The Gunfighters

Being someone who absorbed the later Peter Haining books on a quest to get up to speed ASAP, I believe that the Gunfighters was the worst Doctor Who story ever committed. For years I held this belief despite never having seen even a moment of the adventure. Eventually, UK Gold's schedules ticked round and it was another Saturday morning session – seriously, I never learned my lesson. Even though it was short (compared with some of the others I watched) it was intensely, perhaps even painfully, boring. It put me off it for years and only the existance of Meglos prevented me from defending Peter Haining's judgement to all and sundry. I’ve now gone all the way through and realised that it is bit muddled but basically fine. A yomp rather than a romp. I’m someone who can’t stand westerns at the best of times but Purves is comic gold throughout and that is worth the price of admission. The song gets wedged in your head and for a brief time you start to wish more Doctor Who stories had their own ditty. Speaking of the Haining books, one of them had a picture of the Gunfighters to illustrate it being the worst thing ever and in it was Dodo. I had no idea who she was. I don’t know if Haining skated over her time (much as the aforementioned Rigglesford skated over season 17 in his supposedly definitive reference book) but I remember spending a long time not knowing that the pretty brunette was a regular character. And yes I said pretty. She looked pretty in that photograph. Ok?

The Savages

It was New Year’s Eve, probably 2002, and we had a half day at work. It was a stupid half day – one where some of us worked from 9-12, had an hour for lunch, worked 1-2 and then were let home. That’s how I came to read the green Telos novella at lunchtime. I don’t remember the name – I just know I didn’t understand a word of it and it was green. They got into trouble for it apparently – the BBC would only permit covers in shades of blue. So that passed an hour. After work I went into the village and bought a tin of biscuits from whatever the supermarket was. I can’t believe I’ve forgotten what flavour of supermarket we had there. I only worked in the area for three and a half years. Biscuits are brilliant because they tumble in price between Christmas and New Year for no reason. As do calendars. But you can’t eat calendars so biscuits are better. Thinking about it, I got two tins of biscuits not one. I then went home and ate biscuits while listening to the Savages. For a while I tried to eat biscuits, listen to the Savages and flick through the telesnaps on the BBC website but that turned out to be too difficult and the telesnaps were the one to go. It proved one thing – that the story is far less important in whether I enjoy something than the circs in which I watch/listen to it. That's why I always look fondly upon the Savages and get a little warm glow from it. And it has a character whose name sounds like “Exhaust”. That always cracks a smile on my otherwise jaded face.

I had no time for plates that day. Or since.

The War Machines

I’m sure much great and valuable work had been done in the period from 1993 to 1997 but for me as a fan outside certain circles I’d heard nothing of the restoration team (not yet I think capitalised) since The Radio Times had run a feature on their work colourising the Daemons and other black and white stories. In the absence of anything else to lap, I lapped such things up with a spoon. Then there was nothing until 1997 when the War Machines was released and suddenly we were told a story about how these clever men had pieced the video together from many and various sources. The video itself came from HMV in Coventry – the one that isn’t there anymore (although the other one that isn’t there anymore isn’t there anymore either but the other one that isn’t there anymore went first, and in any case the new one which is there now is very close to where the other one that isn’t there used to be) – and was one of the last things I ever bought as a genuine bona fide student. I remember watching the Blue Peter segment and thinking how Blue Peter had always been the same. Christopher Trace was no different to Simon Groom or even Stuart Miles. Word for word you could imagine Comrade Miles doing that piece in 1997 as a War Machine crashed through some boxes and he stepped in to tell us how impressive its hammers were. The War Machines feels strange now - probably more than it did at the time - because we can see the template of later Doctor Who stories being assembled before our eyes. To them it was the Doctor working with the army to sort out an alien menace and that was fine. To us it is the wrong Doctor working with the army to sort out an alien menace. It shouldn't be Billy, should it? Sure that was Patrick's job, or Jon's, or Tom's even. At a pinch, any of the others. Just not Bill. It also felt weird that WOTAN was trying to achieve that which I'd only recently discovered had now been achieved. I was a late comer to the internet having not really heard of it until the second half of the 1990s. Even then it was only because I lived with computer science students. WOTAN wanted to create the internet and it reduces the dramatic impact somewhat when the thing the evil menace wants to create is basically the same thing you've just spent the morning using to find cute pictures of Baby Spice. And for research into serious academic topics.

Print this off in case you go on a historical tour of Coventry

The Smugglers

The Smugglers sat on my shelf for about five years before I listened to it in the car a few weeks ago. That’s almost literally true. I say almost because something must’ve happened for the second disc in the set to go missing. I’ve left things on shelves before and they don’t suddenly lose a disc. Fortunately I found it on one of my miscellaneous disc spindles (don’t ask) and – after a gap larger than the whole week Mary Whitehouse thought was dangerous to expose vulnerable children to after a particularly vicious cliff-hanger – I was able to finish it. There can’t be too many stories about which less is said and written than the Smugglers. Perhaps the Savages but at least that has the anecdote about it originally being titled “The White Savages” and that makes us feel smug about our politically correct superiority over our ancestors. The Smugglers is the one with the pirates. It is right at the end of the Hartnell era and it is clear that he’s going through the motions while his young companions try and stand out from what has already become quite a crowd. It’s the sort of story I wouldn’t like even with pictures. The riddle is too like something from 3-2-1 as well.

The Tenth Planet

I started buying Doctor Who Magazine with issue 200. Once I’d decided it was as good a magazine as any, I would pick up old copies I found in shops and on stalls. In one of them – dating way back to the 1980s – there was a story in the news section which caught my attention. Part four of the story had not only been recovered but the whole story was going to be colourised before release on video. This was strange as it hadn’t subsequently happened. I was a bit confused for a while until I guessed it must’ve been an April Fool’s gag. Comedy is all in the timing. Eventually it did get a video release – in black and white and with a home made episode four – in another of those tin boxes. This time a Cyber-box with Attack of the Cybermen as its bed fellow. The story an unnamed record producer (allegedly) co-wrote sharing a tin with the story whose final episode he said he would (allegedly) kill for. I suppose that’s why the designers of the packaging subconsciously made it as much like a sandwich box as possible.

I bought it from WH Smith in Manchester soon after its release in the year 2000. Wasn’t the story set in 1986 but relocated to 2000 for the novel? Something like that. I bought it at the same time as the “Chyna Fitness” video because I had an inexplicable crush on that ultimately tragic former WWF superstar lady. I never followed it, obviously.

It’s the regeneration story as everyone knows. Fortunately that bit of footage does survive even if it is another of my getting-things-wrong things. The sheer closeness of the zoom – it’s almost pornographic (whatever that is) – means that for years I didn’t realise this was the entire regeneration. I thought it was the same face with an effect applied and that the rest of it was missing.

Yes I used to fancy her. Ok?

Interlude

And that’s the Hartnell era done already. I think we’ve all spotted the theme – Sunday morning omnibuses in 1992/93/94 were magical and special and exciting. Saturday morning omnibuses in 1997/98 were miserable and painful and dull. I’ve also painted myself as a history hater in tune with the school children (today less patronisingly known as “the 7-14 demographic”) who thought historical stories reeked too much of school and not a patch on the wizzo sci fi stories. I don’t think it’s true but the evidence suggests it might be.