It all started out as a mild curiosity in a junkyard. Time to review the highlights and low-points of The First Doctor.
BONUS audio commentary track for ‘Rose’, in which Eccleston is introduced as the Doctor and Rose charms our socks off!
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Time for a Who Back When experiment. Potentially the start of something wonderful, possibly just a fun bonus episode, and hopefully to your liking either way, here is our first crack at a Doctor Who audio commentary track. JD and I, Ponken, sat down and watched ‘Rose’, the first episode of New Who starring Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler.
No need for a mini summary here, really, as you probably know what this one’s all about already. Suffice to say, a charming, albeit rather chavvy, Rose Tyler stumbles upon a group of Autons, but along with them The Doctor as well! Turns out there’s a Nestene Consciousness plotting to invade Earth and guess Who’s here to save the day.
Unless you have a photographic memory, we advise you to listen to this commentary track while watching ‘Rose’, as some of the gags are rather visual in nature.
If you enjoy this podcast commentary track, please do let us know and – Who knows – perhaps we’ll be swayed to do more of these.
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This is awesome. However, I do not personally subscribe to the new numbering paradigm. Chris is and always will be, The 9th Doctor. Thanks guys!!!
I think the numbering is slightly messed up forever now… In my “head” I like to think of him as 9 then Tennant as 10… but “in universe” he is sadly now #10.
I agree completely on the numbering. I hope the controversy fades and Tennant remains 10 (he even had an official “Song for 10”), Smith as 11, Capaldi as 12, and War and Metacrisis remain Doctors, but not in this numbering system.
I agree with you….He will always be Nine in my own head cannon.
Hear, hear, Kyle. Eccleston’s face is the ninth to call himself Doctor (since Hurt didn’t until Smith and Tennant gave him “blessing” to do so, and even then he never did – did he? – and he promptly went in the TARDIS, presumably forgot everything about “Day of the Doctor”, and regenerated).
But, also as Kyle said, you guys did a great job with your podcast, as ever! I did, in fact, listen without watching the episode (I’ve seen it several times), but still enjoyed hearing your thoughts and reactions. And now you’re going to do “The Edge of Destruction”?! Outstanding. (And *not* the worst episode ever!)
I have made my feelings on Edge of Destruction very clear – it’s probably the episode in Doctor Who that Ponken/Flappy and I are most at odds on out of every one that has been reviewed… The thought of making Ponken watch it again is going to be delicious… 50 minutes of fun for me – and it should make a great episode.
I have a feeling that Ponken may change his opinion. I hated it the first time, but with every re-watch its grown on me. Now I actually enjoy EoD, and not just derisively.
Oh I cannot wait to do it, if there is a chance of this, Gina (and if you’re reading this around the end of February say Happy Birthday to our forever-young Gina G) – everyone knows my opinion of the episode it will actually be fun doing it with someone who I know certainly has a different take on it) – when we did “Rose” (apart from having had a glass of wine) I loved Rose, and was certainly an Ecclestone fan-boy, it was interesting knowing that Nine wasn’t “Loved” by Ponken to watch his impression change as the episode went on..
But everyone – please let us know if you liked the commentary track – I know it’s something different, and possibly wasn’t “universally loved” as an experiment – let us know if you want us to do more of them – we are definitely doing Edge next, that goes without staying for obvious reasons – but let us know whether you want us to continue doing New Who or whether you’d like us to do the classic ones that have already been reviewed – the choice (as they say is yours)
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Ok you wanted comments! First of all I have listened to all your shows and enjoy it. It’s gotten better and I recommend it to friends as one of the better Who podcasts out there. But the commentary needs work. Throughout history, the difference between a good and bad commentary is preparation AND making sure you don’t fall into the trap of doing more watching than talking. First of all, your show is about being irreverent and funny, and you start off saying you’ll be riff tracking the show, but as soon as I heard that Ponken hadn’t seen it in forever I knew he wasn’t gojng to be of much use since to do a good or funny commentary you simply HAVE to prepare by watching it AT LEAST once in advance, making your notes, coming up with jokes together… That’s how the MST3K guys have always done it and if you really want to compare yourselves to them or state you’ll be emulating them, well, ya gots to put the work into it. If you just want to be lazy and wing it that’s fine, but just don’t expect it to be great. And if you’re putting out a weekly show because you believe you have a unique voice and something to say, well dammit put the work into it! JD said he watched it recently which was promising, but he very quickly fell into the trap of not being clever and just narrating the show and/or forgetting he was doing a commentary and just sat there watching the show. In fact several times there were such long gaps of silence I had to make sure the podcast was still playing! Bottom line is there weren’t enough jokes to make it a truly funny commentary (and “look bad cgi” was only funny the first ten times) nor did you guys provide any real unique insight or views to have made it an intellectually interesting listen. I mean seriously, how useful is it to have Ponken keep asking questions and making it obvious that he just hasn’t seen the episode since it first aired? It just added nothing. You guys are very funny and quick and if you truly want to do riffy commentary tracks I’m sure they would be awesome. You just have to be willing to put the same sort of prep into it that the mst3k boys do. And I hope you choose to next time!
I would definitely dig hearing more commentaries, this one was excellent. Don’t really mind whether you go for classic or nu, though I could use an excuse for re-visiting some of the 80s era, maybe?
(actually, now I think about it, I would be quite curious to hear you responding to Delta & The Bannermen)
Delta is at least not overly poor – except for Mel… poor Bonnie Langford given a cipher of a character whose only purpose in Doctor Who Lore is to be derided and hated.
Hehe, yeah, poor Bonnie, I think Big Finish worked a minor miracle regarding Mel