Friday 3 September 2010

Should there be a license to make that video?

In the dark days between the TV Series being on screen, BBV stepped in and produced a range of videos. One such is Do You Have a License to Save this Planet?

Um... no... Basically... just... no. This is a "comedy" in the vein of fan based comedy. That the main role is The Chiropodist ("The Foot Doctor"... it's funny!), and there are wacky(!) moments of Autons and Sontarans and Cybermen... I mean Cyberons. (BBV did actually get the licenses to some of the DW monsters, but not Cybermen. Or Daleks.)

But anyway, the plot is... um... I'm not sure there was a plot. The Foot Doctor turned up, and aliens bumble around (the Cyberon is wearing a mustache... it's funny!!!), and... there's an action attempt at a dramatic moment at the end, but then Sylvester starts gurning again.

In spite of the script, Sylvester McCoy is quite good. Mark Donovan gets to play the role of the companion, but also manages to perform well despite the script. (He even talks to the fourth wall... it's FUNNY!!!) Unfortunately Nigel Fairs and Jo Castleton don't seem to worry about their performances, and I'm only guessing that the rest of the cast were glad to be behind costumes.

Bill Baggs did this as a 10th anniversary special... but BBV's done better than this... this video does not reflect well on them...

[END]

2 comments:

Foo said...

I always wondered about these videos when I was much younger and without access to them. I remember reading about Wartime in DWM and eventually reading the Missing Adventures of Downtime and Shakedown.

It probably would have been good for me as an obsessive fan to have been able to see a lot of these in the 90s although I do now have a few Mythmakers tapes which I am yet to sit down and properly watch.

Jamas Enright said...

Wartime - good music, great cinematography, crap everything else. (I wrote a review for TSV, never got published.)

From the bits I can recall, I think the book of Downtime was better than the video.

Shakedown was a very good attempt at a decent video, considering their budget. The novelisation (aside from the padded Doctor bits) was a good version of it.