Escape To Danger No.53

When Doctor Who Weekly began publication in late 1979, I wasn't allowed to buy it. It had been enough of an uphill struggle to secure regular viewing of the television series itself when Season Seventeen rolled around, after a chance encounter with "Image of the Fendahl" reduced me to a terrified, blubbering wreck a few years before.

 

So I decided to drop the matter, and bide my time. My mother's stated reason for denying the purchase of DWW, incidentally, was that I apparently required "a comic that will make you laugh". And so I was provided with a subscription to The Beano, which I honestly didn't find all that funny, and which probably accounts for me still being extremely wary of anything that claims to generate mirth.

 

Of course, I nowadays find much private amusement in The Beano's mindset during the late 1970's, which seemed much more at ease with the world as it was in the post-war period of the 1940's and 1950's, but that's another story for another day.

 

Doctor Who Weekly morphed into Doctor Who Monthly, and suddenly it was deemed worthy of purchase by my mother. (Probably because it wasn't a comic anymore. Comics are meant to make you laugh, remember?).

 

As I've no doubt mentioned before and at considerable length, No.45 was my first issue, and its contents are to this day seared deep into my mind, continually running under the surface of my daily life until the day I take my last shuddering breath.

 

Yes, it was that good, and here's what was on the cover...

And in a rather Pertwee-heavy issue, there was a "Top Secret UNIT Special Report" (ie. prototype Archive Feature with a rather charming narrative take) on "The Ambassadors of Death", which goes some way to explain why Serial CCC has a particularly special place in my heart.

 

There are other reasons why I'm so fond of "Ambassadors", of course. Caroline John's excellent hat being merely one of them.

 

 

Although solely credited to David Whitaker, the script for Serial CCC ended up being famously hacked around by no less than three other writers (Malcolm Hulke, Terrance Dicks and Trevor Ray) in and attempt to "make it work", and this fact alone seems to have doomed the serial in the eyes of the usual idiots over the years.

 

On the other hand, history has hinted that Whitaker was perhaps given the runaround by a constantly changing production team with no concrete idea of what they actually wanted.

 

 

Rather than viewing the situation as a failure, I'm rather taken with the Whitaker/Hulke mashup. By the way, did you know that the astronaut helmets were originally made for Hammer's exquisite "Moon Zero Two"? You did? Oh, please yourselves...

 

 

Another more famous bit of cost-cutting was the sharing of the Recovery 7 interior set (not the prop, as most people seem to think) with the production team of "Doomwatch". (The "Re-Entry Forbidden" episode from the first season actually exists and was finally released on DVD a few years ago, so you've no excuse not to watch it. Unless you really don't like "Doomwatch", that is).

 

 

I don't know if the cash saved on sets and costumes helped boost the budget for location filming, but Michael Ferguson gets an amazing amount of quality footage for his money. Apart from the oft-mentioned warehouse raid and capsule hijack sequences, there are plenty of other stunning exterior sequences on offer. Weirs, (actual) quarries and what to this day I privately refer to as "Season Seven Industrial"; tanks, pipes, and oil-soaked walkways.

 

 

Oh, and because it's Season Seven, UNIT is still a joyously believable security organisation here, consisting of people who look, dress and behave like proper soldiers, instead of the long-haired layabouts of later seasons who couldn't hit a Yeti while it was sat on a loo in Tooting Bec...

 

 

Ah, and there's the comedy Pertwee car. That's one legacy of Season Seven that I never like to dwell on too much...

 

But Serial CCC shines in the studio as well. Ronald Allen in particular is superb, and Michael Wisher's role as television presenter Wakefield (doing a James Burke and commentating on the technical aspects of the unfolding space programme) adds a verisimilitude that I don't remember the series having up to that point.

 

Even the alleged villain of the piece is noteworthy, being more misguided than evil. (An unusual occurance in the normally black-and-white morality of the series by and large).

 

 

That shot above doesn't work so well in glorious greyscale, and I've never been convinced you actually see that image in the televised story itself. Which is a shame, because it's pretty iconic, and reminds me of the other thing about this series that I am head-over-heels enamoured with...

 

 

RADIATION! RADIATION! AND LOTS OF IT!

 

It was all over the bloody place when I was growing up. (Well, not literally, but you know what I mean). In Marvel comics alone, the spider that bit Peter Parker was contaminated with it, Bruce Banner got a whole explosive dose of it, and let's not forget the origins of Doctor Octopus, the Sandman and, erm... the Radioactive Man.

