w0w on today's weekend marathon of The Doctors, they showed an episode with a really really young Kim Zimmer (Reva from GL).

She was so young that it took me a few minutes to even recognize her.

Which means they're skipping around because she didn't begin until around 1979 as opposed to Anna Stuart's episode this week from 1971.

I watched a lot of the DOCTORS live in real time. That's terrible if they're showing episodes out of place. Anna played Gina, right? And, of course, Liz played Althea Davis. When Nick would bellow "Althea!" I was reminded of Mitch & Stella in STREETCAR. Kim Zimmer, Kathleen Turner & a third actress I am blank on, basically shared the role of Nola Dancy.

@SoapWatch said:

w0w on today's weekend marathon of The Doctors, they showed an episode with a really really young Kim Zimmer (Reva from GL).

She was so young that it took me a few minutes to even recognize her.

Which means they're skipping around because she didn't begin until around 1979 as opposed to Anna Stuart's episode this week from 1971.

I believe the weekend episodes are up to early 1980. The weekday episodes are at 1971. So when the weekend episodes reach the end of the show's run, then those will start over back at 1968, and by then the weekday episodes should be be in 1972 or 1973. They do this, because there are 13 years worth of episodes, and some fans have already seen all the episodes from the 60s and 70s that are available for broadcast.

Ohhhhhh. Well, that's different. That's showing 2 different tracks. They should make that clear though. Is Alec Baldwyn on yet? Elsewhere there's this thread that I began, "From Day Player to Long-running Character" & one of the examples for the DOCTORS is the actress who played Carolee. She was an under-5 & then a light recurring & they just kept adding to her part till she was integral to almost all stories.

Baldwin began in Aug 1980 so I'm not sure what eps they are airing in 1980 to know when he begins but I'd think soon.

I was particularly drawn to pretty boy Mike Powers, who upon looking at actor Peter Burnell right off the bat, figured he had to be gay in real life. Sure enough, he had a male partner, who both caught Aids around the same time in 1982 resulting in Burnell committing suicide. His partner played his illness out dying something like a year later.

The mom of Burnell said he didn't commit suicide because of Aids but because he had auditioned for a part he really wanted and lost it and was tired of the direction his career had taken. Some time before he had landed the role in a TV series but was replaced after the first episode.

This looks like one of the scenes I saw with him and Anna Stuart the past week:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMGZhYWYwNmItMWU4My00NTc5LWE0YTgtYmMxOWJlYmNjOGIyXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzMyNTQxNDA@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ca/62/b0/ca62b03b0e0de81d4a4e4173743d4fa6.jpg

@Donna_L_Bridges said:

Anna played Gina, right?

No. Anna Stuart played a character named Toni Ferra Powers on The Doctors. She played Dr. Gina Dante-Lansing on GH. Gina was the sister of Dr. Mark Dante who was played by Gerald Gordon. Gerald Gordon also played Dr. Nick Bellini on The Doctors.

Not sure if anyone knows who Valerie Mahaffey is but I recognized her right off the bat today from my knowing her from the short-lived John Forsythe TV series The Powers That Be

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0536723/?ref_=tt_cl_t_5

Mike, that would be Matt's son. I have no mental picture of him. https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=soap+opera+The+Doctors+Mike+Powers&qs=n&form=QBILPG&sp=-1&ghc=1&lq=0&pq=soap+opera+the+doctors+mike+powers&sc=10-34&cvid=F4BC879AE159421B9F42E8D51A8B59DD&ghsh=0&ghacc=0&first=1 OH! Very recognizable. Now I know about another soap suicide. 1-Brenda Benet, DAYS 2-Ben Hendriksen, ATWT, 3-Roscoe Born, many soaps, 4-Ben Jorgensen, AMC & ATWT, 5-Peter Burnell, DOC. Is that all? Kim talks about the day Baldwyn came in to read in her book. All the younger females had a fit over him. Apparently he was so good looking. ... ?

I just now watched til the end of the weekend marathon in which they scrolled the entire cast and Baldwin wasn't yet on the list so his episodes should be coming soon.

On these particular episodes, the ever so evil Mona took Kim Zimmer's baby Jessica and won't give her back intending to raise her as her own. Some great acting done by Zimmer in these.

So whatever part of 1980 that plot is from is where they are at on the weekend episodes.

@SoapWatch said:

Not sure if anyone knows who Valerie Mahaffey is but I recognized her right off the bat today from my knowing her from the short-lived John Forsythe TV series The Powers That Be

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0536723/?ref_=tt_cl_t_5

I remember her vividly as a great character actress who is very good at comedy. I didn't realize she started on DOC.

