Pounded in the butt by dialectical materialism.

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Elizabeth Sandifer

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

14 Comments

  1. William Whyte
    September 2, 2011 @ 4:36 am

    "1963 Doctor Who with a leading man who can do running scenes better" — which is amusing, even though it's true, because due to Pertwee's bad back he's probably the second-worst runner of all the Doctors. There's a lot of chase scenes shot from directly in front in this era.

    Reply

  2. William Whyte
    September 2, 2011 @ 4:47 am

    Also, I presume you've seen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxSj71kiEZM. You couldn't make a story as straightforward as this in modern Doctor Who but, if they did, and if they did it like this, everyone would be talking about it.

    Reply

  3. Wm Keith
    September 2, 2011 @ 11:22 pm

    Thanks for the unintended lesson on the power of a good cliffhanger.

    Reply

  4. Elizabeth Sandifer
    September 3, 2011 @ 6:22 am

    Watching that trailer just reminds me how much better this story would have been if there were merely "over nine thousand" Daleks. And that I'd meant to put a joke about that in the entry.

    But yes – that trailer very much captures what this story is – a big Dalek Epic. Which, in 1973, was not tired, had not been seen by any of the audience in years.

    Reply

  5. Seeing_I
    September 7, 2011 @ 6:39 am

    Rats, I am sorry I missed you at DragonCon (since I am just reading this entry afterwards). If you noticed a Robot Monster or The Fly wandering around, that was me!

    Reply

  6. The Lord of Ábrocen Landmearca
    September 18, 2011 @ 1:05 pm

    ARGH, I'M SORRY, BUT IN MY HEAD YOU SOUND LIKE BILL BRYSON! Bryson is, of course, the greatest case of an American culturally dignified by Britain to not sound like an American (says the Canadian). Given that you still sound very, oh so very American, I can not watch your video blogs.

    Reply

  7. Elizabeth Sandifer
    September 18, 2011 @ 1:10 pm

    I am wholly unable to come up with an even remotely compelling answer to that charge. Guilty as charged. I encourage someone to just dub out my narration and replace it with someone who can speak. It doesn't even have to be English. Replace me with anything from the British Isles. Gaelic. Welsh. Cornish. Please. Save me from myself.

    (Actually, the video blogs come out in something very close to my teaching voice, which has developed with few explicit goals other than being able to cover material at an obscenely high clip without ever actually becoming incoherent. I long for when I spend a long enough time continually in the UK that this voice morphs into something remotely dignified.)

    Reply

  8. The Lord of Ábrocen Landmearca
    September 18, 2011 @ 2:00 pm

    Er, to clarify, not because your voice is BAD, but because it doesn't match with what's in my head, and I get confused and panicky.

    Reply

  9. tantalus1970
    January 23, 2012 @ 3:04 pm

    Its got no depth to it at all, but it's a great adventure, which is what Nation was going for. According to the DVD, when Nation wrote it, he was so far behind where the show was that he gave each episode individual names.

    The big failure for me is the location filming, which, being another quarry, has no connection to the world depicted in the studio sets. In fact, going on memory, I think the location filming for this story was a complete waste of time, unless they simply couldn't build a pool set in the studio.

    Reply

  10. Henry R. Kujawa
    August 12, 2012 @ 5:58 pm

    My main problem with this story has always been that, as boring as "FRONTIER IN SPACE" was, with its incessant runaraound, and The Doctor getting captured & imprisoned, then escaping, then getting captured again, and on and on, was that, unlike most stories of that nature, it actually seemed to be building to something. But thben you get to the end of Part 6, and you expect it to keep building…

    …and then "Part 7" (figuratively speaking) seems to have NO connection with the previous 6, nor does anything that comes after. I've seen "PLANET" multiple times by now, and it seems to me, it never builds any momentum in its entire 6 parts.

    Well, actually, that's another problem. Make that 5 parts. Because what I saw on PBS in the 80's– and what I still have in my collection– is missing either part 3 or part 4. I did read the novelization, so that helped. But, not much.

    This last time around, I skipped straight from "CARNIVAL OF MONSTERS" directly to "THE TIME WARRIOR". Yeah– really.

    Reply

  11. thingsiambotheredby
    May 11, 2013 @ 7:37 pm

    One thing I find ridiculous about this story is the fact that the Thals seem to have either chased the Daleks away from Skarro or manage to co-exist with them. The fact that they can't even exterminate their technologically primitive peace-loving neighbours and yet are trying to conquer an entire galaxy makes the the latter fact looks rather preposterous. The idea was dubious enough in The Daleks, at this point it just seems that Terry Nation is bringing back the Thals without thinking at all about the ramifications.

    Reply

  12. John Binns
    March 20, 2014 @ 9:07 am

    Who is it that consigns the Doctor's first visit to Skaro to the status of 'legend', apparently (if the dialogue of The Dalek Invasion of Earth and Frontier in Space are to be believed) long before it 'happened'? Why, it's that chap Bernard Horsfall, from the Land of Fiction…

    Reply

  13. John Binns
    August 5, 2014 @ 5:01 am

    Also, what was the Doctor's message to the Time Lords in episode one? Could they have caused the icecano to erupt at precisely the right time in episode six? How would they do that? With the Doomsday Weapon perhaps? I'll get my coat.

    Reply

  14. Jacob Boyett
    July 3, 2023 @ 6:17 pm

    This feels like as good as any of a place to ask, but are the video blogs archived anywhere? I’m going through the blog as I rewatch the show and it’d be cool to be able to see the whole thing.

    Reply

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