Read Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) for Free Online Page B

good is only a taste of what Nation has in store for us later in the story, but it’s very effective.
    T: It’s easy, considering everything that follows, to forget the scene before the Daleks first appear. It’s great – the lighting is much darker, with the white glare from the instruments dancing on the sweat on the actors’ faces. The camerawork here isn’t as fluid and well-framed as it was the first four episodes (that Waris Hussein went on to great success is increasingly unsurprising), but the few close-ups we get here (especially on Hartnell’s craggy and expressive face) are among memorable and powerful moments.
    And given the proportions they’ll achieve later on, don’t these Daleks seem tiny? They’re really little, but I think it works. The pull back that reveals them in their very first shot is wonderful, as is the fact that the travellers are made to get on their knees so the Daleks can be framed towering over them. Quite why the Daleks are seen watching what looks like rejected Doctor Who title sequences on their round telly is anyone’s guess, but I like the way one scene ends with them starting to talk at the same time. It’s a peculiar choice, but it oddly makes it seem more realistic to end halfway through their babble, as opposed to when the salient dialogue has run out.
    This all looks and sounds amazing, but none of the lines are vying for my attention in the way they did in the first adventure. Thus far, this story has been 50 minutes of set-up, and so I’m fascinated to see what Susan encounters on her way back to the city, and to finally meet a few more humanoid characters...
    Back in the here and now, though, I’ll know who the new Doctor is in about an hour!
    R: And since we watched those Dalek episodes, the BBC have announced our eleventh Doctor is Matt Smith.
    I remember the days when the casting of a new Doctor was something you’d get as one of the late “fun” items on BBC News. Now, the News carries a story about how a special programme following it will reveal the new Doctor, which seems just a mite cart before the horse to me. It’s astonishing to see, as someone still a bit poleaxed by just how massive a success Doctor Who now is, how cannily the BBC have handled David Tennant’s departure. To begin with, his resignation is announced midway through an award ceremony hosted by a rival channel, in one fell swoop guaranteeing that whatever else the evening was supposed to be about, all the papers the next day will only cover the scoop from Doctor Who. (I don’t know, but if I were up as, say, best actress appearing in a soap opera, I’d be a bit miffed by that.) They then broadcast a Christmas special which deliberately plays upon the idea that a new actor is being cast for the role (they even titled it, of all things, The Next Doctor!), thus sending bookies into a frenzy. And then, as soon as the hoopla of that has died down, they announce an entire half-hour programme given over to the casting reveal, on BBC1, only a little before prime time. It’s stunning, really.
    So, of course, the announcement that the new Doctor is one Matt Smith is something of an anticlimax.
    Good.
    It’s funny, really. With all that build-up, the only way that the new Doctor wouldn’t have seemed like an anticlimax is if he’d been someone so incredibly famous, everyone had already heard of him. (And I mean, everyone. Anyone short of Tom Cruise wouldn’t have been appropriate to the fanfare.) That it’s an actor the majority of the audience would never have heard of is comically delicious. And, I think, entirely fitting to Doctor Who too. Since when should a new Doctor be someone we already know? Of the ten previous incarnations, three of the actors, four at a pinch, would have been immediately recognisable – and none of them necessarily famous enough that their names were on the lips of your everyday man on the street.
    The temptation must have been there to do it differently this