@Donna_L_Bridges said:

@SoapWatch said:

Not sure if anyone knows who Valerie Mahaffey is but I recognized her right off the bat today from my knowing her from the short-lived John Forsythe TV series The Powers That Be

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0536723/?ref_=tt_cl_t_5

I remember her vividly as a great character actress who is very good at comedy. I didn't realize she started on DOC.

She had some good acting scenes on this marathon as well. She's wanting a baby but her husband doesn't and he found out she stopped taking the pill and was grilling her about it.

Anna Stuart was very popular as Toni Ferra Powers on The Doctors and she's pretty much front-burner for about five years, from 1971 to 1976. In early 1976, she is playing a triangle with Mike (Armand Assante) and Mike's cousin Alan (Gil Gerard). Assante jumped ship because he had offers to do film work and was replaced, but the next actor that plays Mike, whose name I forget, did not have a lot of chemistry with Stuart.

As for Gil Gerard, he was suddenly backgrounded and starts to appear on a recurring basis until he is totally written out. Stuart was abruptly let go at the end of the summer '76, when her contract was not renewed...though I think she was eager to head to Los Angeles to try her luck in primetime (something Gil Gerard did, more successfully). Stuart ended up taking a role on General Hospital in 1977 which she did for a year, before returning to New York. After that there was a lengthy gap of unemployment for her, because she had some serious health problems and was unable to work during the late 70s. She bounced back in the early 80s, filled in briefly for Maeve Kinkead as Vanessa on Guiding Light, then was hired to do the role for she is most remembered on Another World.

Stuart's last episode on The Doctors occurs in September 1976. Her character exits very quickly. One day she is working at the hospital, then all of a sudden she gets a phone call that her mother has been in a car accident out west. She tells everyone she has to go take care of her mother and will be back, but she never comes back. That's the end of Toni. Mike is forced to move on without Toni. The writers waste no time pairing him up with one of the Dancy daughters. The working class Dancys were now the show's prominent new family, usurping screen time from the other long-running clans. Mike and his new wife Sara raise the son he had with Toni.

In 1977, Liz Hubbard was dropped from The Doctors. She also has an abrupt and rather unsatisfying departure in the summer of '77. Her character, Althea, heads to Japan to be with her daughter Penny (formerly played by Julia Duffy). Unlike Stuart, Hubbard would return later, in February 1981, and she remained with the soap until it ended in December 1982.

Speaking of the episodes from the 1980s. Retro (and whatever company owns that channel) had been leading viewers on that they had all the color episodes from 1967 to 1982. They never indicated anything about the black-and-white episodes from 1963 to 1967. But they kept saying they had leased all the color episodes to the show's conclusion.

There were some missing episodes, but they aired everything they had from December 1967 to December 1979. Then they started back at 1967. They told fans they were in the process of still digitizing episodes from the last three years (1980, 1981 and 1982) but that the process had been delayed by Covid. Etc.

It was only recently that they finally started airing episodes from 1980. However, they admitted they only have episodes from January 1980 to October 1980. So after this weekend cycle reaches the fall of 1980, that will be it.

The Doctors was sold by its long-time sponsor/owner Colgate-Palmolive in mid-1980 to NBC. Supposedly NBC did not save the tapes, so those last two years are lost, except for what you can find online from collectors who may have randomly recorded a few episodes from 1981 and 1982 during the original broadcast period.

Personally I don't believe those last two years are lost. I think Retro and its parent company which has a history of misleading viewers, probably didn't realize they had to pay NBC to broadcast those later episodes. They only negotiated for the color episodes from the Colgate-Palmolive era.

What does this mean for Retro TV viewers? It means that they won't get to see the show up to the end. And that they will only get to see a few dozen appearances with Alec Baldwin playing Billy Aldrich, since he did not join the show until the summer of 1980.

Personally I would most like to see the very bitter end when Barbara Morgenroth & her partner were writing just absolutely off the wall stuff. Graverobbing, a plague, a youth serum, etc. I got to know Morgenroth online & she was a real character.

@JarrodMcDonald said:

The Doctors was sold by its long-time sponsor/owner Colgate-Palmolive in mid-1980 to NBC. Supposedly NBC did not save the tapes, so those last two years are lost, except for what you can find online from collectors who may have randomly recorded a few episodes from 1981 and 1982 during the original broadcast period.

Yeah Mike Fairman reported on this saying that NBC recorded over the last 2 years or so of the soap. But recorded over them for what? More Doctors episodes that were being done by them or another series?

One thing I am interested in knowing is why was the soap opera The Doctors picked by RetroTV over all other soaps?

Was it just that the owner was an avid fan of the soap or what?

It'd be good if they could do it with other soaps from the past though a lot of relies on what actually exists footage-wise out there.

I wonder about that & if they recorded over them or wiped or what.

I can't think what NBC actually produced. They owned GEN & later half of BEACH & all of PSSN.

I have written extensively on the state of things as far as streaming classic episodes is concerned. I will bring that over.