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Was a historical the best idea to start with?

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Oh-Wise-One
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« on: March 12, 2012, 08:19:31 pm »

Do you think it was the right idea to open the series with a historical story? They had a time machine and obviously wanted to show it off but they could have gone into space or to the future, another planet or anywhere really but they instead decided to go to the stone age and while it wasn't an awful story I think they could have done a lot better. I think they probably would have been better off rejigging it so that AUC led directly into The Daleks then have '100,000BC' as story two. It would have meant a bit of a fall after the opening story but I think it would have made the opening story far more effective.
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« Reply #1 on: March 12, 2012, 11:39:50 pm »

I think swapping around with the Daleks would have been a good idea. If it were me I think I would have gone with a space story or something futuristic on Earth. I don't think the story we got was a bad one, I just think that they could have opened stronger.
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« Reply #2 on: March 12, 2012, 11:51:02 pm »

The historical aspect was very important in the original concept - besides entertainment, the show was supposed to teach about both history and science (hence Ian and Barbara's specialities).  I think it would have been better to have gone with a more iconic historical period for the first one, though.

On the other hand, the overall concept was powerful enough to carry it over the first four episodes, then they had The Daleks at the point it could have started losing the audience's interest.  There wasn't the concept then that a show's failed if it needs a few episodes to build up.
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« Reply #3 on: March 13, 2012, 05:51:17 pm »

I think they should have gone with something with a more scifi feel to it, or as Nyki said, something iconic or from more recent history. Going to the year 100,000BC is all well and good to show off what the TARDIS can do but it didn't have anything for the audience to identify with or take a keen interest in like other historicals of the era did.
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« Reply #4 on: March 13, 2012, 10:32:01 pm »

Something that only just occurred to me thinking about this subject - I wonder if the decision to go with cavemen was meant to relate to the idea of Ian and Barbara being "primitive" in their understanding of the TARDIS.
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« Reply #5 on: March 13, 2012, 11:39:23 pm »

I think a historical story worked as well as any other would have. I don't think setting makes much difference as long as the story is good and if you don't like the story then it makes no difference, really.

Something that only just occurred to me thinking about this subject - I wonder if the decision to go with cavemen was meant to relate to the idea of Ian and Barbara being "primitive" in their understanding of the TARDIS.

It's a great theory but I can't imagine they werre thinking that deeply about it when they wrote it.
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« Reply #6 on: March 14, 2012, 03:35:07 pm »

I don't think there was a problem doing a historical first. I've never understood the unpopularity of the historicals. I think they are great. TC is right though, this is harder to identify with. They cover loads of time periods in school and whatnot but this isn't one of them, or at least wasn't when I was in school, I don't know about the 60s. They probably could have had a better received story on their hands if they had gone with something within the last 2000 years.
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« Reply #7 on: March 14, 2012, 03:35:18 pm »

I don't think there was a problem doing a historical first. I've never understood the unpopularity of the historicals. I think they are great. TC is right though, this is harder to identify with. They cover loads of time periods in school and whatnot but this isn't one of them, or at least wasn't when I was in school, I don't know about the 60s. They probably could have had a better received story on their hands if they had gone with something within the last 2000 years.
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« Reply #8 on: March 14, 2012, 10:15:08 pm »

There was quite a bit of interest in "cavemen" as far as I remember - though they were usually portrayed as fighting dinosaurs, with a fine disregard for 65 million years.  In the last major kids SF series before Doctor Who, the "Pathfinders", there'd been a story about Venus, which was portrayed as a young world with cavemen (and dinosaurs) so there'd have been good reason for thinking a prehistoric setting would work.
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« Reply #9 on: March 14, 2012, 11:04:26 pm »

I love history and there were plenty of good stories they could have told, both in the stone age and every other era, but the biggest problem for me is that the story wasn't engaging. The era didn't make a difference to that. Starting with a historical wasn't a problem but starting with a boring one was.
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« Reply #10 on: March 16, 2012, 01:02:49 pm »

I agree with Aneurin. It wasn't the setting that was the problem, it was the story. It didn't live up to it's first episode and by the end of it it got really boring.
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