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

Time and the Rani

This is the anti-Trial of a Time Lord in so many ways. For me at least because Trial was what I did when I got to university and Time and the Rani was what I did when I got home. Generally we’d travel home on a Saturday or a Sunday. I’d have masses of stuff in boxes and it would sit there until I could face it on Monday afternoon. I would pop on Time and the Rani and by the time it finished I would have restored order. This was a pattern which continued itself for pretty much my entire university career.

The only bit I remember from first airing is the Rani's spinning traps and the skeleton that resulted from a trip in one of them. I should really have remembered it being the start of a new Doctor or the return of an old foe but I don't. Just the spinning traps because they were vaguely cool and Kate O'Mara putting on a slight list while in Bonnie Langford's jumpsuit isn't.

Paradise Towers

Paradise Towers was the third in the trilogy of stories which failed to record. At least in this case it was only episode four which didn’t work. I can’t remember the details – every time I think I’ve pieced together what happened I’m reminded of something else and the whole time line falls apart. Suffice it to say it didn’t work. So I did what I did with Timelash – I got a copy of the novel on a shopping trip to Birmingham and read it. I remember nothing of the novel except getting it from WH Smith. Surely that’s the wrong way round – or the sign of a bad novel, when the buying of it is more memorable than the reading of it. As a sidebar, I used to think WH Smith in Birmingham was rather like Castrovalva because there seemed to be many ways in and many passages within and just when you thought you’d found the right way out, you discovered you were somewhere completely different. So not that like Castrovalva. But there was definitely something not quite right about its special geometry and relationship with the rest of the universe.

Hence my excitement – and I use that word wrongly – when the video was released. It was a chance to put one final nail in the coffin of “Doctor Who I don’t have” and even if the first three episodes had been a little too cringe making for my tastes I still had to get it. Shortly after, something a bit odd happened. One of my housemates was a huge Babylon 5 fan. So huge in fact that he spent three years on early Babylon 5 websites and in primitive Babylon 5 chatrooms and failed his finals. He’d been trying to get me to watch Babylon 5 for ages but I wasn’t interested. He proposed a deal – he’d watch one of my Doctor Who tapes if I watched one of his Babylon 5 tapes. Videos which, as a matter of historic record, I’d bought for him when I found them for a pound each in Smiths. When I broke the news he was so delighted that he bounded down the corridor and kissed me on the cheek. He hadn’t shaved for some weeks and it was not pleasant. In that terrible instant I didn’t know which would get him off me faster - punching him in the balls or faking an orgasm. He watched Paradise Towers (I don’t know if it was his choice or mine but it can’t have been mine) and his verdict was a resounding “Crap”. I tried to explain the symbolism of the piece but he couldn’t get past the bad acting, the bad costumes, the absurd characters and pretty much the whole final episode. I can’t really blame him. I didn’t watch his Babylon 5 video – partly because I had no interest in it at all and partly because even I knew it was a serialised saga and no good could come of watching two random episodes from the middle of a season. Best case scenario I would be bored, worst case scenario I would spoiler the series and never get into it as a result. I did eventually get into it thanks to nightly showings on the Sci Fi Channel. Four seasons in four months (with the fifth a year later). That was almost ten years ago and now I’m finally going back and watching the series on DVD for the first time.

This housemate of ours was a strange fish. We once convinced him to grow a moustache and he kept it for nine whole weeks. We kept telling him it looked good. I compared him to Ronald Coleman (a reference I’d heard somewhere and just about understood). He came back clean shaven after the holidays and wouldn’t speak to any of us. He finally broke down and demanded to know why we’d been lying to him about his moustache. His family had told him how old and silly he looked and he resented the hell out of us for it. Then there was the time – the same day England played Switzerland in Euro 96 – that we had a big argument over something (I can’t remember what but it might’ve been a water fight which got out of hand). The bit I remember most clearly is standing outside his bedroom door and shouting Babylon 5 spoilers at him from the new issue of Dreamwatch Magazine. Kosh dies – I didn’t know what that meant but he swore bloody vengeance. But he couldn’t stay angry for long – I was the only one who bought the Radio Times so he needed to be nice to me or he wouldn’t know what was on telly. You’ve probably spotted that he had a fairly simple alternative but he never seemed to think of it.

He also once emerged from a night-long game of Doom (or whatever the shoot-em-up of the day was) and mournfully declared of our other house mate “I’ve been banging him all night and he just won’t die.” We didn’t let him forget that in a hurry either.

So yes he was right about Paradise Towers – by any objective standard the end result on the screen is indeed crap. But a slightly fond crap and a crap which I used to play every Christmas Eve while wrapping presents. I hate wrapping presents because I’m no good at it and I end up panicking because I’ve obviously bought the wrong thing for everyone and my fragile spirit of excited festivity will be shattered as they open the most misjudged presents they’ve ever received. I was once MSNing with Mr Rayner on Christmas Eve and told him about the Paradise Towers ritual. “Why Paradise Towers?” he asked. “I don’t know” I replied. That’s the kind of rapier wit which left me with no MSN buddies.

Delta and the Bannermen

The Christmas hols were upon us – a whole month at home and because I’d only been a student for one term, not much work to do during those four weeks. The only snag was that Delta and the Bannermen started the night before I was going home. Having worked this out with paper and a pencil (and my fingers) I phoned mother and asked if she’d record it for me. She did so but on a random tape. This meant that when I copied it across to what I deemed the right tape it developed a loud buzzing noise. This had never happened before – there was a slight buzz on the original recording but copying it made it much worse. Needless to say I would;'ve liked them to have included an optional buzz for the DVD release just so I could feel nostalgic. But the cold hearted bastards didn't. And I didn't ask them. That's probably why.

This was also the story where – briefly – I thought Mel was hot. Something about that 50s skirt. It brought back memories of the other brief time I thought Mel was hot. I won a prize in my last year at school and come Speech Day (“Prize Giving Day” would’ve been unacceptably vulgar so they had to give it a more dignified title. Originally it was at the local cinema – which we owned – but then it moved into the refectory. We didn’t have a canteen – we had a refectory. Fifteenth century remember. None of your tat) I was presented with a book and the grateful thanks of a successful old boy. About a month before this festival of joy I was given a fifteen pound book token and told to get something for the big day. One chap I knew got the official tie in book of “Sylvanian Waters” – the original dreadful fly on the wall documentary which would spawn a million imitators and Jeremy Spake. This was not acceptable and he was sent to the library in disgrace to get something appropriate. We couldn’t have a distinguished old boy exposed to working class popular culture. Seen next to that, my copy of Peter Haining’s “Twenty Five Glorious Years” was merely regrettable. There was one picture in the book which made me like the look of Mel. What a shame they dressed her in such abysmal faux-futuristic pastel coloured polyester abominations for her brief tenure. Black suited her. Even more than 1950s skirts.