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daveac
Registered: 04/12/06
Posts: 2636
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 Saturday, November 04 2006 @ 02:24 PM EST |
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Posted on Digital Spy Cult Forum by 'mikevaughan' BBC 4 (in UK) will be showing 'Spearhead From Space' most likely in two longer parts (was 4 episodes) starting on Monday 13th Nov - 7:10 to 8:00 pm.
Not sure if the second part is no the following night - but before they have done that ie. two nights in a row.
Cheers, daveac |
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daveac on blip.tv, TalkShoe, iTunes, LiveVideo, uStream, GE, Sci-Fi, DWO, DS & WTA, Dave C on WLP,
cooperda on AVF, dac100 on YouTube & PB, dac on Tiscali
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hdutch007
Registered: 12/27/05
Posts: 340
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| Saturday, November 04 2006 @ 06:53 PM EST |
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Ah, a classic episode. Witness the birth of Pertwee's wardrobe! Witness an entire story shot on film! Witness killer manequins!
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Heath Holland
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Louis
Registered: 01/01/04
Posts: 3075
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| Sunday, November 05 2006 @ 01:59 AM EST |
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Witness the Doctor's tattoo. Witness the first regeneration disorientation... witness the Doctor's lost shoes... Witness the first Doctor Who televised story shot in colour. Witness the predecessor of Bessie. Witness a part of television history!
Cheers,
Louis |
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☛ Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LouisTrapani ♥ ♥
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Ersby
Registered: 04/16/06
Posts: 20
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| Tuesday, November 14 2006 @ 03:51 AM EST |
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| I witnessed it! My first 3rd doctor adventure, not including the Five Doctors. I admit, I did laugh a bit at the start, with a yokel poacher and some very stiff acting from those two people in the radar room. Once it got going (once the Brigadier arrived, more or less) it got a lot more interesting. |
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daveac
Registered: 04/12/06
Posts: 2636
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| Tuesday, November 14 2006 @ 07:25 AM EST |
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| [Quote by: Ersby] I witnessed it! My first 3rd doctor adventure, not including the Five Doctors. I admit, I did laugh a bit at the start, with a yokel poacher and some very stiff acting from those two people in the radar room. Once it got going (once the Brigadier arrived, more or less) it got a lot more interesting. |
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What did you think of Liz Shaw as she is introduced as a scientist in her own right?
Cheers, daveac |
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daveac on blip.tv, TalkShoe, iTunes, LiveVideo, uStream, GE, Sci-Fi, DWO, DS & WTA, Dave C on WLP,
cooperda on AVF, dac100 on YouTube & PB, dac on Tiscali
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DarthSkeptical
Registered: 03/11/06
Posts: 1129
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| Tuesday, November 14 2006 @ 07:37 AM EST |
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I absolutely adore Liz Shaw.
I think she's the most underrated companion in the entire series. It's a damn shame Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts were such obvious chauvinist pigs. Strong lannguage, but it's, I feel, quite fair comment. She could've been used so incredibly well, based upon her fabulous entrance in "Spearhead", but all they could see her for were her stereotypes. It was their job to breathe life into the character--by giving her a point of view distinct from both the Brig and the Doctor--but instead they threw their hands up and said, "It's too hard to write someone who was the Doctor's equal."
I actually think her introduction was the most promising of any companion, bar the original three, Jamie and Romana I. Speaking of Mary Tamm, she gives an obvious lie to the Letts/Dicks party line that Shaw needed to be axed because she was the Doctor's equal. Romana was the Doctor's equal and she worked just fine. |
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"I think of myself as ambitious in casting terms, and I know that Bonnie [Langford] has the potential to make the part totally unirritating . . ." — JNT, 1986
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Ersby
Registered: 04/16/06
Posts: 20
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| Tuesday, November 14 2006 @ 10:52 AM EST |
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I liked Liz Shaw from the beginning. The chauvanistic thing is only to be expected, in that day and age. In the scene with all the tubes and flasks and test tubes it would've been entirely realistic if one of the men had said "That's a lot of equipment just to make a cup of tea, love" and then laugh at his own joke.
I'm reading an old Patrick Troughton adventure at the moment (the one with the Cybermen on the moon) and Polly doesn't seem to do much at all. Liz seems to be a tentative step forward in that respect. |
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DarthSkeptical
Registered: 03/11/06
Posts: 1129
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| Tuesday, November 14 2006 @ 04:39 PM EST |
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| [Quote by: Ersby] I liked Liz Shaw from the beginning. The chauvanistic thing is only to be expected, in that day and age. |
| I don't accept that. After all, whom did Liz replace? Another female scientist who regularly put the Doctor in his place. Barbara, though not on the same intellectual plane as the Doctor, regularly stood up to him, and was a fully mature woman. And nobody ever said of Zöe, "Oh, she's too smart to be an effective companion", or that Barbara was too "old" for the Doctor.
Letts, Pertwee and Dicks were, on this issue, unimaginative pigs, who were not just out of step with the primary generation watching DW, but with the legacy of DW to that point.
I think the "Liz incident" also proves that Dicks was an inferior writer to Robert Holmes. Holmes served up an intriguing starting point for a character. Dicks was so completely unable to capitalize on that he simply gave up on the character altogether. |
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"I think of myself as ambitious in casting terms, and I know that Bonnie [Langford] has the potential to make the part totally unirritating . . ." — JNT, 1986
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Abersoch
Registered: 11/27/05
Posts: 395
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| Tuesday, November 14 2006 @ 05:17 PM EST |
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| [Quote by: DarthSkeptical]It was their job to breathe life into the character--by giving her a point of view distinct from both the Brig and the Doctor--but instead they threw their hands up and said, "It's too hard to write someone who was the Doctor's equal." |
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Is that really true?!  I liked Liz Shaw too but have only seen her in Spearhed from Space and Inferno (giving an interesting look at how she changed between both ends of her short tenure with the show).
