The Solar Pool
Follow Me For Updates On:
  • Blog
  • Revisitation
  • Transformation
  • Book Shop
    • Heart of the Pool
    • Disclaimer
    • Links

You're Hot, Then You're Cold.

8/5/2019

1 Comment

 
PictureThe moment, actually looking more impressive in a photo taken from a better angle than on-screen.
Doctor Who: Dragonfire Part 1. 23rd November 1987.


This is the latest in the series of Ko-Fi sponsored posts, this one from Ade, who asked me to explain what was going on at the end of the first episode of the Doctor Who story Dragonfire.

So, after careful consideration, here is my full answer:

Buggered if I know mate.

Thank you all very much, see you next time.

Wait, that’s not enough? Tough crowd.

Ahem.

So there are basically three versions of what is meant to be going on at the end of that first episode, what was written, what was filmed and what was unexpectedly retconned to have been happening a mere 26 years later.

The former, according to writer Ian Briggs and his novelisation of the story, was that the Doctor would be crawling along a narrow ledge, that got smaller and smaller until he was forced to desperately hang by his fingers over a precipice.

In realisation... well, season 24 is very much a recovery year for the show. Unexpectedly kept on as producer with no leading man and no scripts, it’s somewhat remarkable John Nathan-Turner managed to put out any episodes at all, let alone 14 that show a steady course correction across the year thanks to new script editor Andrew Cartmel. But it’s still a generally unpopular year full of many odd production decisions, seen at best as a necessary stepping stone to the new golden era of the final two McCoy years.



Read More
1 Comment

Pickled In Time: The Eighth Doctor and the Wilderness Years.

5/2/2015

1 Comment

 
My second video in less than a week (curse these Doctor's who don't hang around long enough), looks at the lengthy period when Doctor Who spent his brief screen-time snogging girls and hanging around Albert Square. Marvel at my inability to tell the difference between Comic Relief and Children in Need. No wonder YouTube just advised me my videos are shit. Huzzah!
1 Comment

Unlimited Rice Pudding: The Seventh Doctor Video.

1/2/2015

3 Comments

 
After a year and a half, I've completed my rewatch of the entire original run of Doctor Who. But before I delve into American telemovies and Welsh filming, was the little Scottish guy as good as Peter Jackson thinks?
3 Comments

Every Doctor Has His Day.

25/11/2013

4 Comments

 
Picture
Even as recently as a month ago I was pretty much resigned to the fact that the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who was going to wind up being a bit rubbish. Despite initially being promised “More Who that ever” the Beeb had shown themselves to not actually being very good at making the show resulting in a rather limp half season that seemed to shuffle onto screen in a slightly embarrassed fashion.

Of course, if it had been any good the drastic reduction in the number of episodes wouldn’t have mattered. But whilst it would be unfair to call it a terrible run, and there was only one episode in the Rings of Padding Out The Short Running Time With Endless Singing and Flashbacks to Things That Happened 30 Seconds Ago that I thought was really piss poor, equally there tended to be an distinctly average feeling about the whole thing.


Read More
4 Comments

Doctor Who 152: The House of Blue Fire. Big Finish Review [Spoilers]

19/11/2011

0 Comments

 
Picture
_ Amnesia, for some bizarre reason, has been a recurring theme across all the Doctor Who spin-off media, usually involving the poor old 8th Doctor, who from story to story can have anything from hours to his entire life missing from his mind. Big Finish have done it most recently in Question Marks in the Recorded Time anthology just two releases ago. So when the first episode of The House of Blue Fire focuses on four people who arrive at a sinister hotel and who don't remember a thing about themselves apart from their various phobias it starts to feel like very familiar territory.

However, writer Mark Morris effectively creates a sinister atmosphere into which these characters, known at this stage only by their room numbers, are thrown that's evocative of the best of Sapphire and Steel or the TV McCoy story Ghostlight.


Read More
0 Comments

Doctor Who 151: The Doomsday Quatrain. Big Finish Review [Spoilers]

15/11/2011

0 Comments

 
Picture
_ After last months Colin Baker celebratory diversion, The Doomsday Quatrain sees this year's Sylvester McCoy season resume. As with Robophobia it's a mostly standalone story, even if they ending does create a small cliffhanger into the final story of the trilogy.

