h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, to be honest, anything would look better than Blake's 7 .
I seem to remember that it was a well kept secret at the time but in a line-up that consisted of such televisual gems as Nationwide and Panorama, Blake's 7 was the cheapest programme on a Monday night for the BBC to make.

I would just like to say that Tom Baker was also my favorite Dr, although I liked them all - with the notable exception of Mr McCoy, naturally.

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Blake's 7 had its moments....
It had Avon
and *that*

Very true, GB.

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We even got a replay on the "Top Ten Sci-fi" the other week.
Then I went & wiped the tape accidentally.

That's sad, GB.

But at least you got to see it again.

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Wasn't there supposed to be a B7 movie in the works?

People would vote Earthshock as best story ahead of Genesis of the Daleks? Ahead of Pyramids of Mars? Ahead of Inferno? I mean, it's a good story if you like that kind of thing, and don't look too closely at the script, but it's all a bit gung-ho and po-faced and Star Warsy.

I thought DW got very dull and serious and self-obsessed in the early 80s and it only recovered when they changed the scriptwriters and McCoy joined in 87.

Some would, yes. Pyramids of Mars is a highpoint most agree on, but I have to say that I find Genesis nearly unwatchable. Daleks work better as daleks, not as minions of a mad little chap with a bad latex face, but thats just my opinion...

Including you, I take it.

I should mention that I do like Earthshock, there are lots of good bits in it, and it's head and shoulders over most Davison stories.
My main problem - apart from the irritating militarism - is that the script has so many holes in it...

(I know this is stupid coming from someone who just recommended Pyramids of Mars, by the way, so you needn't mention it.)

...such as the lack of explanation as to how simply having its computer reprogrammed turns a starship into a time machine, why it's still on course for Earth when the solar system has moved significantly in the last 65 million years, how the Cybermen got their bomb to Earth in the first place...

Nitpicking, I know. And, I would venture, also a modicum of Smiths syndrome - as a one-off story Earthshock is fine, but all the terrible imitators it's responsible for - Warriors of the Deep, Resurrection, Attack of the Cybermen, etc, etc - tend to tarnish it by association.

What do I know? I like Creature From The Pit...

You can nit-pick almost any Dr. Who story to death. In some fan circles it's mandatory.
I think that Earthshock was a brave attempt to do something that hadn't been done before. And surely the "irritating militarism" was meant as a reflection of the cybermen themselves-I wonder how often people have remembered in the past that Kit Pedlar and Gerry Davis wrote the cybermen as a very deliberate extension of human technology and it's applications. They were, probably, the best writers to write for Who, and also did some other sterling work, such as The Plastic Eaters novel and, of course, Doomwatch. I have a funny feeling that they would have been proud of Earthshock.
Anything that ran as long as Who did is bound to have different high points for different people. Nothing on tv, or even in cinema has ever scared me the way Pertwee's run did, but I do like the davison episodes, where I thought people were given a clear run at experimenting with the format-but, then, I like Kinda and it's sequel.

Hey, no dissing Kinda here. A classic of plastic set jungles and English actors playing someone else in a grass skirt. Oh, and as for the snake, cringe. I, personally, love it.
You'll note that strange phenomenon where a Dr. Who fan states that one Doctor, or one type of story is the best and then promptly contradicts themself something rotten is going on. With me at least. However, I'll never say that the Chase is anything less than terrible.

I think that's true of any fan of anything, Doc. Just part of the mindset, I'm sure.

And, yes, the Chase was awful.



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No argument from me either. Hywel Bennett in a silly costume... Morton Dill... belligerent duvets...

(I don't think the militarism in Earthshock reflects anything other than Eric Saward's inability to resolve a story without using a gun battle, by the way...)

Well, I don't even remember The Chase, so I'll guess we can all agree to leave that one to The Keeper of Rubbish Dr Who!

And I think the violence that started to occur round about the time of Earthshock was an attempt to toughen the series up. One assistant, Adric, died. Another, Tegan, left because "it wasn't fun anymore". Turlough was a man of mixed morals, to say the least. It all seemed part of a deliberate move to make the series more entertaining for an adult audience that no longer saw the world in black and white moral issues. For me, it worked. For some it didn't.

