The DOCTOR WHO Pinball

The following is an article commissioned for and published in the third of the Update Volumes of HOWE'S TRANSCENDENTAL TOYBOX, which is long out of print ...

Pinball Wizard

In 1992 Bally Williams released, to date, the only Doctor Who arcade pinball machine. William Pfutzenreuter worked on the game for Bally Williams and here he shares his memories of developing something which has become unique in the field of Doctor Who merchandise and collectibles.

The Start

I was a games programmer for Bally Williams, and after about ten years working at this, I was given the opportunity to be the ‘Game Designer’ of a pinball game. All I had to do is come up with a game idea and ‘sell’ it to management. Many sleepless nights and several unsold ideas later, one of my colleagues, Ken Fedesna, knowing that I was a Doctor Who fan (and I suspect he was too!), suggested that I design a game using that as the subject. So, I went back to the drawing board and designed using sketches the main features and the game story. 

For the story, I did not want to adapt something which had already been seen on television, so I tried to come up with something from scratch. I have always liked time paradoxes, and I wanted to get all the Doctors back together again (like the stories ‘The Three Doctors’ and ‘The Five Doctors’ on television). I also wanted there to be a companion for each Doctor, and I wanted to include speech samples from each Doctor and companion. Every story needs an enemy and so I added the Daleks and (my favourite) the latest incarnation of the Master (played on television by Anthony Ainley). The story I came up with was that the Daleks and the Master had compressed time on Earth, hence the slow continental drift back to the one large continent Pangaea, but the Doctors (who visit Earth a lot at different times), escape, only to be flung into different situations represented by different areas of the playfield. 

This was the initial concept of including a 3-level ‘mini-playfield’ known as the Time Expander. Management approved the game and the BBC (for the Doctor Who show) and Terry Nation (for the Daleks) were approached for licensing. After the licenses were preliminarily agreed, the project became official and a team was assembled to make Doctor Who the pinball. Since it was a licensed game it would be released by Bally as they did all the licensed products, and it would be put into production following the development and release of games for The Addams Family and Black Rose. 

The Team

Once the project had been approved by management, the team members could be assembled. The core team comprised a Mechanical Engineer (Zofia Bil), a Graphic Artist (Linda Deal), a Sound Engineer (Jon Hey), and a Dot Matrix Display Artist (Scott ‘Matrix’ Slomiany), all of whom were assigned to work for me. There were some others, like Roger Sharpe from marketing and my contact for Licenses, plus a lot of other people helping. Next came the task of explaining what I wanted each of the team members to do, and educating them on 26 years of Doctor Who. 

The Mini-Playfield

Zofia started on the ‘mini-playfield’ from my sketches. Her task was to design it with the smallest footprint possible, but to make it ‘indestructible’ and still not cost a fortune. Several motor designs were suggested, and a few were simulated, but Zofia liked the offset cam. The motor was chosen to last a long time. It was strong enough to break pencils (fingers would be an easier target) and I even demonstrated it (please do not do this at home!) for management. This concerned a lot of people and we had to find a way to make it safe. Just opening the coin door (doing so cut the power to the solenoids and mini-playfield motor) was not good enough. So a switch was added to detect the presence of the playfield glass, and I programmed the machine to only move the mini-playfield if the glass was present. We even added an obnoxious alarm sound, a dot matrix display warning ‘sticker’, and speech in two languages (English & German) warning the operator. 

The Artwork (Part One)

I gathered up all my Doctor Who collection (magazines, books, video tapes) and brought it to work. Linda look through all of it. We also had access to the BBC Archives, but this took several weeks to get hold of images, and despite being given descriptions of the poses Linda desired, she was never too happy with what we were sent. The backglass is perhaps the most important part of the machine – it advertises it and needs to draw people to it in the arcade. For the Doctor Who backglass I gave Linda the requirement that all seven Doctors, the TARDIS and the Master had to be featured. She also added in the Daleks and the Doctor Who  logo had to be in there as well. The BBC presented the requirement that the faces had to be all the same size (so that no one was more important that the other). This somewhat restricted the design, so she looked at my collection and came up with a design of the seven Doctors around the Doctor Who logo. On the bottom left was a silhouette of the TARDIS, and on the bottom right was a silhouette of the Master flanked by the Daleks. Once approved by myself and the management, she made a full sized colour magic marker drawing. This was then sent out for the approval of Bally and the BBC. 

While this was happening, the playfield and cabinet was being designed. After that was done and sent out for approval. The real painted backglass was started and completed, then twelve translates (temporary backglasses made by a quick process to see the colours and art) were make for the twelve test machines. During all of this, Linda designed the cabinet artwork, the magic motion artwork, the playfield artwork, the playfield plastics art, the playfield stickers, and an assortment of free handouts (bumper stickers, coasters, and so on). 

The magic motion piece was added to the Bally cabinet at the last minute and we didn’t know exactly when they would arrive to be fitted to the machines. So, a back-up piece in standard plastic was made. As it turned out, this was not needed, and so it became another free handout.

The Playfield Design

While all this was going on, it was up to me to start laying out the playfield. I found a discarded drafting table in the hallway. AutoCAD was still not really popular at Williams back in ’92, it and the computers with all the extra memory needed to run it were very expensive. So I dragged the drafting table into my office and picked up a pencil. I rapidly found that I was a better programmer than a draftsman, but I did have a lot of help from other game designers (who always drafted their playfields themselves! I had been missing out!). So the first playfield was designed and built, but the play action was somewhat stunted. Shots did not work, you could not hit a thing, it was no fun at all. Williams (rightly so) rejected it and I was gloomily beginning to think that the game was going to be cancelled.

Well, I dragged my ego down to Roger Sharp’s office and dumped my ‘problems’ onto his lap. He gave me a pep speech about his game design days, but we still had to get the game sorted out. So he suggested that I ask Barry Oursler, one of the more experienced designers, if he would co-design the game with me. So I left Roger and made a bee-line directly to Barry’s office (I had programmed many of his games) and asked him. He accepted, and now it was time to convince Williams’ management that the game was still viable. It took them a little while, but they accepted and Barry took my ideas and gadgets, added a few of his own, and made a real game. 

Once we had the basic design, then a ‘white wood’ version of the playfield was made. This is the playfield without artwork, just wood. It’s used so that the designer can check the shots to see if there is good action. If something needs to be moved, then he will fill the holes and drill new ones to move ramps and/or posts. Sometimes a white wood gets so full of holes that another white wood is made, and so on until you have it right. Once the game play is working, then the design is ‘locked down’ and the playfield artwork can be started. Of course, even the best of playfields can change later in the design … Much to the horror of the playfield artist!

