Doctor Who: Classic 4x6: "The Moonbase" Parts 1-4 | Reaction!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ม.ค. 2025
- ALL THE CONSPIRACIES ARE TURE on Season 4 Serial 6 of Classic Doctor Who: The Moonbase Parts 1-4!
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I almost forgot to put in the reminder that there won't be a new video next week! We'll be back on Jan. 18 with 4x7: "The Macra Terror."
The moonbase is rele when troughton finds how to play his doctor, knows exactly how he should play it. Hope you all had a great christmas!
How are you able to do that when there is no such thing as Macra?
15:43 Interesting that Dad points out that "we were just beginning to learn about anæsthetics, germs, microbiology", as the Doctor tells us he got his medical degree under (Joseph) Lister, who was a pioneer of antiseptic surgery.
Richard is spot on about Jamie not having much to do is because the script didn’t include him to begin with. Also as a massive fan of Gerry Anderson it’s nice to here him mention Fireball XL5 and Thunderbirds.
33:25 The Faceless Ones does have two complete eps, 1 and 3. But the recent release also provided animated versions. I understand why as switching from animation to live action and back can take you out of it a bit. I would suggest you watch the live-action versions of ep 1 and 3 if you can.
Edit: 1:00:35 No, they had them for a while. They just decided to animate them for visual consistency.
'The Moonbase' notes:
Episode 1: Viewing figures = 8.1 million. Chart position = 56.
Episode 2: Viewing figures = 8.9 million. Chart position = 36.
Episode 3: Viewing figures = 8.2 million. Chart position = 49.
Episode 4: Viewing figures = 8.1 million. Chart position = 44.
Recording dates: 4, 11, 18, 25 February 1967.
Studios: Riverside 1 & Lime Grove D
Transmission dates : 11, 18, 25 February, 4 March 1967.
Episode 4 sees the series returning to the older Lime Grove studios from the early Hartnell days. The recording suffered from sound problems whereby the talkback on the floor manager's headphones was picked up by the studio microphones. On the existing print you can hear things like "Cue and cut!" at the start of some scenes, for example.
The serial was sold to Australia, Uganda, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Zambia.
The film can for the New Zealand print of Episode 3 was found in 1989, though sadly it didn't have the episode in it!
Episode 2 now gains the highest audience for a Troughton episode up to this point, with a strong showing for all four episodes.
Comments in the Audience Report were generally positive ("This is what we love - makes us shiver" / "The dream of many to reach the Moon"), so the production team would note this story down as being a success.
You know you’re in trouble when your parents use your full first name. You know you’re really in trouble when they use your full name (including your middle name).
33:22 WAIT, WAIT! The Faceless Ones Episodes 1 & 3 do exist! They only animated them so that regular viewers could have a consistent viewing experience!
Let us not talk of Atlantis. 'Tis a silly place.
MOON!
MOOOOOOON!!!!!!
"It's only a model." "Shhh!" (~Dad)
48:00 A lot of early TV was performed live. The BBC obtained its first ampex 2" quad recorder in 1958. The BBC favoured mainly studio production with video cameras (and the odd bit of location filming), while ITV did branch a bit more into film productions if they had the money (normally by selling the show to the US market). The first series of ITV's Avengers were mostly performed live, while series two and three were produced on VT and series four onwards was all on film.
TV wasn't seen as important and programmes were seen as disposable.
One of the reasons for no repeats was actor's unions. Repeats were heavily restricted because unions were scared it would lead to less new shows being made, so less work for their members. Also the BBC in particular felt like the license-paying public would feel cheated if they showed repeats instead of making new stuff. Coronation Street, which Richard mentioned, is still going today, and I believe every single episode exists, all the way back to the start in 1960.
Curious that the Cybermen have lace-up shoes that I'm sure they would be unable to tie with their three-fingered hand design.
They should get velcro. Velcro is amazing.
Fun fact: After 'The Macra Terror' Troughton only has 2 more 4 part stories!
