Hi. How about a weekend discussion thread about favorite “Dr. Who” references on MST3k? “Dr. Who” recently celebrated the 50th Anniversary of its debut on television. MST3k just recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of its debut. The upcoming “Dr. Who” Christmas special will be airing this month, ushering in the next Doctor. I feel its rather appropriate to include a weekend discussion thread about this. The fan base of MST3k and Dr. Who have a lot in common. Entertainment Weekly once listed “Dr. Who” and MST3k as the No.1 and No. 4 greatest cult TV shows of all time. MST3k and “Dr. Who” fans were regularly engaged in taping episodes near the start of their runs, with early “Dr. Who” fans taping episodes on audio tape as video cassette recording didn’t yet exist, including many episodes whose videotape masters no longer exist or are lost for now, doing their part to preserve them. MST3k fans have been taping episodes since the KTMA days and have made them available through tape trading and the Internet. So with that, I think we should all list our favorite Dr. Who riffs made during the show, even though I haven’t watched much of Dr. Who at all.
My favorite Dr. Who riff is in Overdrawn at the Memory Bank: “Dr. Who…the Hell Cares!”
Simple yet effective riff. What’s yours
Have at it!
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You forgot to mention the fact that Rifftrax just released their riffing of the second Doctor Who movie with Peter Cushing.
What makes the, “Doctor Who… the hell cares,” riff even more effective is the fact that Overdrawn at the Memory Bank looks and plays out like a lower tier Doctor Who adventure from the original run.
Unfortunately, I don’t think they actually had many Doctor Who riffs. The only other one I can recall is from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians when they remark on how the Martian spaceship shares the interior to exterior dimension ratio of the TARDIS.
For an alternate related topic, how about which classic Doctor Who adventure you’d like to see riffed. After all, most of them are effectively feature-length. I would go with Tomb of the Cybermen. It’s one I really love. However, it’s also clearly a mummy movie with science fiction trappings.
There’s one in “Time of the Apes”. When Johnny, Caroline and Catherine are in the cryogenic room Servo notices that a machine looks like a Dalek and he yells, “EXTERMINATE!!!” I also thing there’s another Dalek reference in “Santa Claus”. Little wind up looking toys are seen moving about on the floor in Santa’s lair and someone, I think it’s Servo, says that they look like miniature Daleks.
At the beginning of The Sinister Urge, you have the woman running into a phone booth and Mike riffing: “Quickly, into the TARDIS!”
According to IMDb’s connections page for the classic series, there are at least seven episodes with references to Doctor Who. Not a huge number, but they do exist. The only one to me that sticks in my mind is in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians:
“Apparently, that spaceship’s a lot bigger on the inside.” “Like a TARDIS.”
Most of the rest of them don’t really stand out to me, although I did see Hercules Against the Moon Men recently and I remember one there.
By the way, if we want to do discussions on references in the future, here’s an idea: nearly every episode has some kind of Wizard of Oz reference. I’m not sure if that’s been done before, but it could be fun.
I am a huge fan of Doctor Who, but I only had some knowledge of Tom Baker as Doctor Who before Christopher Ecceleston’s tenure. I laugh because I’ll watch episodes that I’ve seen many, many times before and catch references that flew over my head. The Tardis comparison in Santa Claus Conquers The Martians springs to mind because I watched it Thursday night.
In a slightly related note, I was wondering if Shout! Factory/Ballyhoo would create a special feature about specific pieces of pop culture (Doctor Who; Wizard Of Oz; Planet Of The Apes) that were regularly referenced on the show. It could be fun. Maybe interview the writers AND Misties about our favorite bits.
@1- I believe Tomb of the Cybermen was when the Cybermen had wiffle balls glued to their costumes! Thankfully, the Cybermen costumes have improved significantly since their rather goofy origins.
There’s also Pumaman, when Mike is donning his Coatamundiman costume, he’s commenting on each article, and calls the scarf a Doctor Who scarf.
I’d also like to mention that Mary Peach, who played Dr. Patricia Hill in The Projected Man, also starred in the Patrick Troughton serial Enemy of the World, as Astrid. Also, David Warner (seen in Quest of the Delta Knights) recently appeared in the Matt Smith episode Cold War.
I recall a DOCTOR WHO reference in TIME OF THE APES, SANTA CLAUS VERUS THE MARTIANS, and OVERDRAWN AT THE MEMOREY BANK…and that is about it.