Barry’s play action worked great! Perhaps too good … the ‘sonic boom’ ramp shot (left flipper to right ramp) was so popular and so easy (for the Williams game designers at least) to loop the ball forever. I had to modify the rule and on the tenth loop, divert the ball, give the player a bonus, and force the player to use the right flipper with the diverted ball. Of course, a skilled player would use the right flipper to shoot under the left ramp. This would trade flippers back to the left one as a setup for the right ramp. But this did slow them down a bit … 

The Dotwork

Scott ‘Matrix’, the designer of the ‘dotwork’ images, also had access to my collection of Doctor Who photos and tapes. I originally wanted each ball in play to represent one part of a Doctor Who episode, so that starting a game would start at Part 1. But I also wanted all the different video effects and themes for all the Doctors. This would be selectable depending upon the selected Doctor at the start of playing a ball. However, just creating one theme (and there was more to a game than the start and end of a ball in play) in a low resolution dot matrix display was time consuming. So I abandoned the multiple themes idea (the sound system had limits too) and stuck to just one theme. 

While Scott was working on the display effect he discovered that faces were staring back at him from the Doctor Who titles for the early Tom Baker stories. He had been staring at the Doctor Who titles for quite some time, trying to imitate the effect in a low resolution dot matrix display. Quite to his surprise, a face was staring back at him! These can be seen on the right side, half way from the top on the end credits, and on the starting credits, it’s upside down on the left side on both the top and bottom half. Scott came and found me and asked about the faces. ‘What faces?’ I asked! 

There were many other visual effects in the pinball game. Multiball was the most complicated, both visually and with integrated speech, because it involved telling a story during the play of game controlled by the player and not by the actors. If you think the actors have it tough trying to talk while running down a corridor, try getting hit by flippers, rolling on the ground, bouncing off posts, and talking, all in the middle of all those sounds and changing rules! The game also interacted with the player – as you removed Daleks or Davros from the mini-playfield, they all started to panic.

As mentioned, there was a lot more to the dot matrix display than just titles, and one of the more fun elements was the ‘video mode’. The concept was simple: a Doctor was running away from a Dalek that was chasing him. But there are obstacles in his path that the Doctor must jump over. The narrow obstacles only need one flipper to be pressed, the wider obstacles require two flippers to be pressed at the same time. If the Doctor does not jump over an obstacle, or he jumps into an obstacle, he trips and falls and loses (the Dalek catches him, and this obstacle pattern repeats on the next video mode). If the Doctor does not trip, and reaches his TARDIS, he is safe and he leaves. There are some extra points if you jump into the TARDIS, rather than run into it. And points accumulated on each successful video mode until the ‘end of the wave’ (multiple video modes). Remember that the playfield multiplier could also multiply this score, and the timer for the playfield multiplier was temporarily stopped during video mode.

All seven Doctors (depending upon who you are at the time you start video mode) could run in the video mode, however, I only had speech from Sylvester McCoy, so … every other time (I think) the Doctor made it into the TARDIS, there was funny line that McCoy would say. I loved the line that went, ‘(Exhausted Breathing) I do not mind the guns or running or a Dalek or two, it’s the obstacles that I hate!’

Of course a Dalek would not dream of jumping over an obstacle. He merely blasts it to tiny bits. But … at the end of a video mode wave, too many Doctors have escaped. And the Dalek must report his failure. This is something that Daleks do not accept. We had a lot of fun here and there are several of these scenes, each getting worse. I do not remember them all, just the final one because I could not decide what to do. So I gave in to the ‘big gun’ theory and blasted the Dalek to atoms.

My favourite video effect is the entering of the player’s ‘High Score to Date’ initials. It came from a silly idea: that all Time Lords already have your initials and score in their record book. All you do is flip the pages until you find your score and initials. Remember that they know the future. But then, has the future really been recorded in this book accurately? You’d better double check …

Another element of the dot matrix display was the cow. Yes, there is a cow. In case you did not know, Williams has been putting cows in the dot matrix displays for a long time. The trick is to find what makes it appear. I did not want to do it (I am serious about my Doctor Who!). But Scott made me … He was fascinated with the Transmat, and knew my pinball rules about charging the Transmat when the jet bumpers were hit, and if the charge is big enough, then there was a rule to Transmat in a Doctor’s helper. Of course you can activate the Transmat without there being enough power, and every so often (actually rarely) a cow’s head would appear wearing a Tom Baker hat on its head. Sorry about that Tom … 

Sounds and Music 

John Hey had the job of reproducing the sound effects and theme music from Doctor Who. My video tapes of the TV show helped him a lot here and the sound effects were easy for John to reproduce by ear, or at least get close. Some of it was digitised from my video tapes. However, the theme music was a problem. I originally wanted all the different themes to play depending upon which Doctor was selected in the game. But just doing the Tom Baker theme took weeks, and a lot of space was going to be taken up by speech. So we ended up just using the one theme. With uninterrupted music from ball to ball (which was a first for Williams), each ball is supposed to represent one part of this Doctor Who story … and you do not have to wait until next week to play the next ball!

Somewhere along the way I asked the BBC for a copy of the sheet music to the Tom Baker theme. It was then that I found out that there apparently is no sheet music for the score.

As mentioned, the speech was to take up a lot of space on the chip. My original art concept was have as many companions and Doctors as possible but unfortunately we found that there were not enough rules and playfield available for everybody. But for everyone who made it onto the playfield, I planned to include at least one line of speech. I actually wrote up about three lines on average for all the companions, and more for each of the Doctors, the Daleks, and the Master. Williams management started with an open mind, but it always comes back to the money. Williams would have to locate all the actors, get them to/from a recording studio, and pay everyone something. At the time this payment was not very much for a given pinball, and usually there was only one actor involved. I was dividing the pot by about 20. Well, it was a nice idea while it lasted.

So a decision had to be made and at the end of the day, we would provide speech for just three characters: the seventh Doctor played by Sylvester McCoy, some Dalek speech, and the Master as played by Anthony Ainley. We tracked the actors down, they were both available and both agreed … without seeing a script, which was handy as it wasn’t written yet.

Let me explain that I did not talk to the actors directly. I first talked to Williams marketing (i.e. Roger Sharpe), who talked to an international licensing company located in California, who talked to the BBC in England, who talked to the actors agents, who talked to the actor. This was six layers of communication and it took a while to arrange. The actors probably never knew my name.

Now it was my turn to go back to the drawing board. Remember, that not only is there a certain amount of recording time that can fit on an EPROM, (and I was not going to waste a millisecond!) but it uses lossy compression that trashes the quality of speech. (S’s and T’s are not heard, C’s turn into H’s … I always remember the arcade game Sinistar (released by Williams in 1982) and hearing the phrase ‘Run, Howard!’, it was really ‘Run, Coward!’) This is another reason why we always ask for more than we can put in a game, because some of it ends up as not understandable. I quickly re-wrote all the multi-ball speech so that all three would interact in the game, and added more funny lines for video mode, and a few variations. I only had one chance to get the speech and get it correct. And I am a better programmer than a writer.