You could have subtitles if you used Britbox, just saying.... Anyway, great story with an iconic little speech ("There are some corners of the universe") by the Doctor, which is a character defining moment for not just the second Doctor, but the Doctor's character as a whole. This speech defines the Doctor as someone who travels the universe fighting evil and helping out wherever he can for the next 54 years. I've also gotta say that it's very promising that you liked this story so much. Moonbase kinda sets the tone for the rest of Troughton's era. A lot of his other stories after this follow Moonbase's example in terms of its style and presentation (base under siege). Some people will argue that this made the show formulaic, but it was a successful formula that made the show more consistently good. This is where the Troughton era truly began and there is some truly great stuff coming your way....
The guy who wrote this story and The Tenth Planet also wrote Tomb of The Cybermen
I do love how almost every time we see the cybermen they have a different design where as the daleks stay relatively the same. Very much on brand for the ethics
The Moonbase is the story where the Second Doctor starts to develop into the character that we know him as, with the air of impish silliness that allows his enemies to underestimate him and fail to realise that he's the one in control. The story itself isn't the best - the characters are kind of bland, and the story features some pretty silly moments, like the tea tray blocking the breach in the base - but it has some fun moments, and some more great Cyberman cliffhangers. Part 2 feels like a predecessor to Moffat's "the monster is in the room with us" scares, and part 3's shot of the Cybermen walking across the lunar surface is absolutely iconic
That big prop almost fell on top of Patrick Troughton.
The Moonbase is actually an earlier animated missing serial. The Moonbase came out 3 years earlier than Power of the Daleks.
The cleaning fluid is known as a Polly Cocktail.
32:17 The problem isn't exactly "too much effect", but "no" effect. The voices weren't treated electronically as would happen later, but produced in real time by off-screen voice actors holding electrolarynxes to their throats. (Electrolarynxes being those handheld devices used by laryngectomy patients.)
The three fingers are to imply that the Cybermen have upgraded their hands to be fully mechanical.
This was a better episode for Polly; not only did she think of the cleaning solution (acetone, the key component in nail varnish remover, is a plastic solvent) but also had some good lines with the Doctor. As others have commented, Jamie hadn't been added to the cast when this script was written so had little to do.
The reasons for junking of programmes made perfect sense at the time (and the practice was common among most broadcasters). Domestic repeats were limited by the contracts with performers (and at this point there was little opportunity any way as the show ran virtually year round). Overseas sales were therefore the only commercial value in the recordings. To accommodate these sales, 16mm prints were made (to overcome the different transmission standards) after which the tape masters were seen as being rather superfluous.
At the time, the BBC had no mandate (or budget) to maintain an archive of video recordings although they did have an archive of film material (which didn't, however, include the prints made for overseas sales as these were not considered original material). The problem was that the tape was both bulky (2 inch Ampex Quad machines ran at 15" per second, so a typical 25 minute episode would use nearly 2,000 feet - about half a standard reel) and costly - the tape was in the region of £500 per reel--which would have been a significant proportion of the weekly budget for the show!
It was expected that tape would be routinely wiped and reused when the content no longer had any value. This was one of the reasons why editing was discouraged. As electronic editing was not yet in use at the BBC, they were still in the days of physical cut and paste (which involved developing solutions--essentially a suspension of fine ferrous dust-- a microscope to see the frame boundaries in the magnetic pattern, a razor and a steady hand) and each splice weakened the tape making it more likely to snap and thus be eventually unusable for reuse.
The attitude of senior management seems to have been that television programmes were essentially ephemeral in nature; viewed once then gone. Any residual value in overseas sales was a bonus but not something that was terribly important. The mechanics of overseas sales seems to have been driven very much by cost. The idea was that the same set of prints would circulate from one broadcaster to another, in order to save on shipping, with the final broadcaster in the chain either returning the prints to London or destroying them (depending on the BBC's requirements at the time). Of course, people being people, the prints often just got shoved to the back of a store room only to be discovered decades later by those hunting for lost episodes.
The final nail in the coffin for the earliest seasons was the growth of colour television. Executives basically took the view that the monochrome recordings (and prints) no longer had a market so pushed ahead with a purge of this worthless stuff cluttering their stores. I think we can forgive their failure to foresee the arrival of home video given that the tape decks they were using in studio were still priced in the hundreds of thousands (pounds or dollars, take your pick) and the continued interest in a 50+ year old show.
Incidentally, the BBC still doesn't archive all it's output. Apparently, for shows with no lasting importance, eg game shows, only a representative sample is retained long term.
