Dimensions in Time

I'll let you into a secret. If I could, I'd really like to edit every Doctor Who story down into twelve minute episodes. I'd get Cybertech, or Erasure or the Pet Shop Boys, to add new incidental music as well. I'm sure it would improve some of them no end.

Who could not love twelve minute Doctor Who? It takes no time at all to watch, there simply isn't room for padding and you don't really need to worry about anything because it's gone before you have time to think about it. In addition, "Dimensions in Time" has a cast that makes "The Five Doctors" seem minimal, and a script that makes "Ghost Light" appear simple. But first, let me take you back to 1993 when the thing first aired. Squeezed between Jon Pertwee on Noel Edmonds, and Linford Christie in the Gunge Tank, a legend was born...

Yes, we sat there, all excited, my sister and I both wearing 3D glasses, even though one of us was almost legally old enough to drive. The thing about "Dimensions" is that it doesn't know it's a skit, or a panto, or a Children In Need insert, hence the secret reason you hate it. Nobody has told JNT he isn't making a brand new Doctor Who story, and I firmly believe he thought this way; the fact that it all has to be edited down into little under half an hour is just an inconvenience, another imposition from above like the 45 minute season and sacking Colin Baker. Which is why "Dimensions in Time" has that lovely, spliced-together feel. As it not so much leaps as crashes from Albert Square to the Greenwich Meridian, you just know they probably filmed about ninety minutes of it. Everyone's bit seems special, as they grab their precious ten second cameo.

So we weren't watching a sketch, back in '93, we were sitting down to watch new Doctor Who. And you know, I still got that buzz when the titles crashed in! We watched, fascinated, trying to take it all in and full of questions. Who on Earth was the person with the Fifth Doctor who wasn't Peri? Where did the Rani get her boyfriend from? And why did Richard Franklin look 106? The beauty of watching "Dimensions", then as in now, is that it's so packed to the hilt with lovable, hysterical moments: Debbie Watling's scream of "Who was that terrible woman?!", Lalla getting one over on Grant AND Phil Mitchell whilst dressed in a curtain, and the camera spinning dizzily round Sylvester and Louise Jameson as they gabble out the plot. And didn't Sylv look just great as that trampish little wizard? I used to imagine he'd been plucked straight out some parallel Universe Season 30 that we never got to see! Heavens, they managed to get Carole Ann-Ford wandering round Albert Square on Prime Time telly! That's pretty amazing surely?

And the strange thing is, there are little bits of genuine, bona-fide Doctor Who magic thrown in there as well. Didn't you feel it when the Doctors all linked minds, a sequence topped off beautifully by Tom's "good luck my dears!"? And anyone who didn't feel warm and fuzzy when Sylvester defiantly overdubs a chuckled "I.. I mean we... are very difficult to get rid of!" at the end must have a heart of stone! Or take Doctor Who way too seriously.

By the way, I hated "Curse of Fatal Death" if you're wondering. Why? Well because it was so deliberately intent on spoofing Doctor Who. Isn't it funny how the walls always wobbled, and the monsters were crap, and the resolutions were cheesy? Fans loved it, because they'd seem like they had no sense of humour if they didn't. But being able to laugh at yourself isn't about watching someone else make fun of the series you love and congratulating them. It's about embracing the very things that actually make it bad in the eyes of others, and loving it despite or even because of them.

We wouldn't want a story like "Dimensions in Time" when Doctor Who comes back, but it was a more honest and loving spoof because it wasn't trying to be one. The best way not to feel ashamed of what you are isn't to act dumb deliberately, it's to just be yourself and not care. And that's why "Dimensions in Time" is to cherish. Plus, there's really nothing else like it is there? If Doctor Who ever got so bad it was good, then "Dimensions in Time" is fantastic.