The “Celebrity Historical” has been a mainstay of TV Doctor Who since it returned, mostly working within a very rigid format, the Dickens, Shakespeare and Agatha Christie episodes were pretty much all the same script with a cut and paste job done on them to fill in the correct clever clever references to the relevant authors work. The promotion and back cove for this story creates the impression it will be in the same vein with Nostradamus, but instead it goes off in a completely different direction that actually winds up evoking a story from the Matt Smith's second year on TV. With just a touch of the Peter Davison story Enlightenment.


Read More
0 Comments

The Unlimited Rice Pudding of Sylvester McCoy.

28/8/2011

4 Comments

 
Picture
The Seventh Doctor's original costume.
I can't condone this foolishness, but then love has never been known for its rationality.
-The Doctor, Delta and the Bannermen Part 3.


Over the last couple of weeks I've had an enjoyable hour or so every day listening to Richard Herring's Edinburgh Fringe Podcast (despite it being the launch of a bit of a rant on my part it's still well worth a listen HERE, though new episodes end this coming Monday, the same time as the Fringe itself finishes oddly enough). The format's simple enough, every day nationally known comedian and 90's TV star Herring chats with a fellow comedian up in Edinburgh for the Fringe, whilst another, newer comedian does five minutes of their routine to promote their own show. And on the last Tuesday of the run the five minute spot was taken by a fellow I'd never heard off before named Steven Gribbin who introduced himself by saying he was going to do a comedy song combining his love of Doctor Who and Morrissey.

Now obviously, as a massive Doctor Who fan I was expecting a good chuckle from this. And who knows, if I knew anything about Morrissey perhaps his song would have been funny. But what got me thinking (and inspired this blog post), was him starting off by slagging off Sylvester McCoy, telling a (hopefully made up for comic effect as it makes Gribbin sound like a cock) story of going up to McCoy whilst drunk and shouting “YOU RUINED DOCTOR WHO” at him. A gag that played to pretty much silence from the audience, presumably as a result of them being much like the rest of the British public in not being entirely sure who was Doctor Who between “The One With the Scarf” and “The One With the Ears”.



Read More
4 Comments

Doctor Who: 149 Robophobia. Big Finish Review [Spoilers]

11/8/2011

0 Comments

 
Picture
With the 150th play looming, this month the usual Big Finish trilogy format takes a slight twist for the first time since it was introduced. Instead of three plays in a row with a specific Doctor and companions, we get this month's Sylvester McCoy story, followed by a special Colin Baker release (of which you'll read more next month) before the rest of the McCoy trilogy concludes with the next two releases.

Also, for the first time in a long time, there's been no promotion of an overall arch or storyline across the plays. There's not even any companions, just the Doctor alone. There are a couple of hints in the play itself of Something Bigger tm (the Tardis is black and the wording above the door is slightly different), but apart from that throwaway line Robophobia is, in terms of relation to other Big Finish plays, entirely standalone.


Read More
0 Comments

    Author

    Stuart Webb. Who knows everything about nothing and not a lot about that.

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    March 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011

    Categories

    All
    Abnett
    Action Force/G.I. Joe
    Animated
    Announcement
    Armada
    Audio
    Avengers
    Baker
    Bay
    Beast Wars
    Big Finish
    Brosnan
    Cannon
    Capaldi
    Carpenter
    Carte Blanche
    Cartoon
    Combat Colin
    Comedy
    Comics
    Computer Games
    Costa
    Cullen
    Davison
    Death
    Discworld
    Doctor Who
    Dragon's Claws
    Dreamwave
    Dynamite
    Eccleston
    Ellis
    Fantasy
    Film
    Fleetway
    Frost
    Furman
    Generation 2
    Generation One
    Generation One
    Holmes
    Horror
    IDW
    James Bond
    James Roberts
    Jeffrey Deaver
    Ladybird
    Lanning
    Machine Man
    Marvel
    McCarthy
    Mccoy
    Mcgann
    Mosaic
    Nick Roche
    Nimoy
    Nintendo
    Panini
    Pegg
    Pratchett
    Prime
    Rescue Bots
    Revisitation
    RID
    Rincewind
    Science Fiction
    Science Fiction
    Shatner
    Signature
    Smith
    Sponsored
    Spy
    Star Trek
    Su
    Tennant
    Tipton
    Titan
    Torchwood
    Transformation
    Transformers
    Tv
    Visionaries
    Weatherwax
    Witches
    Wizards
    YouTube

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.