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

Kinda

I was being babysat one night by the people across the road. They almost certainly didn’t have a furry yellow rug on their living room floor – that was my grandmother’s – but the mental picture has me sat on the yellow rug. Maybe they had a different yellow rug. The rug is immaterial. I’m watching Kinda – there is a man in a metal walking contraption which fascinates me. Then it becomes less interesting and I go back to the Speak and Spell toy they have given me to play with.

No, stop, it wasn’t a Speak and Spell. I’ve just Googled it and seen a picture. It wasn’t a Speak and Spell. Disaster.

I’m back – I’ve found it. This is what they gave me to play with.

It was a maths game. I think the screen gave you a sum and you put in the answer. It was very exciting for 1982.

Kinda is a story of images – there is a deeper meaning probably but it is mainly a story with a whole bunch of set pieces which may or may not be burned into the brains of little ones who watched it. I remember the nightmare stuff with Tegan, all black and white and weird. I also remember the snake transfer on her arm. I can’t remember how transfers worked now – I know there were the soaky on ones where you applied a damp cloth to the reverse and the picture of Popeye (or whatever it was) became stuck to your arm instead of the paper. But were there ones where someone would have to rub the reverse with a pencil to get it to stick to your skin? Or have I made those up? I wanted a big snake transfer – one that would go from wrist to shoulder. I didn’t want it for very long. Transfers are good for children (they probably still had lead in them when I was a child) as you learn how quickly you become bored with a My Little Pony or Optimus Prime on your arm. It teaches you that tattoos are a bad idea.

The Visitation

This was the third of the late night stories I stayed up to watch in the summer of 1994 and it was still an exciting adventure. A few months later I arrived a university and there had been a cock up. My room – the room I was to occupy for the next year and which was mine, repeat mine – was still occupied by the overseas student who had been staying there over the summer hols. But that was my room. Damn. I’d have to share with someone else for a few days while the chain of room occupancy was resolved. This wasn’t good. I don’t share rooms with people. Even when it seems like something I want to do I still end up not being terribly keen on the sharing part. My temporary room mate supported Crystal Palace and was a socialist. I didn’t want to know any more. I just wanted to leave. I couldn’t properly unpack because it wasn’t my wardrobe, they weren’t my shelves, it wasn’t my room. Dammit. I’m still cross. So my television and video – I didn’t unpack but I did connect my television and video up – were sat on top of the boxes I hadn’t unpacked. There I tried to while away the time until I could have my room by watching the Visitation. I think I probably empathised with the exiled Terileptil – neither of us could go to our rightful homes and so we planned to destroy all life on earth as an act of revenge. His plan was a little more advanced than mine as I screamed and stood on a chair when my fiendish assistant presented me with my first rat. After a few days – the following Wednesday I believe – I was able to move across the corridor into my own room. The first thing I watched was Fawlty Towers. Not the Visitation. I no longer needed to empathise with big faced monsters.

This was all I wanted - one student, one room

Black Orchid

I might remember the Amazon with the plate in his lip. I certainly don’t remember anything about two Nyssas (actually I don’t remember Nyssa at all – she’s the bit which hasn’t stuck in my memory from this Tardis crew) or the Doctor dressing as a clown (insert Colin Baker joke). I do know I went through a short phase of pretending to be the Doctor. Mine was a radical, daring, stimulating and utterly unique portrayal and mainly involved getting in and out of the wardrobe while wearing a waistcoat. Mother still has that wardrobe – she has so many wardrobes – and I saw it recently. There is are stickers of Gary Bailey and Arthur Albiston on the side of it. And one of David Bowie. I don’t think he played for Manchester United during the mid-80s but the Dame has so many strings to his bow that who can say?

I know I watched this with only one headphone on – I was in the midst of an ear infection and couldn’t bear the pain of the other earphone. My diary also reminds me that this was the story which gave me 100 Doctor Who titles on video. I used to be so anal about things like that. I can remember regularly counting the number of videos I had. When it got over 2000 it used to take ages. Needless to say, I never did catalogue them properly no matter how many times I tried. I do still have the ring binder with various lists in it and that is how I was able to leave such precise lists for mother when I went off to university. God knows how she found the time to record everything I asked for.

I was surprised recently to hear the DVD commentary be so savage towards Black Orchid. When I watched it in 1994 I did so with the knowledge that it was the first proper historical story since 1966 and that it was the first story in ages not to have any science fiction elements save the Tardis and her crew. Both of these were strengths in my opinion and I’ve criticised many stories since for shunning the historical context they’ve created and simply playing out a bog standard monster story. So I was a bit disappointed when the very people I’d looked up to (and Matthew Waterhouse) were so down on the story. I think Black Orchid works – up to a point, for it is certainly slight – because there is no monster. If there is always a monster then it becomes repetitive. What is wrong with time travel being the limit of the sci fi? What is so bad about going back in time, ingratiating yourself with the locals and then solving a murder? It doesn’t mean you’re playing a rejected Campion script – just that you’re using the format a bit differently.

But I’m not supposed to use this as a forum for such opinions. I’ll make up for it by telling you that in addition to my unique and challenging portrayal of the Doctor I also doubled as Zorro. I think the sword was my brother’s but I’d taken charge of it. It had a little stick of chalk at the pointy end and you were supposed to flick it like Zorro and leave a Z behind. I practiced for what seemed like hours on the inside of that same wardrobe door but never could get a convincing enough Z to ride off and lead the oppressed people of California to justice.

If I'd had a moustache, I could've been a hero