I have to say that I felt the violence was entirely appropriate-for decades we had been told that the Daleks and the Cybermen, banned from the Great Game "because they were too good (at it)", were the most violent and ruthless military machines around. Yet to defeat them was a matter of a logic, persuading them to do something that clearly wasn't in theoir best interests or laying a trap that was so obvious a three year old could have seen through it? It never made sense to me as it was implicit from the way they were dicussed that these were opponents who were capable, both technologically and morally, of destroying cities and even planets to benefit their own ends. I detected then, and still do when I watch them now, a growing feeling, very prevalent now but not so then, of the fact that freedom has a price. I make no judgement as to whether it is right or wrong, but it did culminate in the Doc actually laying down his life in the ultimate price for the spiraling violence he had become involved in.

As for Kinda, it may show the BeeB's lack of cash very badly but it is well written. Though Martin Clunes does look a *buffoon* in Snakedance.

I have to disagree totally about the Chase. It was a good William Hartnell story with the Daleks. With the Doctor being Chased around the galaxy, and jumping from timezone to timezone, it made the whole the exciting as you wondered where they would end up next. One of the best scenes was from the Mary Celest (i think that's how it's spelt/what it's called) and the Daleks cause the everybody to abandon ship.

However, if you want to look at the bad points then you should look at how the Daleks seemed to advance so quickly. In the first story with Daleks in they could only travel on metal. In the second story they can now travel on land and have built spaceships and are invading Earth. And in the third story (the Chase) they had time travel technology that is only supposed to be known to the time lord's and needs a timelord to activate (according to the Colin Baker Episode 'The Two Doctors') and the ability to make things bigger on the inside then on the outside. It is surprising that they never use this machine again as they would be too strong for the Doctor.
The other bad point about the story is that in the last episode the Daleks are destroyed in a war against some other machiones. The battle is pretty poor, and if the Daleks were defeated by these machines then I'm suprised they didn't appear in later episodes.

Apart from this I believe it was a good story that should not easily be thrown away. I think that it is probably one of the best Dalek stories there are, and way better then the ones that appeared in the Pertwee era. The Dalek stories in Pertwee's were disppointing at best, and didn't meet up to the quality expected.

I really, really doubt an adult audience was interested in the kind of inaccessible, grim, humourless, repetitively and graphically violent stories that became the norm by the middle 80s. (And, arguably, the viewing figures support this.)

Doctor Who is intriniscally silly. It's about an alien with terrible dress sense and unlikely powers who travels around in a phone box. If you try to take this seriously you're just going to end up looking stupid - or, worse, boring. If you acknowledge how unlikely the series is and just concentrate on doing entertaining yarns that work for the whole family, you can produce extraordinary tales.

And I'd argue that one of the main planks of Doctor Who's morality is that violence isn't necessarily the answer - it should always be the last resort. And even when it occurs, it shouldn't be protracted, explicit or sadistic.

Well i did say some people didn't think it worked.
And as an adult I found them interesting stories, and certainly don't remember them as being sadistic, but different strokes for different folks.
As a fan of HK action cinema, I doubt the BBC could ever make me think "sadistic" about one of their programmes. It is a personal thing after all.
And to the best of my knowledge, I've not seen The Chase from that desricption...

Well, there was that sequence with the guy getting his hands deliberately and gorily crushed... and the one where the guy rips out a rats' throat with his teeth... and the one where the guy gets his hand blown off, whereupon the Doctor makes not one but two jokes about it... all in space of the 1985 season...

Regarding Spook's points, I think all Doctor Who fans should have "Don't worry about continuity" tattooed on the inside of their eyelids. So what if a poor 60s story contradicts a poor 80s story? A little bit of continuity helps the show in tiny ways, too much continuity can wreck it. If continuity had been religiously adhered to we'd have had Pertwee-style Dalek stories forever (no Genesis of the Daleks, cos it contradicts The Daleks - so does every other Dalek story) and the dull Pertwee-style Time Lords (no Deadly Assassin either, cos it contradicts War Games) - mind you, the dull Davison-style Time Lords were pretty bad too...

I am struggling to remember the titles of all the stories.
But now you have mentioned the "Marie Celeste", I remember that one.


I love the way some sci-fi writers come up with ideas to explain past mysteries to us.

One of my favourite 'tricks' that the series plays is the way it explains history and legend in terms of science fantasy.