"You should know by now, young lady, that you can't get rid of the old Doctor as easily as that!"
So I have watched my first reconstructed "Who" episodes, the fourth and fifth eps in the First Doctor serial "The Reign of Terror."
I had been deeply curious about reconstructed episodes. I've only watched a scant handful of Classic Who serials up to this point -- The Romans, Robots of Death, the first couple episodes of The Gunfighters (which I put aside in order to go back to some semblance of the beginning and watch everything in order, in terms of what serials I have lined up), and also, viewed a couple of years back now, An Unearthly Child and The Aztecs. I've seen enough classic serials at this point to proclaim that I have started to get the _feel_ for the Classic show down-pat (well, or at least a feel for it from during the Hartnell Era) -- but I hadn't yet arrived at a reconstruction.
I knew that the BBC had purposefully (PURposefully! Oh, it kills both my Inner Who Fan and my Inner Librarian) destroyed a bunch of the Doctor Who serials in order to clear space.* Other than that, and the vague notion that maybe fans' audio or video recordings had somehow supplemented some of the losses, I really didn't understand exactly what such episodes were reconstructed _from_ -- or, more accurately, what they might look like.
* [It must be admitted that I do understand, as a librarian, that sometimes you simply do not have the space. And I don't mean that you are uncomfortably crowded; I mean sometimes you literally do not have the SPACE.]
So, apart from some vague notions of blurry camera shots and six-minute-shots of stills -- which to some degree would turn out to not be all that far off the mark -- I hadn't any particular ideas of what to expect. So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, while the reconstruction was (unsurprisingly) far less desirable in terms of entertainment value than a regular episode, it was still both enjoyable and, yes, entertaining just the same. There were lines that still made me crack a smile, moments that made me gasp in concern -- and two scenes that actually had me tearing up a bit (when Ian and Barbara are reunited, and when Barbara and the Doctor are reunited; her thick-voiced, "Doctor!" and his shaky "-- Barbara," were more than sufficient to crack my heart). And that right there is pretty much the highest praise I can give it; you know I've accepted William Hartnell as my Doctor when a couple of boring stills matched to some dialogue still delivered with real feeling are enough to move the emotions.
I did spend much of episode four thinking, rather regretfully, "... if _only_ they'd done the lost episodes as radio plays!" Because, I mean -- the reconstructions work fine, they really do. The subtitles help you out when you wouldn't be able to tell from the dialogue what is going on, and since the important bits of "Doctor Who" for me are (generally) the conversation ANYway, particularly in Classic Who, it works out. But because of the fact that you're often just looking at stills, I found myself wishing that they'd just gone all the way and made the reconstructed episodes into flat-out "audioplays." By which I mean -- instead of having subtitles across still pictures, they could have gotten a Narrator to explain what's going on during the action scenes (taking the place of the subtitles, in other words), and the rest could have been just the original soundtrack of the actors' voices, maybe supplemented by a few sound effects (which wouldn't be that hard; most of the original sound effects are audible in the episodes' soundtrack already anyway). I really _like_ audiobooks, and I positively ADORE "radio" plays (I've only listened to one Big Finish production thus far, but I've fallen in love; I've listened to it three times, and I'm just waiting for my next long car trip to start another). So I would have preferred being able to listen to episodes four and five in my car, I think, while driving down the road, with a Narrator to fill in the action gaps for me, instead of watching changing stills on a screen while paying attention to the audio. As I said, the way they have it is perfectly acceptable -- I still find it very much entertaining. I was just thinking audio versions would be nice, too. :)
Not that it's all stills -- several times throughout both episodes, there would suddenly and randomly be a four-second clip from the actual episode, with the actual moving footage and everything ... and then it would be gone again. I have absolutely no idea how they managed to get random handfuls of footage to intersplice with the stills, but then again I don't really understand why they have the stills themselves, either, so it's all good.
