someone who's doing some things
I watch TV. That’s what this category is all about. Although I don’t watch a huge amount I do watch some, and, occasionally I mention it here.
I finished watching all 6 DVDs of season 1. What a great show the Rockford files was. Loads of fun. Never too serious, just enjoyable. It mostly followed a pattern, but not too much of a pattern to get dull. I dare say that season 2 will be more of the same, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
So season 2, here we go.
I’ve liked the Rockford files for as long as I can remember, and the Christmas before last I got seasons 1 and 2. There are 6 seasons in all I believe, and once I’ve finished the first 2 I may well move on and watch the lot. However, one thing that I always loved about the show was Jim Rockford’s answerphone message at the start of every show. They never seemed to have very much to do with the episode, but they were always funny and gave you something of Jim Rockford too.
So I thought I would post all of them, yes, all of them, here. Not all at once you understand, but maybe one a day. That’s the plan anyway.
In my ongoing plan to slowly acquire all of the 3rd Doctor DVDs, these are the two I bought next. Anyone who knows the third doctor will realise that I’m not doing this in any kind of order at all. At least, not so far. It has been a bit random, but I’ll probably start collecting in order quite soon.
However, these two stories came as a boxed set, so there was little choice in that.
The Curse of Peladon is the earlier story, and the first time that the 3rd Doctor visits Peladon. It’s a good story by any standards. Of course the production values are early 70s TV and that probably doesn’t stand the test of time. However, I really enjoyed it, especially because one of the main characters is played by the son of the second Doctor.
The second story was right at the end of Mr Pertwee’s time as the Doctor. It is another good one, in my view, and again, I enjoyed it a lot.
At some point I’m going to go through all of the 3rd Doctor stories in order, when I’ve got them of course, and that will be truly epic.
So I’m slowly collecting the Third Doctor, and, currently, not in any kind of chronological order, as I’m sure you can tell. However, I will be remedying that soon enough. For now I’ve been watching the Colony in Space, which, certainly by today’s standards is a very violent story. It was the 70’s of course and different standards applied, we shouldn’t forget that. Even so, I think that the body count was probably high for its time.
All things being equal I thought it was a good story. Of its time of course, and quite different in every way to the Doctor Who of today (that’s a good thing of course). The Master is possibly one of the most changed elements from later Doctor Who. Roger Delgado’s Master is very different even from the later Master of Logopolis (a personal fav of mine).
It’s certainly interesting to watch, and completely enjoyable to see Mr Pertwee. He was an excellent Doctor.
This is a great story. Sarah-Jane’s first outing with the Doctor, and a great one to start off with too. Sontarans are always good fun right!
I hadn’t seen this in ages, but it really has stood the test of time, and, as ever, Pertwee is brilliant.
I’ve said it before, I’m a big fan of Planet of the Apes, in all its iterations. Of course, my favourites are the original films from 1968 to 1973. Above is the TV series which came out in 1974 and ran for only 14 episodes.
Having watched it again in 2016 I realise that it was very much like a lot of other TV series in the 70’s. Built to run as long as possible, with a handful (in this case 2 humans and an ape) of good guys going from place to place and doing good, righting wrongs etc. There are plenty of examples of this kind of TV show from the period.
The sad thing is that the TV version of Planet of the Apes wasn’t about the story at all. It started off being about the story and then devolved into a weekly story about going from village to village. When it ran out of episodes the series didn’t even end. There was no closure at all. It was a shame really.
So now I’ve only got one more DVD to watch. The animated series, which is apparently not bad. We’ll see, and I’ll let you know what I think.
This is a great old story 3rd Doctor story. An excellent performance from Roger Delgado and of course from Mr Pertwee himself. I really liked this story and it has been restored beautifully as well.
This version comes on 2 discs. The second disc has some really good extras on it and some very interesting revelations about how the production was put together and the issues that it faced.
The restoration job on the series was really good, both picture and audio. I have to say I was very impressed with it.
I’d seen this story on TV in the not too distant past so it wasn’t totally new to me, but it was good to see it nevertheless.
I’ve watched all of the original films, the TV series, and this is the final piece in the puzzle for me. It’ll be interesting to see how this one leaves things. From what I’ve read it is quite different from the previous interpretations.
Of course I’ve still got the book to read too.
These pictures are from the upcoming new episodes that were funded via Kickstarter last year. I’m really looking forward to seeing them, and in preparation I’ve been making my way through all of the original episodes, which is no minor task I can tell you. I’m only disc 4 so far, but it’s worth it. I’m enjoying seeing them again.
I was researching around the Planet of the Apes stories to see what other things I’d missed, and I came across this spin off which was made after the original film, and after the TV series. It has a different view of the ape culture where the apes are more sophisticated and have a higher technology culture than portrayed in both the films and in the TV series. Apparently this is more in keeping with the original book, which I’m sad to say I’ve never read! I must put that right soon though.
So I’m planning on getting hold of this at some point soon, although possibly after I’ve watched the whole of the TV series.
I am Ashley Elsdon 