So you're loving the new Doctor Who, and you want to catch up with some of the old stuff. Where do you even start?

Here one's place: BBC Warner's new DVD set Doctor Who: Beneath the Surface. Totaling nearly seven hours of vintage classic Who, the set includes three stories -- two from Jon Pertwee's era as the Doctor and one from Peter Davison's. All three feature the Sea Devils and the Silurians, the re-awakened reptilian sleepers who originally dominated planet Earth millions of years before humanity evolved from those pesky little mammals underfoot.

And along with all the glorious monsters, these three stories serve as reminders of the Doctor's alienness: he may love humans and love Earth, but he doesn't share our self-centeredness, and if it comes down to humans versus other beings, he's not necessarily going to be on our side, especially if we're trying to blow them up instead of talking to them.

The two Pertwee stories -- "The Silurians" from 1970 and "The Sea Devils" from 1972 -- are great introductions to that era. The show would not be this sophisticated again until Russell Davies took up the mantle in 2005: This is science fiction drama with an emphasis on the drama. In both stories, the Doctor has been exiled to Earth by the Time Lords -- there's no mention of the TARDIS at all -- and his life is all running around with UNIT, the secret UN military branch that deals with alien threats. It's very James Bond, and the Doctor won't be quite this overtly masculine again till the Davies era, either: he doesn't hesitate to strip down to his T-shirt -- and reveal his tattoo! -- when it's time for some dirty work. ("The Sea Devils" is also must-see for the appearance of Roger Delgado's Master, the best Master till John Simm in the new series.)

The Peter Davison episode, "Warriors of the Deep" (from 1984) is one of more minor examples of his era as the Doctor as, a century after the events of the Pertwee episodes, the Sea Devils and Silurians have joined forces in an attempt to finally expel the humans from their planet. However, just as Davison was current Doctor David Tennant's favorite Doctor growing up, Davison was my Doctor too, so I pretty much had this episode memorized from my most devoted era of Who fandom, when I taped them all as a teenager and watched them over and over again.

But I got mucho new amusement listening to Davison and Janet Fielding -- who played the Doctor's companion Tegan -- snarking on the commentary track about wobbly sets and cheap effects and all the many limitations both technical and financial that hindered the old Doctor Who.

There's a lot of love and respect in their snarking, but the physical cheesiness of these old Whos may astonish anyone used to the beautiful and expensive production values of the new show. They astonished me, and I'm no newcomer to the show -- I'd just forgotten, because other aspects are the ones that loom in my memory. And that's really a testament to the old Doctor Who: the stories and the concepts it played with always trumped the wobbly sets and the rubber suits.

The Doctor Who: Beneath the Surface set lists for $59.98. All three stories are also now available on their own individual DVDs.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
MaryAnn Johanson (email me)
reviews, reviews, reviews! at FlickFilosopher.com

Recommend (0)

|  Comments (0)

|  Email

|  Share

Share  Facebook Digg del.icio.us