 

Invisible and lethal, radiation was the bogeyman of the post-war nuclear age. (Yet it never featured much in The Beano. Go figure). So it's always nice to see it appear in Doctor Who again.

 

 

"The Ambassadors of Death" was the last Pertwee story to be novelised in the Target range, the last Pertwee VHS release and nearly the last Pertwee DVD to hit the shelves. The latter two are due to the amount of restoration the story required to recolourise episodes 2 to 7, and while not perfect, the DVD release is probably as good as we are going to get without chucking ridiculous amounts of money at a story many sadly seem not to rate too highly.

 

 

But whatever you may think of the neglected gem of Season Seven, it took Doctor Who Monthly No.45 to teach an exciting new word to an impressionable eight-year-old. (See answer to question 5 below...).

 

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...

Escape To Danger No.10

Ten stories in, and I'm still not entirely sure where I'm going with this project. The overall tone seems undecided at times, and I'm beginning to suspect that I should have created a companion piece, where I ooh and ahh over brilliant photos from each story that I've never seen before.

But there's plenty of time to make amends and have a bash at that later, I suppose.

Anyway, back to the present, and a look at what I've been wallowing in, now that I'm out of Project mode and am a free viewing agent again.

 

 

As the dog returneth to its vomit, so I return to "The Web Planet". (Not literally, you understand. That adventure would have to be in text format in a Monoid One Security Kitchen - as seen on BBC TV - annual).

 

 

Default Menoptera (sic) portrait, as seen in many an issue of Doctor Who Monthly.

 

 

This was one of those TARDIS interior shots from the Hartnell years that I was never quite sure which story they were from. Needless to say, the dilemma was solved by the VHS release, but for many years they were very real concerns...

 

 

Speaking of VHS viewings, I recall that the first time I ever watched Serial N was while house-sitting for a lecturer while I was at university. Nothing can quite prepare you for your first time, but I found that copious amounts of cheap cider did help in a very convivial way.

 

 

That's another one that puzzled me a lot in the poor definition reproduction of DWM days. In fact, I used to think that the control necklace on the floor there was some type of insect grub. Look, you can see the eyes on stalks...

 

 

Ah, the Atmospheric Density Jackets. A fuller frame shot exists, but I like this cropped version, as it is the version used in the DWM "The Phoenix Rises" April Fool article. The premise was that extant footage from (cough) lost story "The Hidden Planet" (aka "Beyond the Sun") was being spliced in with (then) newly-shot material to form a Hartnell/Davison team-up extravaganza. (All lies of course, but it did superimpose a grinning Peter Davison in between Russell and Hartnell in a most amusing fashion).

 

 

Another weird one that had me thinking for years that "The Web Planet" was as pleasantly bizarre as it in fact turned out to be...

 

 

One of Doctor Who's greatest fears, that.

 

 

Another popular Zarbi shot. (Interestingly, Bill Strutton's novelisation was one of the few that I never really got to grips with as a child. The other was "The Curse of Peladon", but I have trouble enough with that on the screen, to be honest).

 

 

Perhaps having many splendid visuals for "The Web Planet" helped prepare me when I finally did get to see it in all its strange glory. Rumours are that Serial N will be the next release in the BBC Radio Collection, and perhaps this non-visual take might help some people out of the quaint (and very wrong) notion that the story is somewhat laughable and not much good.

 

They didn't hype up "The Web Planet" to be the next big thing for nothing, you know. (Now, where's my Give-A-Show projector gone..?)

Publicity Shots from Hell No.63

While it's still all hectic at work due to relocation, it's sometimes difficult to sit back, relax and have a read of your favourite periodicals.

 

 

Not only was Doctor Who Monthly 61 (cover date February 1982) the first issue to feature a cover shot from an actual Fifth Doctor story, it also took the chance to proudly display it's Eagle Award for Best Comic Magazine.

 

It also misspelled the name of the lead actor in the series which it exclusively covered.

 

"Now Better Than Ever..."

Publicity Shots from Hell No.31

Once in a while I present a photograph in this feature, and have a little grumble that I really should know more about it, but can't quite for the life of me recall what it is.

Similarly, a recent conversation with probably the only person who reads this page reminded me of pre-VHS days, when it was often possible to come across an unlabelled photo in DWM and not to be able to place it at all.