The script for Sylvester turned out to be about one and a half pages, mostly instructional with some of the funny lines. The script for the Daleks was less than one page, and I had their usual ‘kill’, ‘destroy’ and so on with a little dialogue and some funny lines for the video mode. The Master ended up with about three pages of script, because I found it easy to write for him. Armed with the scripts, John Hey quickly packed his bags and went from Chicago to England to record the actors. All this happened very, very quickly. Schedules for each of the actors was tight and on short notice, and I am sorry to say that all did not go well. Even today, I am not sure what happened, but Anthony did not record the Master speech. Panic gripped Williams …

The Dalek speech was the last to be recorded. Many ideas were discussed, including using a sound-alike Master (after all there was another actor playing the Master before Ainley). John Hey was still in England and a suggestion came (I think from England) that the person recording the Dalek voice could also do, and was willing to do, a Davros voice. Well, back to the scripts I went and super-quickly re-wrote the Master speech into a Davros speech. Then we faxed the new text to John. Both voices were recorded! We had our speech!

But the Master issue was not over yet. Rumours were flying at super sonic speeds, and there was talk of removing all traces (playfield and backglass artwork, dot matrix, etc) of the Master from the game. After a couple of weeks this died down to giving the Master a face lift on the playfield, making him look like the first Master, as played by Roger Delgado on television. And now instead of the Doctors battling the Daleks with a surprise appearance of the Master as the real villain. Davros was now the surprise villain. At the time, with the Bally backglass, he truly was a surprise … Davros was not on the Bally backglass at all and the Master was only on it as a silhouette. More weeks later, sanity returned at Williams. John knew that I missed the Master character and so he recorded a sound alike voice for Master’s laugh. That I put on the outlanes and a few other places in the game. More weeks went by, and I was talking to Roger Sharpe and told him of the sound alike laugh in the game. He showed me a letter from Anthony written in his own hand, which explained that, basically, he didn’t feel that the £1000 being offered for the recording was enough, and that there wasn’t enough time between his seeing the script and the recording date to effectively negotiate for more. 

When John Hey returned with the speech tapes. Both Sylvester and the Dalek/Davros speaker had added a few more of their phrases on top of my scripted ones. This added a nice personality touch that I missed, so we used them in the game as well. All the scripts were recorded onto a digital audio tape (DAT) machine by John and then the good ‘takes’ grabbed using Sound Designer II on a Mac before being converted through a Williams custom built CVSD (Continuously Variable Slope Delta) encoder. We experimented with the Daleks’ voices. They sounded bad enough to start with, much less after trying to get them correct following CVSD sampling. We ended up using the ones recorded in England. The music was recreated on the Williams Yamaha FM chip sound system by John as well. He reported that it was a real challenge making FM synthesisers sound like older analogue synthesers. The TARDIS sound was sampled and played directly from the DAC (Digital to Analogue Converter). All the rest of the effects (except the drum hits which were also DAC) were created on a Yamaha FM. 

The New BackBox Feature 

The Dalek Head on top the backbox was an after-thought. The game had a great white wood playfield, it was playable with a lot of rules and interest, the artwork sketches were approved. and management asked me if I could decorate the top of the backbox. I was shocked! Usually they took off features! I had spent a lot of dollars on the mini-playfield for the machine, rather than decoration. But, in that era, most Williams games had a backbox feature. And the continuing success of The Addams Family looked like that machine was going to run and run! So, I decided on a Dalek moving head, with an eye ball that would flash in time with the speech. I even devised an simple electronic circuit and software program that would give me the flash rates for any speech phrase that I could play back. But this was a last minute decision that had to be designed quickly. Several motors were tested, and broke. Meanwhile, four Styrofoam models of the head were made. All had a ‘snub nose’ which was made short because it had to fit under a protective plastic dome, there to avoid mischievous players or dedicated fans from pulling the Dalek eye out … and the width of the top of the backbox is very narrow! Then I made and sent a video tape of the prototypes for Terry Nation’s approval (he was the creator/owner of the Daleks). Finally, a reliable motor was found and a mock-up was created since the real parts would arrive just before our scheduled test date … and I still needed to develop the software to make it all work.

The Test 

The issue of where to test a game has always be been a hot one. Here is the logic used to determine the location:

Criteria #1: Marketing and Sales want to sell as many as they can of the next game. But they do not want to impact the sales of the current game. Williams sells to distributors who stock the game, and the distributors sell the game to operators (operators being arcades and/or a ‘route’). So typically, they like to test a game as close to production as possible. But … The Addams Family was a bigger hit than expected, and no one knew when interest would die down. Doctor Who was the second game after The Addams Family, so, the ‘hurry up and wait’ syndrome happened. 

Criteria #2: Test it in a low profile (so noone knows about it) but a high number of plays (for example in a popular arcade). 

Now, how do you get a lot of people to play a game, but nobody knows about it? Marketing and Sales had the answer: They tested it at an average arcade called ‘Dennis’s Place’. They had about two walls of pinball machines, mostly videos, and a couple of sit down video games. At the time there were more high profile (for example Gala North Arcade) and low profile (for example a Bar) locations. All locations were well known test sites for manufacturers, and usually when we went to observe our own game on test we met employees from other manufacturers, and sometimes they even beat us to our own test locations! 

The Artwork (Part Two) 

It was after twelve prototypes had been built and tested that Williams decided that they wanted the Bally pinball cabinets to be more like Williams cabinets. This would allow Williams to order the same parts in a higher volume, thus qualifying for discounts on part prices. I knew that this was coming, but I just never knew when. 

With regards to the Doctor Who pinball, it was ready to be produced, and was just waiting in line, mainly for The Addams Family machine to start to dip in popularity. Then the decision was made by Williams to change from the Bally style backbox to the Williams style backbox. The William backbox was a lot shorter, and Williams management suggested that we just cut off the bottom of the backbox art on the Doctor Who  machine. But a mock up was created, and it looked terrible. It was then that the artist and I went back to the drawing board, and tried to come up with a replacement as fast as we could. I had suggested that we create a scene with the time expander, all seven Doctors, Davros and the Daleks. Then Linda took over the composition, and the final backglass was created. It then had to be rushed to the BBC for approval, and thankfully it was all approved without issue. The twelve Doctor Who pinball test games were made and tested (in public) with the Bally style backbox and then the twelve games were converted to the Williams style backbox. Doctor Who was the first Bally game to be produced with the Williams style backbox, and I do not know what happened to the original backglasses. 

Cost cutting 

Well, it had to happen to Doctor Who. While it was being produced, the money men came, and calculated the cost of producing the game, and decided it cost too much. After many hours of negotiation, the moving Dalek head on the backbox had to go. The head itself was cheap and could stay as part of the shipped game – it was just some plastic and a flasher, but it was integrated into the effects of the game, and so the head stayed! However the motion had to go, and this alteration was scheduled to happen after about 100 had been produced. I changed the software to try and detect the presence of the head, and then to activate the code to move it. There is even a game adjustment (adjustment 49) to manually enable the head software. Years later, some people have even added a motor to their Doctor Who game (take a look at http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Quark/1825/).

