386 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
386 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: Every Episode of Doctor Who
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---
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I'm going to try to watch every episode of Doctor Who, in order.
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Then I'm going to write up what I think.
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A few rules I'm setting out initially:
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* It's okay to skip an episode if I just can't handle it.
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* I don't have to write a big ol' treatise on each one.
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* I fully understand I lack cultural and temporal context for a lot of this,
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and I'm not going to feel bound to try and attain said.
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* I will be viewing this though my personal biases.
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* I may create more rules later on.
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# Season One
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## Story 1: Cavemen and Fire
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I guess this first story pretty clearly established that they travel
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through time.
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### S01E01 - An Unearthly Child
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Oh man, the pacing is just slow.
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I like how they're exploring "what if a time-travelling alien disguised itself as a human and went to high school."
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Okay, there are two high school teachers,
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and this highschool aged timelord girl who's the Doctor's grand-daughter.
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The doctor is kind of a jerk.
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### S01E02 - The Cave of Skulls
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Right, okay, cavemen. And of course they're all short-term-memory idiots.
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Okay, sure.
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### S01E03 - The Forest of Fear
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I forgot what this one was about,
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because I didn't decide to write things down until later.
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### S01E04 - The Firemaker
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The man teacher makes a fire because of course the man does that in 1963.
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And then the leader of the cavemen goes hunting.
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They make some skulls on fire to distract everybody,
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which is pretty cool,
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and then they escape.
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## Story 2: Daleks!
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Holy crap! I didn't realized the Daleks went all the way back to episode 4!
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Also there are some Dutch-looking people who are of course the good guys.
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### S01E05: The Dead Planet
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They find a dead city which, oops, high background radiation.
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Cool doors open up and some neat architecture.
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You know what, for the time and (I assume) paltry budget of the first season,
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this is pretty badass.
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This Doctor is a jerk. Faking a broken part to force everyone to do what
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he wants.
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### S01E06: The Survivors
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Daleks! It's cool that they waited until the second episode to bring them out.
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They're pretty clearly assholes right at the outset here.
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No moral ambiguity with the Daleks.
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The Doctor is pretty frail. Honestly, the rest of the crew seems more
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important than he is.
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### S01E07: The Escape
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I think we really meet the Norwegians here. I don't recall exactly.
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I'm pretty sure this is the one where
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the Norwegians try to meet up with the Daleks and forge a peace treaty,
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not knowing the Daleks are complete assholes.
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### S01E08: The Ambush
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They start taking out the Daleks. There appears to be some sort of
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creature inside, which can be taken out, and the dude teacher crawls in.
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This is actually pretty cool, I liked this one.
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### S01E09: The Expedition
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I think the guy teacher tries to convince the peaceniks to fight the Daleks,
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by presenting them with the possibility of him screwing up their stuff.
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The Norwegians traipse around through some cool looking sets to
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look like an alien landscape.
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I think this is when the Daleks realize they need high background radiation
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in order to survive, because the Norwegians (the Thaals I guess) anti-radiation
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drug kills them. They plan to dump ionizing radiation onto the planet's
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surface.
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A Thaal dude goes to get water and gets sucked up by a vortex or something.
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### S01E10: The Ordeal
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Half the episode was watching people jump over a chasm in a cave.
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The pacing on this, holy crap.
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I think this is the one where the Doctor screws up their electrical grid.
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### S01E11: The Rescue
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Everybody runs around in the cave some more, and eventually they pop out
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in the Dalek city.
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The Doctor and his Grand-daughter
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are imprisoned and he volunteers to teach them about his ship and how to
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travel through time if they let him go.
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The Norwegians and teachers rain holy hell and kill all the Daleks.
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Everybody goes home.
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Honestly, man, for being written 60 years ago, I'm surprised by how
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compelling the Daleks were written when viewed by me today.
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## Story 3: A Tardis Button Gets Stuck
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This story was bathouse crazy.
