60 Years of Doctor Who Anniversary Marathon - T. Baker 1st Review
Disney Time - Behind the Scenes
So for the Third Doctor we looked at trailers and promos for the show itself, well for the Fourth Doctor we’re looking at promotional material and advertisements for things that aren’t related to the show.
See Doctor Who is so popular that the series has been used to advertise various products, charities, PSAs, both for the UK and other countries, and even promote other IPs.
Which leads us to Disney Time.
Disney Time was an annual special that ran in the UK from 1961 to 1998. And it was literally just one giant advert for Disney each and every year. It would show clips from it’s newly released or up coming movies, including recent re-releases and shorts, and promote it’s other tv shows.
Each year the segment was hosted by a celebrity who would provide linking segments and explain the context of the clips being shown. And in 1975 that celebrity was Doctor Who.
Not just Tom Baker, who played the Doctor, but the actual character of the Doctor, running around the theater proclaiming how great Disney is, how much he loves classic Disney characters like Donald Duck, and horribly mispronouncing Mowgli’s name.
The in universe explanation being that the Doctor is on vacation. Having just dropped off Harry and Sarah Jane back home at the end of Revenge of the Cybermen, he enjoys his holiday by going to the movies. At the end of his day off he gets a message from the Brigadier which is supposed to lead directly into Terror of the Zygons. So yeah, this is meant to be canon to the show.
The segment has never officially been released due to copyright, but mega fans with home recorders have kindly posted Tom Baker’s clips to youtube.
In order to watch the show as intended, I pulled up the missing clips off of Disney Plus and kept the Doctor Who linking clips up in another tab; switching between the two when needed.
To re-create the experience yourself, this is the line up.
To start everything off, you have
“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” from Fantasia
The Doctor’s 1st clip
The Clock-cleaners (the short was edited down for the episode, but I don’t know where the cuts were made, so I just watched the entire short)
2nd Doctor clip
“Blackbeard drives a car and says fuck the police” from BlackBeard’s Ghost (the clip starts with Dean Jones and Blackbeard driving in the car and ends with Dean Jones getting handcuffed)
3rd Doctor Who clip
"Trust in Me" from The Jungle Book (clip starts with Kaa singing, and ends Kaa being pushed out of the tree by Mowgli. just end when the segment fades to black)
Back to the Doctor; 4th clip
“The hippopotamus segment” from The African Lion
5th intro by the Doctor
“Theodore and Amos try to rob the bank” from The Apple Dumpling Gang (the segment starts with Theodore telling Amos his plan for using a rope to haul himself to the roof, it ends at the next scene with the Sheriff finding the two thieves tied up together in front of the vault. cut the scene before the trial starts)
6th clip for the Doctor
"The Beautiful Briny" from Bedknobs and Broomsticks (start with them meeting Mr. Cod and end as soon as they accept the trophy)
Another Doctor segment, the 7th clip
“A cougar attacks a child” from Return of the Big Cat (This TV movie is on youtube not Disney+; and clips were actually shown out of order for the episode. first clip time stamp 41:52 to 43:53, and the second clip time stamp is 37:30 to 39:27)
7th Doctor Who clip
“The puppets dancing” from Escape to Witch Mountain (the scene starts with the kids being stuck inside while it rains. they make the puppets come to life, the villains watch them from a hidden camera, next scene the children discuss running away)
8th Doctor who clip
“He’s a Tramp” from Lady and the Tramp (scene kicks off with Lady being brought into the pound, ends with the song ending)
Final Doctor Who clip
Of course it’s Disney and Doctor Who, two my favorite things combined so I love it. THe best bits were the songs, but even the segments from ‘lesser’ films proved to be at least interesting given their context.
The Apple Dumpling and Escape to Witch Mountain were the big theatrical releases at the time, hence their inclusion.
BlackBeard’s Ghost, The African Lion, and Jungle Book were all getting planned releases that following year, and indeed the theater where this was filmed was playing Lady and the Tramp at the time. Which is why the episode ended on that segment in particular.
But most interesting of all was the Return of the Big Cat segment. A movie that I didn’t even knew existed until this marathon.
It’s not a theatrical release, but rather a made for tv movie that was created for Disney’s anthology show The Wonderful World of Color.
Disney made original tv movies from time to time for his anthology and they’re basically the prototype for the Disney Channel Original Movies that I grew up on. With about the same level of quality too.
With new Doctor Who coming to Disney Plus soon, this was a fun look in that I wouldn’t mind revisiting again. Especially since I know where the clips actually begin and end. It took a while to figure that part out.
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My favorite Kingdom Hearts fact is that one of the biggest plot-holes that Nomura has never been able to meaningfully retcon or write his way out, a plot-hole so big that it fundamentally breaks the very rules the series is written on...
Is the existence of Steamboat Willie
Let me explain for the uninitiated:
In Kingdom Hearts 2, there’s a small detour in the story involving Maleficent trying to invade Disney Castle, the home of King Mickey. She can’t step foot in the castle due to an artefact of pure light that wards off darkness locked in the basement.
Pete, who is working for Maleficent, opens a door into the past (Before Disney Castle, this land was known as Timeless River) and decides to remove the artifact from it’s place in time so it won’t be there to stop them from getting in.
Sora, Donald, and Goofy chase Pete into the past thanks to another magic door provided by Merlin, and through some shenanigans involving old cartoons and teaming up with Pete’s past-self, they lock the door the villains are using, and return the artefact to it’s proper place so it can exist in the present.
You with me so far? Pretty straightforward-ish time-travel plot right?
Here’s where it goes off the rails.
Time travel would go on to become a staple of Kingdom Hearts going forward and would come with a very strict set of rules over how it operates:
1. You can only travel to a point in time where a version of yourself exists
2. You basically give up your body to do so, and travel as a disembodied soul unless you have a vessel to inhabit
3. You can’t alter the past in a meaningful way, what’s going to happen will happen
4. You lose your memories of said trip once you return, but your actions could leave a lingering instinct on your other self that could influence their decisions
“Wait” you may be thinking “Why should anyone go through all those hoops? Wasn’t time travel super simple that first time?”
And you’d be totally right, because the existence of Timeless River completely renders all of these rules and restrictions meaningless.
There is no version of Sora that existed in Timeless River before he step foot there, everyone kept their bodies, the trio and Pete were able to mess with the timeline as freely as they pleased, and they all very much remember their trip.
Nomura has never been able to meaningfully explain this super simple, easy way of time travel and the more convoluted method co-existing other than a cheap-throwaway line from one of the villains saying that Merlin “broke the rules”
The hilarious part about this line is that it implies that PETE of all characters is actually more powerful than the actual villain of the series, because Pete opened a door into Timeless River through sheer willpower and nostalgia for “the good old days”
But the all-knowing chess-master of a villain who had an evil plan several decades in the making with countless moving parts and contingencies to account for had to use the roundabout, more complicated method of time travel where a lot could go wrong.
Pete though? Dude just casually broke all the rules of time travel because he felt like it. He's just built different.
TL;DR: Steamboat Willie breaks Kingdom Hearts lore in half, Pete is more powerful than Master Xehanort, and I fucking love this beautiful trainwreck of a series you guys it means so much to me
I love Kingdom hearts so much.
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