That Was the DWM That Was

The Basics - Issue 158, March 1990. The front cover has a photo of the Fourth Doctor from City of Death. The new Designer is Jacqui Papp.

News And Views - Doctor Who may now remain an in-house BBC production, rather than by an independent company. A final decision may not now be made until April, but the 27th season is still provisionally scheduled to air in early 1991. Donald Sutherland is still being promoted by the press as the new film Doctor. Discussions are under way to take The Ultimate Adventure stage play to Australia for a tour from late 1990. Videos of An Unearthly Child and The War Games were released on 5th February, with future releases rumoured as including The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Mind Robber, The Web Planet, The Dominators and unedited versions of The Brain of Morbius and The Five Doctors. BSB are planning to show all surviving stories, starting with An Unearthly Child, on their Galaxy channel.

Reviews - Off The Shelf reviews The Happiness Patrol ("a darned good story; an excellent novelisation" 4.5/5) and The Space Pirates ("one piece of junk from beginning to end" 2/5 (for bravery)).

Boxpops - Top of the pop charts in March 1990 were Dub Be Good To Me by Beats International and The Power by Snap.

Skaro Says - Paul Clement points out that the novelisation of The Space Pirates is infinitely preferable to listening to the audio or watching the reconstruction.

Critique - Starting with the cover (and I like the look on Tom's face!) I often felt that the SFX looked like SEX, and this was in the days before SFX Magazine had launched, as I believe they've used that idea themselves. Once again, GG is full of optimistic news stories, and of course they were only 14 years out when claiming that the 27th series would air in early 1991! A notable feature looked back at how the show was reported in the press throughout 1989 - the sort of feature they do regularly now. Otherwise, it's an issue with little of note and one dominated by interviews, which explains why Skaro didn't say very much this time... Incidentally, it was researching this issue in early 2004 that gave me the idea for this series of features, while looking up the news report of Edmund Warwick's death, so if for nothing else at least that makes this issue somewhat significant!

Back Cover

(the main image is too dark to scan but the tantalising headline is...)