Season 2 - William Hartnell - The Time Meddler

The Time Meddler is a really fun episode featuring a time meddler who has disguised himself as a monk and taken up residence in a monastery on the English coast in 1066. From his settlement the Monk plans to change the course of historic events by lighting beacon fires on the coast to guide the Vikings to the shore.

This episode features Maureen O’Brien as Vicki and Peter Purves as Stephen Taylor who have a great chemistry on screen together. They spend much of the episode running around after William Hartnell’s Doctor who has gone off on his own.

William Hartnell’s classic performance is perfect as ever and this charming little episode is definitely one of our favourites so far. There is something that just feels right about William Hartnell’s episodes.

All in all a 4/5

30 days and still going strong! ~ By Kristy

36 days in and I can no longer say with any degree of confidence who my favourite Doctor is. Even though sometimes I come in from work and all I want to do is go to bed and sleep, the prospect of a brand new episode of Doctor Who is exciting enough to keep me out of my PJs just that little bit longer.

I really see this as a fantastic opportunity and have really enjoyed getting to know the different Doctors, their different companions and their wonderful adventures. Everything from the silliness of Sylvester McCoy to the beautiful class that is Tom Baker’s voice and the classic nature of William Hartnell’s performance has been really inspiring and I find myself thinking about Doctor Who even whilst at work.

One month on - By Jack

When I mentioned the idea for this blog to Kristy over the Christmas holidays I didn't think we would really end up doing it but Kristy was really up for it and starting building the blog, this got me very excited just wondering if we could really do it. Now a entire month has passed since we decided to take on Doctor Who for an entire year and we have successfully consumed at least one episode a day and are reviewing as we go.

It sounded easy to begin with, any Doctor Who fan would think watching an episode every day would be a piece of cake. To begin with we started by watching entire stories from the classic seasons every night, however we soon began to realise that such a pace would be impossible to keep up as many of these stories are 6 or 8 sections long. We can only watch episodes in the evening so watching a 3 hour episode meant that we simply weren’t having time to keep up with the reviews. Since this minor hiccup we have only been watching one segement of each serial a night and this is working out much better.  It has served to keep the episodes much fresher and gave us more time to think about the episodes as we consumed them.

My Doctors (Cross Stitch pattern) by Kristy

So in honour of Our Year with the Doctor I decided to have a go at designing a Doctor Who cross stitch pattern and here is the result! (Available to purchase from my Etsy Store 'SnowFallonSea' ) I'm going to be stitching this over the next week so pictures of the finished piece to follow.

An Interview with Jeremy Bulloch

Jeremy Bulloch started his illustrious and successful acting career in 1950 at the tender age of 5 when he appeared in his first school play and hasn't looked back since.  Destined for the acting profession he attended the Corona Academy Drama School, and made his first professional appearance aged twelve when he appeared in a breakfast cereal commercial.

Appearing many times on children's television, Jeremy's big break came in 1963 at the age of just 17 when he landed a major role in Summer Holiday, which starred Sir Cliff himself. Not long after this, he became a household name by starring in a BBC Soap Opera called The Newcomers, which ran for 3 years. In 1969, Jeremy was off to Madrid in Spain to play the leading role in a musical film called Las Leandras and this was followed by two other major films:  The Virgin and the Gypsy (1970) and Mary Queen of Scots (1971).

Season 2 - William Hartnell - The Space Museum

 

‘The Space Museum was aired in 1965 as part of the second season of Doctor Who featuring William Hartnell as the cranky by lovable Time Lord. This episode, which aired as 4 25 minute long parts, centred on the story of a planet named Xeros which had been taken under the tyrannous rule of a race known as the Moroks who used the planet as a venue to house a museum which paid tribute to the battles they had fought and won as the reached out to conquer the stars. 

There is a really sinister back story to the Moroks and their rule, you learn that they attacked the peaceful Xerons using weapons that were far superior to those of the planets occupants then, once they had Xeros secured, they then organised a mass genocide of all Xerons except for the children. The Children were then drafted into slavery, forced to work to maintain the museum until such time as they came of age. Once the children were considered grown up they would be shipped off to other planets in the Morok empire to undergo other kinds of work, ensuring that there could not be an uprising on Xeros. 