My first encounter with The Moonbase was the novelisation in the mid-70s. I seem to remember that the scientists were more international than just European. My memory tells me that one was Nigerian, but I have no evidence to hand for that. In terms of conversion, you may recall that Toberman was part-converted in Tomb. It is not directly mentioned, but he has a metal arm; take a look during your re-watch. It will be interesting to see if Alex recognises a certain actress when it comes to The Faceless Ones.
Ooh! I'll definitely be on the lookout! I don't know who I'd recognize in 1967 but I'm intrigued!
This is the first Story to have a Laser beam! so thats cool, also yes Jamie had not been created yet so hes inclusion was a last minute thing. In the Script there was an Explanation on how the Cybermen Survived but it was Sadly cut out. these Cybermen come from the first Mondas Colony Telos letting you know the next Storys Animation has a scene cut in episode 1 so id recommend you see the recon for Episode 1
It was a last-minute decision to make Jamie a companion so Dad is right about that being the reason he's knocked out for a couple of episodes in this story. In Underwater Menace, half of Ben's lines were given to Jamie, much to actor Michael Craze's annoyance. Yes, the Cybermen can be killed by cleaning chemicals, but to be fair so could you if you were to ingest them. It's supposed to be an international crew on the Moonbase, when Hobson introduces Niels he refers to him as "the Mad Dane". These Cybermen are from Telos, a world the Cybermen conquered/colonized, which became their new "home world" following the destruction of Mondas. There's a nice moment in this story where the Doctor delivers his "There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things" line, where his usual clowning facade is dropped for a moment and you catch a glimpse of how seriously the Doctor actually takes this threat. I love little moments like that.
I think this is the first Troughton story I watched. On the Lost in Time box set, with the missing episode audio. I liked what I saw, but I wanted to see the whole thing!
I believe this was written without the Cybermen, then when they proved popular they re-wrote it to include them. It was also written before Jamie joined the cast, hence why he does so little in this story and the next one. I believe his actor says in the making-of on the DVD that "It was the most I've ever been paid for laying down".
The 2020 date for Power of the Daleks comes from a trailer that aired the week beforehand. The same trailer which gives us a clip from episode 1.
The gold thing isn't established until the 4th Doctor's era.
With regards to the thinking, I believe that's supposed to be what's happening at the start of The Underwater Menace, but you can't tell in a recon.
Faceless Ones episode 1 and 3 both exist, however they were animated along with the missing episodes. So make sure you watch the existing eps, not the animated versions.
Hey Richard, Alexander! Early on in the history of British television, agreements with the actors' union Equity, other trade bodies, limited the number of times a single program could be broadcast, usually only twice. Reshowings were limited to a period such as five years. Unions' feared that if channels filled their schedules with repeats, actors and other production staff would have less work because fewer new shows would be made. It also had the side effect of causing many programs to be junked after the repeat rights expired, being considered to be of no further use by broadcasters. Junkings were continuing into the nineties at least.
Oh, Never consider the last year to be the worst of all possible years. You're historians. Time points and laughs at historians!
Macra defeated with tartar sauce.
Kemmdog73: I prefer Macra with cocktail sauce or drawn butter. Save the tartar sauce for fried fish! ~Dad
@@richardlemin7840 That does sound better
Niks was indeed wearing a Danish flag, i alsomspotted characters with Australian and Nigerian flags.
This is my favourite cyberman story
I'm curious. Does Macra not ring any bells for you? I haven't noticed any comments on it.
European economic community probably at the time. Pan European or pan Atlantic organisations are common in the 60s who
Best animation for Ben I would say for definite. He looks bad in the others
This is my 2nd favourite doctor who story all over
I love it too! Criminally underrated story, just a lot of fun
Jamie didn't have much to do because the writer of this story didn't like the idea of a historical character being in the far future which is why Jamie didnt do much.
It was a worldwide collaboration. I think one of the men had a Nigerian flag.
The animation in this is so much better than Power of the Daleks
Some of it isn't standard animation. They employed rotoscoping for many shots.
Episodes 1 and 3 of the faceless ones exist. You should watch the actual episodes not their animated versions because they exist. If the rest survived those 2 wouldn’t be animated