This one independently puzzled us both for many years, it seems. But since it is a shot from a story that was never transmitted on TV, I suppose we can be excused for our youthful naivety.

Personally, it wasn't until the October 1983 publication of Doctor Who Monthly 81 (The Magazine of Time and Space) that I began to get a clue as to the photograph's provenance.

I still wasn't totally convinced, though.

And before you get all cocky, let's remember that DWM covers were never the most reliable guides to the series and its stars. Randomly jump forward a mere 18 months, and here's how issue 99 advertised its wares...

Blimey, Mary Tamm looks a bit off-colour, doesn't she?

Star Wars Toys I Never Knew I Wanted No.7

Flicking through scans of three-decade-old Doctor Who Monthlies the other day, I was reminded of this.

 

Having considered at length the ramifications of going so seriously off-topic, I have decided to throw caution to the winds and go with the yoghurt after all...

 

Now, as the title of this series suggests, I was never aware until now that I wanted to consume Star Wars yoghurts so strongly. As has already been discussed a long time ago, in a different blog far, far away, by the time these little tubs of goodness hit the shelves, I was already turning my back on such things dairy.

 

So, I wasn't all that bothered at the time. And with the benefit of hindsight and the passage of time, other reasons for my casual attitude make themselves clear.

 

Firstly, the outlets that are quoted as having stocked these delights were all virtually unknown in this forgotten corner of our green and pleasant land in 1983. (And now, the majority are long since vanished, and memories of them can only be jogged with extensive online research).

 

And secondly, from a purely synesthetic point of view, nearly all of the (8 exciting) flavours have been wrongly assigned to their characters. The fudge flavour quite obviously should have been associated with Jabba the Hutt, black cherry with Princess Leia in Bespin attire, and banana with Chewbacca, for example.

 

And would they have been subtly flavoured with small shreds of the flavoursome fruit, as opposed to obtrusively large chunks or something inappropriate in a corner?

 

You bet your rub down action transfers they would have...

Publicity Shots from Hell No.23

And while we're on the subject of the excellent "Meglos", let's rewind the clock back to the autumn of 1980, to those heady days when John Nathan-Turner turned Marvel UK's fledgling Doctor Who Monthly on its head and actually started utilising the magazine to provide its fanboy readers with information on forthcoming and current stories.

 

Not exactly rocket science, but I do think that the third monthly issue (pictured below) was the first instance that a publicity shot from a story concurrently running on screen appeared on the cover.

Unfortunately, it was a photo from the session where Tom Baker got multiple opportunities to show that his excellent cactus make-up wasn't quite as extensive as one might have hoped.

 

And you know what?

 

Back then I never even noticed that Tom's cuffs had ridden too low for credibility.

And you know what else?

 

Nowadays I don't even bloody care...

Anhedonistically Yours

First day of Spring, and the familiar Seasonal Affective Disorder is already kicking in.

Any kind of merriment in life in general appears to be getting increasingly hard to achieve. With the unwelcome appearance of such unseasonally warm weather, it's hardly surprising.

Just better get used to it, I suppose.

Anyway, my attentions have been wandering from these pages for other reasons than that.

Rediscovering the joys of reading has a lot to do with it, as I have finally managed to hone both my male multitasking skills and extraneous noise filters to achieve their full potential. I am happy to report that I can now maintain the illusion that I am actually paying attention to other people and my surroundings while simultaneously managing to remain in total concentration on what I am damn well doing.

And being totally immersed in a book (especially history or philosophy) is a good "fuck you" in these parts, it's sad to say.

Anyway, that's the theory, and let's hope it works.

Meanwhile, I am basking in the warm and fuzzy glow of old Doctor Who Monthlies, or rather a stack of recently acquired pdf scans since all my original copies are languishing in the loft.

And again I am almost moved to tears by my near-pathological page-by-page recollection of a set of magazines that were published over 30 years ago, and how valued the contents were because of their excitement, uniqueness and the joyful fires they fanned in my imagination.

Also of interest lately has been the chasing down of a variety of shinydisc stragglers of varying degrees of rarity. I am now currently up to date with Yer Who discs, have had significant victories in Hammer mode (including Noir material), and have unearthed a fair few Network gems that have recently slipped into deletion.

(Note to self. Next for a long overdue purge will be Marvel Essentials).

Come to think of it, things don't look so bad. If you think money can buy you distraction, that is...