Also, for some reason, I got a MAJOR kick out of all the times in Episode Four when someone would enter or exit the one room in the secret house/headquarters, and they made sure to show us ... AN ACTUAL MOVING CLIP OF THE DOOR OPENING OR CLOSING. Like the sound of a door opening in the background, coupled with one of the characters exclaiming the newcomer's name, wasn't going to be enough for us to suss out what had just happened. Also, it was the SAME clips over and over, because it's just the door moving -- you can't see who's actually opening or closing it -- so by like the fifth time it was starting to get a bit humorous, at least to me. I guess they figured some moving footage is always better than a still -- but, really, it cracked me up. In a good way.
(Because, despite my protestations of door clips and lost audioplay opportunities, I hope you all still realize how much I enjoyed this serial, reconstructions and all, and how quickly and deeply I am coming to love Classic Who. It's not the show's fault that the original copies of the episodes were destroyed, after all, and the fact that reconstructions exist for (all of?) the lost episodes is definitely a stroke of good fortune; it's fantastic that they're not lost completely. So don't get me wrong -- I'm grateful for 'em. It's simply that the Door Clip cracks me UP. XD)
As for the serial itself -- as mentioned before, I had already been enjoying myself with "The Reign of Terror" to a level I hadn't reached before with any of the other serials. While I realized, in hindsight, that I'd technically laughed out loud while first watching "Robots of Death" a week or three before getting into TRoT,* this latest serial of mine _did_ give me my first "That's my Doctor" moment of Classic Who. And I've been sucked into Who so firmly this time round** that I have been enjoying all the serials I've been watching, true -- but this one established itself as something special in the first episode or two. (The fact that I'm fond of French history, albeit without knowing much about this particular period in it, didn't hurt.)
* [Moment of great laugh-out-loud humor:
"Doctor -- something's wrong!"
"... that's true."
Okay, I don't know why it cracked me up as much as it did, but -- it DID. I must have rewound that scene like half a dozen times. MAN. I gotta start remembering to say that the next time somebody tells me, on an already-bad day, "We have a problem!"]
** [This is due pretty much entirely to my reaction to the last three episodes of Tennant's run, which I am STILL working on writing. It's not that I'm slacking; it's just that the entry is turning out to be so bleeding LONG. I have kind of a lot to say.]
But if the first few episodes in this serial hooked me in on one level, the sixth and final ep had a real _effect_ on me. And to tell you about it, I'm going to have to showcase what an ignorant American I am, but I kind of feel like the least I owe the Doctor at this point is to be HONEST about things, so here goes nothing:
I know approximately boo-all about the Terror; in fact, I didn't even know that "that period wherein all the French people were chopping off the aristocracy's heads" was CALLED "the Terror" until I watched this serial. I had heard the name "Robespierre" but didn't have any idea that he had anything to do with the big guillotine fuss and, in fact, wouldn't have been able to tell you (prior to this serial) what part of history he was from. I DID know Napoleon's rise to power sort of came out of the ashes of the French Revolution(s), but I wasn't entirely certain which ones (since, thanks to Les Mis and Forbidden Broadway, I DID know that there had been more than one*). But that's really all I know about the whole thing -- so ignorant was I, in fact, that it wasn't until the FIFTH OR SIXTH SERIAL** that I realized that Ian and Co. were on the side of the aristocracy, not the rebellious revolution.
* ["Then he becomes involved in a French Revolution! ... But not the big famous one; a little later one you thought you didn't know anything abo-o-out ..."]
** [I watched the fifth and sixth episodes back to back, so I'm a little fuzzy about exactly what happened in which one.]
I really can't tell you how surprised this made me. I won't say I was _shocked_, it was just -- look, I'm an AMERICAN. It had simply never OCCURRED to me that the "good guys" of ANYthing were gonna be _against_ the revolution and FOR the Oppressed Nobility. Because -- dude, what??! Aren't the nobles ALWAYS the bad guys, even when they're getting their heads chopped off?? I mean ... I'd always thought that the French went about their overthrowing of the monarchy in a very overboard (and very _cruel_) method. But still -- we (the audience of the episode, I mean) were on the _side_ of the aristocracy??
