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Resistance is Useless |
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Resistance is Useless |
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| Synopsis: A documentary by anoraks, for anoraks. |
A good opening to a brilliant year by Tim Roll-Pickering 14/69/03
1992 was one of those years when it felt better than ever to be a Doctor Who fan in the UK. It was a year when no less than twenty episodes were repeated, when the video releases finally shifted from a steady trickle to a stronger torrent, when the New Adventures started to thrive and unleashed a new companion on us, when lost classics were released on audio tape, when The Tomb of the Cybermen was rediscovered (as well as a PAL copy of Death to the Daleks Part 1), when Target reprinted many more novelisations, when Shada was finally released to fans, when UK Gold began screening many old stories, when the Restoration Team formed and began recolourising Pertwee stories, when Fraser Hines was the star of an edition of This Is Your Life, when the script of The Masters of Luxor was printed and so much more. For fans of the series this was truly an annus mirabalus and you could hold your head up high. On a personal level this was the year I became a proper fan of the series, and Resistance is Useless is where it all began...
Unlike other documentaries, most obviously the various versions of Thirty Years In The TARDIS, there is no narrative theme and instead we are presented with a thirty minute celebration of the series. Most of the show is made up of clips from many different stories, with all Doctors represented although for some reason an early sequence incorportating the regenerations misses out the Baker-Davison and Baker-McCoy transformations. We also get sections looking at different aspects of the show, including the TARDIS, gadgets, costumes, belittling women, the Brigadier, scarey moments, special effects, overacting and the Doctor taking control of a situation. The result is half an hour of wonderful nostalgia!
But amidst all this there is something to embaress fans. The show is presented by a talking anorak.
Literally.
There's nothing more guarenteed to outrage Doctor Who fans than something which hits one of the all-time big "fan embaressment" buttons and this is one of the biggest. This anorak is full of trivia, taking the opportunity to "correct" the common misperception that Doctor Who is the character's name (although to my knowledge no-one has yet managed to point out where precisely where in the series it is stated that this isn't the case when there are a few episodes and a load of credits which do use the name). Attitudes to the anorak will probably determine people's views on Resistance is Useless but caricatures are something every group has to bear and shrug off. Given that the show is half an hour celebrating the show with a random fan, it works for me and so makes the entire show a wonder. This is what made me and others become fans and remains good to this day. 8/10