Classic Who Season 1 Review

Style: The quality of this season is fairly low and it’s entirely in black and white. The effects, when there are any, are almost laughable from a modern perspective, and the writing and dialogue is very 60s hammy - especially the death scenes, which are very unbelievable.

That said, if you give some permissions for the era, it’s not… terrible. It’s a bit slow and drags from a modern PoV, but I didn't find it completely un-stomach- able. And I hate watching anything made before the 1990s, so that should tell you enough.

Character: You have four main characters, the Doctor and his three companions - Susan, Barbara and Ian.


The Doctor - The First Doctor is very different from what we are used to see as a the building blocks of the Doctor’s personality, at least in New Who. He is a bit of a trickster and kind of a dick. He basically kidnaps Ian and Barbara in the beginning; lies for his own benefit; and within the first story, tries to finish off a cave man with a rock and Ian has to stop him. The Doctor is also kind of selfish and more interested in saving his skin and running away, than staying to help. In fact, even when he does stay, it’s always with the purpose to explore and the very real intention to run away at the first sign of trouble. He does become more… caring as the season progresses and in particular shows a great deal of caring to his companions, but he is definitely no Ten.

Susan Foreman - from what I can tell, Susan is the Doctor’s true, biological granddaughter and therefore Gallifreyan. She calls him “grandfather”; explains she is from a different world; later doctors make references to her and to the Doctor having a family at one point, and her description of Gallifrey is also echoed by later Doctors. How she came to be and whether she is a Time Lady or not is left up for debate, but there you go.

Susan is very much the child of the group. She is very young, only fifteen, and in several ways she acts like a typical teenage girl, especially one from the 60s. However, she is also smart and shows bravery and desire to grow up several times. Overall, I liked her a fair amount, in many ways I find her more easy to stomach than even Rose (although the fact that she has zero romantic interest in the Doctor - you know, with them being related and all - certainly helps.)

Ian Chesterton - Ian is a kind of a masculine ideal of the era, but not in a bad way. While he has leadership qualities, and wants to be heroic, he wants to do the physical work and he acts as the sort of the protector of the group, but he is also willing to step aside when needed, listen to other people and even let the women do some of the hard work. Overall, he was much better than what I was expecting and I can’t say I have many complaints within regards to his characterisation.

Barbara Wright - Barbara is a BAMF. She is consistently the character who gets the most shit done, is very smart, very clever, willing to stand up for herself and call out the Doctor on his shit. Not only that, but she is compassionate, a sort of a substitute mother to Susan, without smothering her, and just a very well rounded character. I’m confident in saying that she is most certainly one of the best companions in the entire history of the show. And once again, the fact that she has no romantic interest in the Doctor - or anyone else for that matter - certainly does help not to distract from her awesomeness. She has a few cute moments with Ian, but they are not over the top, and personally I think they'd make a cute couple,

In terms of the side characters, they were alright. No one terribly written, but also no one I was desperate to see more of. Honestly not much to say here.

Story - The plot of the season starts with two of Susan’s high school teachers - Ian, science/chemistry and Barbara, history/government - being concerned about her, because she is strangely smart and capable in many ways, but lacking knowledge or having strange ideas in other ways. Barbara in particular, is very suspicious, because there doesn’t seem to be anything on the address Susan gave. So she and Ian decide to follow her home, eventually stumbling upon the TARDIS and the first Doctor. Pushing their way inside, they find it all very strange and have a hard time believing it’s a spaceship travelling in time and space. The Doctor, deciding he can’t let them go, as they might give him away, kidnaps them. The rest of the season is spent with them going on several adventures, while trying to get back to their own time.

The stories are as follows:
The Unearthly Child:
 - Meeting Susan, then going back in the past to the cave men times (4 parts).
The Daleks 
 - The Doctor and his companions end up in Skaro, millions of years in the future, meeting the Daleks and the Thals (7 parts)
The Edge of Destruction 
 - an entirely TARDID-based story (2 parts)
Marco Polo 
 - The Doctor and his companions end up in the 13th century and meet Marco Polo (7 Parts). This only an audio, so I skipped it.
The Keys of Marinus
 - The Doctor and his companions end up in a strange planet and have to get five keys to the machine called Marinus, so they could go back to the TARDIS (6 parts
The Aztecs
 - The Doctor and his companions end up in the past amongst a civilization called the Aztecs, where Barbara is confused for a reincarnation of one of their goddesses (4 parts)
The Sensorites
 - The Doctor and his companions end up on a scape ship controlled by an alien race called the Sensorites, who turn out to be good-intentioned after all (6 parts)
and finally,
The Reign of Terror
 - The Doctor in his companions end up smack in the middle of the French revolution (6 parts, but episodes 3 and 4 are missing)

Amongst the separate stories, the action drags somewhat from a modern perspective, and most a are fairly long, between 4 to 7 parts, each part around 22-25 minutes. My personal favorite stories are probably The Sensorites, as it remind me most of a core Doctor Who adventure story, while trying to help an alien race (strange, as it’s rated the lowest of the season on IMDB). I really wanted to like The Daleks, but it was too unnecessarily long and tiresome, though there were definitely moments of it I enjoyed.