Of course, Barbara's awesome history lesson (as magratpudifoot put it) to Ian and Jules -- "You check your history books, Ian, before you decide what people deserve!" -- was well-spoken and quite brilliant. (But then again, Barbara is quite brilliant.) But what really affected me was Jules's own rebuttal:
"There are only two sides today, Barbara. Those who rule by fear and treachery, and those who fight for reason and justice."
Talk about making you see something in a different light! And, I mean ... it's not like I wasn't aware that the "two sides" in ANY conflict are much more complicated than the black-and-white extremes the collective unconscious makes them out to be, or like I didn't appreciate the fact that most people are not wholly on one side or wholly on the other (MOST people, MOST people), or the fact that those who rebel against an unjust system are likely to replace it with another unjust system. I have always known all that. But when I heard that line, I felt the truth of that, on a gut level, in a way I'm not accustomed to -- at least not when it comes to figuring out the bad guys from the good guys in a revolution. How could someone on the side of the aristocracy _ever_ be the good guy? Well, because it's more complicated than that. You don't have to be on any particular side to try to rule people through fear, and you don't have to be on any particular side to want to stand up for justice instead.
I imagine I'm not the first American to watch this serial at this particular point in our current political-climate history* and be possessed with a sudden desire to quote that line of Jules's in the general direction of Glenn Beck ... or in the general direction of my uber-liberal co-worker, for that matter. I could hardly help but think of our own ridiculously politically-polarized nation at the moment and wish, "... we need to listen to 'Doctor Who' more often."
* [Unless I'm the only American PERIOD to be watching William Hartnell serials of "Doctor Who" for the first time at this particular moment in time, granted.]
Not that that's a new thought. But damn, that was a neat moment, to hear that line and be so utterly effected by it. _That's_ what good storytelling is all about -- and that is a large reason why "Doctor Who" has made it as long as it has, and is still going strong.
Thank heavens for reconstructions.
*
"Our lives are important, at least to us. And as we see, so we learn."
"And what are we going to see and learn next, Doctor?"
"That unlike the old adage, my boy, our destiny is in the stars. So let's go and search for it."
I had been deeply curious about reconstructed episodes. I've only watched a scant handful of Classic Who serials up to this point -- The Romans, Robots of Death, the first couple episodes of The Gunfighters (which I put aside in order to go back to some semblance of the beginning and watch everything in order, in terms of what serials I have lined up), and also, viewed a couple of years back now, An Unearthly Child and The Aztecs. I've seen enough classic serials at this point to proclaim that I have started to get the _feel_ for the Classic show down-pat (well, or at least a feel for it from during the Hartnell Era) -- but I hadn't yet arrived at a reconstruction.
I knew that the BBC had purposefully (PURposefully! Oh, it kills both my Inner Who Fan and my Inner Librarian) destroyed a bunch of the Doctor Who serials in order to clear space.* Other than that, and the vague notion that maybe fans' audio or video recordings had somehow supplemented some of the losses, I really didn't understand exactly what such episodes were reconstructed _from_ -- or, more accurately, what they might look like.
* [It must be admitted that I do understand, as a librarian, that sometimes you simply do not have the space. And I don't mean that you are uncomfortably crowded; I mean sometimes you literally do not have the SPACE.]
So, apart from some vague notions of blurry camera shots and six-minute-shots of stills -- which to some degree would turn out to not be all that far off the mark -- I hadn't any particular ideas of what to expect. So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, while the reconstruction was (unsurprisingly) far less desirable in terms of entertainment value than a regular episode, it was still both enjoyable and, yes, entertaining just the same. There were lines that still made me crack a smile, moments that made me gasp in concern -- and two scenes that actually had me tearing up a bit (when Ian and Barbara are reunited, and when Barbara and the Doctor are reunited; her thick-voiced, "Doctor!" and his shaky "-- Barbara," were more than sufficient to crack my heart). And that right there is pretty much the highest praise I can give it; you know I've accepted William Hartnell as my Doctor when a couple of boring stills matched to some dialogue still delivered with real feeling are enough to move the emotions.
