And don’t forget that they’ll be riffing “Samurai Cop” on April 13th. Tickets are available here.
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RiffTrax Live to Feature “The Five Doctors” on August 17thHere’s the announcement:
49 Replies to “RiffTrax Live to Feature “The Five Doctors” on August 17th”Commenting at Satellite News
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Huh. Wonder if that means we’ll see the Cushing movies back up on the site?
Let’s see, Five Doctors..that one still had That One Guy Who Looked Like Moe in it, right?
Patrick Troughton, yes. Plus Jon Pertwee, Peter Davison, some guy dressed up like William Hartnell, and Tom Baker as Doctor Not Appearing In This Film.
Was this the title they couldn’t reveal? Because I have to say, if it is, I’m underwhelmed.
Looking forward to this, but best Doctor not in it. That would be Colin Baker.
They did a great job with the Cushing movies, so I figure this should be interesting.
“Vengeance on Varos” would be a good riffing choice for him. Sil is more annoying than most of the Japanese monster children.
As a massive Whovian, I’m totes stoked about this. I hope this is the first of many classic!Who riffs.
If they want to take on other Who episodes, “The Gunfighters” should be job one. The Brits can’t do “Gunsmoke” any better than we can do “Downton Abbey”
doctor who stinks and rifftrax is tiresome
Allons-y! At first I thought August 17th was the eclipse day but thankfully it’s not. FYI someone else did a bit of riffing on this…there’s a hidden commentary on The Five Doctors dvd which includes David Tennant and a few others who have worked on New Who. It’s not all riffing but they certainly had fun with what they were watching.
I doubt they waited this long just to keep us in suspense; I expect if they’d been able to advertise a Doctor Who show before the Kickstarter ended, they would have.
So either the deal just closed, or there was some kind of condition where they weren’t allowed to use Doctor Who in their Kickstarter promotions.
While I agree on both points:
Even if Kevin may be an actual Who fan BTS, and not the nerd-basher he pretended to be in Servo’s “Fugitive Alien” riff (y’know, the one I–look, okay, never mind), I don’t SERIOUSLY think they chose this one out of a thorough season-by-season comprehensive search of which particular crime of the John Nathan Turner era to heckle.
It’s Rifftrax–That’s like saying they make a deep analysis of which Lucas Prequel movie to heckle.
FTR, even Frazier “Jamie” Hines hated the Five Doctors special, and the Colin-Troughton “Two Doctors” was made just to apologize for the one crappy “illusion” scene that he and “Zoe” got out of the whole thing, when fans wanted to see #2 and Jamie back together. And Dalek fans were even worse off.
(Although, reportedly, it was originally going to be part of the story that Fake Stodgy William Hartnell really was fake.)
Heeeeey, wait a minute — I’m starting to think you knew Patrick Troughton’s name all along!
Best Doctor Who = Jon Pertwee.
I guess Kevin is a fan; I don’t know about Mike. From the Cushing riffs, and the fact that Bill wore a Tom Baker scarf to one of the live shows, I know he’s a Whovian. And, from the riffing of “Doctor Who and the Daleks”, he provided one of my all-time favorite lines:
“I mean, he’s not young and dashing, he doesn’t have some weird psycho-sexual yearning for his Companion. I mean, what is “Doctor Who”, if not that?”
Great dig on one of the ongoing themes of NuWho that the show has run into the ground. And I wouldn’t mind hearing RT do the looooooong ending to “The End of Time”, especially the whiny, “I don’t want to go!”
I respect your choice, but I prefer early Tom Baker.
If you are a Who fan and haven’t seen it, check out Peter Davison’s The Five-ish Doctors. It’s hilarious.
I could never get into the new Who, but I am a big fan of the Big Finish audio productions of the old doctors (save Sylvester McCoy, still don’t like him).
I’m not a “Doctor Who” fan (see Crow’s comment in “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank), so what the hell is “The Five Doctors?
It’s all the Doctor Whos up to that point teaming up. Well, except for the first guy, he died and they had someone replace him. And not really Tom Baker, they just edited in footage of him from an aborted series.
So it’s like a Justice League of Doctor Whos, but with Dean Cain instead of Christopher Reeve and footage from one of Christian Bale’s vacations instead of Batman.
Those who remember Douglas Adams script-editing for the BBC Tom Baker years know that “Hitchhiker’s Guide”‘s Ford Prefect WAS the Fourth Doctor:
“Time is an illusion…Lunchtime, even more so.”
It was the 20th anniversary show, by which point Peter Davison was in the story and they were up to Five–
Whereas “The Three Doctors” had been the 10th anniversary show, with only Troughton and Pertwee, and a retired William Hartnell having to phone in his bits offscreen because he wasn’t quite dead yet.
Mixed feelings on this one. Seems a little unfair to rip apart a show made on a BBC shoestring budget that was really only intended for kids. They made the best show they could with the resources they had, and it’s as good as anything else on TV at the time. Pretty good Terrance Dicks script too, in fact I can’t think of anything bad or embarrassing story-wise in this one (the moon doesn’t turn out to be a giant egg, etc.). Yeah, there’s actually a lot more examples of dumb stories to make fun of if you looked through episodes from the past couple years.
If “low budget/for kids” are disqualifying factors, then that would rule out basically every Santa Claus movie that MST3K or Rifftrax (or, for that matter, Cinematic Titanic) have ever done, plus most of the educational shorts.
It contradicts The War Games so hard that fans invented an entire missing season to explain how it makes any sense, and eventually published actual officially-licensed novels set during the missing season.
But yeah, it’s still less dumb than that damn moon egg thing; you’re right about that.
I’ll be more specific: “The Five Doctors” was made FOR kids, and that generation of kids enjoyed it. It did what it was meant to do. Riffing is funnier when the movie is a failure in some way, or made as a cynical cash-in, or what-have-you. I’m fine with riffing shows that were pandering/insulting to kids – you can’t tell me there’s anyone on the planet who fondly remembers “The Ice Cream Bunny” or “Fun in Balloonland” from their youth as a great show. There’s a big distinction there.
And yeah, it contradicts “The War Games”, so what? Would a kid in ’83 watching “The Five Doctors” for the first time care? I didn’t remember it until you reminded me. The story on its own is fine, I don’t care about the geeky canon/continuity arguments, most people don’t.
They’ll probably have a field day with Richard Hurndall’s at best passing resemblance to William Hartnell.
A little conflicted over this, as Who was one of those things that made childhood suck a bit less. And I’ve been catching up on all the existing 60’s episodes lately. Troughton has become my favorite Doctor, and I grew up on Tom Baker.
I know there are no sacred cows where Rifftrax is concerned, but is it really worth risking war with England? ;)
Look, if it’s funny, it’s fine.
If it’s not, they’ve failed.
As always, it’s really that simple.
War with England!? What are they going to do, lob scones at us?
Specifically, it was picked because OO, it has a FAN-FOLLOWING! Just like riffing Marvel, Tolkien, Game of Thrones, etc. And if it has a stereotypically “nerdy” fan following that the very utterance of its name can conjure up schoolyard giggles, like Twilight or Avatar, so much the better (for them).
Obviously the latter’s not the case with Kevin and possibly Bill’s familiarity with the Classic series, but as long as there are gushy fangirls to embarrass the New Series fandom, RT will smell the cheap-gag money to exploit while bully-mocking.
(If the movie is a “cynical cash-in”, it’s funny; if the riffing is, then not so much.)
I’m sure they’ll get around to their cheap trend-fatigue New Series nerd-bashing with riffing “Day of the Doctors”, or whatever, soon enough, but seeing as they’re going Fathom-event, and BBC already has a lucrative gravy-train with New-Series Fathom events for Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi, it’s probably going to be too expensive territory for RT to wander into for a while, even with Kickstarter.
(Although, that said, I did go to see the Fathom BBC screening of “Power of the Daleks”‘s restoration, and watching any good Troughton classic is a good reason to hate what the New Series and Sherlock did to the entire BBC….How many times did we have to sit through that freakin’ “Return of Mysterio” trailer??)
It’s got a fake William Hartnell, and Tom Baker isn’t in it. You don’t see either of those things as mockable?
I can’t speak for kids watching it for the first time in ’83, but it is not a well-regarded episode.
Would a kid in ’83 watching The Five Doctors for the first time care about the First, Second, or Third Doctor? Would they even know who those guys were?
I think you’re grossly overstating the extent to which this twentieth-anniversary nostalgia-fest was targeted toward young viewers. They didn’t bring back the First, Second, and Third Doctors, Susan, Zoe, and Jamie for the kids. If you were 12 years old in 1983, you were old enough to remember exactly two Doctors, and most likely not thinking “Gee, I sure hope Tom Baker comes back for about 30 seconds of totally unrelated footage!”
It’s not bad or anything. It’s not a debacle. There are lots of worse Doctor Who serials. But it is imminently mockable. It’s not very good; it’s nice to see so much of the old cast back, but there’s not really any good story reason for them to be there; the plot is a paper-thin excuse to have a reunion show, and you can feel it ticking off boxes as it goes — oh, here’s a Dalek; here are some Cybermen.
There are other Doctor Who stories that might work better; they’ve already done the Cushing movies, Delta and the Bannermen springs to mind as good riff fodder, and I’d probably suggest the TV movie with Paul McGann. But as far as having the right balance of being something of a classic episode that’s remembered with some fondness but also as kind of a mess, this is a pretty great choice.
Yawn. This is really narrow-casting. But if it’s funny, that’s fine. But when you hype it like you actually secured Twilight or something, and it turns out to be this… :(
I hear Brad’s wife got fired from Cracker Barrel (and on Brad’s birthday) because the RiffTrax guys came in and ordered the “Rootie Tootie Fresh and Fruitie” breakfast. She laughed and told them to use the Tardis to head over to IHOP and that’s why Brad’s wife got fired after eleven years. EricJ didn’t think it was right because the old pancakes were better.
My favorite Who is Cindy Lou.
OK, so I’m not a Whovian. :)
Hopefully they’ll include the British produced water safety short Lonely Water, which features Donald Pleasance as the Voice of Death. Only a minute and a half, but quite memorable.
THIS.
And to add a little bit more back story, it was basically what script editor Terrance Dicks could cobble together at the last minute after several other proposed 20th Anniversary celebrations fell through, with ongoing rewrites even as the story was being filmed. We were originally supposed to get a Cyberman story written by Robert Holmes that involved them kidnapping all previous incarnations of the Doctor to extract Time Lord DNA in an attempt to become Cyber Lords (this plot element later got slightly recycled for The Two Doctors). Originally, Tom Baker was supposed to have a much bigger role as the prime suspect for stealing the Black Scrolls of Rassilon (instead of the chancellor), the Doctor/Companion pairings were completely different, and of course, lots of budget and costuming issues.
I won’t call this story a complete trainwreck (for that, see John Nathan-Turner’s attempt at a 30th Anniversary celebration, Dimensions in Time: https://youtu.be/NQCeMIQpFBc?t=1m45s) but it’s goofy, cliched, confusing, not particularly well written, but also comparatively fast paced, which makes it easily the best classic Doctor Who episode for riffing.
Sometimes I feel like the only non-Dr.Who-fan in the world. Then there are threads like this and I know I’m not alone. Thank you, Satellite News, for making me laugh about love, again.
I can only assume you’ve never watched this at a Doctor Who convention–gentle ribbing about the story’s faults (the teleporter that apparently distributes cloaks, “No–not the mind probe,” the Mighty Morphin’ Raston Warrior Robot, the weird voice of Rassilon in the original edition, the even weirder voice in the special edition, pretty much Anthony Ainley’s entire performance) is a time-honored part of enjoying it, and I think this fits in perfectly with the experience of fandom.
As far as kids in ’83 not knowing who the first 3 Doctors were, of course we did, Thad. I was reading the Target novelizations, so even though I’d only seen Baker and Davison episodes on TV, I had read plenty of stories of the first 3 Doctors. That’s why “The Five Doctors” was so cool at the time, I could finally see the Second and Third Doctors I’d read about. I hadn’t seen any Hartnell stories, so the “fake Hartnell” didn’t bother me – and really I’ve never heard anyone put down Hurndall’s performance or refer to him as a “fake Hartnell” until now. What do you do when the original actor’s passed on? It didn’t bother me either that Tom Baker wasn’t in it because I’d already seen all his episodes numerous times. And bottom line, you can nitpick it all day long, but when you consider that in ’83 the big mainstream sci-fi entertainment featured Imperial Stormtroopers getting their asses handed to them by some teddy bears – now THAT’S insulting to kids! I’ll take “The Five Doctors” any day.
Better acting and production value than Time Chasers.
@Anthony W: In other words, your experience is an outlier and you’re insisting it’s representative.
A little on the fence on this one. On the one hand, it’s eminently mockable (even Peter Davison recognized that in his DVD commentary). Never was there a more perfect example of a Doctor Who episode written by committee, as a few here have already noted: Here’s a Dalek; oh, hello Susan; next Doctor appears; oh, hello Sarah Jane; f’n robot dog; why it’s the Doctor-who-refused-to-appear; Richard Hurndall doing his best impression of the First Doctor (which, frankly, is pretty good if you’ve never seen any Hartnell episodes); a couple of Cybermen; here’s the Master; etc.
But, on the other hand, they did pretty well to make it as coherent as possible. It’s an episode for the fans, just like the 50th anniversary episode. It gives you what you wanted to see: all the extant Doctors, as many companions and adversaries they could grab, and a reiteration of what made the Doctor so great (even if it is Davison, one of my least favorite Doctors). The 50th anniversary episode was the same way: does ANYONE know what happened to the Zygons by the end of the episode? No, because, who cares? Tom Baker came back!!
As for the cries of “fake Hartnell,” not to mention the episode features the second actor to take on the role of the Master as a semi-regular, it’s a case of, you can’t get the original to come back, but the replacement is still pretty good. (Although Anthony Ainley really has nothing on the original (Roger Delgado) OR NuWho’s first Master, John Simms).
And how can you NOT laugh at the “NO, not the MIND probe!” moment? Yes, I’m a Whovian (original series primarily), but I’ll be in line to see what Rifftrax does with this. Bring it on, boys!
Hurray, he saved us from extermination by getting behind the Dalek and pushing it into a closet! Welp, back to the story…
If you have, though, Hurndall’s too stodgy, like an old Mr. Chips schoolmaster–He’s got the coat and Hartnell’s indignant grip of the lapels, but he’s too imperiously glowering and doesn’t have that spark of mischief behind the “Hm-hmm?”‘s that made Hartnell seem more like a mad-genius smartypants grandpa who likes to duck any straight question about himself.
But then, we didn’t have VCR’s, DVD’s or HuluPlus back then, and the BBC hadn’t restored “An Unearthly Child” yet, so us 80’s kids just said “Oh, that must be what that first guy was like!”
Outlier, Thad? Most if not all young Doctor Who fans in ’83 were reading Target books and had at least a passing knowledge of the show’s history. The books were available at stores across the US. Ask anyone who’s old enough. I try to be polite, but good lord. I can’t understand for the life of me why guys like you have the desire to get on the internet and act like an authority on events that you weren’t there for.
I have a feeling a number of riffs will be focused on just who all these people are and what they’re doing in the story. You have to admit that, unless you’ve got a pretty good knowledge of the Classic series, you’re going to be lost.
Rifftrax has jumped the shark
An Observation On the Similarities Between Dr. Who and Our Beloved Show –
+ Both shows began as low budget shows with homemade props.
+ Both had a focus on more or less the same audience.
+ Both grew to have a large, extremely loyal fan base.
+ Both generated one (or more) critics who live to heap scorn on those that differ with their pronouncements. (Sigh)
Now, if somebody could smuggle a sonic screwdriver to Joel there is no telling what might happen!
@ #46: There’s also how performers come and go.
Perhaps when Troughton is on screen, they can sing a few lines of Hike Up Your Pants.
+ Both shows had a different-network reboot that Didn’t Get It
+ Both shows created a new-generation audience that fell into swooning-cult mode and evangelized their new-version fandom without realizing an earlier version ever existed before their lifetime.
+ Both shows had prominent influential members of the old-version cast praise the new version because they could sit down and watch it in retirement without too many personally attached bad on-set memories of working on the old version.
Heck, the episode riffs itself in that scene: the Second Doctor is singing, and the Brig goes “Are you in pain, Doctor?”
Ha!