The Doctor and his companions (Vicki, Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton) arrive on Xeros and find that nothing seems quite right, their clothes have changed, their feet leave no footprints in the dust on the earth, they cannot touch any of the exhibits in the museum nor can they be seen by the staff and then to top it all off they come across display cabinets which appear to house exact clones of themselves in some kind of state of preservation. The Doctor surmises that the Tardis had a bit of trouble on landing and has accidentally jumped a time track resulting in a few minutes where their timelines became misaligned. It is upon the Doctor making this discovery that the time track slips back into place and our heroes find themselves exposed and vulnerable to capture. 

Day 7 - The Time Warrior and Day 8 - The Space Museum plus an exciting announcement

 Day 7 - For day 7 of our year with the Doctor we took an adventure into the medieval times with Sarah Jane and the Third doctor, Jon Pertwee, in 'The Time Warrior'. This episode which aired over Christmas and New Year in 1973 during the Doctor's eleventh season, was Sarah Jane's introductory episode as well as the debut of the Sontarons. This episode was packed full of fire, explosives and sword fighting and the perfect way to introduce Sarah Jane and her thirst for adventure.

Day 8 - On day 8 we decided to go back to William Hartnell's era choosing the well loved and very ahead of its time 'The Space Museum' episode featuring Barbara White, Ian Chesterton and Vicki. This episode aired during the second season of Doctor Who back in 1965.


Now why did we choose these episodes specifically you might ask? Well these episodes have a common denominator which really stood out to us, both of these episodes feature the actor Jeremy Bulloch. Jeremy, most commonly known for his role as Boba Fett in Star Wars appeared as 'Hal' a loyal and talented bowman in 'The Time Warrior' and 'Tor' a Xeron rebel in 'The Space Museum'. We were able to get into contact with the man himself and he has agreed to participate in an online interview with us for this blog about his time on Doctor Who. We're both really excited to get the opportunity to speak with him as we have met him multiple times at events and have always loved spending time with him.

If you have any questions that you'd like us to ask please let us know ASAP.

In the meantime reviews of 'The Time Warrior' and 'The Space Museum' to follow. Thank you for reading ... :)

Season 10 - Jon Pertwee - The Three Doctors

On the second day of ‘Our Year with the Doctor’ we sat down to watch the 1972 season 10 episode ‘The Three Doctors’. This was a great episode and is a fan-favourite because not only was it released to mark the Doctor’s tenth year of television but it was also the first Doctor Who episode to feature a previous incarnation of the Doctor returning to our screen, alongside the current Doctor. In fact, as the name suggests, this episode featured all three of the early Doctors, William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and the current Doctor Jon Pertwee.

This episode, much like most episodes of the period, was made up of 4 segments each with a 25 minute duration and was originally aired on 30^th December 1972 and for the following 3 weeks after. This episode introduced a legendary Time Lord known as ‘Omega’, he was initially introduced as an alternative to the Master following the death of Roger Delgado. The intention was to fill the need for a rogue Time Lord character. Omega has often been revered through Time Lord history as one of the founding fathers and the Gallifrey’s ‘greatest hero’, he was a stellar engineer who was working on developing time travel until he was lost and believed dead when his experiments created a supernova and he fell into the resulting black hole.

Our year with the Doctor, an introduction.

This year we celebrated the Doctor’s 50^th year. A huge part of British Heritage, a BBC staple and a Sci-Fi giant, Doctor Who has proven that it stands the test of time, fascinating adults and children alike for decades with its intelligent storylines and genuinely terrifying villains. The doctor has spanned many different mediums since its debut in 1963, reaching out to its fans through television, radio series, literature, internet serials and a vast collection of merchandise and toys.

In 2013 we welcomed a new doctor and said goodbye to an old favourite, we laughed, we cried and we celebrated with the man himself. All of this got us thinking about just how much of the Doctor there is out there and we wondered if it would be truly possible to consume it all. This is when we decided to make 2014 the year of the Doctor. Every day of every week in every month of 2014 we plan to watch an episode of Doctor Who starting from 01/01/2014. That’s right, 365 days in the Tardis. 

We have made the decision to start this blog so as we can share our tears, tantrums and jubilation with all of you lovely people out there. Along the way we will also be starting a Doctor who toy collection, trying out some of the awesome radio serials, visiting conventions and reviewing DVD sets and documentaries. The aim? To consume all of the ‘Wonderful nonsense’ that is Doctor who.