Escape To Danger No.28

The first three stories of the premier season of Yer Who have, for as long as I can recall, borne the brunt of silly naming arguments.

Back when I started my Doctor Who Monthly fuelled guzzling of the series' history, Serial A was usually referred to as "An Unearthly Child", aka "The Tribe of Gum". This always seemed to reek of some sort of weak-chinned political compromise, until the Five Faces repeat season and the Target novelisation cemented the former as the dominant force in the fanboy consciousness.

But as with VHS versus Betamax, this was not necessarily the most happy outcome, and the Season One Naming Debates did for a time seem to have the potential of creating almost Deadly Assassin style schisms amidst the nascent fan community.

The second story fared no better, managing to have no less than four possible titles, each vying for our love and affection. (Namely "The Daleks", "The Mutants", "The Dead Planet" and "Beyond the Sun", if you're interested. That nobody considered "Doctor Who In An Exciting Adventure With the Daleks" as a contender is admittedly a disappointment. I'd have quite happily slipped J. Jeremy Bentham a 1981 fiver from my Dad's wallet to have that title touted in the Matrix Data Bank).

The third story also contrived to be known as "Beyond the Sun" for a time, in addition to the more usual "The Edge of Destruction". But it was soon postulated that the solar themed title was probably just another name for the aborted script now known as "The Hidden Planet", so it didn't really hang around for that long.

So imagine my surprise when I returned to all things Who in 1993 and found even more silly names to call two of these stories by. These had almost divine status for a while, as it was claimed they were mentioned on actual BBC production documentation.

While I concur that we probably should be calling Serial B "The Mutants" as is inferred, I also agree that you can't have two stories running around with that title, and so am happy to refer to it by the less problematical moniker of "Doctor Who In An Exciting Adventure With the Daleks".

And if we're honest, "100,000 BC" is a pretty crap title, which makes Serial A have no good titles at all to choose from. (But I do applaud Titan Books for flying in the face of fashion and calling their script book "The Tribe of Gum", if only out of sheer awkwardness).

But the one that irritated me the most was "Inside the Spaceship".

Pfft.

At least "The Edge of Destruction" made an attempt to make it sound exciting. "Inside the Spaceship" could just be two episodes playing around with the TARDIS food machine (which it probably would have been if David Whitaker had co-written it with Terry Nation).

You think I only mention all this as mere filler for what would have been a very brief entry?

No, the point of all this is to emphasise a rather delicious irony that I've deliberately avoided mentioning for the past half an hour:

That the solitary standard image that was trotted out to accompany mentions of this story back in the day wasn't actually from the story at all.

Never mind all the column inches spent bickering about what we should or shouldn't call it. The fact remains that I only recently discovered that for a significant portion of my life, I have been deceived into thinking that the above photo from Serial B was actually from "The Edge of Destruction".

Which it isn't.

My childhood was therefore built on a lie.

Damn you for that, Doctor Who Monthly...