Tag Archives: Peter Capaldi

‘The Musketeers’ and ‘The Three Musketeers’

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I’ve always loved Musketeers stories.

I’m pretty sure I read Alexandre Dumas’ novel of 17th-century Musketeers – the king’s guard – when I was still young and certainly before the 1973 Richard Lester movie version. I really loved Lester’s movie and its made-at-the-same-time sequel, “The Four Musketeers,” which was funny and slapstick and swashbuckling all at the same time. The movies clinched my love of the story and characters, a love that deepened when I saw the very different but equally thrilling 1948 version starring Gene Kelly and Van Heflin.

So I’ve enjoyed getting a double-dose of Musketeers lately with a BBC America series, “The Musketeers,” and a repeat viewing of Lester’s first movie.

“The Musketeers” is a handsome version of the story of young French farm boy d’Artagnan, who goes to Paris on a mission of revenge but soon finds companions in three of the king’s best Musketeers, suave Aramis, tragic Athos and brawling Porthos.

The series has the court intrigue, double-crossings and mysterious motives familiar from the story. The four Musketeers are stalwart but portrayed as men with faults and secrets.

Peter Capaldi as Cardinal Richelieu in the BBC's The Musketeers.
A nice bonus is the presence of Peter Capaldi, who just last night began his tenure as the Doctor in “Doctor Who,” as Cardinal Richelieu, often portrayed as a villain but given some interesting shading here.

The series finishes up tonight, but I’m sure you can catch it streaming or on demand.

As for a recent chance to re-watch Lester’s original “Three Musketeers,” with Michael York, Raquel Welch and the amazing Oliver Reed, I rediscovered my love for the movie again.

the three musketeers 1973
But I hadn’t remembered how goofy parts of the movie were.

And for all the talk about modern-day movies hinting at or previewing future movies in a series, “The Three Musketeers” ends with scenes from its sequel.

It was a practice the producers, the Salkinds, pioneered here and tried to do again with the first two “Superman” movies. In the latter series, the producers threw out much of the footage shot for the sequel. With the “Musketeers” films, some members of the cast sued because they had been paid for only one movie.

Pretty sure Peter Jackson worked out such details with the “Lord of the Rings” cast before the fact.

Peter Capaldi is the new Doctor

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A woman would have been nice, as would a non-white actor.

But there’s almost universal acclaim online since the announcement, a little more than a half hour ago, that British character actor Peter Capaldi would play the Doctor, the traveling time lord in the 50-year-old British TV series “Doctor Who.”

Capaldi – who played a WHO (World Health Organization) doctor in “World War Z – is best known as another kind of doctor – a spin doctor – in the BBC series “The Thick of It.”

We’d heard a lot of possible new Doctors – the 12th in the run in the series, including a one-shot TV movie starring Paul McGann but not counting the version played on the big screen by Peter Cushing – to replace Matt Smith. Capaldi had apparently become a favorite in recent days.

Since the modern “Doctor Who” era began in 2005 when the show was revived with Christopher Eccleston in the title role, I’ve caught the series a few times on SyFy or BBC America.

My real background with “Doctor Who” goes back to the 1970s and early 1980s, though, and the heyday of Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor.

This was before the age of home video, so the only way to catch the show was when it aired, usually on some obscure cable channel.

I remember watching “Doctor Who” with friends up near the Region (for those of you who don’t know, that’s Northern Indiana) and enjoying Baker’s scarf-wearing escapades.

The modern-day Doctors have been younger romantic lead-types. The 55-year-old Capaldi brings a slightly older, more distinguished feel to the role.

One additional thought: It’s funny that Twitter was alive this afternoon with anticipation and reaction to the announcement of the new Doctor. The changing of the series’ lead actor has drawn some attention in recent years, but for much of the show’s early history, the change didn’t get a lot of notice around the world and especially here in the states.

It’s further proof that the geeks have inherited the Earth.