It seems rather anachronistic of them to say they found it so hard to write a strong role for women in Doctor Who considering they both started on The Avengers - a show globally noted for it's strong female leading roles. |
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Ersby
Registered: 04/16/06
Posts: 20
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| Wednesday, November 15 2006 @ 10:09 AM EST |
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| Well, I don't know what happened before, nor what happened after. I can only comment on what I saw from the first two episodes, and there didn't seem to be anything particularly unsatisfying about her character. But I'm just speaking as a third doctor newbie, here. |
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Palms
Registered: 07/01/06
Posts: 83
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| Sunday, January 14 2007 @ 10:45 PM EST |
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This story is being show late tonight on BBC Kids in Canada. I watched it last summer when I was waking up regularly at 5 AM to watch episodes, but I might stay up until 2 tonight to tape it for my little one. I love that it is all on film!
-Sean |
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DarthSkeptical
Registered: 03/11/06
Posts: 1129
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| Tuesday, February 20 2007 @ 12:48 AM EST |
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[Quote by: Abersoch] | [Quote by: DarthSkeptical]It was their job to breathe life into the character--by giving her a point of view distinct from both the Brig and the Doctor--but instead they threw their hands up and said, "It's too hard to write someone who was the Doctor's equal." |
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Is that really true?! I liked Liz Shaw too but have only seen her in Spearhed from Space and Inferno (giving an interesting look at how she changed between both ends of her short tenure with the show).
It seems rather anachronistic of them to say they found it so hard to write a strong role for women in Doctor Who considering they both started on The Avengers - a show globally noted for it's strong female leading roles. |
| Sorry, I just now saw this question. But yeah, I think it's true. On several DVD interviews, Letts and Dicks make pointed reference to the "unsuitability" of Liz Shaw, and their timbre comes across (to me, at least) as something approaching disdain for the character.
Letts goes (I think) out of his way to point out on "The Unit Family, Part One" (included with "Inferno") that Liz was a character decided and cast before he arrived: "It was already decided before I joined that the Doctor's assist . . . assistant, if you can call it that—hardly, companion—Doctor Liz Shaw would be a member of UNIT."
He goes on to claim that he decided "very, very soon" to replace the character because the kinds of conversations that Liz would have with the Doctor, since the two characters were on an intellectual par, did little to explain situations to the audience.
Caroline John claims that in "The Silurians" the production team wanted her to wear a mini skirt and go-go boots to go down into the caves that were central to the story's plot. It was only the intervention of Pertwee which allowed her to go in attire that was actually suitable.
Later, John said that she got no real explanation as to why she was being replaced, but instead had to read in Doctor Who Magazine that Letts thought Liz was "too clever by half".
Speaking on John's dismissal, Dicks said, "Caroline John is a fine actress, but basically she's a serious actress, y'know, she needs a proper part. And being the Doctor's companion is not a very good part for a girl, because she has to hang around and be rescued by the Doctor . . . The show is the Doctor, you see, he's the center of everything and everyone else is a satellite."
I've heard other interviews with Dicks and Letts where they've spoken on Liz directly, or the general notion of what makes a "good" companion. None of them do much to alter the impression given here, though. These quotes I think do enough to paint what is (again, to me) a very clear picture of the kind of men-in-power that fomented the women's liberation movement. They had a very traditionalist view of male-female workplace traditions which they were trying to pass off as core Doctor Who values, despite the fact that tradition in black and white Doctor Who had been for a wide cross-section of women, as well as a number of whole episodes that were driven by the actions of the companions, not the Doctor.
Letts and Dicks were reasonable stewards of a concept, but they weren't, aside from Letts' admirable work in pushing the technical boundaries of the program, what could be called "innovators". Even though they are responsible for giving us Sarah Jane, interviews about that casting, especially with Dicks, make her character type seem like something that was foisted on to them "by the times", rather than a direction that Dicks really wanted to take.
Bottom line: they willingly perpetuated what was, by modern standards, a really quite willingly sexist view of Doctor Who, and seem unapologetic about it to this day. Now, perhaps they aren't generally sexist, but at least inasmuch as their Doctor Who work is concerned, their "Unit Family" was one that would end up in civil rights litigation today. |
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"I think of myself as ambitious in casting terms, and I know that Bonnie [Langford] has the potential to make the part totally unirritating . . ." — JNT, 1986
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Milamber
Registered: 06/14/06
Posts: 146
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| Tuesday, February 20 2007 @ 05:15 PM EST |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Shaw_(Doctor_Who)
Check out the bottom section for info on what happened to her character. It's interesting that she got her own video series P.R.O.B.E. (I think I've only seen 2 of them) Someone at the BBC must have like her. |
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tarashnat
Registered: 08/17/05
Posts: 3062
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| Tuesday, February 20 2007 @ 06:06 PM EST |
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| [Quote by: Milamber]It's interesting that she got her own video series P.R.O.B.E. (I think I've only seen 2 of them) Someone at the BBC must have like her. |
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It wasn't the BBC, but BBV. These productions had little, if anything, to do with the BBC.
Taras |
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Daleks don't accept apologies! YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!
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gackt
Registered: 02/12/07
Posts: 19
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| Wednesday, February 21 2007 @ 01:52 AM EST |
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having recently begun working my way through the pertwee era again i have to say liz was a great companion and the producers were so very wrong to get rid. i feel sorry for her that she never even got to travel in the TARDIS, in fact did she even get to go inside it?
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Such a beautiful thing is always good that it is fascinating.
However, a good thing is beautiful always.
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