14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
30 years, 7 Doctors, 159 stories, 1 heckuva show!, December 7, 2001
If I was to introduce anyone to Doctor Who, I'd probably show them this documentary, as it provides a concise history and behinds the scenes look at the "greatest show in the galaxy."
The video is divided into three episodes--Doctor Who and the Daleks, Monsters and Companions, and Laughter and Tears, Behind the Scenes, which details the efforts that went into making the program and the eventual end of the program. The documentary flows smoothly from one subject to another, with imaginative transitions.
What can be said about the Doctor that hasn't been said already? He's an old-fashioned hero, a champion for truth, right, and justice, someone compelled to right wrongs, someone never cruel or unkind, someone very anti-establishment, and despite being an alien, made endearable by his human qualities. Thanks to Barry Letts, Terrance Dicks, Philip Hinchcliffe, Verity Lambert, and Colin Baker for those comments.
I have to give fashion editor Lowrey Turner a high-five and a hug, as both she and I think Jon Pertwee's the best Doctor. I can't imagine any of the other Doctors looking snazzy in a velvet smoking jacket and frill-fronted shirt. Unfortunately, anyone wearing that today might be asked, "Oh, you're doing Austin Powers, right?" What's this world coming to?
Jessica Carney, William Hartnell's granddaughter, was in the process of writing Who's There, a biography of Hartnell, while being interviewed.
Toyah Willcox's remembrances are amusing and funny--how she found the Cybermen sexy, describing them as wearing silver fetish suits. And how she exterminated her brothers 10 times a day when wearing her Dalek costume! I figured anyone who's a DW fan can't be all that bad--hence my interest in her music.
Brand new footage especially made for this works well with old footage, such as the recreation of the Cybermen marching of St. Paul's Cathedral (The Invasion), the Auton window dummies from Spearhead From Space.
Of the Doctors and companions interviewed on their fond memories, one can tell who actually enjoyed doing the program and really cared. The Doctors are Jon Pertwee, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, and the companions being Carole Anne Ford, Frazier Hines, Deborah Watling, Nicholas Courtney, Nicola Bryant, and Sophie Aldred. Now that's only a handful! You can learn about why Jon Pertwee preferred humanoid monsters, and Sophie Aldred's near-fatal accident during the making of Battlefield.
However, footage from incomplete stories (The Dalek Master Plan, The Underwater Menace, Web Of Fear), or dialogue from nonexistent stories (Fury From The Deep), is always a treat. And the five year purge by the BBC of half of the William Hartnell and two-thirds of the Patrick Troughton stories are among the most heinous crimes ever committed in BBC TV history. So a big Krynoid-size thanks to Ian Levine for saving The Daleks--a day later and he would have been too late.
The last minutes of Survival, the last aired TV story, and Sophie Aldred and Sylvester McCoy's last words mirror the end of the program. "I felt as if I could run forever." So did we.
More Than 30 Years is a perfect synthesis of the program's history, combining clips from the series, Who-related commercials, and with the presence of other programs--e.g. Blue Peter, Pebble Mill At One, Crackerjack, a cross-section of British TV culture. As someone said early on, its "essentially British quality" made it appealing. And who better than Nicholas Courtney, a.k.a. Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, to narrate the documentary. So will the show return? Time will tell. It always does.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A 5 if you already know and love the show, otherwise a 3, January 3, 2004
I bought this tape thinking it would fill in some of the blanks in my Who awareness, since I've seen numerous episodes but out of order and very incomplete, with entire doctors and bad guys missing, and no particular sense of continuity. While this special is a quite wonderful celebration of all that is Who, it is really either for someone who has never seen the show and wants a very basic overview or, more likely, for the serious fan, who wants both a recap of much of what has gone on and some after the fact interviews and special footage.
I was hoping for a bit more of a chronology, with the highlights of each doctor's reign and a little bit more about each of them as well as the key monsters and companions, but the overview was more slight than that. And despite the title, there was virtually nothing about the Tardis itself, or the history of the timelords. It was fun to see and hear many of the people who had been involved in the show over the years relive their memories, but it really is what the tagline says -- a "celebration" of over 30 years of Doctor Who. So, not quite intro to the show, not quite recap, great fun for Who fans, but not quite what I'd hoped for. Guess I'll have to read a fan blog or two to find out what I want. Still recommended if you're a fan, or if you've never seen an episode and want to get a sense of whether you might like it.
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