I did spend much of episode four thinking, rather regretfully, "... if _only_ they'd done the lost episodes as radio plays!" Because, I mean -- the reconstructions work fine, they really do. The subtitles help you out when you wouldn't be able to tell from the dialogue what is going on, and since the important bits of "Doctor Who" for me are (generally) the conversation ANYway, particularly in Classic Who, it works out. But because of the fact that you're often just looking at stills, I found myself wishing that they'd just gone all the way and made the reconstructed episodes into flat-out "audioplays." By which I mean -- instead of having subtitles across still pictures, they could have gotten a Narrator to explain what's going on during the action scenes (taking the place of the subtitles, in other words), and the rest could have been just the original soundtrack of the actors' voices, maybe supplemented by a few sound effects (which wouldn't be that hard; most of the original sound effects are audible in the episodes' soundtrack already anyway). I really _like_ audiobooks, and I positively ADORE "radio" plays (I've only listened to one Big Finish production thus far, but I've fallen in love; I've listened to it three times, and I'm just waiting for my next long car trip to start another). So I would have preferred being able to listen to episodes four and five in my car, I think, while driving down the road, with a Narrator to fill in the action gaps for me, instead of watching changing stills on a screen while paying attention to the audio. As I said, the way they have it is perfectly acceptable -- I still find it very much entertaining. I was just thinking audio versions would be nice, too. :)
Not that it's all stills -- several times throughout both episodes, there would suddenly and randomly be a four-second clip from the actual episode, with the actual moving footage and everything ... and then it would be gone again. I have absolutely no idea how they managed to get random handfuls of footage to intersplice with the stills, but then again I don't really understand why they have the stills themselves, either, so it's all good.
Also, for some reason, I got a MAJOR kick out of all the times in Episode Four when someone would enter or exit the one room in the secret house/headquarters, and they made sure to show us ... AN ACTUAL MOVING CLIP OF THE DOOR OPENING OR CLOSING. Like the sound of a door opening in the background, coupled with one of the characters exclaiming the newcomer's name, wasn't going to be enough for us to suss out what had just happened. Also, it was the SAME clips over and over, because it's just the door moving -- you can't see who's actually opening or closing it -- so by like the fifth time it was starting to get a bit humorous, at least to me. I guess they figured some moving footage is always better than a still -- but, really, it cracked me up. In a good way.
(Because, despite my protestations of door clips and lost audioplay opportunities, I hope you all still realize how much I enjoyed this serial, reconstructions and all, and how quickly and deeply I am coming to love Classic Who. It's not the show's fault that the original copies of the episodes were destroyed, after all, and the fact that reconstructions exist for (all of?) the lost episodes is definitely a stroke of good fortune; it's fantastic that they're not lost completely. So don't get me wrong -- I'm grateful for 'em. It's simply that the Door Clip cracks me UP. XD)
As for the serial itself -- as mentioned before, I had already been enjoying myself with "The Reign of Terror" to a level I hadn't reached before with any of the other serials. While I realized, in hindsight, that I'd technically laughed out loud while first watching "Robots of Death" a week or three before getting into TRoT,* this latest serial of mine _did_ give me my first "That's my Doctor" moment of Classic Who. And I've been sucked into Who so firmly this time round** that I have been enjoying all the serials I've been watching, true -- but this one established itself as something special in the first episode or two. (The fact that I'm fond of French history, albeit without knowing much about this particular period in it, didn't hurt.)
* [Moment of great laugh-out-loud humor:
"Doctor -- something's wrong!"
"... that's true."
Okay, I don't know why it cracked me up as much as it did, but -- it DID. I must have rewound that scene like half a dozen times. MAN. I gotta start remembering to say that the next time somebody tells me, on an already-bad day, "We have a problem!"]
** [This is due pretty much entirely to my reaction to the last three episodes of Tennant's run, which I am STILL working on writing. It's not that I'm slacking; it's just that the entry is turning out to be so bleeding LONG. I have kind of a lot to say.]
