I Love... 1977

By Jonno Simmons

If I had to pick one year that stood out in so many ways for my love of Doctor Who, it would have to be 1977.

I was aged from 7 and a half to 8 and a half during the course of the year, and was now old enough to be fully aware of stories and plots, rather than just experiencing vivid images from behind the sofa. It was also a time when my whole family watched the show together and enjoyed it. I can recall with amusement early in the year when one of our neighbour’s daughters, slightly younger than me, was staying with us and didn’t want to watch the programme as it terrified her– it was an episode of Robots of Death that night, so in hindsight I don’t really blame her! My Mum’s succinct response to her though was that if she didn’t like it, don’t watch it! Nothing would prevent us from watching. Nice one Mum!

I must admit that the stories at either end of the calendar aren’t amongst my favourites by any means, although at least the opening story of the year – on the opening day of the year no less – introduced one of my favourite companions in Leela, who was a loyal companion throughout the year. She was joined by K9 later in the year – a love him or hate him companion, but personally I loved him. I guess I was at the right age to be fascinated by him, and I think that Mark I worked really well with Leela, due to the contrast between his intelligence and her ignorance of so many scientific matters.

Having introduced the new companion, I was now treated to an amazing trio of stories spanning the 14^th and 15^th seasons. Robots, Talons and Fang Rock all figure in my personal all time Top Five of the show – as far as I’m concerned, they all come as close to perfection as you can ask for and highlight the show at its very peak of creative power. Everyone connected with the show gave their utmost, and they were rewarded with massive viewing figures. Every episode from Face of Evil 1 to Talons 5 was in the national Top 30, with many of them in the Top 20. (Talons 6 just missed out at 32). The show was a national treasure and a mass audience phenomenon. I even got to see the first major documentary devoted to the show the night after Season 14 finished. Also on screen that year, two classics were repeated – Deadly Assassin in the summer (with its infamous freeze-frame cliffhanger edited out) and on the last day of the year, an omnibus repeat of the first two episodes of Robots of Death.

This was also the year I really got into the Target novelisations – I was borrowing them from the library. I can particularly remember borrowing The Three Doctors with its original striking Chris Achilleos cover. I bought Day of the Daleks, Carnival of Monsters and The Mutants that year – and still have them in my collection. The pages might be browned with age, but they’re still cherished. I can also recall buying a Doctor Who magazine this year, which had a mixture of text and comic strip stories, though sadly that is no longer in my collection. That was the first Doctor Who magazine I would have bought, in those pre-DWW/M days.

After such an exciting year, it was perhaps inevitable that change was in the air. For me, it was my parents’ announcement late in the year that we would be emigrating to Liberia in West Africa. The immediate effect this had on me was that, due to space restrictions on what we could ship out with us, I had to give away lots of my belongings. My friend and fellow Who fan, Neil, delightedly received various books and toys, though I managed to take some Targets with me, including the aforementioned ones which made for good reading on the long flight out there.

And suddenly, sometime during transmission of The Sunmakers, my favourite television programme was out of my life. 1978 would be the only year in my life in which I never watched a single episode of the show. We returned for a summer holiday in 1979 which enabled me to catch a repeat of The Pirate Planet, and were back in good in summer 1980 with two more repeats to watch.

It wouldn’t be quite the same from now on – secondary school was beginning as Season 18 debuted, only my Dad and I now watched as it had stopped becoming a family event for us, and even my beloved title sequence and theme had disappeared. So, 1977 remains a very special year for me Who wise.