The Five Doctors

[meddow]

I watched The Five Doctors with my flatmates. Flatmate One decided that Anthony Ainley was hot and proceeded to drool over the Master. Flatmate Two decided that Two is the best Doctor ever, with haircut being her sole judging criterion. Everybody mocked the triangles and I found myself apologising for the Sarah vs. the hill of very slight gradient. Actually, the Sarah fall thing wasn't half as awful as I had expected it to be. Don't get me wrong, it was pretty bad, but listening to fandom you would think it was the worst moment in Who history (for me that's the entirety of Revelation of the Daleks)

It occurred to me sometime after watching it that The Five Doctors would be in 1983 what The Stolen Earth (and to a lesser extent Journey's End) was to fans this year: one big long squee fest, although incomplete with the lack of Tom Baker and the real One. Yes, it's a bit rubbish in places, but who cares? It's five Doctors. And Susan! The Brigadier! Sarah Jane!

I have one major complaint – there was not nearly enough bickering. You can take your Death Zones and Yetis and Rassilon robots, all I'm here is for the Doctor bickering with his selves. But they spent barely any time together. The The Three Doctors is far superior in this respect (actually in most respects).

One and Tegan are quite possibly the greatest TARDIS team that never were. I don't like Tegan that much, but I think it's very little to do with the character, but rather she's paired with the wrong sort of Doctor. Five's so very lovely and she would work far better with a grumpy Doctor, like One. Poor Turlough just seems to not want to make an impression on me - negative or positive - at all.

In other pairings, this serial contained the most Foe!Yay I've seen after the Sound of Drums. It was the Master's line about a universe without the Doctor being unbearable that did it. You actually had to feel quite sorry for the Master in this serial. He is actually for the most part just trying to help. And One couldn't even figure out who he was.

I couldn’t help but notice Sarah ends up with the coasterseal of Rassilon. There's something that it would be brilliant to see show up in her attic. I think 'X item should show up in Sarah's attic' is a very common phrase in my journal, like 'Y classic monster should be in the new series' and 'Actor Z that Meddow has a crush on this week should be Eleven' (you know I've been crewing at the bit since TDK to say how brilliant a Doctor Aaron Eckhart would be in spite of being American).

The commentary with David Tennant, Phil Collinson and Helen Raynor was excellent, and the making of doco one of the best. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to listen to the other commentaries. I hope I didn't miss out on much.

Next DVD I plan to watch is Timelash. Wish me luck.

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

In lieu of providing you with entire serials, I can at least give you their classing making out fencing scene from The Sea Devils. The sandwhich eating in between kills me and is the most blatant come on by the Doctor in Old Who: