The Basics - Issue 172, 17 April 1991. The front cover has artwork of The Awakening by Pete Wallbank, which is the subject of this issue's Archive.

Indicia - Dangerous Vworping Noises courtesy of ILM. (A lie, sorry).

News And Views - The Curse of Fenric is the fastest selling DW tape to date, with 12,200 units sold in its first two weeks of release. The Hartnell and Troughton Era tapes are still scheduled for June, with the Pertwee release being put back. A second series of New Adventures will be published in 1992 under the umbrella title of Cat's Cradle. Jon Pertwee writes in to thank DWM for sending him the recent interview with him (issue 170). Another letter writer suggests that Radio 5 could broadcast a DW radio series...

New Fiction - The Brief Encounters "A Victorian Interlude" by Andrew Lane features Jago and Litefoot.

Notables - The Episode Guide (which began in Issue 50) returns to cover the Seventh Doctor's era, featuring Season 24 this issue.

Reviews - Off The Shelf reviews the first eight episodes of Blake's 7, recently released on four BBC videos.

Boxpops - Top of the pop charts throughout April 91 was The One And Only by Chesney Hawkes.

Skaro Says - Si Hart believes that the diamond logo reinvigorated the magazine, and that they were on a bit of a roll, seeming to be cleaner and sleeker. Sidesk notes that this issue goes some way to redressing the balance by focusing more on the recent years of the show, in particular the Davison era, with 10 pages devoted to a 2 episode story.

Critique - I rather like this artwork cover (will we ever see them again?), and the Archive also contains some decent artwork by Colin Howard. Including an interview with the writer, Eric Pringle, and small items on the design work and comments by JNT, they put an extra bit of effort into the last Archives before the forthcoming revamp. This issue is notable for reviving the Episode Guide that had begun over a decade earlier, while the Brief Encounter is a particularly good one, featuing two characters from my favourite story to date. Off The Shelf is dominated by reviews of the first few Blake's 7 videos, which didn't go down well with all the readers, but was fine with me as I was buying the videos at that time. The final part of The Mark of Mandragora has a nice continuity touch where we find out that the Foreign Hazard Duty will be an offshoot of UNIT. With a look at the Pertwee era coverage in Radio Times, this is another excellent issue.