Subj : Dcotor Who DVDs
To   : alt.tv.farscape
From : RR
Date : Fri Sep 16 2005 22:31:59

From Newsgroup: alt.tv.farscape

Two new Doctor Who R1 DVDs came out last week: "The Mind Robber" w/
Troughton & "The Horror of Fang Rock" w/ Tom Baker.

"The Mind Robber" has long been one of my favorite stories. The premise is
that the Doc must take the TARDIS out of time & space altogether due to a
bunch of lava (from the previous story). Upon doing so, the crew end up in a
place called The Land of Fiction where they encounter all manner of
low-budget 60's trippy weirdness like Gulliver, Medusa, a unicorn, a bunch
of life-size toy soldiers and bunches more. The story has huge amounts of
imagination that more often than not the budget is unable to realise. I'd
always been forgiving of this, but oddly this time around, I found the
serial much harder to appreciate. Even the writing seemed dodgier than I
recalled. The memory cheated. I was bummed.

But the memory can cheat in good ways as well.

Case in point: "Fang Rock". Despite many a Who fan's assertion that it's one
of the very best - a "classic" - I'd never really warmed to it and had
always found it to be a bit of a snooze-fest. Not so this time around. I
really got into the whole thing and saw it in a completely different light.
The entire thing takes place in and around a lighthouse right around the
time electricity came into fashion. It's basically a group of people and the
Doctor & Leela hanging out and one by one folks start getting picked off.
It's barely any more complex than that. Gothic, well-written dialogue,
diverse supporting cast - the whole thing sails. Best of all, perhaps, there
really aren't any seriously dodgy effects. The monster/alien menace is
simplistic enough in design that it's pretty easy to accept and the rest is
mostly period stuff. It pretty much rocks all the way around.

Some Dude: Are you in charge here?
The Doctor: No, but I'm full of ideas.

Leela (with her knife at some dude's chest): You will do as the Doctor
instructs or I will cut out your heart!

-- 
RR

"It's been my experience that every
  time I think I know 'where it's at,'
      it's really somewhere else."
      - William Holden - S.O.B.

.