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29th May 2013, 11:49 AM #1
BBC asks Was Doctor Who Rubbish In The Eighties
BBC 50th Anniversary Celebrations finally click into gear:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22628484
Was Doctor Who rubbish in the 1980s?
By Shaun Ley
Newsnight
Doctor Who is 50 this year and has plenty to celebrate. But just like chart-topping bands with albums they wish they had never released, the veteran sci-fi TV show has had its share of turkeys. Why is the 1980s the decade so many fans love to hate?
Watch Newsnight's Doctor Who film on Wednesday 29 May 2013 at 2230 on BBC Two, and then afterwards on the BBC iPlayer and Newsnight website.
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29th May 2013, 11:55 AM #2
It's a very slow news day.
*sigh*
I've just got my handcuffs and my truncheon and that's enough.
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29th May 2013, 12:07 PM #3
It's a good job there arn't more weighty or important issues to make news programmes about.
Si.
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29th May 2013, 12:08 PM #4
Certainly is! It's only 30 years too late to do anything about it.
I've just got my handcuffs and my truncheon and that's enough.
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29th May 2013, 12:23 PM #5
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29th May 2013, 12:24 PM #6
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29th May 2013, 12:30 PM #7
Is it a slow Forum day as well
Assume you're going to Win
Always have an Edge
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29th May 2013, 12:32 PM #8
*Si*
I've just got my handcuffs and my truncheon and that's enough.
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29th May 2013, 12:38 PM #9
Good grief.
By Shaun Ley
It's rather pathetic, especially as so many of the current series writers draw so heavily from that period.
In other news not reported on the BBC this week, David Bowie made loads of crap albums, Jeff Lynne was washed up in 1986, and Roy Orbison made a dreadful "disco" album...If my sons did not want wars, there would be none. - Gutle Schnaper Rothschild
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29th May 2013, 1:36 PM #10
Lets face it, the quality of 80s Doctor Who is as mixed as the quality of the 70s and the 60s and indeed the 00s and the 10s. Doctor Who has never been consistently brilliant.
I've just got my handcuffs and my truncheon and that's enough.
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29th May 2013, 1:40 PM #11
Has anyone actually read the article? It's pretty good and pretty balanced. The conclusion is -
The lesson of the 1980s, though, is not to take it for granted. A powerful producer can drive a programme forward, but in time can also become a barrier to change. Fans can buoy you up, but pleasing them can leave you deaf to the wider audience.Dennis, Francois, Melba and Smasher are competing to see who can wine and dine Lola Whitecastle and win the contract to write her memoirs. Can Dennis learn how to be charming? Can Francois concentrate on anything else when food is on the table? Will Smasher keep his temper under control?
If only the 28th century didn't keep popping up to get in Dennis's way...
#dammitbrent
The eleventh annual Brenty Four serial is another Planet Skaro exclusive. A new episode each day until Christmas in the Brenty Four-um.
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29th May 2013, 3:02 PM #12
I didn't read it, I just reacted hysterically to the title.
Si.
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29th May 2013, 6:48 PM #13
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29th May 2013, 7:59 PM #14
Thank goodness for that - at least someone was finally brave enough to ask the question.
After all, what did we get after such 60s and 70s classics as The Space Museum, Underworld, Monster of Peladon and Space Pirates ? A load of old w@n# like Logogpolis and Castrovalva, Earthshock and 5 Doctors, Revelation and Fenric.
We should all get a TV license rebate personally signed by Michael Grade.Bazinga !
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29th May 2013, 8:28 PM #15
The 60s and 70s were so rubbish, the BBC wiped the tapes of most of them...
If my sons did not want wars, there would be none. - Gutle Schnaper Rothschild
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30th May 2013, 5:32 AM #16I didn't read it, I just reacted hysterically to the title.
Tsk, people eh?Pity. I have no understanding of the word. It is not registered in my vocabulary bank. EXTERMINATE!
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30th May 2013, 5:42 AM #17
Oh and the comments thread is superb!
I watched an episode last Saturday (had no choice, I was in a hotel room and that was the only channel I could get). Couldn't make head nor tail of it. And the background music was nauseating. Now I remember why I stopped watching it all those years back.It's about 47 years past it's sell by date .
I have watched Dr Who right from the beginning with William Hartnell; the Daleks & Cybermen really scared me then. When the Daleks came back with the ability to travel up stairs it freaked me out!
I've never actually watched it since the 80's, other than the odd glimpse. Dare I say it, it still looks a bit naff now, just a more expensive naff.
Dr Who is and will always be rubbish,talk about flogging a dead horse.Why does the BBC continue with this pap?because they make millions flogging it around the world.I thought part of the BBC'S remit was to produce original programs ,which DR WHO most certainly isn't.
A coment of Face book is if it was not rubish then. It is now.