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Part of it was probably that I wasn't paying full attention,
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but it was also just nuts.
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### S01E12: The Edge of Destruction
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People alternate between normal and crazy.
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There's a lot of screaming.
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Random weirdness takes place and it doesn't make sense.
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Everybody turns of everybody and then suddenly it's fine and dandy.
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### S01E13: The Brink of Disaster
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The Doctor starts piecing together some clues.
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Turns out the Tardis itself has been trying to send them a message
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by dropping obscure clues.
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He figures it out and unsticks the "go back to where you just were" button,
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which, because it was stuck down, sent them back to the origin of the
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solar system.
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You know, not awful.
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It felt pretty incoherent but I was willing to go along.
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## Story 4: Doctor Who goes to China
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I guess the film for this was lost,
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so it was sort of a slideshow playing over a radio drama.
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### S01E14: The Roof of the World
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I made it as far as them getting into a hut in Mongolia and meeting
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Marco Polo,
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and then I skipped to the next story.
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### S01E15: The Singing Sands
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More British people pretending they're in China, I presume.
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### S01E16: Five Hundred Eyes
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Skipped
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### S01E17: The Wall of Lies
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Skipped
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### S01E18: Rider from Shang Tu
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Skipped
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### S01E19: Mightly Kublai Khan
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Skipped
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### S01E20: Assassin at Peking
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Skipped
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## Story 5: Finding the Chips
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The Scooby gang has to find some microchips scattered around the planet,
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so a machine can be repaired to mind-control everyone into
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being peaceful.
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### S01E21: The Sea of Death
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This was the episode during which I decided to start writing this.
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It's really interesting how they kept the sort of stumbling around delivery
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of lines, rather than shooting another take. I kind of like it.
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It's like watching a play.
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LOL at the alien costume with swim flippers.
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Frickin' Susan is, disappointingly, pretty much a horror movie character.
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Just sort of blithely wandering around all over the place and screaming
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a lot. Amusingly, they just assumed it was her from her scream.
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Okay, got the main plot point. The dude needs to recover some keys so they
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can mind-control people to make everybody peaceful. I really hope they don't
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just accept this without question.
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Their mime acting could use some continuity work, LOL.
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### S02E22: The Velvet Web
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When the statue's eyes lit up and the creepy lady came out to put rocks
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on everybody's forehead, it really felt like a 1970s episode from when
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I was a kid.
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Aww yeah, brains in jars getting killed.
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### S02E23: The Screaming Jungle
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The Screaming Jungle, eh? Must be about Susan.
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For crying out loud, yep, she's screaming again.
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I read that this actress quit early on.
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I don't blame her. What a limiting role to have to play.
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Now Barbara's screaming. A statue grabbed her.
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Now she's screaming again. A net fell on her.
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Third time screaming. Some plants grabbed her.
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Apparently the scream in the jungle was mostly Barbara.
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### S01E24: The Snows of Terror
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Okay, now Ian and Barbara are cold. And a beardo has rescued them.
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Ian left for some reason,
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and Beardo's giving off some really rapey vibes.
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Oh, sure enough, he's got all their junk.
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Susan and a blonde woman are in a cave.
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I've decided I don't like Susan at all,
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her sole role appears to be screwing things up and screaming.
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Oh boy. They're all in another cave, and they're going to explore it..
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Oh, okay, we don't have to watch that. They melt some ice and...
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Susan's screaming again as some dude with a cardboard sword wakes up.
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Great, they found another key.
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### S01E25: Sentence of Death
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The Scooby gang vs. the Japanese Criminal System, I guess.
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They assumed Ian is guilty and he has to prove he's not.
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The Doctor is going to be his defense.
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I've seen this episode at least three times on Star Trek,
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and once on the Brady Bunch.
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I might skip this one.
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Oh, neat, a dude who hits his wife.
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Okay, but you know what, I dig the costumes.