Premiering the Game

I had been to previous Visions conventions in the USA, and they feature Doctor Who and other TV shows. I proposed to Williams that we bring a couple of games to the convention in 1992 and have free handouts and a contest. We had plenty of free plastic handouts, and we decided the contest would award a backglass (or, in reality, back plastic) to the overall winner. But there was a condition, Doctor Who could only go to the convention if the game was actually in production. Remember the marketing rules from before: Williams did not show games before production, since it might have an adverse effect on the current game in production. Since production of Doctor Who was being delayed by the success of The Addams Family pinball, it was impossible to predict if the game could go to the convention or not. So, with these restrictions in mind, I contacted the convention people. They were happy that I wanted to show the pinball at their convention, but of course I could not guarantee if I could bring it at all! Hence, there could be no announcement or advertisement about the pinball in advance. However, I was lucky. About one month before the convention, Doctor Who finally went into production. It was too later to tell the convention organisers, but time enough for us to organize to have two games shipped to the convention. It turned out to be well received, and people loved the free handouts. Although I missed any of the actors visiting the game, I heard that they liked it.

Success Story

If there is one impossible obstacle that any pinball machine must face, it is when it comes after a mega-production hit. I am of course, talking about The Addams Family pinball. That game shipped about 20,000 units! It was a huge success that broke all records and raised all expectations for a popular pinball machine. The next one in line, Black Rose had a very short production life, and sold about 3,700 units. Although it was an average game (in my opinion) it was not as good as The Addams Family, and it did not meet the high expectations of the market. It took a while for the last Black Rose we produced to sell. Next in line was Doctor Who which started production in September of 1992. To my relief, that sold around 7,700 units. At around that time, an average production number was 4,000 to 5,000. 

Summing Up

It was a lot of fun designing, programming, & even promoting this game. I am also glad that Doctor Who is now back on the air. I hope this inspires future game designers to continue their efforts despite the many obstacles & issues that can occur.

Statistics and Information

The following information is from the Internet Pinball Database at: http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=738

Doctor Who / IPD No. 738 / September, 1992 / 4 Players

Average Fun Rating:      8.1/10  (34 ratings/29 comments)         

Manufacturer: Midway Manufacturing Company, a subsidiary of WMS Industries, Incorporated,

of Chicago, Illinois, USA (1988-1999) [Trade Name: Bally]

Model Number: 20006

Common Abbreviations: DW

MPU: Williams WPC (Fliptronics 2)

Type: Solid State Electronic (SS)  

Production: 7,752 units   (confirmed)

Theme: Celebrities - Fictional - Licensed Theme

Notable Features: Flippers (3; the two main flippers – ‘Lightning’ Flippers - are shorter than the standard size flippers), Ramps (2), Multiball

Toys: Three Level Mini-Playfield

Design by: Barry Oursler, Bill Pfutzenreuter

Art by: Linda Deal (aka Doane)

Dots/Animation by: Scott Slomiany

Mechanics by: Zofia Bil

Music by: Jon Hey

Sound by: Jon Hey

Software by: Bill Pfutzenreuter

Marketing Slogans: ‘It’s About Time’

’The Doctor Is In …’

Rule Sheets: Doctor Who! Rulesheet Version 1.02 (Mar/31/1993), by Bowen Kerins  

Richard Poser’s Tip Sheet  (External Site)

Additional Info: View at PinLinks.org  (External site)

ROMs: 355 KB ZIP Game ROM L-2 [Midway Mfg. Co.]

  1 MB ZIP Game ROM P5 (Prototype) With L2 Sound [Midway Mfg. Co.]

  1 MB ZIP PinMame ROMs Set (L-2)

  260 KB ZIP PinMame Romsets (L-1)

  995 KB ZIP Sound ROM L-1 [U14,U15,U18] [Midway Mfg. Co.]

Documentation: 8 MB PDF English Manual [Midway Mfg. Co., a subsidiary of WMS Industries, Inc.]

  207 KB TXT Parts List

 

Doctor Who Monsters

Doctor Who Monsters

David J Howe steps into the TARDIS to seek out some of the many monsters featured on the BBC's weekly science fiction adventure serial.

Doctor Who is the world's longest-running science fiction television programme. Created by Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson for the BBC, it was first transmitted in November 1963, and since that time the Doctor (a nomadic alien whose origins have never satisfactorily been explained) has had over 150 televised adventures in time and space and has encountered literally hundreds of alien races and monstrous individuals. The Doctor is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, and has the ability to change his body when the current one wears out or is damaged - a process called regeneration. There have been seven incarnations of the Doctor so far, each played by talented actors who have brought new facets to the character and helped to carry forward the popularity of the programme amongst children and adults alike.

When thinking of Doctor Who, the first thing that comes to most people's minds is not the TARDIS or the Doctor but the monsters, in particular a race of pepper-pot shaped aliens from the planet Skaro, better known as Daleks. It is fitting that the Daleks are so closely associated with the TV programme which spawned them, as they were a major factor in the early popularity and growth of the series from a Saturday tea-time drama to a national (and international) institution.

The Daleks' debut came just six weeks into the series, in the second episode of a story called The Mutants (aka The Daleks), written by Terry Nation, then a comedy writer. Doctor Who had started on November 23rd 1963 with an episode introducing us to the nameless time-traveller (we know he is a Doctor, but Doctor ... who?) and Susan his grand-daughter. Two of Susan's curious school teachers, Ian and Barbara, follow her home to an old junk yard. Inside the yard they find that Susan has vanished and also the incongruous form of a blue police public call box - a familiar sight on London's streets during the sixties. Susan's mysterious grandfather, the Doctor, arrives, and is reluctant to help Ian and Barbara search for Susan. Suddenly Susan's voice is heard coming from inside the police box, and the schoolteachers force their way inside.

What they find is now a part of television history as the police box is just the external shell for a fantastically advanced space/time machine called TARDIS (the letters standing for Time And Relative Dimension In Space), and the Doctor and Susan are aliens from another time, travelling in the hope of one day returning to their own people.

When Susan threatens to leave and stay on Earth, the Doctor operates the controls and sends the ship back in time to the Palaeolithic era where a stone-age tribe has lost the secret of fire and want the time-travellers to help. They eventually escape but rather than back to 20th century England, TARDIS takes them instead to an apparently dead and petrified forest on the planet Skaro.

The forest surrounds a gigantic metal city, and the Doctor determines to explore. It is in this city that they discover the Daleks, mutated remnants of a once noble race who intend to wipe out all remaining life on the planet with a radiation weapon.

The Daleks are the archetypal evil robots equipped with a lethal exterminator, memorable voices, and a completely inhuman shape. Unlike robots, however, each Dalek contains a mutated lump of seething hate, all that remains of the actual organic creature.

Described as 'the most evil creatures ever invented' the Daleks' origins were not revealed on screen until 1975 in an adventure called 'Genesis of the Daleks', again written by Terry Nation. In Nation's story Skaro was the site of a long war between its opposing humanoid factions: on one side the Thals, on the other the Kaleds. As time progressed, funds began to run out and the respective sides began re-using old equipment and resorting to biological weapons and nuclear bombardment in an attempt to gain the upper hand. The inevitable result of the chemicals and radiation was massive mutations on both sides and it soon became apparent that neither side could win.

Then the Kaleds' chief scientist, a genius named Davros who had been crippled and confined to a mobile life-support system earlier in the war, came up with a plan intended to save the Kaled race and to win the war. Davros determined to discover what form the Kaled mutations would ultimately take, and designed a travel and life-support system for them. He named his invention the mark three travel machine or Dalek.

In striving to make the Kaled race survival-orientated, Davros removed all trace of emotion and fear from his genetically engineered mutants. The Daleks would survive as that was their basic instinct, and they would survive by the systematic extermination of all life which was not Dalek. The killing started with the Thals, but then the Daleks turned on the Kaleds and ultimately Davros himself.

Following the end of the war - achieved through the Daleks dropping a radiation bomb which wiped out all life on the planet bar themselves and a few Thal mutants - the Daleks found that they could not move outside their metal city as they drew their power from static electricity generated through contact with the floor. The remaining Thal mutants underwent further metabolic change and eventually came full circle, becoming handsome and peaceful humanoids.

No other monster featured on Doctor Who had quite the same impact as the Daleks. During the sixties the BBC tried very hard to popularise the various creatures as they appeared, but none of them ever really caught on, although many are still fondly remembered today.

There were the Sensorites, bulbous-headed telepathic aliens who ultimately turned out to be a peaceful race, preyed upon by three deranged Human astronauts. Then there was the Daleks' pet, the Slyther, which was only glimpsed lurking in the shadows when they invaded Earth in the 21st Century.

The Zarbi, one of the most unlikely alien races, also received a lot of publicity. These were the creation of Australian writer Bill Strutton, and looked like giant ants. Indeed, Strutton's inspiration had come from watching a pair of bull ants fighting. Strutton's story, 'The Web Planet' (1965), contained no humanoids apart from the Doctor and his friends. As well as the Zarbi, there were the Menoptra, giant butterfly people, the Optera, underground grubs, and the Venom Guns, Zarbi larvae which spat poison from their snouts. The story also featured the Animus, a huge glowing web-structure with a malign intelligence at its centre, which was controlling the Zarbi and oppressing the Menoptra. The story was very ambitious for its time and some of the imaginative concepts could not wholly be embraced by the budget and available technology.

William Emms' 'Galaxy 4' (1965) introduced another twist. This was a classic tale of good versus evil with the good represented by a race of hideous wart hog-like, ammonia-breathing Rills, while the evil was attractively packaged as Amazonian female warriors called Drahvins. Both races were trapped on a doomed planet and the Doctor, seeing through the facade of good looks, ultimately helped the Rills escape before the planet was destroyed, leaving the ruthless Drahvins to their fate.

Other aliens to appear during the early years of Doctor Who included the one-eyed Monoids ('The Ark' 1966), the immortal Celestial Toymaker (played by actor Michael Gough) ('The Celestial Toymaker' 1966), a race of energy sapping Elders on a planet of savages ('The Savages' 1966) and a whole host of intergalactic creatures introduced in an epic twelve part story 'The Daleks' Master Plan' (1965/66).

In 1966 we were introduced to another of the programme's most popular enemies, a race of giant silver humanoids driven by logic and the instinct to survive: the Cybermen.

The concept came from Dr Kit Pedler who was at the timeDoctor Who's scientific adviser. He had a personal fear of where replacement part surgery was heading and he saw the Cybermen as the logical end point. They had once been human, but they replaced their limbs and internal organs with machines until they became more machine than flesh.

Written by Pedler and Doctor Who's script editor, Gerry Davis, 'The Tenth Planet' introduced us to the inhabitants of the planet Mondas - Earth's twin - who had discovered the science of cybernetics and used it to prolong their lifespan. They replaced limbs and vital organs with metal and plastic until the Mondasians became the first Cybermen. From Mondas they spread out across the galaxy, terrorising and bringing cold, emotionless, logical destruction with them.

To look at the Cybermen are quite impressive. Each stands about seven feet tall and is encased in a protective flexible silver armour. Their features are covered by an expressionless silver mask, with holes for the eyes and mouth. On their chest they wear an armoured unit which contains all their life-support functions and which distributes lubricants and power to all their limbs. The unit is also armed with both detachable guns and in-built weaponry depending on the Cyberman. They each have the strength of ten men and do not need oxygen as they do not breath as we do. Gold dust is their only weakness as it coats their life-support systems and suffocates them.

The Cybermen are in many ways more horrific a concept than the Daleks. In the Cybermen we can see the human form, and the Cybermen have the means to convert humans into creatures like themselves - the fear of losing one's identity touches nerves in everyone.

Another strength of the Cybermen lies in the horrific content of their stories. In 'The Tomb of the Cybermen' (1967) we saw the creatures slowly being revived, thawed from the ice by a power crazed logician. We also saw them destroyed, spurting foam from their chest-units as they wailed in electronic pain. In 'The Invasion' (1968) the Cybermen again invaded Earth, this time using the London sewers as a base. The sight of a crazed Cyberman lurching towards the Doctor's companions out of a dark sewer is an image that tends to stick in the memory. Just as potent is the image of the Cybermen breaking out of their storage capsules in the 1982 adventure 'Earthshock'.

The Cybermen were just one of many monsters which appeared in the late sixties. We also saw creatures like the Macra (giant crabs, drooling saliva and controlling an Earth colony), the Chameleons (faceless aliens who kidnapped humans to steal their forms), parasitic seaweed creatures (who took over a refinery as well as the humans on it), the Quarks (robot servants of the alien Dominators who intended to convert a peaceful planet into a radioactive power source) and the Krotons (more robotic creatures who used a race's mental power to revive and sustain themselves).

All of these were popular but two other creations really captured imaginations back in the black and white days. The first of these was the Yeti.

Doctor Who has often touched upon human legend (the Loch Ness monster, Atlantis, the Minotaur etc) and the myths surrounding the Bigfoot, or Yeti, inspired Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln to write 'The Abominable Snowmen' (1967) where the elusive creatures turned out to be robots controlled by an alien intelligence struggling to manifest itself on Earth. Although the Intelligence's first attack on Earth was unsuccessful, it was its second attempt which raised the Yeti to cult status. 'The Web of Fear' (1968) took place in the London underground, and even today many people still recall the cobwebs and the eerie pulsating web through which the Yeti stalked their victims accompanied by the two-tone beeping from the spherical control units buried in their chests.

