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

The Five Doctors

When I think about the night the Five Doctors was broadcast I’m pretty sure I was being babysat. By whom I couldn’t say – I think we were at home though. I’d long since been aware of other Doctors thanks to the Five Faces season, the atmosphere on the day of the Fourth Doctor’s demise and the way I declared myself the Sixth Doctor whenever my radical and to date unfulfilled portrayal of the Doctor was given voice. And you thought there were murmurings of discontent when the rumour started that Joanna Lumley might replace Peter Davison. If only they knew I would. The chessboard sequence – now ironically one of my least favourite bits because it is done so badly – is the one clear and striking image I have. It is an iconic set piece and one of those things which is hard to forget, even when you're old enough to listen to the words and realise it's bibble. I might also remember the black triangles. I’d like to say I lived in constant fear for weeks of a black triangle hurtling out of the sky and scooping me off to Wales but I didn’t. At least I don’t think I did. Though I was once haunted by a raincoat which came to life so anything is possible.

I’ve covered the background to my getting the video of the Five Doctors in April 1993 and don’t need to remind you that most of that background took place while I was in the bath. I got it from Woolworths for £10.99 and don’t remember which other videos they had. I know I made a definite choice to get the Five Doctors so I must’ve turned down some disappointed cassettes that afternoon. I watched it in the evening and it felt at the same time wonderfully familiar and excitingly new. It was a link back to childhood and the opening of a window into a whole new world I could comfortably explore. Over the next eighteen months I would absorb twenty six years of adventures. That can’t be healthy. And look how I turned out.

I got the special edition video from the Virgin Megastore in Coventry for twenty quid. I remember sitting on a bus going to university reading a lengthy review of the Special Edition. It might’ve been the same day I bought the video but I can’t imagine it was. Anyway, this was a long and frankly hostile review which tore to shreds every little tweak of the Special Edition. My excitement at what I’d thought was a fantastic re-visiting complete with cool new swirly triangles and more logical Shada footage was somewhat crushed. The new footage no longer felt special – it felt like more corridors. The effects were no longer fantastic – they were unnecessary meddling by people with too much time on their hands. The Five Doctors is probably the only story where I’ve let people deconstruct all the fun out of it. It wasn’t just that article – there were plenty more like it which went into so much detail about what was wrong with the Five Doctors that my love of it just sort of died. And do you know what brought it flickering back into life? It was the Easter egg commentary with David Tennant, Helen Raynor and Phil Collinson. Their enthusiasm and passion and sheer joy at watching the Five Doctors reminded me of how I felt in April 1993.

Warriors of the Deep

Here we go back to the UK Gold 30th Anniversary weekend and the obviously genuine phone polls to decide which stories would be shown. In a display of voting irregularity which would make GMTV get down on their knees and do that wavy arms thing while chanting about not being worthy, the Silurians and Sea Devils defeated the Daleks and the Cybermen to be Most Popular Doctor Who Monster. This was never going to happen. That’s why I didn’t bother rushing downstairs to record it. It was going to be a Dalek story I’d already got or Earthshock (which I’d already got). Any other result would be beneath contempt. So I switched the television on and there was a sentinel attacking the Tardis. Not something which had happened in either the Dalek story (I forget which it was – probably Death to the Daleks) or the Cyber-story. I panicked, rushed upstairs for a video tape (correction – the right video tape) and got back downstairs in time to start recording before it was too late. For a while I assumed it was missing something in the opening few minutes which made the story so bad. I was wrong – it was everything which happened after the first few minutes which made the story so bad.

The Awakening

It’s another of those story pairings – not as strong as the Rescue and the Romans but probably stronger than the Visitation and Black Orchid. It is hard to think of the Awakening without adding “and Frontios” to the sentence. Back in 1984 I was too busy being irritated by Will Chandler (who would’ve joined the Tardis crew over my dead little body). I can’t believe the face of the Malus wasn’t burned into my psyche but thankfully I seem to have dodged that bullet. It was just Will Chandler and his annoying ways.

The video was cheap. I remember that much. I think it was in a Boots sale. I’ve mentioned Boots a few times in these memoirs – I don’t think they sell things like that any more. They were never that keen on it. I’ve got it – Boots in Coventry. The place I also got both tapes of “The Singing Detective” from and was so not impressed by it that I taped over them. Their video section was not easy to find but worth the trouble. It only came out a couple of months earlier which is why I was surprised to find it so cheap. These days it happens all the time but back then it was a rare treat to be snapped up before the shop realised what fools they had been and sent a burly store assistant over with a bigger sticker.

Frontios

I was in my bedroom at the top of my aunt’s house in Pennsylvania (I say my bedroom because no one else ever used it even if I only stayed there every couple of years or so) watching television and flicking through the limited selection of channels available on a non-cable, UHF/VHF set. There was Philly 57 – a local channel with cartoons and old sit coms, there were the three networks and then there was the one showing Doctor Who. This was July 1990 – I know because one of the few other programmes I found to watch on that set was NWA Worldwide Wrestling and they were promoting the impending Great American Bash show with Flair vs Sting on top. All I remember of it was the mining machine with the gruesome near-dead face of its human operator. That was the same holiday that my aunt gave me a chocolate thing which was shaped like Ayres Rock (and its fine to call it that because we honour Mark Ayres as one of our gods and he rocks) and beneath the thin chocolate exterior was this yellow matter which I couldn’t eat without feeling very odd indeed. I was also fourteen and exploding with puberty but we won’t go into that sort of thing.

Resurrection of the Daleks

I must’ve seen this when it was first on because I knew who Davros was when he returned a few months later in Revelation of the Daleks. As it is extremely unlikely I extrapolated the whole Dalek creator myth from a single hand seen when I was a toddler, Resurrection of the Daleks is the most likely candidate. My other memory is the troops with Dalek style helmets – I thought they were some kind of human-Dalek hybrid. I wish they had been, then New Who might not have tried it in “Evolution of the Daleks” and we could all have been spared that nonsense. I was a bit disappointed later to discover they were just mercenaries with silly hats on. In the old days they would at least have been brainwashed into serving the Daleks. Now the Daleks apparently pay people to do their bidding. It isn’t as scary somehow. Their Dalek accoutrement – the Dalek style gun – might also have stuck in my mind. The Doctor holding Davros at gun point did look awfully familiar. Though it was probably in “Resistance is Useless” – it was the sort of thing they showed a lot of.

I got the video on a day out with my grandmother. I remember showing her the box on the way home and she seemed awfully impressed. That was about the time when reviews of Davison videos constantly complained about him always being painted with white hair. They have a point I suppose. Even today – when he is officially older than William Hartnell was when he played the Doctor – he has yet to become as old as some of those artists made out. So it was a relief then when Resurrection of the Daleks made him resoundingly ginger. It meant the harsher magazines could tear the story to pieces as they had the Five Doctors (see above) instead of harping on about his hair. I read their criticisms and none of it mattered – Resurrection of the Daleks is one of those stories which is just absolutely fantastic the first time you see it. It gets worse on every subsequent viewing as I’ve found out over the years but first time round it is – if you’ll forgive the expression – balls out and proud of it. There are some things which even a first viewing can’t ignore – Rula Lenska’s strangely out of place line about wanting some mineral water, the burger bar hats everyone is wearing, Chloe Ashcroft’s glasses and Janet Fielding’s skirt. Though the latter was for different reasons. She may be a mouth on legs but when they’re good legs, who cares?