Rewriting history. Victorian Quaker business tried to look after there employees Bornvile and the towns built for workers were not a horror like carry on hornting.
I watched a bit at mums recently having got rid of my TV in 1988 then found an old dads army. Mum said it was not suitable for children agreed so much.
From a moral point of view Dr. Who and other tales which demonstrate the best aspects of Christian morality should be encouraged such as assisting those in need.
However all too often these fictitious creations become confused with fact, we should remember the words of the Bible:
Psalm 8:3
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,Pity. I have no understanding of the word. It is not registered in my vocabulary bank. EXTERMINATE!
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30th May 2013, 11:46 AM #18
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I watched the Newsnight film expecting the usual smug media bullshit but it was actually a good film which raised a number of important questions in that the way the show was shot and made hampered it. Mind you watching that clip of Micheal Grade tells me that Chris Morris was right about Micheal Grade
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30th May 2013, 3:04 PM #19
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Nowadays i tend to think back on 80s Who a bit more fondly than I did at the time. At worst, I'm still not overly fond of Survival for example, but at least i can see now what they were trying to pull off. At least the article makes the point that there were moments in one or two popular stories of earlier vintage that didn't work either, and it's for the same reason - the producers' pocket has never in a billion trillion years been bottomless. You might as well say Dad's Army was rubbish in the 60s because they didn't have colour, they'd not settled on the format or Pike's character til the third series etc.
Personal taste is the key; I'd rather watch 70s Who than 80s, but I'd much rather watch 80s Who than certain programmes being made today!
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1st Jun 2013, 12:57 AM #20
Hinchcliffe is not f***ing God. How many people remember that he caused so much trouble that he was gone after only two and a half years?
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1st Jun 2013, 10:31 AM #21
I thought the Newsnight film was OK... but I couldn't quite see the point. They seemed to focus on specific stories to tell the tale - but by focussing on a different few stories they could have told an entirely different tale couldn't they? And they ought to have given some context - I agree that in the 80s Doctor Who was the only non-soap drama being made in that same old way, but they should have shown us some other contemporary dramas to prove the point: Lovejoy, Rockliffe, etc, were all filmy shows with a large proportion (maybe even majority) shot on location. Hi-De-Hi was still being made in the same way as Who, so it was definitely an anomaly - but I don't think the film really made that point.
BTW, I'm not aware Hinchliffe was sacked, which seems to be the implication - other than Barry Letts & JN-T, couldn't you insert ANY producers name into a sentence that ends "gone after only two and a half years"?
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1st Jun 2013, 2:41 PM #22
Well, if we're including Hi-De-Hi, we could also include Only Fools And Horses, Blackadder, Yes Prime Minister, Red Dwarf, You Rang M'Lord, and just about any other sitcom of the era. Blott on the Landscape was video too, as were The Life and Loves of a She-Devil and Rumpole of the Bailey, and the early episodes of Wexford. They were still making classic serials on video up to at least 1987, such as David Copperfield and Vanity Fair, although there had been a filmed Bleak House in 1985. Casualty started in the late 80s and was video look, and then there was The Bill, and neither of those were soaps at this stage.
Filmed dramas were beginning to become more common at this time, and it was a period of transition to them becoming virtually universal, other than soaps, but it took quite a long time before it was completed. The last videotaped drama BBC series, other than EastEnders or Casualty, is thought to have been The House of Eliot, which ran from 1991 - 4. Doctor Who was suffering from the videotape factor partly by dint of being science fiction, which, it's probably fair to say, was increasingly felt to be needed to be more filmic by its very nature, and partly because that was the direction TV was going in anyway.
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1st Jun 2013, 3:11 PM #23
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He not only appears to have been sacked, but his sacking appears to have been handled in the most bloody awful way - the way I've heard him tell it, he didn't know himself until Graham Williams knocked on tjhe office door one morning and introduced himself as the new producer of Doctor Who.
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1st Jun 2013, 3:21 PM #24
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To be fair, The Hand Of Fear and Planet Of Evil don't have great reputations, but overall the Hinchcliffe era does, since the rough stories are outnumbered in the general opinion of fandom by a lot of good stories - even if Letts and Dicks did appropriate a couple of them. And he arguably did walk into the sacking, but John Lennon and Pete Townsend are both still very popular; I think they're both overrated, and boy they've both made some classic blunders!
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1st Jun 2013, 5:39 PM #25Well, if we're including Hi-De-Hi, we could also include Only Fools And Horses, Blackadder, Yes Prime Minister, Red Dwarf, You Rang M'Lord, and just about any other sitcom of the era
As for the rest, Logo, I stand corrected. I guess the memory cheats, as they say.
He not only appears to have been sacked
his sacking appears to have been handled in the most bloody awful way - the way I've heard him tell it, he didn't know himself until Graham Williams knocked on tjhe office door one morning and introduced himself as the new producer of Doctor Who
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