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Post by Brad Phipps on Jul 24, 2014 21:51:06 GMT
Renamed the page to something more appropriate.  |
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Post by Philip C Huish on Jul 24, 2014 22:11:46 GMT
A couple of things surprise me reading the list. In the first season all the actors got two consecutive weeks off but in following seasons the actors only got 1 (excluding illness and injury) and only Hartnell got more than one a season. If the list is complete then only Hartnell got a week off during the third production block. Did Peter Purves miss a week between Myth Makers and the end of the Savages?
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Post by Brad Phipps on Jul 24, 2014 23:12:05 GMT
It may have depending on the actor requesting time off or someone like John Wiles vetoed breaks during his tenure.
Either way, it looks like Dodo, Steven and Vicki are the only sixties companions to have appeared in all of their episodes.
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Post by Neil Lambess on Jul 30, 2014 8:28:43 GMT
if my dodgy memory is right , wasnt the first production block everything up untill the last episode or Marco ? and the first series extension was confirmed only after the success of the Daleks , Perhaps Hartnell has an inbuilt week off as part of that first production block , or was given a week off once the series extension was given , so that he could have a break before starting the next block (im not sure if Marcos filming dates dovetail straight into the following serial ?
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Post by Michael D. Kimpton on Jul 30, 2014 19:04:52 GMT
From what I understand, The Singing Sands was just written that way by John Lucarotti. He was told to do it his own way, and I guess for the majority of The Singing Sands, he wanted to reduce the Doctor's role and give Marco Polo more time to interact with Ian and Barbara, as well as giving Susan a chance to interact more with Ping-Cho, hence the sandstorm sequence the episode's named after.
Rumours in the past claim it was because Hartnell was having time off, but considering he appears near the end, I believe that, as I wrote at the beginning of this post, it was simply written that way and as the additional characters required further development for this 7-part story, David Whitaker possibly saw no reason to amend it.
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Post by Brad Phipps on Jul 31, 2014 9:25:25 GMT
I've actually found the answer in The First Doctor Handbook:
Clearly the episode is rewritten to accomodate this.
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Post by Brad Phipps on Jul 31, 2014 9:34:37 GMT
if my dodgy memory is right , wasnt the first production block everything up untill the last episode or Marco ? and the first series extension was confirmed only after the success of the Daleks , Perhaps Hartnell has an inbuilt week off as part of that first production block , or was given a week off once the series extension was given , so that he could have a break before starting the next block (im not sure if Marcos filming dates dovetail straight into the following serial ? The series was committed to 52 weeks just prior to the filming of Marco Polo 3. |
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Post by Paul Edwards on Aug 1, 2014 7:09:18 GMT
I'm going to ask what may appear to be a rather dumb question, but something I have wondered about for decades: why *is* Marco Polo so highly regarded in terms of missing episodes? Is it because of it's production values? The plain annoying fact that statistically it shouldn't be missing as so many copies were made? The story? Something else? The first historical?
FWIW, it's not in my top 3 ME Hartnells... I'm genuinely curious as to why it's so highly sought after.
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Post by shellyharman67 on Aug 1, 2014 8:37:00 GMT
I'm going to ask what may appear to be a rather dumb question, but something I have wondered about for decades: why *is* Marco Polo so highly regarded in terms of missing episodes? Is it because of it's production values? The plain annoying fact that statistically it shouldn't be missing as so many copies were made? The story? Something else? The first historical? FWIW, it's not in my top 3 ME Hartnells... I'm genuinely curious as to why it's so highly sought after. Agree paul ! I would rather have Smugglers, Savages, And Myth Makers, Masterplan first ! It looks a bit of an over long story to me......... |
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Post by Brad Phipps on Aug 1, 2014 10:24:01 GMT
I'm going to ask what may appear to be a rather dumb question, but something I have wondered about for decades: why *is* Marco Polo so highly regarded in terms of missing episodes? Is it because of it's production values? The plain annoying fact that statistically it shouldn't be missing as so many copies were made? The story? Something else? The first historical? FWIW, it's not in my top 3 ME Hartnells... I'm genuinely curious as to why it's so highly sought after. To each his own. It's the largest completely missing story of the Hartnell era, and up until 2004 there were only a handful of on-screen images known to exist. I personally love the story and would love to see it back. |
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Post by brianfretwell on Aug 1, 2014 10:55:13 GMT
For me it is because it is one of the stories I do remember (though not in detail) from the original transmission . It must have had something to stick in my memory.
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Post by Matthew Kurth on Aug 2, 2014 1:14:39 GMT
I'm going to ask what may appear to be a rather dumb question, but something I have wondered about for decades: why *is* Marco Polo so highly regarded in terms of missing episodes? FWIW, it's not in my top 3 ME Hartnells... I'm genuinely curious as to why it's so highly sought after. For me it's a lot of things. It's the fact that it's held as the template of what historicals were supposed to be like (until Dennis Spooner rewrote the book). It's the performances from all the characters. Susan actually being given something to do. The complex and evolving relationship between Marco and the Doctor. The way it sprawls without being stretched too thin. The fact that the whole damn thing is missing when we've got something for everything else up to MTTU. And the fact that we're 13 weeks into the show and someone was already recording and saving the audios. |
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