A strange thing I found is that The First Doctor says several times that “you can’t change history,” which is very much in contrast to New Who doctors claiming that “time can be rewritten just like that!’”, and also a bit strange as a concept, because what even is history? Any point in time is “history” to another point and don’t they change history by helping the Sensorites or finding the keys of Marines? Or is that just Earth history? Kind of a weird rule to have, really. But anyway, I’m very curious to see how the Doctor changes his mind about that.

Jessica Jones S2 Review: Part 1 - Predictions

So I decided to review Marvel's Jessica Jones' Season 2.

The review will happen in 3 parts:

1. My predictions prior to watching the season and how wrong or right I was about them.
This part will have little to no spoilers.

2. My thoughts on the actual season.
There will be loads of spoilers here

and finally, 3. My thoughts on how the season could have been improved.
There will be some spoilers here as well.

So let's start with predictions:

1. Since the first season was a man vs man type of story (well, woman vs man, technically), I thought the second season would be (wo)man vs organization.

Accuracy: 45%

Jessica against IGH was a big part of the season, but not exactly in the way that I thought. I thought IGH was going to be more like The Company in Heroes, but it's really not. It was a very small organization to begin with, and once Jessica starts her investigation of them, most people either turn up dead or just aren't really at fault for anything that happened or didn't know much.

2. The person clapping in the trailer was Kilgrave. 
A part of me thought he might be alive somehow, but my actual prediction was that it was just a flashback / dream sequence/ some sort of an illusion. 

Accuracy: 100% 

I don't want to give too much away, but yeah, I was pretty on the money about that one.

3. Jessica would be forced to face some of her past trauma that wasn't directly linked to Kilgrave (about her family, the experiments done on her etc.). The anger management / therapy of some sorts would play a big role in the season.

Accuracy: 30%

We go into it a little bit, and the scene from the trailer is in the actual season, but it's not nearly as big of a part of it as I thought and hoped it was going to be. Don't get me wrong, I didn't think that Jessica would magically transform into a perfectly healthy person by the end of the season, but I was hoping she would make at least a couple of emotional breakthroughs. And I guess she does, in a way, but it was not as satisfying as I hoped it would be. And it didn't affect her relationships with the characters I (and I think most people) cared about, instead it was about a character that I didn't care for that much to begin with.

4. Cheng was going to start out as Jessica's enemy/rival, but would somehow get wrapped in the main plot, become her unwilling sidekick, and they would eventually develop a romance, in the spirit of the enemies-to-lovers trope.

Accuracy: 15% 

I was only right about the first part. They don't even become friends by the end of the season.

5. The season would go into Jessica's biological family and her history before Kilgrave. 

Accuracy: 80%

I mean, it does, definitely, just not exactly in the way I thought? This one is hard to explain, because I don't know what I thought or hoped for exactly. And it also ties in with the therapy one here, which I was wrong about, so there's that.

6. The ending would be more satisfying than the last time.

Accuracy: 55%

Well, it was and it wasn't. It is at the very least hinting at a possible happiness in Jessica's future, unlike last time where the conclusion to the Kilgrave arc was a relief that she was rid of him, but at the same time not really being sure about her future/not feeling too good about it. So that part was good. But it also leaves two of Jessica's more important (in my opinion) relationships still unresolved. So while it's nice to see Jessica be a little happy, it's also isn't nice to know she's in a bad place with her family.

Doctor Who 1.08 - Father's Day

Overall opinion: This is another super solid episode to me. I love time travelling stories that deal with personal loss, even if we all know how it's going to end. The only complaint I probably have is that Rose's father wasn't really established before this point. I think if he had been, this story would have had much more impact. But honestly, it's pretty great as is. 10/10

The Doctor: I loved seeing the Doctor get mad at Rose, and then still try to protect her and her family, that was great, very Doctor-like.

Rose: I'm not sure how to feel about Rose here. On one hand, I relate to what she's feeling, but on the other hand, I hate that she insists on screwing things up. She is apologetic pretty fast though, so I guess that's a good thing.

Side characters: Oh man, this one episode really did make me feel for Rose's father. And that couple about to get married were pretty cute. Oh, and tiny Mickey! :D

Villain: There isn't one here, not really. There are these time-eating monsters, but they are not really what the episode is *about*.

Doctor Who 1.07 - The Long Game

Overall opinion: Um, this is a pretty good, tight episode. Good commentary, cool mystery, 9/10

The Doctor: Not much to say about The Doctor here, basically he is just being The Doctor.

Rose: Rose is fun in this episode, I like seeing the contrast between her and Adam, and yeah, that's really it. But it's good.

Side characters: Adam turns out to be a disappointment. That's pretty sad. But I liked the fact that they showed not everyone can handle travelling with the Doctor. Cathica and Suki are pretty great, no complaints about them.

Villain: Nothing much about the villain here, it's pretty generic, but I do like the plot they've come up with and I like the commentary they are making about television and modern culture.