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I Love... 1981 |
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Bath Library was a big and imposing building and it was here that one of my fondest childhood memories took place. My Mum and my Grandad had collected me from school and took me to the library. I remember it being a huge place full of thousands of books, but then I was much smaller back then. Anyway, Grandad went to find a librarian and she came back with a pile of books, which she laid on the desk in front of me… a big pile of hardback Target books for me to choose from. My cousin had lent us a copy of the Destiny of the Daleks novelisation sometime before and obviously this had gone down well with me, leading them to find me some more books to be read. I can remember quite clearly being amazed at the colourful jackets, which looked ever so exciting. All those other Doctors I’d seen in the comic, monsters, Daleks… I was allowed to choose one. I wish I could remember which one I took; I think it was The Dalek Invasion of Earth, but it was so long ago… Over the coming months we read them all. I remember Mum telling me as we walked along the canal back to my grandparents’ house at the top of the hill all about the yeti in the underground as we’d taken Web of Fear (with the brilliant Achilleos cover, its still my favourite!), I know we read The Deadly Assassin just before Keeper of Traken was on as I recognised the Master when he turned round and there’s a photo somewhere in my parents photo albums of a very sleepy Simon being read The Claws of Axos by my Mum. We used to do a chapter a night (two if I was very lucky!) and I have very happy memories of curling up on the settee next to Mum as she read to me each night. 1981 was the year I started my very own Target book collection. July that year was, as always, my birthday and I got the quite considerable sum of £10 birthday money! Dad took me into town after school on my birthday and we chose a big pile of Target books to start off my collection! Again I remember being really excited by the covers of among others, The Giant Robot with the wonderful head shot of the robot, The Three Doctors (Too Old, Too Bad and Too Welsh!), Brain of Morbius in glorious yellow, Masque of Mandragora with the strange mask around the Doctor’s head and several others possibly including Androids of Tara, Underworld and The Armageddon Factor (I wasn’t discerning!). I used to sit and gaze at the covers, especially as I was too young to actually read much of the books on my own, but that time would come. That birthday’s main present from my parents had been my very own tape recorder, so the rest of the birthday money was spent on my first ever tape, Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks. I listened to that and the State of Decay talking book over and over again until I virtually knew them off by heart. To this day I can still recite bits and pieces of Tom’s wonderful Genesis narration, from stepping out of the TARDIS onto a bleak planet to Sarah and Sevrin climbing higher and higher… it was wonderful stuff. It was much the same with State of Decay and I know there are other fans of the same age as me who know the tape as I do… "The Doctor and his companions were lost…" through to "The menace of the Great Vampire was ended forever", it remains a big favourite to this day. Where are those tapes? Of course it was on the telly too. I remember sitting, clutching my Talking K9 watching Warriors’ Gate, gasping as the Master was revealed and being really upset when Tom fell to his "death" and changed in front of my eyes… the memory being mixed with us moving into our house in Bracknell, where my parents still live, reading Doctor Who Magazine in an empty house as the furniture was moved in (issue 51… Farewell to Tom Baker). By the summer we were settled, we had a colour TV for the first time, and we sat and watched the repeats of Full Circle and Keeper of Traken, with Dad suggesting we recorded Full Circle on tape with my new tape recorder. I wore the tape out eventually, but my favourite memory of it was of me quietly saying as the TARDIS took off with Adric and co on board in early episode 3 "They could be going to Gallifrey!" Awww! I’m sure the tape was responsible for making the story one of my very favourites. At the end of the year we were treated to The Five Faces of Doctor Who, and it was ever so exciting too. I remember being disappointed to miss part 4 of The Krotons as we had a power cut, and seeing The Three Doctors was particularly good as we’d read the book earlier in the year. The year ended with a haul of Doctor Who stuff for Christmas. My Mum and Dad both remember having a quiet Christmas that year as I sat in my TARDIS Tent at one end of the living room and my sister in her Wendy House at the other end! Inspired Christmas present buying that year! K9 was back in K9 and Co which was ever so exciting too, and I remember all my friends the next day humming the theme as we played outside! 1981 was a great year and I have so many happy memories… just round the corner was a new Doctor, a video recorder and a new little brother.
The 1980s – a decade that is often much maligned for fashion, music and even for Doctor Who it would be a somewhat controversial decade. However, 1981 was a great time to be an 11/12 year old. The music was fantastic – ska and new romantic were the order of the day. And for me personally, Doctor Who was at its peak in its last decade in 1981. This despite the fact that there were only three new stories transmitted in the calendar year – but never mind the quantity, look at the quality. Warrior’s Gate kicked off the year by concluding the excellent E-Space trilogy, and with new companion Adric already on board, it was farewell to two remnants of the 70s in Romana and K-9. Next up was an excellent tale in The Keeper of Traken, which was quite fascinating in as much as we DWM readers knew that Sarah Sutton’s Nyssa would be joining the TARDIS, yet at the end of the story the Doctor and Adric departed as usual and left her on Traken. Most unusual! Then came the apocalyptic Logopolis, and a sad farewell to "my" Doctor, Tom Baker. Now suddenly the new crew is fully in place, with Nyssa popping up again and Tegan, the mouth on legs, making a striking debut appearance. There’s a nod to the past in the final two stories of the season with the reintroduction of arch enemy, The Master, firstly in his emaciated persona, in a nod to The Deadly Assassin though not looking as scary this time, and then the slight physical resemblance to Roger Delgado’s incarnation. Then came the long wait – an unprecedented nine month wait until the new season, and for the first time in seven years, there would be no new season in the autumn months. However, there were some treats in store for us patient TV viewers between seasons. First, in the summer came repeats of two of the best stories of Season 18 – Full Circle and The Keeper of Traken. I lapped them up, and was particularly pleased to see the latter repeated, as I had missed the final part on original transmission while on a school holiday to France. However, the week that Traken was repeated found me at my Nan’s home on summer holiday – and in its 6.30pm slot it clashed with Crossroads on ITV, and my Nan watched all the soaps. I tried to explain how important it was for me to watch the final part, but she was having none of it and I had to pick up a newspaper and pretend to be immersed in it, while the tears trickled down my face… In the autumn, we were treated to The Five Faces of Doctor Who on BBC2. It is hard to describe now to younger fans just how exciting it was, in those pre-VCR days, to be able to watch vintage stories from the first three Doctors. It was a real talking point at school too. It was great also to watch a whole story in the space of three days, rather than a whole month! And although in some ways it was disappointing not to get an early, scary Tom Baker story, I was still pleased with the choice of Logopolis, having missed the first part earlier in the year while on that school holiday. And it didn’t end there – at Christmas time, with the new Doctor and three new companions bidding us a Merry Christmas at home on a BBC stars trailer, BBC1 gave us K-9 And Company. Much derided perhaps (especially for that title sequence and theme!), but it was still great to have this spin-off which featured my favourite human companion, and a quick return for K-9, who I had always liked and had been disappointed at his poor treatment throughout Season 18. 1981 was also a good time to be a DWM reader – this was the year that it turned from a comic to a magazine aimed at a slightly older audience, with Jeremy Bentham writing virtually everything inside to a very high standard. So, we may have had less new stories than any other year in the show’s run (barring 1963 of course and 1986 if the Trial is one story), but we had a gripping end to the Tom Baker era and I saw my first ever stories from the first three Doctors, not to mention the spin-off to see the year out. With a new Doctor, new timeslot and ratings back at the 10 million mark just around the corner, they were heady days in the life of this fan… |
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