A DVD in the mail

Ooh, The Web Planet isn’t on YouTube…because it’s out on DVD.  So now I have to quickly watch one of the movies I have at home so that I can receive this DVD in the mail.  Interestingly, Netflix has 1975 listed as the date for this serial, despite the fact that it actually broadcast in early 1965.

 

The Keys of Marinus

YouTube to the rescue: the entire serial #5 — The Keys of Marinus — is online, in 18 parts.  I had a reasonably enjoyable though longish evening of watching the entire serial, all six episodes.  The plot involves the doctor and his companions arriving on the planet Marinus (a land with acid lakes and sand converted into glass), and being sent on a quest to recover the five microchips — keys — for some machine that will bring justice and peace to the planet.  The story really has little to do with hard science fiction, but at least it’s not like the purely historical approach of The Aztecs serial that follows.  The characters didn’t change much, and exhibited the same traits as before: Ian the Brave, Susan the Frightened, Barbara the Investigative.  Notably, Ian was condemned to death at one point in the serial, and didn’t really do much on his own to get out of the predicament: perhaps that’s fine, he’ll have a chance to show off later, but he’s definitely one to get into trouble without a good plan, lately.  The Doctor was a bit Sherlock Holmesy here, but wasn’t really the star of the serial as much as the companions.

Also I continued filling out the spreadsheet, getting some of the basics filled out through season 4.

 

Getting organized

So a cursory search of Google Video shows that a whole bunch of old episodes that aren’t at Netflix are readily available (not sure if the complete serials are, but it’s better than nothing). So I think my decision to follow through with option 2 stands from now on.

So in order to get started, I’m putting together a spreadsheet (“live” view) where I will keep track of all episodes, where it’s available, and whether I’ve seen it. Red for “not available”, green for “all good”, and yellow for everything else or when info isn’t available or I just haven’t gotten it yet. I’ve only documented through Season 2, so it will obviously need much more work.

 

Three paths to the Doctor

I still haven’t decided how to continue watching the episodes. Of the old series, so far, I’ve watched the first three serials, plus The Azteks serial from the first season, plus the Dalek serial from the second serial.  It seems that Netflix is truly out of disks up through season 5 or 6 (by which time we get to the Second Doctor already).  So my choices appear to be:

1. Watch just what Netflix has, in rough sequence, even if it means jumping very rapidly through time.
2. Try to find the easy-to-find episodes (youtube, google video, and a couple of the better independent video stores can help here), and watch these in rough order.  Only jump time when spending a half-hour of searching per serial yields no results.
3. Go very slowly, acquiring an episode from tough-to-find sources if necessary, preserving the time jump only in cases of great difficulty or serious expense.

I’ve not decided, but I’m leaning towards the second option.  This will necessitate building a spreadsheet of all episodes, probably, so that I can keep track of theoretical availability and my attempts to find the episodes.