The other popular monster from the sixties was a race of Warriors from Mars, which writer Brian Hayles arranged to be discovered buried in a glacier during the third ice age in the year 3000. 'The Ice Warriors' (1967) saw them revived and attempting to take over the Earth using their powerful sonic weapons.

The Warriors stand around eight feet tall and are clad in green scaly body armour edged with coarse black fur. Their heads are also encased and their eyes are covered with a flat red perspex-like material. Martian technology developed the Warriors as fighting machines with electronically augmented hearing and sight and a fearsome sonic weapon fitted to their arm. They appear slow and ponderous only because of Earth's unfamiliar gravity, and their distinctive hissing breathing and voice are as a result of the Earth's atmosphere.

Not all the Martians are evil. While the Doctor has encountered Warriors intent on invading the Earth by disrupting its climate ('The Seeds of Death' 1969), and plotting to annexe supplies of a rare mineral on an alien planet ('The Monster of Peladon' 1974), he has also met Warriors who are strongly loyal and moral, who helped and supported him when he was mistaken for the Earth delegate at a conference to allow a primitive planet to join the Galactic Federation ('The Curse of Peladon' 1972). Despite their popularity at the time, the Ice Warriors have not re-appeared since 1974 and their place has been taken by a number of other creatures and aliens.

In 1970 Doctor Who was made and transmitted in colour for the first time, and with a new actor playing the Doctor (Jon Pertwee) exiled to Earth by the Time Lords, the menaces he faced were more home-grown than we had seen before.

His exile to Earth coincided with the first invasion by the squid-like Nestene consciousness which arrived contained in a swarm of meteorites in Robert Holmes' 'Spearhead from Space' (1970). The Nestenes had no bodies of their own and so used Autons, animated plastic dummies, to do their bidding. Scenes of a row of mannequins springing jerkily into life in a shop window and then striding through the streets killing pedestrians as they go are among the all-time classic moments in Doctor Who's history. Holmes' second story featuring the Nestenes and Autons, 'Terror of the Autons' (1971), went a step further and brought the menace into our own homes. 'Terror of the Autons' was criticised heavily by Mary Whitehouse and the Viewers and Listeners Association for its scenes of graphic horror: a man is suffocated and crushed by a plastic armchair; a troll-like doll strangles another victim; the Doctor is attacked by a telephone cable which wraps itself around his neck; and plastic daffodils spray a plastic film over the mouths and noses of their victims.

The Nestenes were the first of numerous creatures which tried their hand at the Earth. There were the Axons, apparently perfect golden humanoids who offered the planet a valuable mineral in exchange for knowledge. Their true nature was revealed as hideous orange tentacled monsters, part of a collective organism which included their ship and the mineral. The Axons were a parasitic life form come to leech the Earth of its energy.

The Axons had been brought to Earth by the Master, another of the Doctor's race, but one committed to evil and the gaining of personal power. The Master has been behind many of the plots against the Earth, including using a mind parasite in an attempt to sabotage a peace conference ('The Mind of Evil' 1971), the revival through black magic of an ancient god-like alien to judge the Earth ('The Daemons' 1971) and the manipulation in 1972 of a race of reptilian creatures, the Sea Devils.

Named by the keeper of an abandoned sea fort who glimpsed them and was driven insane by the sight, they are horrific part-reptile part-humanoid creatures armed with a powerful hand weapon which they can use to burn through the hulls of ships as well as to fire bolts of energy at any who oppose them.

Their alien looks belie the fact that they are actually native to the Earth, and along with their land-based cousins the Silurians (mis-named by the Doctor as the period of Earth's history they originated from was the Eocene), ruled the planet many thousands of years ago. Their story, told by Malcolm Hulke in 'Doctor Who and the Silurians' (1970) and 'The Sea Devils' (1972), was that their civilisation came to a halt when a rogue planet was detected headed for Earth on a collision course. The reptiles knew that the collision would disrupt the environment for many years to come and so decided to put themselves into hibernation until the Earth became habitable once more.

Unfortunately the planets did not collide as they had predicted, instead the rogue was captured by Earth's gravitational pull and became the Moon. As the expected disaster never occurred, the reptile's mechanisms to revive them once danger had passed did not operate, and they slept on in ignorance. The ape creatures which they had kept as pets evolved into Mankind and all was well until the reptiles were awakened from their sleep. The deposed rulers decided to reclaim their heritage and to wipe out the upstart apes.

The Silurians, who had been awoken by radiation from a Cyclotron machine, attempted to destroy Earth's Van Allen belt thus allowing harmful radiation to kill the humans, and the Sea Devils were awoken by repair work being carried out to an abandoned Sea Fort and began sinking ships in the vicinity.

The Master tried to use the Sea Devils to gain power for himself, but his plans were ultimately foiled when the Navy bombed their underwater base, destroying the creatures. Previously the military had used explosives to seal the Silurians underground. This apparent treachery on the part of humanity came to a head when a triad of Silurians revived some Sea Devil Warriors and attempted to seize control of a military base in the year 2084 and instigate a global war between the superpowers ('Warriors of the Deep' 1984). The Doctor was luckily on hand, but he again despaired of all the deaths that resulted.

Other creatures encountered by the Doctor during the seventies included the members of the Galactic Federation present on the planet Peladon to debate that world's entry to the Federation. There was the six-armed, one-eyed hermaphrodite Alpha Centauri, the evil Arcturus floating in a tank of nutrient sustained by a life-support system and the Ice Warriors. There were the Draconians, proud lizard-like creatures with a society based on a dynastic empire. Their Empire had made a pact with Earth, a pact that the Daleks and the Master were keen to break down.

Another popular foe first appeared in 1974 in a story again by Robert Holmes called 'The Time Warrior'. The warrior in question was Lynx, a Sontaran, who had crashed his ship in Medieval England. Lynx was kidnapping scientists from the 20th century to help repair his ship, and it was this activity which drew the third Doctor's attention.

Sontarans live for war and battle. They see such endeavours as glorious and praiseworthy, and every Sontaran, from officer to cadet, longs for the day when they might die for the greater glory of the Sontaran empire. Such is their total commitment to the art of war that Sontarans are actually bred for the purpose. Each is cloned from a genetic pool, and all are refined and honed to create a perfect fighting machine, all identical, with matching aims, goals and values.

The Doctor encountered the Sontarans again in Earth's future. They had decided to test the strength of human resistance to a planned Galactic invasion and had sent a lone emissary to Earth to carry out experiments. Field Major Styre had captured members of a ship from one of Earth's colonies which he had lured back to Earth itself, and was experimenting on them in a number of cruel and torturous ways. The fourth Doctor managed to rescue the humans and arrange for the Sontaran's power supply to be sabotaged.

