Another WhoCulture video. Several of these are random and usually brief intrusions by crew members, but I don’t feel like I’m spoiling much by noting that #1 is the justly legendary incident with Malcolm Terris’ splitting pants in “The Horns of Nimon”…
You little ripper!
…but I’m more intrigued by an item lower on the list, that being an episode of “The Chase”…
…in which a camera can be seen for a few seconds in the background of this shot. As the narrator says, this probably wouldn’t have been noticed back in the days when the show was shot in b/w 405-line (and being viewed on much smaller screens than we have now) compared to PAL colour… but then never mentions the time the same thing did happen in colour…
…that being “Planet of the Daleks” episode five where you can indeed just about see the camera lurking, and also one of the extras playing a Spiridon, standing at the right of the shot with his fur covering hanging slack and making bugger all effort to move out of shot. A bit odd they brought one up but not the other, and I didn’t see any of the commenters bring it up either (though I did discover a new favourite error, that being a random stagehand’s hand in “Pyramids of Mars”)…
I’m not a big fan of WhatCulture’s videos, and I’m generally iffy about most Doctor Who discourse on YT, but I was struck by this one when it was recommended. For what they may be worth, I’ll give my own thoughts on the selections…
10. “Arc of Infinity” (1983) — not that bad, though not as good as the novelisation which I read long before seeing the serial, and as such I didn’t have the, er, benefit of the visuals.
9. “The Underwater Menace” (1967) — yeah, crap, but blighted mainly by the series’ continual week-in week-out production method of that period. This came immediately after “The Highlanders”, which introduced the immortal Jamie McCrimmon, who only became a companion once production was more or less done, meaning the next two serials (this and “The Moonbase”) had to be re-jigged to accommodate his unexpected presence. I don’t think much would’ve saved this story anyway, but that certainly didn’t help.
8. “Warriors of the Deep” (1984) — look, the Myrka is crap but I don’t think the story’s terrible. Could’ve been better, but not terrible.
7. “The Dominators” (1968) — again, cursed by the 60s production schedule as much as anything. But it kind of is the embodiment of the six-parter that should only have been a four-parter in the first place.
6. “Time and the Rani” (1987) — very bad, but knowing now what the behind the scenes situation was like on the program, I’m inclined to be gentler with it than I once was.
5. “Timelash” (1985) — yeah, pretty inexcusable. Not bad conceptually but the execution… yikes.
4. “The Space Pirates” (1969) — again, the show’s ad hoc production method didn’t help, really, in that they had no option but make this cos other stories had fallen through. I’ve never actually seen this in full, by which I mean I’ve watched the one surviving episode but never heard the remaining off-air audios. Never had much inclination to either. Don’t think this ever had a great reputation.
3. “Underworld” (1978) — some of the worst CSO work in the series, but I never thought this was actually bad as such (from memory it was the first of the Target novelisations I ever read; primary school library had a bunch of them). Suffered from a director who blew all his budget on the first episode, and a producer who didn’t think it might be a good idea to just cancel this one, but I have a soft spot for it. People who vote this as the worst Tom Baker serial haven’t seen “The Android Invasion”.
2. “Time-Flight” (1982) — YES. FUCK THIS. How the series went from a peak like “Earthshock” to a nadir like this baffles me. You can’t even blame it on end-of-season slump or budget issues, it’s just dogshit.
1. “The Twin Dilemma” (1984) — yeah, what I just said but worse. Again, the show went from a peak (“Caves of Androzani”) to the worst possible introduction for a new Doctor. And I think Colin Baker is unfairly maligned, the show had an interesting vision for his Doctor and he did the best he could with what he was given. But no one could’ve overcome that costume. Serves mostly to save “Timelash” from being Colin’s worst serial.
So that’s that. Interesting to not see traditional Who worsts like “The Gunfighters” or “Horns of Nimon” on this list. And for all their faults, I don’t think any of these are as terrible as “Love and Monsters” from the new series, which for me remains the single worst Doctor Who story from either old or new eras.
Here’s a slightly perplexing triple bill I found via Twitter. It’s not even so much the mix of films, though that’s odd enough; I could imagine The House That Dripped Blood and the Dalek film showing together cos they were both made by Amicus (technically the latter is an Aaru production but that was just Amicus posing under another name for some reason), but adding the Romero film into the mix gave the whole thing an… interesting if not traumatising flavour. But the thing that the original poster highlights is the “An erotic nightmare” tag… which I suspect may have been meant to refer to House (though that’s still a stretch), but its placement certainly makes it look like it’s about the Dalek film. Which… no?
That said, you may well find Dalek stories to be perfectly erotic and arousing. In which case, please get the hell away from me, you freak.
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