Doctor Who - The Talons of Weng-Chiang

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DVD details

Actor: Louise Jameson, Tom Baker
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 142 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-10-07
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: BBC Video

DVD Reviews of Doctor Who - The Talons of Weng-Chiang

DVD Review: Another classic from the Tom Baker era
Summary: 5 Stars

This is one of my favorites and would mark the end of producer Philip Hinchcliffe's work on the show as well as season 14. This would also mark the end of Leela's first season on the show although she wasn't there for the whole season. John Nathan-Turner who would become a producer later on joins the crew here. The story itself is set in Victorian England with The Doctor dressed as Sherlock Holmes. This story has also drawn alot of attention for it's display of what some consider racist attitudes towards the Chinese with the show actually being pulled off of some channels. This is a show that the pc police certainly wouldn't let be made today.

DVD Review: Memorable Characters!
Summary: 5 Stars

"The Talons of Weng Chiang" like most of my favorite "Dr. Who" Episodes, features a Six Part Story that allows for the necessary character development of several supporting players. Most memorable is that of the Theater Owner "Henry Gordon Jago". This must truly go down as one of the great supporting roles in this series with the character's W.C. Fields Like love of employing extra and often exotic words to describe situations that can otherwise be explained in much simpler fashion. He is to be sure a bumbler and a blowhard but not without loveable qualities nonetheless... This is one of the few instances I can think of when a guest star comes close to actually stealing the show from Tom Baker as Dr. Who (no small feat!) Another character, Dr. George Lightfoot, while still a bit bumbling and a tad confused by the Doctor's ultimate goals, has more to offer in terms of providing assistance to the good Doctor in solving the crime and mysteries of Weng Chiang. While the story itself initially pulls you in, it is the supporting cast that will have you watching this program over and over again! A must for the Serious Dr. Who Collector of any time period...

DVD Review: Doctor Who VCR Tape Talons of Weng-Chiang
Summary: 4 Stars

The 6th Story in the 14th season. Starring Tom Baker. If you are building a Doctor Who collection, be aware that a lot of the earlier shows and episodes were destroyed and no longer exist. There were 26 seasons of Doctor Who before the show was cancelled. At that point the Doctor Who movie was made in the mid 1990's. Then we had 9 long years of no Doctor Who. Yet in 2005 the BBC launched a new Doctor Who series which is currently starting its 4th season.
Definately worth collecting all the Tom Baker episodes, since he played the role longer then any other actor to date. And by many is considered the quintessential Doctor Who. Missing episodes all occurred prior to Tom Bakers appearance in the role.

DVD Review: Top Who
Summary: 5 Stars

Without a doubt, one of the best series of Dr Who episodes: not just for Tom Baker, but of the entire franchise. If you're a Dr Who fan, you have to have this one.

DVD Review: are you trying to get my attention?
Summary: 5 Stars

I love this dvd i have watched it 100 times already, tom baker is just an extrodinary actor very versitile and charasmatic he fits into the character of the Doctor like hand in glove. Despite the obvious racism in this story which critics and fans alike found distasteful, i found that this story was only trying to convey the sillines of victorian racism and not promoting it. This story had impecable humour,mystery, adventure, and really gloomy atmosphere which is the hallmark of the early tom baker serials. I love doctor who both the old serials and the new series because doctor who is not your ordinary run of the mill science fiction tv series where you have people blowing their enemies up or discussing mundane relationships between different groups of people trying to humanize the alien creatures they contact, no doctor who is about facing the unknown and trying to better understand the universe as it relates to time and history leaving the alien creatures as they are strange and forboding. This series shows us that the universe time and space are filled with wonders beyond our imagining.

Description of Doctor Who - The Talons of Weng-Chiang

The Doctor brings Leela to Victorian London to meet her ancestors (though Agincourt might have been more her style). The TARDIS materializes in the darkest heart of the city, where life - and death - is anything but dull. A hapless cabbie is slain by agents of a secret Chinese cult. Young women are disappearing at an alarming rate, and Li H'sen Chang, the Palace Theatre's celebrated magician, may know more about that than he admits. Li H'sen's ventriloquist dummy, Mr. Sin, appears to have a life of its own, and the rat problem in the sewers is bigger than anyone can imagine.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:Commentary by producer Philip Hinchcliffe, director David Maloney and actors Louise Jameson, John Bennett and Christopher Benjamin
Documentary:Whose Doctor Who - 59-minute documentary presented by Melvyn Bragg
Interviews:Philip Hinchcliffe interview (Pebble Mill, 1977)
Other:Blue Peter: Make Your Own Doctor Who Theatre; Behind the Scenes - 24 minutes of raw footage; Howard Da Silva intros/teases; TARDIS-Cam No. 6
Photo gallery
Production Notes
Theatrical Trailer:Trailers and continuity announcements

"The Talons of Weng-Chiang" is one of the very best Doctor Who stories, a six-part adventure set in a gothic Victorian London inspired by The Phantom of the Opera and Sax Rohmer's tales of Fu Manchu, with nods toward Jack the Ripper, Dracula, and Sherlock Holmes. The final story from the Golden Age of the show, Philip Hinchcliff's three-year tenure as producer, the tale boasts superior production values and a bizarre storyline involving a time-traveling war criminal, giant rats in the London sewers, and a malevolent ventriloquist's doll with the brain of a pig.

Pitted against this flamboyant madness, largely centered on an East End music-hall run by the self-important Henry Gordon Jago (a memorable performance by Christopher Benjamin) are Tom Baker's fourth Doctor, in pre-self-parody top form, and Louise Jameson's Leela at her primal best. There's strong support from Trevor Baxter as the Watson-like Professor Lightfoot, and John Bennett as the villainous Li H'sen Chang. Really helping matters is the first-rate direction from David "Genesis of the Daleks" Maloney, evoking a creepy atmosphere in a fantasy London of shadows and fog. "Weng-Chiang" was the pinnacle of gothic Who and still remains highly enjoyable entertainment. --Gary S. Dalkin

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