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Doctor Who, What, Where, When, Why and How
A personal Doctor Who viewing memoir

Warriors' Gate

Oddly, Word doesn’t think “Warrior’s Gate” is a place when I’d say it is much more place-like than “Full Circle”. During UK Gold’s 30th anniversary weekend, there were some phone polls to determine which stories would be shown. There was one for best Doctor, one for best monster and I think the third must’ve been best companion. The best monster one was almost certainly fixed – Warriors of the Deep won it for the Silurans / Sea Devils ahead of Daleks and Cybermen – but the other two were more believable. Warriors Gate won the Best Doctor poll and Horns of Nimon won what I’m assuming was best assistant (either for Romana or K9). I can’t remember which order they showed them in – Warriors of the Deep was definitely on the Sunday which left Warriors Gate and Horns of Nimon on the Saturday. If I was planning it now I’d have Warriors Gate on first because the brain – flexible as it undoubtedly is – cannot possibly cope with heavy pseudo-science after bloating itself on campness and wit. Warriors Gate must be the stodgy main course and Horns of Nimon the sugary pudding. Something I’m sure I’ve been called at one time or another. I can only find the listings for Sunday – vague as they are – so I may never know what the other choices were.

That's it really

The Keeper of Traken

I remember reading a review of Keeper of Traken in one of the first DWMs I ever bought. The bit which sticks in my mind was a criticism of them using painted on eyes for Kassia’s final descent into mania. “Didn’t they learn anything from Image of the Fendahl?” asked the reviewer. This was terribly exciting – this was a reference I didn’t understand. I don’t think I knew what Image of the Fendahl was yet, let alone what one could reasonably learn from it. I got the video not long after its release and all I remember was that I got it from somewhere quite far away because it was quite late when we got home and later still when I started watching it. I knew the twist by then – in fact I knew all the bullet points when I bought a video. The bullet points made up my mind for me most of the time. The Master reappears (tick), Nyssa joins (tick), scenes within the Tardis (tick). You do the math.

Did we learn NOTHING?

Logopolis

I’ve said before that I never paid more than RRP. It’s not strictly true – sometimes father would buy me a video and I had no qualms about him paying HMV’s RRP+1 formula. Logopolis was one of these - £11.99 when it ought not to have been. As a slight deviation, I remember when John Major’s government put VAT up from 15% to 17.5% and how this ended the days of videos generally costing £9.99. After a brief period of adjustment, videos became £10.99 each and this seemed wrong, unnatural and just plain weird. There were too many digits on the price label. You couldn’t buy a video with a single note (fourteen year olds didn’t have twenty pounds notes in those days) and it seemed the world had gone mad. Nowadays, paying £8.93 for a DVD from an online store desperate to be top of the price comparison website’s list seems as normal as carrying ten thousand songs in my pocket or having readers on four continents. Logopolis was from HMV as I’ve said and it had an early security device on it. It was a sticky strip about four centimetres long and a couple of centimetres wide. In the middle were two little metallic circles. The cashier would use some kind of gun to pierce or deactivate these metal circles and the video could pass through the gates unhindered. The stickiness of the security strip was legendary. You just could not get the buggers off. By design no doubt but a classic case of a store not giving a rat’s ass about the customer. It was fine if they put it on the bottom of the box – as they did with Logopolis – but if they stuck it on the back (or worse, the front) there was nothing else for it but to find a less important video and swap boxes. I’ve a feeling I even once tried to buy a video where they’d stuck it over the barcode and so had to type it in manually. But I may be imagining that. It seem to be a higher state of stupidity than I’m comfortable believing in. I got it from the short lived HMV Video Zone (possibly Video Box) in Manchester. I think it’s a travel agent’s now. It wasn’t there long but I remember getting Logopolis, several Blackadders and a celebration of Hulkamania from that boutique.

Then one day it was a black, empty void. I hate it when shops just disappear. You turn a corner and where there used to be a living entity there is just darkness. There is something uniquely depressing about a dead shop. The ones where the shelves are still there are ok – they look like they’re just sleeping. But when everything has gone it is as if it has died suddenly. Hence I prefer shopping malls where they put a wooden facia up so the empty shop becomes an extended wall and we can pass by as if nothing has happened.

Logopolis was the first story of the 18th season I saw and I was convinced the Pharos Project must’ve been a theme running through the season. It was mentioned with such significance that I wanted to know what had happened there before and how had it all lead up to this point. I was disappointed to discover it wasn’t a story arc – before I knew the term story arc – just a happy accident of the Doctor’s adventuring. Less disappointing were the old clips used in the regeneration. Nowadays people criticise JNT’s love of clip montages and pour scorn on the fans who got excited by them. Well, I got excited by them back in the past so pah - some say pooh - to the smug detractors of today. Old clips were brilliant. Fact.

Logopolis is also my second memory of Doctor Who (third if it turns out I did absorb elements of State of Decay). Again I remember it being at my grandparents’ bungalow by the seaside and there was an atmosphere. I didn’t know what Doctor Who was but I knew something was happening. Something big and important. I doubt I actually watched it but I was aware of it. It’s always good to get regeneration over as a concept early in life. My little nephew was very nearly five when Christopher Eccleston regenerated and he’s been fine ever since with the idea. He was less sure when Rose left and Martha came in. For a while he did call her “the new Rose” and I had to explain several times that she was a new person and not Rose with a different face. If anything he accepted the concept of regeneration a little too well.

And so we’ve reached the end of the Tom Baker era. This was the period I was dreading because I started it with pretty much nothing to say. It went slightly better than I thought it would.

It's the end - but the moment etc etc etc...