Mike exclaims “Doctor Who” as a Tugar is dragging a long scarf-like thing behind a horse in The Sword and the Dragon.
I vaguely remember a K-9 reference from some MSTed episode, but can’t place which one – maybe Warrior of the Lost World? Does anybody know?
By the way, the new riffs on the non-canonical Dr. Who movies with Peter Cushing look like a lot of fun. Cushing gives the Doctor a Mr. Magoo quality.
One other is in the opening of “Fugitive Alien”. As the Star Wolf ships are attacking Earth, Crow & Servo are engaged in a nerdish debate over how the scene is similar to other scenes in sci-fi. Servo mentions how it’s very similar to an episode with the Second Doctor, who he says “looks like Moe”. I like this one, as well as the “Overdrawn…” joke.
As for riffable “Doctor Who” episodes, I mentioned in another thread that I wouldn’t mind seeing RT take on “The End of Time”, David Tennant’s departure show. For example, each time the Tenth Doctor visits another old companion during the loooooooooong and drawn-out finish, I can hear Mike going, “Aaaaand, he regenerates…no.” (Shades of “Aaaaand, his eyes open.”)
Wait a minute! This topic could be a way to restart MST3000 (as speculated earlier).
The Doctor lands in Mike, Crow, and Servo’s apartment (conveniently right by the bus line) and
agrees to take them as Companions to the edge of the universe, but they get stranded in
a used Tardis (the one Doctor #1 was recently seen being talked out of using) in the Joel
era. Since it’s dangerous for them all to coexist for a long time together experiments vary
between Joel and the bots and Mike era villains.
First Mike era riffed feature MUST be the Peter Jackson Hobbit atrocity movies.
I saw Hobbit Atrocity open for The Misfits back in ’89.
Oh, and a good Doctor Who story that could be riffed is the William Hartnell serial The Web Planet. It actually had a good plot, but horribly bad costuming & special effects. There were giant ants with human legs, wearing trousers.
One thing Who:Classic fans like to be smug about ( ^_^ ) is the fact that geek-bashers WANT to lump vintage-Whovians in with Star Wars and Trek geeks–because they have, like, fan clubs and conventions, and stuff–but…don’t actually know anything about the show to make fun of.
Maybe, if we’re lucky, we get an aforementioned “Exterminate, exterminate!” Dalek joke (dating back to the 70’s days when everyone wondered what was that cheap show your local PBS station was playing every time you switched channels from the 7 or 11pm news), but as pop-culture nerd-target fans, we’ve kept whatcha sorta might call a “low profile”. ;)
The fact that the Servo’s desire to geek-bash at least remembered Patrick “Looks Like Moe” Troughton in Fugitive Alien is about as detailed as the refs have ever gotten, but we fans aren’t blaming them for that. Another bullet glances off our impenetrable shell of anonymity.
Most of the riffs I remember have been mentioned. There may have been a Dalek reference in Manhunt in Space or Crash of Moons, not sure which one. Both shows have another point of comparison, cast changes resulting in recasting actors throughout the run of the show while keeping the basic premise and quality intact.
#14-I’m sick of the either/or mentality-I’ll watch Jon Pertwee and Matt Smith, Kirk and Picard, Adam West and Michael Keaton.
I liked Mike’s Coatimundi Man scarf from Puma Man. I remember laughing myself into an episode the first time I saw it.
And Of No Account (#13), The Web Planet is perfect for riffing – the only way I got through it was making my own jokes at its expense. The Gunfighters or Horns of Nimon deserve riffing too.
I remembered another one.
In Hercules Against the Moon Men when the Herc and the old man are creeping thru the basement tunnel, Joel remarks that “it looks like a Doctor Who set.”
Web Planet absolutely – the over-the-top Shakespearian acting with the cheap looking insect costumes is hilarious.
If you watch any of the eighties era DW DVDs with the commentary tracks, you are frequently rewarded with the surviving cast members riffing themselves. Peter Davidson’s vitriol against Time Flight stands out in particular.
The cast commentary on The Five Doctors of 1983 has each actor saying “No, not the mind probe” together. I fell on the floor when I heard that. The DVD also has an easter egg track where David Tennant and two producers of the new series watch the older episode from the perspective of young fans.
In other tracks, they often mock the sets, script, and effects, while praising many of the actors who appeared on the show.
Mentioned already, but, has to be “Dr. Who….the hell cares.”
ck/#11:
I just needed out a bit.
I love that idea.
#14-I’m sick of the either/or mentality-I’ll watch Jon Pertwee and Matt Smith, Kirk and Picard, Adam West and Michael Keaton.
Well, same here: I was referring to the fact that most geek-bashers have never seen EITHER series in their lives, and have to compensate that there are no characters with funny ears to make the Spock-fan joke about…Oo, it must just frustrate them! :)
(I mean, if they even knew Louise Jameson’s Leela was on the show, they could adapt the ready-made Slavegirl Leia “Geeks just want sex!” joke, it would be so easy, but they don’t!)
Beside the point anyway–I’ll watch the straight-producer series and the gay-producer series, I’ll watch Tom Baker and Christopher Eccleston, but I WON’T watch Wendy Padbury and Bille Piper…Shoot her, SHOOT HER! Who needs a snotty-diva companion that cellphones her boyfriend? Push her out of the Tardis just for that “Queen Victoria” stunt!! (Ahem…I digress.)
Doctor Who is my other favorite show, and I think MST helped me become a fan – even the worst original series
Who story is better than 99% of the movies the Brains riffed.
@6 Warner also voiced a villain in the David Tennant special Dreamland, and played an alternate universe
3rd Doctor in two & a quarter audio plays (the quarter was a short crossover with Colin Baker’s Doctor).
He was the original choice for the 4th Doctor, which ended up being the Tom Baker Doctor, but at the time
he was the biggest Shakespearean actor in England and Who at the time was a step down. Funny how things
change.
@9 Cushing was approached to play the 2nd Doctor, and said he half-regretted turning it down. He said he would have played it more like Hartnell than he did in the movie, but it was better they went with someone like Patrick Troughton who played it his own way. Cushing also did a pilot for an American radio play Who series, but sadly it’s lost and only the script exists.
@10 I like that sequence despite how overlong it is, but it could be worse – when Matt Smith’s Doctor appeared on Sarah Jane Adventures he told ex-companion Jo he visited all his companions, we just saw the new series ones.
@22 No accounting for taste re Wendy Padbury. Zoe was awesome.
As for stories to riff, Sylvester McCoy’s debut Time & the Rani. McCoy is my Doctor, the one who made me a fan, but there’s a reason it’s better to just watch his/the show’s last two seasons*. It’s the worst regeneration story ever, and not just because of how they had to dress McCoy up as Colin Baker after he was wrongly scapegoated and fired for the show’s problems (the audio plays show Colin is a good Doctor, he just had really poor to awful material in his stint). I can just imagine the crew’s reaction to the Rani declaring out of nowhere “I have the lolygharil!” I’ve considered doing an iRiff with my non-Whovian friend and making a running gag out of defending McCoy (he’s very much the love him or hate him Doctor in fandom).
*Though the rest of his first season improves as it goes on. Paradise Towers is a good concept let down by budget and some naff supporting performances. Delta & the Bannermen is actually pretty good and McCoy’s starting to get the hang of the role, and Dragonfire is an okay intro for my favorite companion, Ace.
@22 – Wait… someone else who dislikes Rose?!! Huzzah! I’m not alone. I absolutely can’t stand her.
But… I agree with SOLDaria, Zoe was awesome. One of my favorite companions. Not only was she unbelievably cute, she was also the first highly intelligent companion (something they don’t do nearly often enough). I mean, she can fry a supercomputer just by talking to it!
Still loved it when the alarm goes off in “Manhunt in Space” and Crow goes “Exterminate! Exterminate!”
In case anyone’s interested, Rifftrax has now done both Doctor Who movies (starring Peter Cushing as Dr. Who, not The Doctor, a human named Dr. Who), and somehow, I don’t think they appreciate the Daleks…
Now, if we expand this to include CT, there’s the mid-movie bit during “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians”, where Joel wants to give Trace a Christmas present: a time machine with a laser cannon.
Said time machine has a very familiar shape…
RiffTrax included a Dalek reference in Star Wars Episode IV, when the torture probe ball is going towards Leia, Kevin exclaims “EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!” and in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire riff, when David Tennant is shown, Kevin says “Hey! It’s doctor um…” Then Mike says “Who?”, and then Kevin asks to wait and let him think on it.
@23, @25 – Oh, I agree, I was just saying that Rose was just so, so NOT Zoe. Or Tegan. Or even Peri.
(Watching Rose use her time travel to figure out how she can show off to her dumped boyfriend made you realize just why all the Classic companions were either orphans or independent stowaways with no connections whatsoever.
And didn’t literally think the show was All About Them. Yes, that even puts Adric a point over her.)
I liked Zoe. I always thought Rose wasn’t too smart at times. I hated Donna, but then Catherine Tate never impressed me in any case. She always struck me of a poor woman’s Tracey Ullman, and I wasn’t impressed by her either.
And the new girl is cute. Can’t find any other advantage to her yet.
I recently watched the Cinematic Titanic version of ‘Santa Claus Conquers the Martians’, and there’s a gag where Joel is giving everyone presents (that turn out to just be cardboard cutouts of presents, riffing on their inability to leave the theater while the movie is running). Trace’s gift is “a time machine with a laser cannon”, and the silhouette that pops up is of a police box with a giant gun mounted on the roof. :)
RE: 19. That’s why I always love listening to the Doctor Who commentaries – they don’t try to hide (or make apologizes for) when the episode is total crap. Unlike American commentaries, who usually blame the studio when this happens. And when it’s really bad (Time-Flight, where they send a Concorde back to the time of the dinosaurs on a budget of a $1.98), it’s almost like an MST riffing. Especially when Fourth Doctor Tom Baker does a commentary for one of his episodes.
But, just like MST, there really isn’t a bad classic Doctor Who episode and there is always something you can take from the episode.
Well, with the possible exception of “The Twin Dilemma” – Colin Baker’s first (and worst) episode. Even he acknowledges that it wasn’t the best the show had to offer.
When it comes to Companions, I’ve always preferred Leela, Romana or the absolute wonderfulness that is Sarah Jane Smith. I also liked Jo and Harry Sullivan, and, of course, the Brig. And shame on the BBC for not settling the rights issues with Universal so they can at least mention Grace from the McGann movie.
@ 29, 30: Rose was probably my second least favorite companion of the revived series, after Clara. I did like how they made her as the Bad Wolf entity in the 50th Anniversary special, rather than just Rose, though. Clara was slightly interesting because there was the fact she had died twice before, but when they explained that, she’s not that great. Donna is probably my favorite, because she didn’t let the doctor get away with crap and there wasn’t any real sexual tension between her and The Doctor. I liked Amy a lot during the 5th Series, but her characterization during the 6th and 7th made her slip in my standings. Martha didn’t really do that much positive or negative, but, IMHO, she was the cutest.
Count me as another who doesn’t care for Rose, though she’s still not as bad as Adric (his dickweed behavior in State of Decay being a prime example).
Here’s a theory for you to chew on. I posit that Jamie McCrimmon is the Doctor’s intellectual superior and chose to engage in obfuscating stupidity. Why else did the sonic screwdriver suddenly appear during the Second Doctor’s tenure. Another point is how, at the end of the War Games storyline, the Time Lords have the memories of Jamie and Zoe altered so as to believe that they never travelled on the TARDIS. With all the other Companions wandering about with unaltered memories, why were they singled out for this treatment. It’s because they could figure out how to replicate Time Lord technology. Think about it, won’t you?
RE: 35.
There’s a reason why Jamie is the second longest serving Companion (after Sarah Jane, unless you count Benny from the audios and books). I agree that Jamie is a lot smarter than he appeared, but remember he came from the 15th century and is very willing to learn. And the Second Doctor is probably the only one with the patience to teach him how to operate the TARDIS and use (or develop?) advanced technology. As I recall, Jamie had no problem using guns or other weapons that post-date his time (more than half of Jamie’s time on the show no longer exists in video form, but I heard this was the case).
There are a couple of tie-in media that suggest either the brainwashing didn’t work or the Doctor was allowed to retrieve him and restore his memory (the Season 6B theory) for new adventures – but that was mostly to explain his much older appearance in The Two Doctors episode with Colin Baker. Still, he was a great Companion who I thought really got shafted by the show’s change in direction at the end of the Troughton era. They really should consider bringing Jamie back, especially with Peter Capaldi beginning his run as the Doctor.
You’ll pardon if I insert a couple of corrections. First, Jamie is from the 18th century, as the Jacobite Uprising is mentioned in The Highlanders. Also, if you go by episode count, Jamie is the longest running classic Companion. If you go by adventure count, the longest running classic Companion is K-9.