The Macra Terror

The Macra Terror is the tape I don’t remember buying. I believe it came out at the same time as Evil of the Daleks (of which more shortly) but I didn’t get it at the time. I was still new to all this and it seemed to have little to recommend it. It sat there for years and years until it – along with all my other audio tapes, now unplayable because I didn’t have a tape machine anymore – was consigned to the top of a dusty wardrobe until such time as I become organised enough to get a USB tape player and a plan of what to save and what to destroy. Then we had Gridlock – a story which inspired me to do two things. The first of which was to acquire a digital copy of the Macra Terror that very evening and listen to it for the first time. The second was to find out who the gorgeous actress was who kidnapped Martha and, when I’d done so, get “Sugar Rush” on DVD because she was in it. I loved that show. I can’t believe they axed it after two series. Of the two I would say Sugar Rush was better than the Macra Terror.

Lenora~!

The Faceless Ones

I listened to the Faceless Ones in a Nissan Micra, one episode a day, during a lunch break from a job I hated. The thing with the Faceless Ones is that it is so mundane for most of it – indistinguishable from Department S or any other ITC series – that the clifhanger where a plane turns into a space ship is far more effective than it ought to be. Because why would aliens in Doctor Who having a space ship possibly be a surprise? So it gets points for that.

Transform~!

Evil of the Daleks

Back in the early days of sixth form there was an idea floating around that I could be Oxbridge material. I had several trips down to various colleges – including one to Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge (which I liked) – and it was on the Fitz excursion that I got Evil of the Daleks from Waterstones in Cambridge. The reason I never applied to Oxford was that my history tutor – the one who knows David Starkey – was blunt about it being like doing another A-Level over the summer holiday and with absolutely no guarantee of getting a place. Cambridge was out because apparently they place so much emphasis on the interview that a stumbling, bumbling, moronic and semi-retarded fuckwit like me wasn’t going to stand a chance. I don’t think he actually used the word stumbling but I got the gist. So I didn’t bother with the Oxbridge palaver and so the pattern for the rest of my life was set in stone. On the plus side, I got Evil of the Daleks as I say and popped it into my Walkman (a sort of pre-iPod mobile gramophone if any teenagers are reading this) on the car ride home. A car ride shared with a school chum who I bumped into at the Fitzwilliam College open day and who probably went on to fulfil some of his potential rather than squander it. I don’t recommend trying to listen to one of the unrestored tapes in a car. The first episode was just hiss and the occasional note of incidental music. Until that is the cliffhanger in which a Dalek bellowed (I had the sound turned right up) and I was scared all over again. The second episode was much clearer. Things were looking up or so I thought. Optimism wasn’t to be encouraged and I realised near the end of this audible chapter that part two was the one which still existed on video so they just lifted the sound off a proper tape. A false dawn. Hope where hope should never have trod. I gave up a few minutes into episode three. Though I did have another go in bed a few weeks later and this time I could hear some of what was going on. I wonder what a normal person would’ve made of those tapes? There they are in an audio tape shop, browsing freely and they see a Dalek. A Dalek and Tom Baker’s grinning face. They buy it and for their eight quid (or whatever they were in those days, probably nearer eleven if I’m honest) they get a lot of hissing and some Daleks shouting at people you didn’t realise were there. It’s no wonder the range was shelved until someone could do something marvellous.

Fitz~!

Tomb of the Cybermen

When I think of Tomb of the Cybermen it reminds me of Windows 95. You see, in 1995 I was a student and not very technically literate. I’d not really used a computer since the ZX Spectrum because I went to a very old school with very old ideas about what was and wasn’t us. They had a computer room but it was equipped with BBC Micros and no one quite knew what the room was for. There was no computer science subject. It was just there if anyone had any ideas which would need a couple of dozen BBC Micros. There weren’t many ideas so the room gathered dust. So in the summer (or whenever) of 1995 I didn’t know what to make of these huge displays of “Windows 95” which were cluttering up the high street. It never occurred to me to ask anyone or have look at the box. I just assumed it was something which mattered to someone else and went back to pottering around and maybe trying things on. A few years earlier I had something similar with Tomb of the Cybermen. It seemed to be all over the video shops. I was aware that Doctor Who was being released on video but it had never been shoved down so many throats before. Again I mainly ignored it but later – when I was in a position to know things – I understood what it was all about.

I was one of the lucky ones to come to Tomb of the Cybermen without preconceptions, hype, unrealistic expectations and a newly grown skin of cynicism to protect me from inevitable disappointment. Instead I had a video bought from Boots in Chester and an ear ache which I’d hoped Boots might be able to cure but they couldn’t. It was Saturday and the doctor’s was shut. Equally useless was the audio tape version of Tomb of the Cybermen which I inexplicably bought despite already owning the video. It wasn’t worth the money for some Pertwee links which were recorded before the tapes turned up. One day it might be amusing to listen to the descriptions and compare them with what was actually shot. Or not. And has a story ever had more different format releases than Tomb of the Cybermen? We have DVD, video tape, audio tape, CD, novel and script book. That’s not bad for a tale about working out which order to pull some big levers.

The DVD was exciting though – partly because everyone was looking for some kind of game which the RT jokingly said they’d included as an Easter egg – but mainly because it contained a clip treated with the new vidFIRE process. It is no exaggeration to say I was stunned when I saw it. The process had been explained in magazines and online but nothing really prepares you for how different everything looks.

Chester~!