of the show. And certainly the fact that the louder elements of fandom had viciously turned on John Nathan-Turner only gave Powell support for his argument that science fiction was unpopular (after all, if the fans hate Doctor Who, cancelling it is surely reasonable?). In truth Grade and Powell had their own agendas and part of that was making sure Doctor Who was not on the television.
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"The design and direction are brilliant....." HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA only if you mean in the sense of 'brilliant fodder for MST3K/Rifftrax'! Oh man. That set design was analagous to Colin's coat! I get what they were trying to do in terms of satire, but whereas the cheesiness of say, Battlefield is endearing, here it's nails-on-a-chalkboard grating.
Grade certainly had an agenda.
But at this point, I'm just counting my blessings that you didn't rush to Davison's defense in reply to my other post.
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But that's just the thing about The Happiness Patrol - the set design is very, very fake, but in a story that is all about how society is fake, it works. It looks like the Doctor has arrived on the set of a stage, but then everything about Terra Alpha *is* staged. The entire society is like a stage set - looks great from the seats, but when up close and personal it shows how it's just painted backdrops. It's a brilliantly clever approach to overcoming the space and money restrictions that were imposed upon the show. It's similar in style to Dragonfire, but whereas it works terribly in Dragonfire, it's bang on the money with The Happiness Patrol. The thing is, everyone now says it was a satire, but in truth it wasn't - it had some inspiration in Pinochet, but outside of that it's essentially just a story where people latched onto an actress doing an impression of Thatcher and read waaay too much into it. I find The Happiness Patrol far more defensible than Battlefield, which delivers one of the best monsters the series ever had, only to completely waste it.
Davison's portrayal is subjective - to each their own
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Then if Davison's potrayal is subjective, then so is the staging of Happiness Patrol. It's not that it's fake; it's that it's *bad*. Very, very bad. In Dragonfire it was more effective, if not good. The real problem with Dragonfire is that abysmal cliffhanger, I'm sure you know which I mean. And Battlefield is good cheesy fun, an entertaining romp. But enough of this.
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It is very true - when it comes to the arts, virtually everything is subjective, and what appeals to one person doesn't to another.
With the possible exception of the New52
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*the sound of Arcalian throwing up*
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As George Costanza would say, "SEVEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!" <3
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Yeah, I know a lot of Who folks that love old Seven. I would even say that a lot of the things they began to explore with McCoy have turned up in Moffat's episodes. I'm really hoping they bring them all back for the 50th.
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Yeah, I would have to agree with you - Moffat does occasionally seem to be riffing off what Cartmel did in the late eighties with McCoy. It would be quite interesting to see McCoy and Smith on screen together
Thanks for the fave, as well
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The remaining five actor all seem to be down for that. I've got a lot of love 8 as well. I'd love to see him come back.
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Remaining five...Baker, Davison, Baker, McCoy and McGann you mean? Yeah they all seem cautiously interested...though both Baker's seem a little concerned about how it would be acheived. I'm fairly certain you'd need to decapitate Tennant to stop him coming back, and I'm fairly certain that it would take an act of god to get Eccleston to actually do it
Still...7 out of 11 ain't bad
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I'll take what I can get.
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I think we all will for the anniversary
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...well gee. Do people really think that of him? I never got that impression. Poor seven. He's so great.
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What the hell? There are people who don't like McCoy? Imma hurt these people.
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Yeah, I'm afraid so 
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Y'know, I never realized that, but now that you mention it, you're right. I remember you telling me Tennant couldn't do eccentric and I was just amazed about how right you were. And now the same goes for McCoy and anger. Though he does those cool "bigger picture" speeches.
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Yeah, he's very good at being grim and foreboding, I think. And mysterious and thoughtful and mournful and regretful...but anger..not so much so
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