The Leisure Hive

“The Argolis Catalogue”, “Doctor Who and the Tacky Ones”, “Doctor Who and the Mafia”

“The One With the Pellets Falling of Heads” (USA), “Hurrah!” (“Classic Beards” magazine)

Doctor Who has a new look, new music, new costumes, new producer and a new plot as he stops some green monsters from causing death and destruction.

*** - Historically more important than it is interesting

“What this programme needs is a boy – preferably small and talented” (Tom Baker in the BBC bar)

Brock: 'His pants killed Stimson.'
Doctor: 'Arrest the pants then!'

It is well known that Lovett Bickford used a single camera to shoot this story. What isn't always understood is that it wasn't a video camera - he posed the cast for twenty five static photographs per second of action. The cost of getting 132,478 pictures developed at Boots almost bankrupted the BBC.

"Tachyon" was a made up piece of scientific gibberish which was later given credibility when a Doctor Who loving physicist went out of his way to discover a new type of particle and name it in the show's honour.

For which writer David Fisher got an ex gratia payment of seventy five pounds.

He unsuccessfully sued the British Physics Society for royalties on any future tachyons produced, described, observed or tinkered with by BPS members.

The shot of Tom Baker asleep on Brighton Beach was actually achieved by an unnamed female assistant slipping something in his cocoa after he'd annoyed her during a row about God.

Episode one's original transmission was prefaced with a warning that some viewers might find the new music disturbing. It failed to protect sensitive fans however and three ended up suffering from 'post-startling stress disorder'.

Everyone hates the question marks on Tom Baker's shirts except the late John Nathan Turner. Alternatives were suggested - Chris Bidmead thought Tom better suited an exclamation mark, John Leeson suggested an ampersand and Lalla Ward said she felt deeply that Tom was an utter colon. They later made up and she reduced it to a semi colon.

...is that if you want to rebrand a radioactive warzone as a tourist resort, don't ask the Mafia to help you.

Si Hunt

In addition to being one of the most boring pieces of film ever shot, the opening tracking sequence along Brighton "Beach" is a source of lingering frustration to me (and most other people I imagine). It began in 1985 when a rumour was circulated around our intimate circle that an extended cut of the panning shot existed. Clocking in at over eight seconds longer than the transmitted version, this represented an obvious treasure to be obtained at all cost. After three thousand pounds worth of international telephone calls and a postal order for another seven thousand pounds I finally obtained a video cassette tape of the extended sequence. It was one of my proudest possessions until 2003 when an acquaintance who I won't name (as we have fallen out over his entirely unreasonable behaviour) produced a computer "program" which is able to compare video or film footage with the precise meteorological and tidal conditions at the time it was shot. I discovered to my amazement that my supposedly extended cut was merely a slightly slowed down version of the extant sequence. The one available to the proles and all and sundry. I was the laughing stock of my inner circle until Grantham happened to catch a snippet of "The Thin Blue Line" and realised that the embalmed David Haig he'd purchased at auction was a fake.

Gary Syrup, writing in "The Leisure Drive", has never forgiven season eighteen. 'I eagerly tuned in for episode one of the new season of Doctor Who only to find something completely different in its place. When the familiar time-tunnel and music failed to appear I immediately switched off my television and went to iron my shirt for Monday morning. At first I put it down to disorganisation at the BBC but after six weeks I began to think it was an elaborate practical joke. Week after week I tuned in only to find something else on in place of Doctor Who. It wasn't until Castrovalva was broadcast with a pre-credits sequence showing Tom Baker that I realised that the programme with the stars and the funky music was actually my beloved Doctor Who. I fell into a deep depression when I realised I'd missed out on an entire year's worth of my favourite series and became very anti-social. I didn't go out, I didn't comb my hair, I didn't even wash. Luckily I discovered DWAS shortly afterwards and was offered a position on their research team. The first thing I did with my new contacts was get VHS copies of The Leisure Hive and it was ok."