When Tom Baker took over as the fourth Doctor in 1974, he came up against a variety of hideous and evil creatures. There were the Wirrn, giant insect creatures which laid their eggs close to a power source to enable them to grow. Once they hatched, the larvae sought out a host to slowly convert into a Wirrn, the host's brain gradually taken over by the invading parasite. When the Doctor encountered them, the host was human.

'The Ark In Space' (1975), yet another Robert Holmes story which introduced the Wirrn, was a powerful and claustrophobic tale of a small group of humans up against the invading Wirrn. It was made in 1974, about five years earlier than Ridley Scott's Alien, but contains many similar ideas and concepts. One can only surmise that Scott (who very nearly designed the Daleks back in 1963 as at the time he worked as a BBC designer) may well have been influenced by Doctor Who's treatment of the ideas.

Following the Wirrn the Doctor met the Zygons, more aliens trapped on Earth, this time under Loch Ness where their cyborg 'pet' and food source, the Skarasen, was mistaken for the Loch Ness monster. There were the Kraals who attempted to invade Earth using android duplicates, there was Sutekh, one of the ancient Egyptian gods who was breaking free of his bonds in a pyramid situated on Mars and an anti-matter creature which emerged into our universe on a planet at the edge of the galaxy.

Transmitted in 1975/76, these adventures were strongly influenced by films from the fifties and sixties. 'Pyramids of Mars' had its roots in the Hammer Mummy films, 'Planet of Evil' with its invisible anti-matter creature which flickered into existence when passing through a force field was inspired by Forbidden Planet, 'The Android Invasion' had the android duplicates delivered to Earth in seed-pod-like containers reminiscent of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and 'The Seeds of Doom' was strongly based on Christian Nyby's 1951 film The Thing from Another World (John Carpenter's version was some years away). Even the classic Frankenstein story was exploited in 'The Brain of Morbius', in which a discredited Doctor Solon builds a piecemeal body in which to house the preserved and functioning brain of his master.

Doctor Who has always been innovative in its presentation of creatures which differ from the norm. 'Image of the Fendahl' (1977) by Chris Boucher, encompassed many of the themes and iconography of death and black magic: a human skull is unearthed which is far older than it should be and which, when X-rayed, has a five-pointed star pattern on it. The skull is in fact the channel for the alien Fendahl to come to Earth. The Fendahl is a creature which is death - the Time Lords reduced the planet between Mars and Jupiter to rubble in an attempt to wipe it out, and its contact with Mars turned that into a dead world. Once on Earth, the Fendahl attempted to manifest itself completely and of course the Doctor prevented it.

Horror returned in 1980 when we were introduced to the Marshmen. 'Full Circle' by Andrew Smith featured the concept of a planet on which the flora and fauna are linked together and which evolve on a predetermined cycle. A spacecraft crashes on the planet and all the occupants are killed by the Marshmen who rise from the swamps and attack the ship. The Marshmen then evolve into humans and eventually believe themselves to be the true crew of the ship which they attempt to make ready for flight. Eventually the planetary cycle comes full circle and the mists again roll in from the swamps, closely followed by another marauding group of Marshmen. One of the most effective moments in DOCTOR WHO's history is the sight of the Marshmen rising from the misty swamps to advance on the hapless spacecraft.

Peter Davison took over the title rôle as Doctor Who progressed into the eighties and we met the frog-like Monarch and his two lieutenants, Persuasion and Enlightenment, en route to colonise Earth from their home planet of Urbanka. There were the Terileptils whose ship had crashed on Earth in the seventeenth century and who were ultimately responsible for the fire of London in 1666. The Malus was originally the psychic power source of a probe from the planet Hakol that crashed on Earth many hundreds of years ago. The entity was reactivated during a modern-day reconstruction of a Civil War battle and, through psychic energy, directed the war game to a conclusion that would provide enough fear and bloodshed to enable it to break free.

It was not only the Earth which was threatened, however, and the Doctor encountered alien menaces on many other planets too. For example a nest of Tractators on the planet Frontios was discovered to be the cause of both violent meteor showers and the mysterious disappearance of the planet's colonists. The Tractators used gravity to impel their victims towards them and then manipulated the living flesh into hideous burrowing machines.

In 1985, another classic alien was added to the ever-growing list. This was Sil, a maggot-like creature obsessed with violence, pain and hard cash. Sil was on the planet Varos where the Governor was trying to negotiate a better price for the ore that Varos had in abundance. In a bold move, the director of 'Vengeance on Varos' (1985), Ron Jones, hired disabled actor Nabil Shaban to play the creature. This was inspired casting as Shaban's superb acting, combined with a revolting maggot costume which could not have been worn by an able-bodied actor, meant that Sil came over as a totally believable and nasty piece of work.

By this time Colin Baker was playing the Doctor, and during his short tenure we were introduced to such menaces as the Vervoids, flesh-eating plant creatures which ran amok on a luxury space liner, the Androgums, gluttonous humanoids, and the Borad, a half-humanoid, half snake creature intent on making the Doctor's companion Peri into a creature like himself for breeding purposes.

As the eighties drew to a close, there were a few more additions to Doctor Who's monster gallery as well as a new actor playing the Doctor, Sylvester McCoy.

Ian Briggs' 'The Curse of Fenric' (1989) featured a quiet village on the Yorkshire coast: seemingly an ideal place for the British Army to set up a base during the Second World War. However the village had a secret hidden in Viking runes carved on the wall of the church crypt, and the sea nearby was home to an ancient race of blood drinking monsters, the Haemovores.

The Haemovores had once been human but had been changed into zombie-like vampire mutants. Their leader was a creature called the Ancient Haemovore, bigger, older and more horrific than the rest. The Doctor managed to persuade the Ancient Haemovore not to allow the evil Fenric to destroy life on the Earth, and the Ancient One sacrificed himself instead. Like the Sea Devils and Marshmen before them, scenes of the Haemovores rising from the sea and advancing on a priest through a mist-wreathed graveyard are amongst the more memorable in recent years.

Another memorable creature was the Destroyer from 'Battlefield' (1989). This horned and blue-skinned demon was summoned by Morgaine the witch to destroy the Earth, and, even though shackled by chains of silver, managed to create a lasting impression. Doctor Who still managed to stir up controversy, as with the death of the character Kane in the 1987 story 'Dragonfire'. Kane was a humanoid who existed at sub-zero temperatures and at the story's conclusion he was exposed to sunlight and his face melted away to reveal the grinning skull beneath. This effect was the cause of many complaints from concerned parents and even received coverage in the tabloid press.

Over the last twenty-nine years Doctor Who has presented a wide selection of believable, and not-so-believable creatures for our entertainment. The series has spawned more nightmares than any other, and has seen the Doctor battle evil in all its many forms across the galaxy.

