That's part of the original fan video that they borrowed the sequence from, so the idea didn't originate with them, although they did decide to keep it.
The War Games -- colororized
- Thread starter Turtletrekker
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That's part of the original fan video that they borrowed the sequence from, so the idea didn't originate with them, although they did decide to keep it.
Considering how many stories in Pertwee's run due to desk and wall calendars and the rare spoken dialogue alluding to things, and fashion since 1970 fashion would NOT be the same after a handful of years - never mind a decade, and even Tom Baker's as "Robot" shows an egregious mistake thanks to car annual registration sticker reading a big ol' "75" on it, anyone who blamed JNT and/or Peter Grimwade's script ("Mawdryn Undead") regarding the discontinuity first established in "The Abominable Snowmen" and "The Web of Fear" ("1935", "forty years later" respectively).
Actually, read the script, the televised version states "For thirty years it stands" but does NOT state when Travers sold the Yeti to the museum. He could have done so after keeping it for a decade. He could have sold it straightaway. He could have spent 2 years 4 months 3 weeks 2 days 1 hour 47 seconds counting the individual hairs on it and then sold it, so either which way there's wiggle room. So even before Pertwee's era began, it's muddled and muddied! I recall that the novelization of "Web" does suggest there's a 10-year gap, but the novelizations aren't said to be canonical.
In short, the more pedantic 80s fans all had their undies in a twist because the novelization that came out in 1976 was the only source of continuity in this regard, apart from potentially a multi-generational audio recording made by fans in 1968 who made a copy for a friend, who in turn made a copy for a friend and a few more friends later you get something that's barely audible. The televised episode 1 was in the Archives but never distributed or repeated, so the majority of fans could not know and even the makers wouldn't have cared as it was just another show and they were writing new stories for other shows.
So, yeah, "Mawdryn Undead"'s alleged gaffe honestly never was.
I gave up with retconning after "time can be rewritten". Gotta get on with the show and make it worth watching instead.
I think that's an overstatement. "The Web of Fear" explicitly said in dialogue that "The Abominable Snowmen" was in 1935 and "over 40 years ago," explicitly dating the story as 1975 or later. "The Invasion" is explicitly said to be four years after that. The UNIT stories were clearly intended to be set in the near future, which is why they had things like a crewed Mars expedition, and of course Sarah explicitly saying "I'm from 1980" in a 1975 serial -- although that directly contradicts the Troughton-era references, since there's no way the entire Pertwee era could fit into less than one year.
So yes, "Mawdryn" was a gaffe. It wasn't the first one, but it was the biggest one. Before, we could mostly ignore the minor details you mention like calendars and car stickers as trivial errors while still believing the intent that the stories were in the near future (in the same way we choose to suspend disbelief about the fakey monster costumes and spaceship models and accept the underlying intent that they're real). That's a common enough thing to see in near-future sci-fi, for instance Gerry Anderson's UFO, which features the 1960s-est version of 1980 I've ever seen (even though it was made in 1970). So it doesn't have to be taken literally in-story. But "Mawdryn" is too explicit about its dates in a way that's too central to the story, so it amplified a previously minor inconsistency into an overt contradiction that could no longer be shrugged off.
Sometimes I think it's just best not to think too hard about these sort of things.
If there were ever an instance where it were just best to say "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey" and move on, this would be it.
If there were ever an instance where it were just best to say "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey" and move on, this would be it.
I think it was Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor Who said, "That's the problem with regeneration. You'll never know what you're going to get."
So, it's been around at least that long.
Sometimes I think it's just best not to think too hard about these sort of things.
It's not a problem unique to Doctor Who. The original 1966 Ultraman series in Japan was meant to take place 20 years in the future, with the heroes' technology and spaceflight capabilities commensurately advanced beyond the 1960s state of the art, but sequel series always treated it as taking place in 1966.
Where was the regeneration effect? I didn't see it.
Yeah, I actually agree with you on this one. It is weird that they only showed new series Doctors, if it were me, I would have done a mixture.
Or they could have only showed close ups of their faces.
I've been watching the Pertwee seasons, and I had no idea they were meant to take place in the '80s, I had just assumed they took place the same years they were made, and any advanced tech or anything like that was because UNIT and the people they worked with had access to special advanced technology.
Oh, I don't remember that one.
OK, I went back and watched that part of the clip, and now I heard it.
My bad, whoops! I just re-read the transcript and "over 40 years ago" was exclaimed in a later episode. So I was overstating, big-time.
That said, the Pertwee era definitely broke the rules first, and Sarah Jane did claim she was from 1980 (which also begs questions, or she was fudging with numbers to sound even more cool to Scarman.)
But that said, while calendars, et al, do reveal more subtle gaffes (but are still fair game), you're right that Mawdryn does have the most detailed problem thanks to the explicit dialogue. How much time they had to change this when finding out William Russell was not available, or if they had the original script laying around to have caught it. Or even then. The more subtle references previously shown still lessen the ding anyhow as there are more of them than this one big one.
Except the Doctor specifically said he took the TARDIS to 1980.
Not only is the Doctor shown two faces from beyond his currently existing regeneration cycle, the image of Thirteen that the Timelords show him depicts her staring at the fob watch that contains the memories of all the lives that the Timelords are hiding from them! Now that's meta.
When the date is flipping between 1970 and 1980, The error code is listed as "83 * NYRDWAM * 6F". 1983 is the year Mawdryn Undead is said to occur in. "NYRDWAM" is "Mawdryn" spelled backwards and 6F is Mawdryn Undead's production code.
When the date is flipping between 1970 and 1980, The error code is listed as "83 * NYRDWAM * 6F". 1983 is the year Mawdryn Undead is said to occur in. "NYRDWAM" is "Mawdryn" spelled backwards and 6F is Mawdryn Undead's production code.
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Very true. Some fans had theorized that Sarah was peacockiing it up to Prof Scarman by fudging the year she claimed to have come from.
Yes, you already said that, and it's what I was responding to. My point is that it doesn't work as a handwave because the Doctor said it to Sarah too when he took her to the devastated future, and neither of them would've had reason to lie about the year in that context, or to care in the slightest what Laurence Scarman thought.
Also, it seems to be predicated on the assumption that "Mawdryn" was correct and the UNIT stories took place in the years they were aired, so it doesn't work as a response to the point I was making, which is that by the original UNIT dating established in "The Web of Fear" and "The Invasion," Sarah would've had to come from considerably later than 1980. "Web" was explicitly set no earlier than 1975, and "The Invasion" was explicitly four years after that. If we assume subsequent UNIT stories advanced in roughly real time thereafter, then Sarah would've had to be from 1986 at the earliest.
That entire regeneration bit is to steal a term 'naff' in how it handles things. Going all in on the future without focusing on the fun aspect of being able to slip in some fun like that video they took the idea from. Or maybe it's just the stock images they used with that filter over them. Oh well, at least there's now more colorized Troughton.
No matter what happens, we'll always have this...
And we're all GRATEFUL for it.
Indeed. Although, as I've said above, I have no problem with the colorized version so long as the original is still available. Now it seems to be widely available.
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