Search Results for "Liz Shaw

Liz Shaw's Best Bits

Liz Shaw’s Best Bits: Spearhead from Space

1 July 2010 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

Liz Shaw and the third Doctor

On Friday, we started a new, low-budget, four-part series that aims to show the best bits of premier Doctor Who companion Liz Shaw, who appeared during the first season of Jon Pertwee’s reign as the Doctor 40 years ago.

Last time, we did The Ambassadors of Death, her third story, purely because I think it’s the second-best Who story ever, but this week, we’re going to go back and do things chronologically and look at her – and Jon Pertwee’s – first story, Spearhead from Space.

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: The Companion Chronicles – The Blue Tooth

5 March 2007 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

The Blue ToothAs a notorious Liz Shaw fan, I was looking forward to this entry in the Companion Chronicles range. One of the more adult companions (in a good way), she was one of the main elements of a short-lived strategy to make Doctor Who less childish, way back in season seven. However, she never got so much as a leaving scene when she was replaced by Jo Grant and hasn’t yet appeared in any of the Big Finish range. So it was good to hear she would be featuring in this brief set of audio books.

The Blue Tooth sees Liz returning to Cambridge to meet an old friend. In true Who style, it all goes very wrong when an outer space monster intrudes – no less a beastie than the Cybermen, in fact. And it opens with a promise: to reveal why Liz decided to leave the Doctor.

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UK TV

More favourite characters

28 August 2006 Rob Buckley 25 Comments

The top TV characters meme lives on! Stu_N has added his list to the mix; Marie’s crafted a much-admired ‘women only’ list; and there are other suggestions in the comments list of the original meme.

In addition to my original 20, we’ve now added

21) Stringer Bell from The Wire

22) Stewie Griffin of Family Guy (thanks Rosby!)

Stu_N has tempted me with David Callan, Will Scarlet and Steel, but I’m still not sure they’re great characters. I’m half-tempted to add Robert de Rainault – aka the Sheriff of Nottingham from Robin of Sherwood – simply because he was:

a) clever, unlike every other version of the Sheriff of Nottingham so far (and I suspect to come)

b) able to kill Robin Hood. Yes, kill him, stone dead. Well, technically, “so filled with crossbow bolts then trampled by horses that we couldn’t stick his head on a pike outside Nottingham castle because no one would recognise him” dead.

But I’ve decided not to. Again, good but not great. Still Stu_N and Marie both had one name in common on their lists, which has prompted me to come up with a 23 and a 24 for my list.

Drum roll (humour me)…

At 23, we have Liz Shaw from Doctor Who; and at 24, we have, from The Avengers… Cathy Gale.

Who they? I’m glad you asked. Because in both 23 and 24’s cases we have a similar thing happening. We have two pioneering, feminist characters whom everyone’s forgotten, in favour of two not-quite-so feminist characters.

Let me alpha nerd you for a moment…

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: The Companion Chronicles 4×9 – Shadow of the Past

10 June 2010 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Shadow of the PastLiz Shaw: brilliant companion from the brilliant seventh season of Doctor Who. Yet it’s been over three years since she last featured in one of the Companion Chronicles, The Blue Tooth. Hooray, she’s back!

Doubly hooray, it’s Simon Guerrier who’s writing for her, Guerrier being responsible for the brilliant Home Truths and The Drowned World. Can so much excellence all in one place lead only to excellence or is this going to be a letdown?

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Why Liz Shaw had to go

31 October 2006 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

Without wishing to start a new almost-war, I thought this little snippet from the Backlash… sorry, BBC Doctor Who web site was of interest:

Another element of the seventh season with which both Letts and Dicks had been dissatisfied was Liz Shaw. This was on the basis that the independent, self-confident scientist had little need to rely on the Doctor for explanations and so, in their eyes, failed to fulfil the basic dramatic functions of aiding plot exposition and acting as a point of audience identification. Letts therefore decided against renewing actress Caroline John’s contract for a further season and the two men set about devising a new companion for the Doctor.

Anyway, here’s a little clip of Liz Shaw in action from my third most favourite story, The Ambassadors of Death. The clip is actually an example of the current restoration work being done by Ian Levine and co, so the quality of the first half is rubbish. And I don’t mean the story.