Full transcript of “A Quick Guide to Classic Who Season 19”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:17 the piece hello again when Peter Davison got the role of the doctor he was one of the most popular TV actors in the UK having made his name playing Avastin all creatures great and small when Asura began he could also regularly be seen in two comedy shows holding the fort and sink-or-swim the other doctors were launched into mega recognizability by Doctor Who but
1:04 Peter Davison already had it and it was a good thing doctors one Deford personality in spades and 5 doesn't he's both blonde and blonde vanilla made flesh and cast as the doctor that's the trouble with regeneration you never quite know what you're going to get agreed he's my least favorite classic doctor but I'll try to be fair cast revolver is the third part of the master trilogy and his four parts long the crew dragged the doctor back to the TARDIS as he's a troubled regeneration five cycles through his earlier incarnations and spends part of the story semi-conscious and or semi lucid but most importantly the doctors boots somehow regenerate into shoes between lakopolous and this
1:49 story eventually they use the zero room and a makeshift zero cabinet to aid the doctors recovery it's piece of Time Lord technology that helps with difficulty generations they create the makeshift one because the real one gets deleted as part of an effort to escape the Big Bang about half the story takes place in cast revolver a town of simplicity relaxation and peace and of course it's an MC Escher s plot concocted by the master who's captured Adric now I wasn't entirely fair about Adric last season the reasons he was so reviled as a companion started mostly with this story like rose he was tolerable this first season and like Rose his second season utterly poisoned the characters wail the master is also in disguised as one of
2:35 the people who live in cast revolver now when the Delgado master would be in disguised they would usually go to minimal effort usually to be practically see-through but what they only it works you were not supposed to realize it was him and often you don't he plays each disguise differently and they even use pseudonyms in the end credits to keep up the illusion amy was just a really good actor cast revolve itself is a spatially impossible town everything written down was in the same handwriting the streets all reach the same locations it's unstable and it's shrinking this is one of the all-time classic master escapes from certain death and it's never explained how scenes as the master is grabbed by the inhabitants of cast revolver as the final door out of it closes soon
3:21 everything inside will be crushed and destroyed and they all want to kill him I only bring this up because they didn't even need to create a reason for the Masters reappearance in the end of time the character survived things much more fatal than a gunshot wound without explanation in the Ainley years is practically a trademark of a character I like cast revolver maybe more than I should it's interesting as debut stories go it's better than average some of the costumes are beautifully silly and the alien architecture of cast revolve itself is some of early eighties doctor who's better optical effects and a way onto the four-part for to doomsday it's another special one a special one that I'd call a guilty pleasure but I don't really believe in guilty pleasures I like it and most people think it's
4:07 and stupid they're trying to take Tegan home to Heathrow but the TARDIS misses the earth day for light days so they're somewhere far beyond Pluto and land in a ship owned by monarch a large green alien he is a ship full of humans taken from various points in history and from different cultures well I say they're humans they're androids with the appearance and memories of the original humans and he's planning on getting to earth and wiping out the human race and taking over the dead planet he also wants to go back in time and see the Big Bang because he's fairly sure he's God and wants to confirm that he made it happen in this story Adric betrays the rest of the TARDIS crew the doctor ignores physics and biology in a sequence when he goes into space without a spacesuit we discover that Tegan can
4:52 speak a forty thousand year old Aboriginal dialect because she's Australian admitted uhz n't do very much at all because they had too many companions for the script like I said I mostly like for to doomsday because it's really really stupidly silly but you probably won't next is kinder one of the most popular early Peter Davison stories and I'm gonna have to be very vague about it because without a lot of time to properly explain things I just can't do it justice so just trust me it's good Nyssa is missing from episodes two and three this is the first story since the Trouten era were a main character flooded miss random episodes it's the plan of devil loca there is a race of psychics called the kinder a human expedition is checking the planet for possible colonization and Tekin has
5:39 fallen asleep only to be trapped in a dream and contacted with Amara an evil noncorporeal snake monster that aims to possessor it gets worse when one of the humans in the expedition goes completely insane and plans to blow their dome up this is good unique and interesting even the terrible snake special effects can't take that away from it from there we go to the visitation the weakest story of the season thus far and the first historical the TARDIS lines on the right spot for Heathrow under turning teak into a regular life but they're about three hundred and fifteen years early 1666 it's the eve of the Great Fire of London the Great Plague is scouring the land and the Grim Reaper himself has been seen well he's actually a robot working
6:25 for some Terrill epital criminals the Terrill app tells plan on genetically augmenting the Black Death to devastate the Earth's population and taking the punt for themselves because what else would their motivation be the show used up all this stories allotted originality and Kenda the TARDIS crew team up with a hammy theatrical actor turned highwayman who is easily the most entertaining part of the story there are two noteworthy things about this adventure one this is the first script by Erik's a word he's the new script editor and he essentially built a career in Doctor Who when trying to be Robert Holmes and to this is the last appearance of the sonic screwdriver until the Paul McGann TV movie I feel as though you've just killed an old friend his destruction is a minor