But if the first few episodes in this serial hooked me in on one level, the sixth and final ep had a real _effect_ on me. And to tell you about it, I'm going to have to showcase what an ignorant American I am, but I kind of feel like the least I owe the Doctor at this point is to be HONEST about things, so here goes nothing:
I know approximately boo-all about the Terror; in fact, I didn't even know that "that period wherein all the French people were chopping off the aristocracy's heads" was CALLED "the Terror" until I watched this serial. I had heard the name "Robespierre" but didn't have any idea that he had anything to do with the big guillotine fuss and, in fact, wouldn't have been able to tell you (prior to this serial) what part of history he was from. I DID know Napoleon's rise to power sort of came out of the ashes of the French Revolution(s), but I wasn't entirely certain which ones (since, thanks to Les Mis and Forbidden Broadway, I DID know that there had been more than one*). But that's really all I know about the whole thing -- so ignorant was I, in fact, that it wasn't until the FIFTH OR SIXTH SERIAL** that I realized that Ian and Co. were on the side of the aristocracy, not the rebellious revolution.
* ["Then he becomes involved in a French Revolution! ... But not the big famous one; a little later one you thought you didn't know anything abo-o-out ..."]
** [I watched the fifth and sixth episodes back to back, so I'm a little fuzzy about exactly what happened in which one.]
I really can't tell you how surprised this made me. I won't say I was _shocked_, it was just -- look, I'm an AMERICAN. It had simply never OCCURRED to me that the "good guys" of ANYthing were gonna be _against_ the revolution and FOR the Oppressed Nobility. Because -- dude, what??! Aren't the nobles ALWAYS the bad guys, even when they're getting their heads chopped off?? I mean ... I'd always thought that the French went about their overthrowing of the monarchy in a very overboard (and very _cruel_) method. But still -- we (the audience of the episode, I mean) were on the _side_ of the aristocracy??
Of course, Barbara's awesome history lesson (as magratpudifoot put it) to Ian and Jules -- "You check your history books, Ian, before you decide what people deserve!" -- was well-spoken and quite brilliant. (But then again, Barbara is quite brilliant.) But what really affected me was Jules's own rebuttal:
"There are only two sides today, Barbara. Those who rule by fear and treachery, and those who fight for reason and justice."
Talk about making you see something in a different light! And, I mean ... it's not like I wasn't aware that the "two sides" in ANY conflict are much more complicated than the black-and-white extremes the collective unconscious makes them out to be, or like I didn't appreciate the fact that most people are not wholly on one side or wholly on the other (MOST people, MOST people), or the fact that those who rebel against an unjust system are likely to replace it with another unjust system. I have always known all that. But when I heard that line, I felt the truth of that, on a gut level, in a way I'm not accustomed to -- at least not when it comes to figuring out the bad guys from the good guys in a revolution. How could someone on the side of the aristocracy _ever_ be the good guy? Well, because it's more complicated than that. You don't have to be on any particular side to try to rule people through fear, and you don't have to be on any particular side to want to stand up for justice instead.
I imagine I'm not the first American to watch this serial at this particular point in our current political-climate history* and be possessed with a sudden desire to quote that line of Jules's in the general direction of Glenn Beck ... or in the general direction of my uber-liberal co-worker, for that matter. I could hardly help but think of our own ridiculously politically-polarized nation at the moment and wish, "... we need to listen to 'Doctor Who' more often."
* [Unless I'm the only American PERIOD to be watching William Hartnell serials of "Doctor Who" for the first time at this particular moment in time, granted.]
Not that that's a new thought. But damn, that was a neat moment, to hear that line and be so utterly effected by it. _That's_ what good storytelling is all about -- and that is a large reason why "Doctor Who" has made it as long as it has, and is still going strong.
Thank heavens for reconstructions.
*
"Our lives are important, at least to us. And as we see, so we learn."
"And what are we going to see and learn next, Doctor?"
"That unlike the old adage, my boy, our destiny is in the stars. So let's go and search for it."