william hartnell

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One of the things I’ve been meaning to do with this blog, but I never seem to remember to actually do is to write about movies, TV shows, books, and music that I enjoy, but in smaller ways. Instead of doing full-on reviews, just write a couple of paragraphs about something I found interesting.

For a couple of years, I wrote a little thing for Cinema Sentries called Five Cool Things. Every week I’d write about five things (well, technically six as there was always an “and…”) I enjoyed that week in the way that I’m talking about. I’d just do a couple of three paragraphs about whatever it was I enjoyed and not worry about digging in too deep.

With that in mind, I’m gonna try to do more of that type of thing. First up is the Doctor Who story “The Chase.”

The wife and I have been chronologically working our way through Classic Doctor Who. The Chase was the Eighth and penultimate story of the second season. It stars William Hartnell as The Doctor, and William Russell, Jaqueline Hill, and Maureen O’Brien as his companions, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki.

I am a fan of Hartnell’s version of The Doctor and I do like a great man of his stories, while also admitting that I often find them dull. Classic Doctor Who episodes were 25 minutes in length. A single story might last anywhere from two episodes to eight. The long ones often feel like the writers had to pad things out in order to fulfill the set number of episodes for their stories. Hence my boredom.

“The Chase” gets around this by basically creating a bunch of mini-stories inside the main one. The Daleks have built a ship that can travel through space and time much like the Tardis, and it has a way of following the Tardis anywhere it goes. This leads to a series of adventures as the Tardis crew tries to flee the Daleks, zipping from place to place and all over history.

In one episode they land on the top of the Empire State Building and then on a ship at sea (the Mary Celeste, a famous ship that was discovered completely without a crew, no one ever found out what happened to them). In another episode, they land inside a haunted house where they meet Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula (and Frankenstein’s monster body slams a Dalek!) Then they land on a planet full of giant, monstrous fungi. The Daleks build a robot Doctor and nearly kill Vicky with it.

It is all quite silly. But then again I tend to prefer my classic Doctor Who stories to be silly. When they get too serious they tend to feel ponderous and I tend to get bored.

I quite liked this one.

doctor who the aztecs

I am a very big fan of Doctor Who, both the new series and the original. That wasn’t always the case. My wife grew up watching Tom Baker as The Doctor on PBS when she was a kid, but that was a series I never paid much attention to back then. When the new series came out she would sometimes watch an episode, but we weren’t in a position where she could watch it every week. Whenever she would watch it I would try to watch it with her but it never took. It just seemed so cheesy to me then.

But when our daughter was born we were constantly looking for series to binge watch and eventually, we landed on Doctor Who. It took me a few episodes, but I did get into it. I’ve come to love the cheesiness. Over time we’ve gone back and watched many of the old stories which are even more cheesy.

The Aztecs was one of the first of the Classic Who stories I ever watched, it was definitely the first I ever with William Hartnell playing The Doctor. It is really fun for me to read my review of that story as I seem a little confused by the low budget and cheesiness of it all, which I now know is part of the show’s charm.

This was also an early review for me for Cinema Sentries and you can tell I was out of practice as I mostly just regurgitate the plot.

But whatever you can read my review here if you like.

Actually, if I may make a small request. Cinema Sentries is a small site. It is run by my friend Gordon and is a labor of love. I don’t know the stats but I know he’s not getting the traffic the big sites get. So, even if you don’t want to read my review of this Doctor Who story (or any review I write) I’d appreciate it if you’d click on those links that will take you to Cinema Sentries, and then stay there for a minute or two. That will help his numbers and help him grow the site. Thanks in advance.