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

Attack of the Cybermen

I’ve really tried to remember this because I have a feeling I do remember it but I can’t remember remembering it (or something – it’s about time travel so I’ll put my confusion down to a temporal anomaly). Perhaps there was a Blue Peter feature on it as Sarah Greene was one of the Cryons. I certainly didn’t appreciate the twenty year old references to the Tenth Planet and Tomb of the Cybermen. But I was an imaginative nine years old who wanted exciting stories – I wasn’t the target audience for Doctor Who in those days.

I’ve just done a bit of research (yes I do) and discovered something disappointing – I remembered watching Colin’s Doctor Who in an exciting Saturday evening line up alongside Morris Minor and the Majors and Roland Rat. Wikipedia has just shattered half that illusion – Morris Minor and the Majors didn’t come along until 1989. So I can’t tell you how it used to confuse me that the show was called Morris Minor and the Majors but the band within the show (think a Lidl version of the Monkeys) was called Morris and the Minors. Or maybe it wasn’t – I’m hardly an authority on the show any more. I only just got the decade right.

I first saw Attack of the Cybermen when I got home from University in December 1994. It was a couple of days after – a week day I’m sure – and we’d been out shopping in the morning. As the Doctor emerged from the Tardis I was reading "Powerslam" magazine and furiously reading their list of the 50 greatest wrestlers in the world.

I’ve got it – it’s come back to me like a boomerang – of course I remember Attack of the Cybermen – it was the one where the Tardis kept changing shape. Even as a nine year old I knew the Tardis was a police telephone box. I understood the significance of it becoming a bunch of other things. I was appalled. Maybe I wasn’t – it wouldn’t have mattered if I was because I wasn’t the target audience remember – but I do remember it. Just. With prodding.

By the time I was able to watch it on UK Gold I had, of course, seen Tomb of the Cybermen and was able to say without fear of reprisal that the bits which were meant to look like Tomb of the Cybermen looked nothing like Tomb of the Cybermen. This was more like Cupboard of the Cybermen. Ikea replaced iconic. It bored me enormously and I wouldn’t have bought the video had it not been in a tin with the Tenth Planet.

Vengeance on Varos

This was one of the first Doctor Who videos I ever bought. Probably the third though I can’t remember what the second one was. I remember the day most clearly. It was May of 1993 and it was half term. My beloved suggested we go to Manchester. Together. I could half close my eyes, squint and almost convince myself it looked not unlike a date. She took me round the market – to shops which seemed to sell nothing but holes in people – and I took her to shelves of video cassettes. All the while she jabbered on at a hundred miles an hour as she was prone to do and I listened to every word as though it meant something. Happy days. I’d seen a little snippet of Vengeance on Varos on the Big Breakfast’s ad-bumper non-competitions ("Don’t phone – it’s just for fun") and knew it contained Tardis scenes and shorts. That was enough. I didn’t want to seem indecisive in front of my believed (not that she would’ve noticed as the world revolved around her – one of the few things we ever agreed on) so I got it from WH Smith without the usual fuss.

Mark of the Rani

I was dragged round Iron Bridge once. I didn’t like it. It took ages to get to (but doesn’t everywhere when you’re a child?) and when we finally arrived there was nothing but old buildings and chimneys stuff like that. None of which was what I wanted from a day out that was meant to be fun. Now I know of its importance in this history of British television, now I’ve seen an exciting Blue Peter report about it, now I can appreciate history and now I have been there as a grown up. It's a wonderful place even if I failed to find anywhere that was definitely a Doctor Who location. I found one which might've been but it was largely a failed mission.

I first saw Mark of the Rani on UK Gold and of course they treated it as if it were a four parter. So we got to see the gloriously awful fake cliffhangers. "I’m indestructible – the whole universe knows that" cackles the Master. That would be a good place to break the action. It’s no less utterly terrifying than "Oh my dear Doctor, you have been naïve". The problem is that "I’m indestructible…" wasn’t the cliffhanger. Instead they added the Rani’s bored and dismissive "Is that so?" and then cut to stars, music, Colin’s face disappearing into the universe and the chilling words ‘Eric’ and ‘Saward’. This was an absurd place to end the episode. I know they were very limited because of timing but they had a couple of seconds either way to play with.

A video of Mark of the Rani was the first thing I watched on my new television. It was the Christmas of either 2000 or 2001 and I was doing what I always do over Christmas. I need to have a series on the go. It helps fill those inevitable gaps into which darkness can so easily slip. A couple of years ago – when the little ones were in Ireland – I had Hugh Laurie’s marvellous "House" on the go and nothing says Christmas quite like operations, sarcasm and bodily fluids. In either 2000 or 2001 I had fallen into a Colin Baker marathon and watching his stories in a fairly random pile. I moved on to Sylvester McCoy before the festive season was out. With hindsight it might’ve been less complicated just to have watched some of his stories. It is always an important moment when you watch something on your new television or video. My last TV made its debut with the "A to Z of ITV Wrestling" but I tend to say it was the night of the Idiot’s Lantern because then I can date it easily. The current set was a far more generic dose of the late and lamented Setanta Sports News. Mark of the Rani was the first thing I saw on what turned out to be a not terribly good Philips TV. Though I kept it for a long time. Unpacking it, connecting it, installing it and playing with it was done while listening to the Shadow of the Scourge – which I still don’t like even after all this time – and then I put Doctor Who and the Luddites on.

The video cost me £4.99 from the HMV opposite Boots in Coventry (don’t bother looking for it – it isn’t there anymore. HMV not Coventry). And while it surprised me at the time to find it so cheap, I was plenty more surprised when I saw clips of Mark of the Rani on a charity telethon. I do have the video somewhere – I found it during a purge – and it was Bob Mills doing his "MeDinner" routine. For those who haven't seen "In Bed With MeDinner" you are missing out. Millsy – as he is known to his followers – used to do a thing where he’d play video clips and make them funny. In the series these were usually documentaries or cheap rubbish made by cable channels. He’d set the joke up and play the clip. It was very funny. Google it – you’ll find clips. Anyway, the telethon hosts let us know Millsy was coming up (strange given he was very niche and telethons are very mainstream) so I recorded it. Almost immediately he started talking about acting techniques and his favourite one is known as the "Nicola Bryant". What? Who goes on national television to get a laugh mentioning Nicola Bryant? He then told us that her technique was to just repeat the last few words said to her. Not rib tickling I think you’ll agree. Then he played a series of clips from Mark of the Rani. That’s all she does in the story – just repeat the last few words someone has said to her. On and on it went. It was in fact rib tickling. And in case you're thinking that this sounds just like what Harry Hill does on his TV Burp, it is but Millsy did it first (and funnier - I can't explain but I've been in pain laughing at MeDinner).