People..please, no more telling me I misunderstood the Football Factory, if one more person even thi...
People..please, no more telling me I misunderstood the Football Factory, if one more person even thinks about saying it..I'm 32, I've got GCSE's in pottery..I understand sh*t British films just fine <flounces off in flurry of petticoats>
Member since:27.07.2000
Reviews:170
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Remember the dark old days of C90 cassettes, before MP3 and Cd burning, when you had the perfect mix of tunes in your head but just couldn't get it all to squeeze onto a fizzy hissy cassette? Just 2 songs more, or perhaps take 3 off but put a longer track in their place and it would've been perfect...this kind of sums up 'The Five Doctors', the BBC's 1983 Anniversary show to celebrate 20 years of Who.
Entertaining without doubt, but really not much cop, 'The Five Doctors' suffers from trying to do too much in too little time with far too small a budget to do justice to some big ideas on the part of Terrance Dicks, Who writing and script-editing veteran. It was admittedly a huge task to try and celebrate 20 years of travels in time and space, so many characters, and creatures to consider when attempting a story such as this. Rather than craft a big tale for the then Doctor, a re-run of 1973' The Three Doctors was swung into action, bringing together each incarnation of the Doctor and trying to integrate them into a single storyline. With each Doctor comes a companion or two, and a notable villain, although Pertwee's Doctor was forced to do battle with Cybermen, depsite never actually encountering them during his tenure as the lead. Already hindered by having to recast the original Doctor, with William Hartnell having passed away many years before, further complications arose when Tom Baker decided not to take part in the show. Luckily footage existed from the never broadcast 'Shada' and this was utilised to explain the 4th Doctors absence, stuck in time don't you know.
This
DVD benefits from a more extensive use of the 'Shada' footage and the 4th Doctor makes a slightly more satisfying appearance. So, to the story and Doctors and Villains and locations themselves. Cast as the first doctor was Richard Hurndall, an actor bearing no similarity in either appearance or voice, who decided to play the character as grumpily and snappily as possible, removing the occasional warmth and twinkle that Hartnell brought to the role. Patrick Troughton is as energetic and enthusiastic as ever, though lumbered with a poor hairdo that makes him look like the child everyone bullied at school. Pertwee is, well, Pertwee, flamboyant, over the top, and stuck with some pretty atrocious lines, but you just can't help but love this all action incarnation of the Time Lord. As mentioned, Baker only appears fleetingly, with companion Romana (the Lalla Ward regeneration), and Peter Davison's Doctor has the lions share of the action as he attempts to discover why his former selves are being pulled from time and deposited in a rather dangerous bit of Gallifreys History.
Deep breath, so, Gallifrey once was witness to dreadful gladiatorial type games in an area christened the Death Zone. Here unwitting creatures would be plucked from time and space and be forced to battle it out in a bid for survival. The winner would then attempt to breach the defences of the Tower of Rassilon, a tomb for a once great Time Lord, and seek the ultimate prize. Immortality.
The Doctors, and their respective companions are now being placed in this reactivated game, along with dangerous enemies from their past. They have to stay alive, while attempting to figure out just who has reactivated the zone and who is manipulating the Time Scoop to take them there.
Throw into this mix some Cybermen, Daleks, Yeti, a Raston Warrior Robot, and last but not least, in an interesting twist, the Master, and you have quite a busy story to tell. For further complications, the Master is working as an agent for the Gallifreyan High Council who are aware of the Death Zone and the Doctor's plight. They summon the Master, played by 80's regular Anthony Ainley, agree to pardon his previous crimes in the belief he is the only person cunning and devious enough to enter the Death Zone and rescue his greatest enemy/ies - The Doctor.
Are you keeping track here? Sounds like quite a grand story, well, now imagine it crammed into 90 minutes on a tame budget. Cracks starting to show? Well yes, cracks do appear in this cluttered production. Characters have either too much or too little to do, villains lack motivation and on the whole intelligence as they stumble into trap after trap, and the Death Zone is clearly Wales, clearly not deadly and Gallifrey is reduced to a staircase and 3 rooms. It's all so small scale for such a grandiose story, and the plot hangs by threads as everyone attempts to find something to do in this Anniversay Photo Album of past glories.
The direction by Peter Moffat is poor, and it smacks of someone a little tired of the genre going through the motions. Production design is okay, but Gallifrey looks more like Blackpool than the murky world glimpsed way back when in 'The Deadly Assasin'. The actors do their best with a perfunctory script, companion-wise Sarah Jane Smith and the Brigadier are both relegated to buffoon status, while Susan gets to do some obligatory twisting of ankles. The then assistants Turlough and Tegan are wasted and spend most of the time stuck in the TARDIS with little of interest to say or do, while the Cybermen lurk outside being pale imitations of their former selves. The special effects are occasionally quite innovative, and the Raston Warrior Robot is an entertaining enough creation. In fact, the whole she-bang is entertaining enough, but it's just not very good and suffers terribly from repeated viewings, in complete contrast to the Davison story Caves of Androzani which is also available on DVD.
There's a reasonably good sting in the tail of this romp, when the Gallifreyan President, Borusa, is revealed as the traitor, only for him to discover that while he has pitted the Doctors against each other in a race to the Tower of Rassilon, the prize of immortality which he arrives to claim is instead an eternal incarceration in the tomb.
The DVD itself? Well, this is more The Five Doctors Redux, a Producers cut by John Nathan Turner that swaps some takes for others, extends some scenes, adds new ones, revamps the special effects and it features a soundtrack remixed into 5.1. It adds minor interest to the adventure, but on the whole you can see why the scenes were left out in the first place, and new special effects only go to show the stories age and highlights the inadequacies of the visual effects of the story. The story, as was back then is a mixture of film on location and videotape when back in the studio. The DVD makes the most of the film sequences but can do little to improve the look of the videotaped sections. It's a good stable transfer, but hardly eye candy of the top order.
The disc features no extras, and is quite poorly packaged, the only excuse being that it was the first foray into DVD by the good Doctor, since then the BBC have performed wonders with the discs.
Summing up, an entertaining but hardly rewarding trip down memory lane. Too much action, too little character interaction. The lack of Bakers Doctor is a huge disappointment, and Hurndall is no replacement for Hartnell, who appears tantalisingly in a clip from 'the Dalek Invasion of Earth' just before the main titles.
I'm a fan of the show, but this disc collects dust.
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Production Year: 2007 - Science Fiction - Director: Francis Lawrence - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan, Dash Mihok, Will Smith, Salli Richardson, Willow Smith
This is one of my faves, but I love the nostalgia-fest of it all!!
tange 31.01.2003 14:35
I'm glad the BBC have got better at this DVD extras lark. you wouldn't recognise this as being from thesame people as Tomb of the Cybermen etc. Great review and nice to see another Who fan around.
mattygroves 31.01.2003 12:37
I remember seeing this on public telly in the US - I thought the Raston Warrior Robot was cool - but it bugged me when Pertwee explains that it can detect even the tiniest movement - all the while moving his lips, fidgeting a wee bit etc etc...good review! Cheers, Kate
![Doctor Who The Five Doctors Dvd [1983] | Baker](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/126453136.jpg "Doctor Who The Five Doctors Dvd [1983] | Baker")
Jan 29th, 2003
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