someone who's doing some things
Old but not bad, that’s what I mean by vintage.
Currently I don’t even have a ZX Spectrum, but I did, a long while ago, and one day I’ll have one again. When I do I’ll be running this among a number of music programs that I used to use a long time ago. That’ll be fun.
The Timex 1000 is the US equivalent to the ZX81. I was given it when in Canada last week and it looks like it’s in pretty good shape actually. I’m going to be very careful about firing it up though as I don’t want to get the power supply wrong in any way. When it’s all up and running I’ll post some stuff about what I’m doing with it.
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.
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 kickstarted these new episodes a while back and I’m really looking forward to them, but I’m expecting to only watch them when I’ve got through the entire existing set of episodes. Only then will I watch the new ones. I want to get it done in order you know.
Anyway, the picture above was on the Christmas email from the project. It looks pretty cool. I can’t wait to see what they’ve done.
I am Ashley Elsdon 