Tuesday, November 8, 2022

Doctor Whos

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous.

So, along with watching an excellent live performance of MACBETH, I've been poking around on the net looking at a slew of postings about DOCTOR WHO. This was my favorite show for a long time, but I drifted away in recent years, watching it in spurts. The last episodes I watched came about mid-way through Whittaker's first season. I'm trying to stir up my enthusiasm for another plunge. 

Anyway, in the course of looking at a lot of overviews and best of's and compilation clips hoping to remind myself why I liked this show so much, I came across the following twelve-Doctors-together one-off.

I'd always liked the episodes that included multiple Doctors, so this was very much my cup of tea. Here's the clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26UFq8RGVOs


Have to say I thought they had some good voice imitations, esp Tom Baker, Pertwee, and Troughton (certain others, like Davidson, not as good).  And the figures appearing as companions was a fun touch (e.g. Beatles Paul and Ringo with Troughton, Laurel and Hardy with Smith)


Surprisingly, of all the Doctors Colin Baker, whose tenure marked the bottom of the barrel, came out best here, closely followed by John Hurt's so-called 'War Doctor'.


My favorite Doctors, just so everyone knows where I stand: 

Tom Baker, of course, by a country mile.

Christopher Eccleston, who relaunched the show after it'd died a lingering humiliating death.

John Hurt, who may have had the shortest tenure but made the most of it.

Honorable Mention:  Patrick Troughton, who was better than his scripts.

--John R.

--current reading: BABEL (about a third of the way through, and still don't know where he's going with this).

2 comments:

Clive Shergold said...

"Doctors Who", surely?

John D. Rateliff said...

Doctors Who vs Doctor Whos

I think that either form is correct, the first more formal, the latter a more colloquial usage. After going back and forth I decided the latter was more appropriate for the casual context of a blog post. Better yet wd have been to recast the sentence to avoid the phrase.

--John R.