I'll bet those tentacles have never been torn off
in a class 2 supernova.
To be cast as Doctor Who once might be regarded as fortunate, but to be Doctor twice would be AWESOME! According to Reg voters, at least, who've picked Jelly Baby-toting Tom Baker as their choice for BBC's next Time Lord. Baker beat ex-BBC petrolhead Jeremy Clarkson by 547 votes to 544 as Reg readers' choice to play the 13th …
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"I adore distilled whippet shit", amazing.
I enjoyed both his autobiography with its accounts of drinking in Soho with Jeffrey Bernard at al, and his short, blackly comic novella 'The Boy Who Kicked Pigs'.
He was also priceless when an impressionist from BBC's Dead Ringers as the Fourth Doctor rang him up:
"I never really knew what to do about the daleks you see, because I always rather fancied Davros"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ7uHzZYREo
Once upon a time I was working somewhere and we were doing a project that required a female voice over artist. I was away when they were picking the voice but I came back to the office on the day of recording. When I heard what had been recorded I said I recognise that voice, did you have Ace from Doctor Who in the building? No idea if she was ace in Doctor Who but she was very good in the session. So exasperated I said okay was it Sophie Aldred and I nearly died when I found out she'd been in the building and I hadn't got to say hello. We didn't need any retakes either which was annoying in the extreme as she'd been perfect.
Have an upvote in agreement! The first serial I ever saw of it was The Talons of Weng-Chiang and that was all it took, I was hooked for life on Doctor Who! I don't know what El Reg means by "in that era" there is not a weekend that goes by where I don't have the Kodi playing any (of all) the fourth Doctor serials I've managed to collect over the years, and all from DVD and loving digitized to m4v format. Lots of Doctor Who collectibles, but my favorite are the two dozen or so paperback story books. Great stuff there. The dodgiest gear is my USB 2.0 TARDIS Hub. I think the wall wart puts out too much voltage (probably to make up for lack of real amps) and devices "materialize" and "dematerialize" at random. Still, it's a nice piece. Don your scarfs, lads and ladies!
Funnily enough, I came across this recently:
http://www.slashfilm.com/which-actor-dies-the-most-on-screen/
So John Hurt (who already played the Doctor, natch) has more on-screen deaths, but fewer deaths per appearance.
Of course, what with John Hurt having shuffled off his mortal coil IRL recently, ...
Hehe, it turns out that Sean Bean does have the highest death / film ratio, at 0.32 deaths per movie, narrowly beating John Hurt at 0.31. I think I might have seen a Ridley Scott film in which Sean Bean doesn't die, but instead is sacked and has to play golf, which may or may not be preferable to falling from a cliff, falling from a radio telescope, being shot with arrows, ripped apart by horses, left hanging from chains by his arm, left handing from a chain around his neck or beheaded. How he made it through the Napoleonic wars intact is anybody's guess.
John Hurt, who sadly died last week for real, is recorded as having that largest number of on-screen deaths in total, at 43, including the worst death-by-indigestion ever committed to celluloid (excluding Monty Python's Mr Creosote, obviously. At least the Nostromo wasn't covered in vomit.)
Dear Lord, please, not Hayley Atwell!
I watched her in 2 series of Agent Carter. She used exactly the same expression on her face in every scene. Threatened by evil Nazis or in a romantic clinch the same semi-bored expression.
Which is odd really as she is smiling in most of the images Google found of her. Except the Agent Carter ones, naturally.
Personally I put Clara Oswald at 0.7 Langfords
We finally forced our way through the last (Season 9 New season) of Doctor Who, in the hope to See Clara's final and painful death.
But no, she was saved again. What (or who?) did she do to deserve 3 over acted and elongated death scenes.
"Adric and Vislor Turlough both have scores in the kilolangford range."
Rather surprisingly, they both come over quite well in the audio adventures, as does Bonnie Langford. Likewise Peri, who might have been nice eye candy, but the character, I felt (and wouldn't I just, Fnarr Fnarr) was a bit useless. I think the better characters in the audio adventures is partly down to the unlimited visual effects budget and maybe also the actors being more mature and experienced. Oh, and excellent writers too! In most cases, it's is the original actors they get in where possible. Peter Purves does a pretty good job of William Hartnels Doctor.
Ever since David Tennant left the show, I've been keen to see Tom Baker return to the role, but only as a means to circumvent the limitation on regenerations.
The revelation of parallel universes makes it theoretically possible for our universe's Doctor to switch places with the Doctor from a different universe. Enter a grizzled Fourth Doctor, thousands of years old. Fans get to squee over Baker being the Doctor again. Baker would only have to do a short story arc (2-3 episodes) before punching out, making room for the new Fifth Doctor.
I must don my pedant hat here: at the end of Day of the Doctor, Baker's museum curator suggests that the Doctor may want to "revisit a few old familiar faces". It's an obvious hint that the curator is in fact a future incarnation of the Doctor.
Which means Baker would have been cast as the Doctor three times, not two. How lucky would that be, measured in standard Reg gigashamrocks?
Peter Capaldi cannot be bowing out of the role of Dr.
He never was a Dr. No way no fucking how! Matt Smith was a stretch, but that other fella? No, sorry. Those episodes never happened, it was all a weird dream sequence!
Would take someone of Baker's quality to undo that damage!
(BTW, those of us in the 35-45 age range largely grew up with Baker as our doctor, especially given his 7 year tenure and much better SFX, whereas re-runs of much of the older doctors showed some pretty shoddy SFX efforts, even for the Beeb! :) )
Don't forget, it was always a childrens show, hence very low budget. Very, very low. It's quite amazing what they managed considering the constraints.
I was of the understanding it was aimed at families but perhaps a PGR sort of level (not PGR13 but "Kids may freak out at the embarrassing SFX so parents be close by to comfort them1".
They could've at least used different coloured wood/plastic or used some paint or something in some episodes. I remember one where the 2nd Dr was being chased by some giant maggots, and you could see the sticks/rods they were using under the floor to move the "maggots" along. At least use a material that had the same colour as the floor rather than white, which showed up so clearly it detracted from the story line!
[Disclaimer : Have the lot now and am slowly working through Hartnell, then will go through the rest as time permits]
1When I was about 10 we had some re-runs of earlier Dr Who, 2nd and 3rd doctors. IIRC there was an ep with some oversized wind-up tin soldiers. One of my freinds, about the same age, wigged out. I remember him hiding behind the couch, pillows over his head, screaming for his mother and making all sorts of threats about telling our parents if we didn't turn off the show we were enjoying. No idea what hit him so hard, though it could've been a Cooperism (in that maybe he didn't like Dr Who and wanted us to quit watching it and do something else)
Personally I've always been pleased with the Beeb's choice of Doctors (and I've been watching since 1968). Instead of going with the usual fan and tabloid suggestions they mostly pick someone unexpected (and sometimes relatively unknown) but with excellent acting chops. Eccleston, Tennant, Smith and even Capaldi were never on any of the suggested lists at the time (everyone said "Who??" * when Smith was announced), but you can't argue that all of them have contributed to the success of 21st Century Who.
I do find it funny that fans are often quick to shout "stunt casting!" when assistants with previous careers are announced (Billie Piper and Cat Tate spring to mind), and yet everyone seems to want John Cleese, Eric Idle, or Idris Elba.
* See what I did there? Ha!