| 1st Week |
Thursday 20th January, 8pm
St. John's College Video Room |
- Black Orchid & The Five Doctors
- Black Orchid is a quick Peter Davison two-parter in the form of an Agatha-Christie-style country house mystery.
It doesn't have very much in common with The Unicorn and the Wasp from New Who, even though there's a gorgeous ginger companion
(Turlough, the evil alien public schoolboy and slashfic favourite). The Five Doctors is the delightfully silly 20th-anniversary
special, featuring Gallifreyan mythology, mysterious lycra-wearing ninja-bots, and companions plunging down perilously slight rocky
inclines.
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| 2nd Week |
Thursday 27th January, 8pm
St. John's MCR |
- Ghostlight & The Unquiet Dead
- An Edwardian haunted house story, followed by a Victorian haunted house story - an interesting look at the way that
old and new Who dealt with similar themes.
Ghostlight comes from Sylvester McCoy's final season, when he's stopped playing the fool so much and has become a disarmingly
whimsical arch-manipulator. The companion is Ace - she of the mean-looking bomber jacket and Blue Peter accent - and the men's evening
dress she wears in this serial is the stuff of this teenage butch's fantasies..
The Unquiet Dead is an early Eccleston story, where Rose's mysterious new friend starts to demonstrate just how alien he really
is with his utilitarian attitude to the human body after death.
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| 3rd Week |
Thursday 3rd February, 8pm
St. John's MCR |
- Blake's 7 & 42
- An evening themed loosely around the idea of The Crystal Maze - episodes which take our
contestants
participants through a series of physical/mental challenges towards a particular goal. We'll start the evening with Space Fall,
the second ever episode of Terry Nation's classic dystopian sci-fi - acknowledged by Joss Whedon as one of the major influences on
Firefly. Then we'll watch 42, a fast-paced and frantic Tenth Doctor and Martha story. Then, depending on how keen everyone is,
there'll be the option of watching more Blake's 7.
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| 4th Week |
Thursday 10th February, 8pm
St. John's MCR |
- The Dominators
- This term's black-and-white serial features Patrick Troughton, who is purported to be Matt Smith's favourite Doctor.
Certainly, Steven Moffat is on record as saying that he sat Matt down with a pile of Second Doctor DVDs in preparation for playing the
character! In this story, the Doctor is traveling with Jamie (kilts) and Zoe (catsuits), when he finds the ruthless Dominators and their
robotic servants ('Quarks') threatening the peaceful way of life on the planet of Dulkis.
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| 5th Week |
Thursday 17th February, 8pm
North Quad Lecture Room, St. John's |
- The Geek Quiz
- In the now-legendary Geek Quiz, members of Oxford's geekiest societies get together in order to battle it out for the
crown of "team who won that term". Start writing your rounds now!
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| 6th Week |
Thursday 24th February, 8pm
St. John's MCR |
- The Ark in Space
- Sarah-Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan get their first TARDIS adventure with the newly regenerated Fourth Doctor,
played by Tom Baker. The team materialise on a mysterious space station full of cryogenically frozen humans, only to discover that things
are not quite as quiet as they should be on a ship designed for long-term sleepers. A chilling, claustrophobic story that is often cited
as an influence on Ridley Scott's Alien.
The Ark in the title of this episode was built in the 29th Century to protect humanity from incoming solar flares - just like the ships
in Eleventh Doctor story The Beast Below. It seems pretty likely that this is an intentional reference, as Moffat frequently gives
The Ark in Space as his answer when interviewers ask him about his favourite episode of Doctor Who.
|
| 7th Week |
Thursday 3th March, 8pm
The Big Bang, 124 Walton Street, Jericho |
- DocSoc Meal
- This term, we continue our quest to eat every type of cuisine available in Oxford with a trip to The Big Bang. I
believe that this is meant to symbolise British cuisine; it specialises in sausage and mash. (Veggie and gluten free options available,
although no veggie-and-gluten-free options.)
|
Saturday 5th March, 12pm
Lecture Room A, Magdalen |
- Torchwood Season One Marathon
- No, seriously. We plan to watch all of it - sex aliens, scary fairies, retcon, cannibalism,
cyber-conversion does not work like that!, time-travel, identity-theft, implausible 1940s attitudes to Don't Ask, Don't
Tell - the lot. This should start at around lunchtime and finish at around midnight. I worry for all of you, I really do. And by that
I mean that I will bring vodka.
|
| 8th Week |
Thursday 11th March, 8pm
St. John's MCR |
- Eighth Week is
Eighties Eighth Doctor Week! - Doctor Who - The Movie & Red Dwarf
- We always turn to silly stories to celebrate the end of term - this time it's the turn of Paul McGann's Doctor.
Although he's wildly popular in the spin-off novels and audios, he only actually played the Doctor on screen once, in this US/UK
co-produced TV movie from 1996. Teaming a US-American Master (half Terminator, half Ming the Merciless) with a half-human Doctor who
kisses girls (fans were divided at the time about which was more sacrilegious), this abortive reboot was a hit in the UK but a flop in
the states.
Paired entirely on the basis of a similar-looking wig, our other piece of 90s silliness will be the Red Dwarf episode Stoke Me a
Clipper, featuring legendary parallel-universe alter-ego character 'Ace Rimmer'.
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