Full Circle

"Full Circle" holds rather a special place in my affections, because it was the very last Doctor Who story I watched for the first time. I was getting them taped off UK Gold in order, but this was one of the few occasions when my Grandad arsed up the recording and taped an edition of "Sunday Worship" instead. Lots of dull people singing, and not a Marshman in sight.

There was no great resistance to the end; no hiding the tape away in a sealed casket for ten years or daring myself to watch that extra few seconds past the opening titles in the knowledge that I was edging into the very last "new bits" I had left to see. Like all endings, postponing the final moment does not take you back. So I just watched it, slightly sad that my long voyage through all existing Doctor Who was over, but knowing that, given the huge wait for this story to roll round again on the Sunday satellite listings, it had really been over for some time.

In retrospect the gift of UK Gold was both a curse and a blessing. Having instant access to so many rare treasures was so immeasurably exciting that I rung up my best friend immediately just to tell him, and was later berated for showing off (well that told me!). The timing couldn't have been better - UK Gold's very first Doctor Who showing had been the previous week, and the following Sunday they were running "The Edge of Destruction" coupled with "The Aztecs", unspeakably rare episodes to someone waiting with baited breath for each month's video release to be unshackled from the vaults. And they were going through the WHOLE LOT! Except the Terry Nation ones, obviously, which would emerge much later once a sufficiently lucrative deal had been struck with Roger Hancock Inc. I decided from the off to have them all taped, as you would, and my Grandad dutifully manned his video every Sunday morning for the next two and a bit years.

Such was his devotion that he even stood by and made sure he pressed 'record' exactly when each story started, thus hoping to ensure all my tapes begun right at the start of the theme music. He never realised, and I never had the heart to tell him, that there was a four second delay and his VCR never actually started recording until its initial whir-hum-click had ceased. All my UK Gold copies begun half-way through the relevant Doctor's face zooming down a time tunnel or star field. It didn't matter though - I was collecting them all, and this hobby became a full-time pursuit. Between adjacent Sunday's I would while away the time when I should have been revising for my GCSE's by printing out neat spines for all my tapes in a trendy typeface (which I changed my mind about at least four times, thus leading to me having to joyfully re-label all the tapes), a large font being used for six-parters and some tapes requiring smaller text to accommodate two adventures. Tuesday became

another special day, as I'd race up to the corner shop before school just to buy the new issue of "Radio Times" and confirm which story would be headlining the next Sunday's omnibus. I gained something of a reputation with the newsagent, Deepak, for having to acquire the weekly listings magazine the moment it hit his shelves. With the Doctor Who connection never revealed, Heaven alone knows what he thought I wanted it for. Presumably he just thought I liked reading TV listings a great deal.

I actually worked for his parents at the time, who ran a small Chemist's across the road. Every Saturday I'd finish my grueling eight hour shift in the stuffy little shop, collect my £12 wages (yes, I know now!) and once more call into the newsagent on my way home to buy a big bar of Cadbury's Bourneville chocolate. The next stop was Grandad's to quickly pick up the tape, then after dinner I'd climb into bed, freshly showered, and rest my weary limbs with Doctor Who, a glass of cold milk, and that big bar of chocolate. It was bliss! For several years this went on, me greedily devouring a whole new Doctor Who adventure (and a big bar of chocolate) every week. I can't ever wish that I'd waited, because as you've probably gathered, I gained maximum enjoyment out of those weekly showings. But a part of me will always wonder if I should have done. Waited to see the episodes as they were intended and not in the frankly hacked-to-pieces versions I will now always have first sampled them in.

We all know how important cliffhangers are, so it's no use me pretending. To lose each one in substitution for a cheap montage of Doctors faces was a great loss indeed. Then there was the picture quality, which was a million miles away from the lovingly-restored DVD releases we get today. In fact one could almost believe some demonic Anti-Restoration Team had been at work, adding extra scratch and hiss and chopping out random scenes - it's only now that I see bits I realise were cut from those UK Gold showings. And those blessed logo's! How I wish they hadn't been necessary, appearing and disappearing, changing style, simply being there at all. How many of us have watched "The Bill" and tried to block out of our minds the nightmarish concept of a Doctor Who with not only a big gap in the middle expounding the virtues of the 100% beef in a McDonald's burger (100% crap more like!) but one in which those precious cliffhanger moments will be immediately diluted by the screen shrinking back to give way to an extract from "Midsomer Murders" and a stark voiceover making sure you arn't thinking of changing the channel. That was what Doctor Who was like on UK Gold.

Yet it's still very easy for me to say that now. Let's not forget that a new Doctor Who story cost a day's wages to this young boy in 1993, and we only got a dozen a year. Suddenly, there they were offering them up on a weekly basis, and all the rare ones to boot, adventures I had only dreamt about. If I concentrate hard, I can still feel the excitement at the prospect of "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" or "The Hand of Fear". It was an unstoppable, wondrous, anticipation that was never going to be tamed and shirked just because they happened to have a few adverts in the middle. "Full Circle" was the last, and suddenly there was nothing left to look forward to. It brought mixed feelings really - a certain satisfaction and warmth in having it all in my grasp, and knowing there was now no end of things to re-watch. But it was also very definitely the end of an era. I'm sure Deepak the Newsagent missed me coming in every Saturday evening for my big bar of Bourneville chocolate as well.