Living and working as I do in one of the agricultural hubs of this green and pleasant land of ours, I have since childhood always harboured a fascination with the seething metropolis that is our capital city.
After my usual half-arsed attempts at soul-searching and contemplation, I think I can trace this back to four things from my childhood: the mesmerising Thames TV ident sequence, The Dalek Invasion of Earth (and the Chris Achilleos novelisation cover artwork in particular), The Web of Fear, and the fact that my father would never let us have a family trip to London, in spite of all my tearful pleas.
But he's dead now, and I'm going on my umpteenth trip to London as an adult in a few weeks' time.
Thus I win.
So, apologies for that seemingly cruel sentiment delivered in jest, but it is actually a telling example of how things that my parents attempted to steer me away from in youth have become among my main interests in adulthood.
Doctor Who, Marvel Comics, London, Brutalist architecture, and the somewhat exciting and intriguing genderbending ramifications that Glam Rock thrust into the spotlight.
Ah, the trials and dilemmas of parenting in the 1970's...
Anyway, enough of all that, and let us marvel at the skill of Jacqueline Hill as she gamely struggles with a neck clamp that really looks at if it should be magnetic but actually isn't.
Ann Davies is doing alright, though.
Good future companion material, that girl...
Recorded as the final story in the initial production block, Serial K is the first ever instance of Proper Who doing a back-by-popular-demand type story. It also would have made an ideal Season finale, especially with Carole Ann Ford's decision to leave the series, and the poignance-on-a-stick ending would have lingered well in the memory until "The Rescue" opened Season Two.
But that wasn't to be.
Whichever way you cut it though, "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" is effectively "The Dalek Invasion of London", and much has been written in various publications as to why the London of post-2164 has been transformed into what looks like the 1950's.
Of course, it's all part of the Blitz imagery and the start of the Daleks-As-Nazis thing that Terry Nation would revisit when he next had a sympathetic script editor. It's also worth reiterating that in 1964, the privations accompanying the end the Second World War were less than 20 years in the past, and very much in recent living memory.
No, that's not a Nazi salute there at all, is it? (And like many of our ilk, my first ever visit to Trafalgar Square witnessed me attempting to recreate the above pose. But thanks to an embarrassed Ms Monoid, no photographic evidence exists).
I am, however, definitely (and defiantly) bloody proud that last year I braved the nearby desecration/demolition of Riverside Studios, and took the time to wander around the corner to the very spot pictured above.
And as I looked down at the spot at the foot of Hammersmith Bridge where just over fifty years ago a couple of guys from the BBC pulled a Dalek out of the Thames, I couldn't help but raise a smile.
.
And then it struck me.
That because of Doctor Who, I felt like I'd finally come home.
