Home  Up One Level  Updates  Email

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

The Curse of Fenric

It was the end of my mock A-Levels. The final box had been ticked, the final brilliant thought written, the final radical hypothesis penned and the final bead of sweat shed. I was sort of free. Sure, we were due back in school almost immediately and the real thing would soon be upon us but that afternoon I felt like the freest person on Earth. And, like most people throughout history who have been granted their freedom, I went to Woolworths. £7.99 changed hands and I had myself a copy of Curse of Fenric. Of course I loved it. It’s brilliant – what else would I have thought of it? I’d already read the novel and, unusually, I’d gone to town with the express intention of getting Curse of Fenric. Usually in that first year of mad video buying I would see what was there and pick more or less at random. By random I probably mean whichever was the cheapest. This time I was determined to get Curse of Fenric. It was also – by a coincidence – the cheapest. I think it was a BBC Video re-release of old tapes at a lower price. They did that a couple of times before the TVM and its legal entanglements forced the entire catalogue to be deleted.

This is the story I associate with fish cakes. My grandmother was looking after us at the time and she made fish cakes. I always used to like fish fingers – that isn’t a euphemism – and she not unreasonably thought I would like her very similar fish cakes. I thought they were all fine and dandy. I can’t remember what fish she used – it might’ve been salmon – but I do know she interrupted the exciting final chapter of Curse of Fenric to serve them. One interesting clip I found in my diary was a remark in 1994 that if it wasn’t for cheese burgers I could quite easily go vegetarian. This was on my mind at the time as my beloved was an outspoken vegetarian and I thought it might be a way to impress her. I didn’t do anything about it for another few years and then did it for an all together more sensible reason than impressing an unrequited love. I can still remember the taste of those fish cakes though. They taste of Curse of Fenric.

Survival

The final story though not for me. For me it was just the story which ended the first great UK Gold Doctor Who cycle – a cycle which would be starting again almost immediately and thus give me chance to get copies of the few stragglers which remained. I have a feeling they went back only to the beginning of the Pertwee era so I was left to fume over my missing Hartnells until the latter years of the decade. In truth Survival means nothing to me except an occasional use of the phrase “…or gone to Birmingham.” Someone will ask what happened to so and so. “I think they’ve left” I say. “Or gone to Birmingham”. They’ll look at me strangely. “Birmingham?” they’ll ask. “Never mind” I’ll assure them. It’s my problem not theirs.

I think I remember a DWM special which focused on An Unearthly Child and Survival. It had a cover merging the two and compared the themes of the first and last stories. What seemed like a very thin premise actually turned out to be quite interesting. I remember reading it in a restaurant in Manchester, next to the canal, while eating nachos or possibly chips. For some reason I can’t find any trace of this special online. The otherwise exhaustive DWM site I use for Magazine queries doesn’t include it. I can’t have imagined it and if it was a dream I would’ve been eating something more fun than nachos.

So I suppose the first time Survival was important to me was when the DVD came out. Not for the fan commentary or anything like that but for the documentary about “season 27”. Ever since DWM did a fantastic article about “season 27” I’ve been fascinated by it. The last two years had been pointing in an interesting direction and the signs are that the next one would’ve continued in that vein. Also amusing is the way the documentary constantly switches between the idea that Doctor Who was on a roll and needed to continue and the counter idea that it was tired and in need of a long rest.

And although it’s a crap note on which to finish, I listened to a couple of Bernice Summerfield audio CDs and was rather taken with Lisa Bowerman’s voice. I looked her up online. By Timothy! She’d not only been in Doctor Who (under a mask so I wouldn’t be able to see what she looked like), she was also interviewed in “I Was a Doctor Who Monster” – a video I only bloody had in a box somewhere. I dug it out and fast forwarded to the part where she and Sophs were reminiscing about those damned quarries and the heat. Her hair was a bit too short and she sounded a bit too jolly-hockey-sticks but I was not unimpressed by La Bowerman.

Interlude

I wasn’t really aware that Doctor Who had finished in 1989. I was a pretty casual viewer by the end and because there was no official axing, it just wasn’t there a year later and who notices something that isn’t there a year later when they are fourteen? A clumsy sentence but you see what I mean. Until that day when the Radio Times told us that repeats were on the way I don’t think I gave it too much thought. There was the bit of Frontios in Pennsylvania, I looked at an early New Adventure in WH Smith and was a bit confused about it not having been on telly first, and I never forgot that comedians making jokes about Daleks and stairs were woefully behind the times but that was about it for two or three years.

Dimensions in Time

Before there was Dimensions in Time there was the Dark Dimension. When I started reading DWM in April 1993 there were already murmurings afoot that Doctor Who was coming back for a thirtieth anniversary special. Then it wasn’t. Then it was. Then it wasn’t. Each edition brought news which contradicted the previous issue. We know now that it didn’t happen – except in an online version which is frankly better than they would’ve made on the straight-to-video budget they were planning – but what did emerge was Dimensions in Time. And a Radio Times cover which I found waiting for me one day when I got home from school. I remember it because my beloved’s best friend had given me (and her) a lift home and they came in for a mooch around. She gave me such a pitying look that this magazine had been left for me in a prominent place. She probably thought it was an old one which I had on permanent display. She shook her head in that way she did when I disappointed her and I mumbled something apologetic and asked if they wanted some lemonade. Or something.

I’ve never watched Eastenders. I’ve seen bits and pieces, usually on Christmas day when someone else wants to watch it and I can’t move. One year it was on before Doctor Who and there was a very strange scene with people driving around a junk yard for no reason until one of them was killed. It might’ve been New Year’s Eve. It was still stupid. So I only knew Wendy Richard (and that was from “Are You Being Served?”) and no doubt there were gags which went over my head. I did love Dimensions in Time when I first saw it – it was a festival, a feast if you prefer, where you never knew who was going to appear next. I recognised all but one of the companions. I asked the chap in K9 books who she was. “Anneke Wills” he replied. He pronounced her first name “Ah-knee-kah” which for all I knew was right. I’ve always said it as in Rice.

Then there was Pertwee appearing on Noel’s House Party – another show I’d never seen before. I wasn’t impressed. Then Pertwee turns up in one of his convention jackets and they did a bit of banter before screening part two. There was fury in the fan press (DWB) about Edmonds insisting on cuts to reduce the length of this intrusion into his high brow world of gunge and tired hidden camera based humour. There was also fury at JNT showing it at a convention in America and charging people for 3D specs. It was for charity – sometimes I think they went looking for sticks with which to beat him.

The much vaunted 3D was rather good for what it was. I must admit I found the Tomorrow’s World explanation of the 3D effect more interesting than Dimensions in Time itself. I can see why it never took off but it was reasonably successful if you didn’t mind wearing cardboard glasses. JNT had plastic ones and looked a bit silly. But it was for charidee. I’ve only ever seen one other use of that keep-the-camera-moving-round 3D effect – a late night German entertainment programme of the early 90s which suited 3D more than Doctor Who did.

Next time - the final chapter, the TVM and that fateful announcement