The War Machines

With hindsight, basing a Doctor Who story around the new Post Office Tower wasn't the best of ideas to pursue. Maybe they got some free money, or perhaps were simply courting that topical interest Blue Peter feature. "The War Machines" isn't the only story to have employed dramatically detrimental publicity stunts, but it can at least lay claim to have patented the idea. Ultimately however, all this gimmick achieved was to force viewers to question just how the story's new, decidedly un-vertically mobile foes could make it up and down from the top floor. Or perhaps not.

The Post Office Tower is still standing, and completely unchanged from how it was in 1966, bar of course the occasional movement of the now sadly closed revolving restaurant. You can actually see it when standing outside the Fitzroy Tavern, the monthly meeting place of Doctor Who fans for over twenty years. Its towering presence in "The War Machines" acted as a signpost to viewers of the day that Doctor Who had "come home", an instant visual link to the world outside their front doors and, more significantly, on the news programmes of the day. It was a handy way of making Doctor Who significant again at a time when it probably wasn't most peoples idea of fashionable. But it's also a little piece of Doctor Who that is still with us today, a monument to a series that only now exists in our memories and on film (and in many cases, only in reminiscence).

Going and searching out the locations used in Doctor Who is one of the least respectable yet fun activities for the modern fan. Okay, it drifts slightly into the domain of the trainspotter when your life's work is to catalogue Britain's slate quarries, but there's something curiously calming about wandering round places like Aldebourne or East Hagbourne where "The Android Invasion" was filmed (you have to stand on the stone monument and "do" the tied-up thing apparently) and remembering that, many years before, it was subject to the hustle and bustle of a Doctor Who episode being made. In many cases, the production team of the day even left historical reminders of their stay; I'm reliably informed that you can still buy Cloven Hoof tea towels in the eponymous (but now annoyingly renamed) pub, and the Solos symbol for changing seasons, carved out by the production team in 1972, can still be seen on the walls of Chiselhurst Caves in Kent. Why not pop down there and take a look?

London provides enough scope for a Doctor Who tour, as many, many stories naturally made use of locations on the series doorstep. There's even a real Police box in Earls Court, should you wish to recreate that Three Doctors back-to-back pose (a friend of mine located said icon by hollering "Excuse me, have you seen the TARDIS?" at a nearby British Rail worker, who reassuringly pointed us in the appropriate direction instantly). Unfortunately someone has built a bloody great bridge in the middle of the St Paul's Cathedral steps, so authentic recreations of the Cybermen's march from "The Invasion" or even Colin and Nicola's witterings on reaffirming the patently obvious in "More Than Thirty Years" are no longer really possible. But we had a go anyway.

Sadly, the famous steps aren't the only Doctor Who location to have been gradually buried by the passing years. Some, like a drive in Halings Lane, Denham, where Bessie was once swallowed by an anti-matter organism from a black hole have now been demolished. Others are unchanged to this day. Luckily, the Post Office tower seems likely to loom over London for many years to come, indistinguishable from the days when WOTAN plotted a secret invasion from its summit. What begun as a handy means for connecting Doctor Who with a culture it had long since left behind has now become a permanent reminder of the story that, let's face it, will always be "the one with the Post Office tower".


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