7:10 part of the story but the order came directly from producer JN t he felt the sonic was too much like a magic wand that the writers were leaning on and was cheeping the stories and if he saw how the sonic is handled in the new show we'd probably know his way through his TV set and I agree with his concerns it was used as a crutch I'm just confused for the timing of us removal if anything he should have written it out before the ledger hi it's Tom Baker's doctor who really began the magical sonic screwdriver thing but even Tom Baker didn't overuse it like the new show does I really wish someone would have the guts to remove it from the new show anyway this is uninspired mundane and fairly short if you love the Sonic then watch and cry the next story Black Orchid is notable for two and a half
7:56 reasons one it's the final pure historical to remind you a pure historical is a historical with no sci-fi elements beyond the TARDIS the main cast and anything they bring there hadn't been one since the Highlanders in season four and I personally would love to see some more - it's a two-part story made up of 25-minute episodes there were three of these in the entire 26 seasons of classic whoo and the half point is because they run into an identical double of Nyssa it's a half point because exact companion doubles aren't quite as interesting as exact doctor doubles it's the 1920s and the TARDIS crew were invited to a fancy dress party at a manor house something is murdering people and what's it got to do with a mysterious Black Orchid this is a mostly
8:42 pointless story it exists so people can see Tegan dance the Charleston and so some random Edwardian tropes can be used in Doctor Who what's committing the murders the owner of the manors son who went insane searching for the Black Hawk and is now trapped in disused part of the mansion obviously and now you know you don't need to watch it another thing I like but classic who over knew who is the DVD commentaries and knew who it's as though they're all reading from matching talking points but how everyone is wonderful genius and brilliant how every episode is some sort of a triumph but not classic who oh no people are allowed to say what they want and black orchids commentary is wonderfully abusive to the story okay now this is where I think it
9:29 starts to fall about this two-part story there are fans who like this to plummet shave your chest now on to the penultimate story of season 19 the must-see story now must-see doesn't equal the best it means the most important story of the season but in this case this is probably the best story of the season J&T loved publicity for the show anyway he could get it it was one of his biggest strengths but even he knew that sometimes you have to shock the audience earth shock had two massive earth-shattering shocks the sorts of things the new show can't do because of the Internet the closest it's ever come to this is Rose appearing in
10:15 partners in crime or Jenna Louise Coleman in asylum of the Daleks and they are small fry compared to earth shock first up it brought back the Cybermen for the first time since season 12 the Cybermen's first appearance is right at the end of episode 1 the second massive shock was killing Adric they decided that 3 was too many companions so Adric had to go and he went out in style trapped on an exploring spaceship which might or might not have wiped out the dinosaurs no companions had died since season three's Dalek Master Plan 16 seasons earlier the Cybermen would keep
11:01 this basic design with little changes here and there until the end of the classic show it's a fine design not my favorite but better than most the directing on this story is top-notch some of the best ever seen in the classic show it's stage II theatrical old classic Doctor Who directed like an action film and that's really hard to do with multi camera filming setups the story is not perfect by any means many of the Cybermen weren't told in cyber school that emotions are for the weak some of the casting is just baffling especially the heart button space captain played by Beryl read their name is outside mr. you pointing a gun in the wrong direction and the worst is the end credits they're
11:49 played over address destroyed badge no audio only silence should have been like this but even if this was terrible the story would it justify his existence by inspiring this sketch from the real McCoy I present the Jamaican Cybermen sketch you can thank me later coming up tonight we are some classic programs for you from the BBC which have been specially dubbed for we starting at 7:30 with Doctor Who having some trouble with some Cybermen
12:36 decision what you don't look like nor Darla coming after that hi we have the last story of the season in like season 21 season 19 ends with a steaming pile of sheets after it's brilliant ultimate story the master who escaped Castro Valda is on primordial earth where he has disguised himself as what I think is a racist caricature but I'm not sure what off he's stealing Conchords as they take off from Heathrow and bringing them into the past or is brainwashing the people onboard and enslaving them of course the TARDIS crew were investigating the mysterious missing Conchords in the most practical way possible by getting on board a Concorde now the master had no idea the doctor would be coming Souls disguise has
13:22 literally no point the only reason it happens is because the original script didn't feature the master so they made the original villain be the master in disguise whether it made sense or not anyway this is terrible if Tegan didn't leave at the end you would have literally no reason to watch this and seeing as she returns in the first story of the next season you have literally no reason to watch this that's it for season 19 much better than season 18 even if a Drakkar two modes intolerable and dead I still don't like the fifth doctor much but many others do so you might join me next time for pointless robot companion misses departure and the return of the Brigadier mr.
14:22 you
