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

Earthshock

Adric’s death is one of the clearest memories I have of 1982. I suppose I probably did look up to Adric slightly in that same way the kids of Grange Hill always seemed so cool when you were little and then you outgrew Grange Hill and absolutely everyone in it was childish and annoying. I wasn’t upset he’d been blown up – though I didn’t laugh uproariously as might’ve been claimed elsewhere – but it did register. I remember the silent end credits over the star and knowing why they were silent. I don’t remember the Cybermen or the dinosaurs or anything except those last couple of minutes.

I remember I got the video from Boots – probably in Manchester – and it being just about the best damn video I’d ever seen. It might’ve been my birthday in 1993 but statistically it wasn’t. I just have a birthday vibe when I think about it. I know I was excited when I discovered that one of the daughters from the superb “Father, Dear Father” was in it. It wasn’t the one I fancied most but it was still nice.

Bye. That's all. Just 'bye'.

Time-Flight

The memory cupboard is bare I’m afraid. I don’t remember it at the time, I don’t remember it on UK Gold, I don’t remember buying the video and you don’t really care about last year when I bought the DVD and nothing interesting happened. Epic fail. I do remember having one of those leather style British Airways shoulder bags from the early 80s which lasted me for many years and being babysat by a British Airways pilot who may well have had lots of equally convincing model aeroplanes around the house.

Depressed aircraft remembers Timeflight.

Arc of Infinity

This is another of those pivotal stories. The key points in my Doctor Who journey. We were in California – near Universal Studios I think – and it wasn’t my turn to go in the bathroom yet. I put the television on and amongst the usual American breakfast shows on the networks was a bit of Doctor Who on what I assume was the local PBS station. It was the last part of Arc of Infinity and I watched it. This would’ve been April 1993 so I’d seen the repeats of 1992 and early 1993 – including a much better Peter Davison story – but they didn’t inspire any action. Later that night I was lying in the bath and thinking about what to do with the tenner my grandmother had given me the day before we left. Bless her – she didn’t really grasp that money had to be changed before going to America so it was sitting at home. Why not, I said to myself between the foam mountains I’d built, get a Doctor Who video. It was good today, I said (still back then), and I’d like to see some more. And that’s what I did when I got home – I took that very ten pound note and went to Woolies. The rest is later.

The video I got wasn’t Arc of Infinity – if it had been it might’ve killed my new found interest stone dead. The first time I saw Arc of Infinity in full I knew it was bad. I was reading DWM by that point so I’d had some of the obvious flaws pointed out in advance but I wasn’t prepared for how dreadful it was. The dialogue clunked and clanked around like a ghost carrying a heavy chain. Even the chase at the end – which had seemed so great in sunny California – was laboured and dull. It was too ordinary an end for a Time Lord god who wanted to cross from one universe to another. Chased down a street in a boiler suit? Hardly fitting. And time hasn’t improved it – it wasn’t war with the Daleks which destroyed the Time Lords – it was a script by Johnny Byrne.

I bought the video on Founder’s Day – one of the more obscure holidays. Actually it only means anything to people who went to my old school. Once a year we would have a day off – almost a day off – and congregate in a local church. The church where the school was founded way back in the fifteenth century. Be impressed. It was traditional to sing the school psalm, listen to some speech or other and then everyone – all thousand or so pupils – would descend on the town centre to do what school boys and girls do when they aren’t at school. The local McDonald’s did a brisk trade as you can imagine. I celebrated my last Founder’s Day by buying Arc of Infinity. Celebrate is such a misused word, don’t you think? Though I was either dedicated or a masochist because I apparently watched it three – perhaps four – times over the next four months because by July I was ready to concede it wasn’t quite as bad as I thought. Almost.

"If you kill me, you'll have to spend the rest of eternity
standing in the middle of this cover so it balances"

Snakedance

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Kinda when I saw it again on UK Gold so I wasn’t tremendously excited about its sequel. Snakedance contains far fewer great visuals and that may be why I don’t remember anything from its first airing. Though Martin Clunes might’ve stuck in my memory because I recognised him from somewhere when he turned up in Jeeves and Wooster as the second incarnation of Barmy Fotheringay Phipps. “Oh no” I said, “not him.” I’ve grown to love Martin Clunes – haven’t we all? – over the years and however much we may hate it when that clip of Snakedance is wheeled out by TV interviewers and hosts, I would imagine he hates it even more. I wonder if he’ll do the commentary when the DVD comes out. Probably not.

I’ve still no real idea what is going on in the story – the only bit which stands out from UK Gold is that Tegan’s feeling of isolation when she’s wearing the earphones almost exactly mirrored my own isolation wearing the enormous headphones. Though I’m fairly sure Tegan only had one earphone in. I tried that once. I was dragged to see the Halle orchestra and thought I had a plan. I’d take my Walkman and put one earphone in so parents sat to my left wouldn’t be able to see. Clever me. It didn’t work – I’d underestimated how loud an orchestra could be.

No one - not him, not us - will ever live this down