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### S01E26: The Keys of Marinus
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I don't like Barbara's hairstyle, though.
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Oh, snap! What a twist! I seriously was not expecting this one.
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I mean, I probably should have, from a casting standpoint, but I'm not
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really devoting a lot of mental energy to this.
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Okay, I guess they decided the mind-control machine wasn't so great.
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Kind of a naive take but whatever, it was a pretty fun story.
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## Story 6: Doctor Who goes to Mexico
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A bunch of white people pretend to be Aztecs, and explore the moral
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aspects of human sacrifice.
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To its credit, there is at least lip service to the notion that
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this is some other culture and maybe you can't impose your current moral
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structure over it.
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### S01E27: The Temple of Evil
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Oh goodie. Barbara's gone and gotten herself in trouble again.
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I'm not sure I can stomach this one.
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Yay, let's focus on human sacrifice. And let's frame it as summoning rain,
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because I'm sure that was the beginning and end of the philosophy behind it.
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LOL the sword fight.
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Haha, Susan's screaming desecrated an Aztec temple.
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### S01E28: The Warriors of Death
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Damn, the Doctor's pissed.
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Holy crap, the Vulcan Nerve Pinch! 2 years before it showed up in Star Trek!
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More 1960s dudes wrasslin'. But there's a twist, he got scratched.
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### S01E29: The Bride of Sacrifice
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Aha, the old Saffron maneuver, eh? Looks like the Doctor's gettin' hitched!
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The gang has a moral dilemma about altering the culture of the Aztecs by
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Barbara abusing her god status to outlaw human sacrifice. The Doctor gets
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married or engaged or something. Susan finally expresses an emotion other
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than terror:
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![well hello there](susan-well-hello-there.mp4)
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I'm back to being uncomfortable with the cultural framing here. I mean,
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maybe this is useful for viewing 1960s British culture, but that's still
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too recent for me to not feel squicky about it. The only reason I didn't
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skip this entire story is because Wikipedia said it was one of the best
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stories of the entire franchise.
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### S01E30: The Day of Darkness
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They found a tunnel or something, to get back into the burial chamber
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containing the Tardis. Susan is going to get married or sacrificed or
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something. Ian does the Vulcan Nerve Pinch on a white guy dressed as a
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brown guy, saving the white lady. They find a way to escape, and
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somebody gets sacrificed, and then Barbara gets to watch Susan get
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sacrificed or something, I'm not sure.
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Oh, more 1960s dudes fighting. I skipped it. I presume the British
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high school teacher beats the Aztec warrior who's been training his
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entire life.
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Barbara has some sort of moral quandry about her inability to change
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the past, which I guess was the point of the story. I sure hope
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they don't wind up on earth again in the next story.
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## Story 7: The Sensorites
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### S01E31: Strangers in Space
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They're in a spaceship, thank goodness. The lighting is pretty bad.
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Okay there are these sensorites messing with peoples' minds. Aw, crap,
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we're sort of on Earth. At least it's in the future.
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This is a cool premise,
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taking over a ship by manipulating everybody's emotions.
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### S01E32: The Unwilling Warriors
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Hey! Creepy! I like this story.
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Susan is doing something! Nice!
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Susan makes a sacrifice
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### S01E33: Hidden Danger
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Susan needs to get out of this place! The Doctor's being a real jerk. Again.
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Seems like she's growing up and needs her own space.
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Anyway. The Sensorites are cool. And I'm glad Barbara seems to get an equal
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say in matters. Like, she just argued with Ian about something, and she was
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like "well then it's settled, we'll do it my way".
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Still can't abide her hairstyle, though.
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Ian seems really British. It's not difficult to imagine pretty much
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everything he does being done by an older dude with a brandy in his hand.
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He doesn't seem to get to grow as a character,
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he's already fully grown, I guess.
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I dig that the sensorites have internal debates.
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## Story 8: Dr Who vs the French Revolution
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I just couldn't get myself to care about another one of these.
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