As the Doctor himself once said: "There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything that we believe in. They must be fought."

David J Howe
1992

Why Isn't Doctor Who On Television Any More?

WHY ISN'T DOCTOR WHO ON TELEVISION ANY MORE?

Here's a question for all you budding TV buffs: which of the following television shows represents the very best of BBC popular drama over the last sixty years:

All Creatures Great and Small
Ballykissangel
Bergerac
Casualty
Colditz
Doctor Who
EastEnders
The Onedin Line
When the Boat Comes In
Z Cars

The startling answer - at least as far as the BBC are concerned - is Doctor Who. At a glittering and well publicised presentation ceremony in 1996, the awards for the best BBC programmes over the last sixty years were presented and Doctor Who actually won the 'Best Popular Drama' vote.

So what happened? Simple, really. The viewers - and reportedly around 500,000 people phoned in with votes, 480,000 more than buy the Doctor Who merchandise - voted for Doctor Who maybe simply because it is the best popular drama series that the BBC has produced. Did this cross the minds of anyone at the Corporation when they saw the result?

Apparently not. At an event during the Conservative Party Conference on 9 October 1996, Head of BBC Television Will Wyatt, the boss of Alan Yentob and Michael Jackson who actually commission new programmes, was asked about the Doctor Who TV film which starred Paul McGann as the Doctor. 'It didn't do that well over here,' said Wyatt, seemingly forgetting the 9 million viewers which made it the highest rated drama show on television that week, and which placed it in the top 15 TV shows for the week. He also said that it was 'too dark' and not right for the family audience they had hoped to attract ... but the BBC had approval on the script, the casting, the editing ... If it wasn't right, why did they approve the script?

Other BBC officials at the event included Jenny Abramsky, former head of the BBC's Radio Five Live news and sport radio station and at the time in charge of planning the BBC's launch of digital TV. 'I hated it,' she said of the Doctor Who film and went on to wonder why the BBC didn't make things like Blake's 7 any more. 'It's not that we won't make SF,' she burbled, 'it's that we won't make Who.' A further comment from Wyatt seemed to seal Doctor Who's fate. When called over by Deputy Director General and Chief Executive of BBC Worldwide, Bob Phillis, to answer the question as to whether the BBC would make any more Doctor Who - a question which Phillis seemed unwilling to answer himself - Wyatt's unequivocal response was 'No ... we can't afford it.'

The fact that far more expensive shows, like, for example, Rhodes, have received disastrous ratings, would seem to indicate that the money is there, but only if the BBC Bosses deem it so. They feel that Doctor Who cannot be made without vast budgets being available, well it managed quite well for twenty six years without this, so why should things be any different today? With reactions and attitudes as reported above, it would appear that the 'top brass' at the BBC is staunchly anti-Doctor Who. This is very odd especially as Doctor Who was voted by the viewers - the people who actually fund the corporation and provide the budgets for all programmes - as the best popular drama. You'd think that someone in the BBC hierarchy would stop and think about it, wouldn't you?

But this is, I think, the whole problem. All those people in charge of the BBC are what one might call 'the old guard'. They are all totally out of touch with what is popular today. They genuinely don't understand the appeal of films like Star Wars or Independence Day, they were not brought up in a climate where science fiction on television was essential viewing. Therefore they cannot understand why so many people like science fiction and, as a result, won't commission it themselves. They're quite happy to import shows from America and to show them in popular early-evening slots to satisfy the viewers' thirst for the fantastic. Or, when a decent genre show comes along - like Ultraviolet - they play it down and pretend that it isn't a genre show at all. However, at the same time, they ignore and neglect the one science fiction show that they own, despite the fact that it is still drawing a huge amount of interest, and the merchandise alone is bringing in many hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.

Just to take an example: the Doctor Who novels. Until early in 1997, Virgin Publishing were releasing two books a month, twelve months a year. Each book cost £5.99 of which around 2 per cent went to the BBC. Each book also reportedly sold in the region of 20,000 copies. By my calculations, that makes an annual royalty of £57,504. And that's just on the novels. Add to that the income from videos, magazines, special books, postcards, calendars, watches and all manner of other licensed Doctor Who goodies and you have a significant annual income from a product which the BBC claims is dead. In fact, the BBC has now taken over the publishing of the novels from Virgin, and so their profit on them is even greater (perhaps double, if not more).

The independent Doctor Who drama Downtime cost £50,000 to make (it's a 50 minute direct to video film, directed by ex-Doctor Who director Christopher Barry and written by ex-Doctor Who writer Marc Platt and starring Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier, Deborah Watling as Victoria and Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah) which was cheap by anyone's standards. However the final result was impressive and certainly good enough to show on television. If the BBC have a profitable income from the books alone in excess of £100,000, why don't they commission an annual drama to continue the series and give it new life? With double the budget, those independent filmmakers who were involved in Downtime could create something to equal any Doctor Who story currently available on video. As well as being shown on television, the BBC could release the film on video, plus a novel, plus a CD of the soundtrack. From these items alone, a proportion of the cost of the product could be recouped.

For example: If the video sells for £13.99, the book for £5.99 and the soundtrack for £10.99 and the BBC gets to make, say, 4 per cent profit on all of these items. Assuming a sale of around 20,000 copies of each, that makes £24,776 profit:

That's a quarter of the entire budget made back. Don't forget about foreign sales on top of that, plus overseas television rights ... Basically, even at this simplistic level, the figures are workable, and I've probably underestimated the profit to be made from them, as well as underestimating the sales figures. By way of comparison, the novelisation of the McGann TV movie sold in excess of 30,000 copies, and the video over 100,000 copies!

So why aren't the BBC making Doctor Who any more? The only rational answer is because they don't want to as all financial, popularity and marketability arguments show that it would be a success. Not only would the new product revitalise interest in Doctor Who, but it would also ensure the continuation of the profitable merchandise lines.

It's a shame that an organisation that purports to heed what the public wants, that is funded by public money through the payment of television licenses, so stoically ignores all arguments and thinks that a thirty-year old science fiction show is as dead as a dodo. Unfortunately, as long as the BBC thinks in this way, Doctor Who will be dead, and interest in the show will slowly wane as people forget about it and new generations come along who have never heard of it.

Doctor Who is being used by the BBC to spearhead their new digital BBC Choice network, they have two official websites devoted to it, new books, videos and audio projects continue to be released on a monthly basis ... Not bad for a dead show.

It's a horrible, ignoble death for one of the BBC's greatest assets.

CODA: Rumour has reached me that at the time of writing (November 1998, the show's 35th anniversary) that there is an internal memo circulating around the various Heads of Drama at the BBC, stating that there is a scheduling gap on BBC1, on Saturday evenings at around 5.30pm. They are looking for ideas for a half-hour children's science fiction drama series that could fill that gap ... The mind simply boggles at either the BBC's ineptitude or lack of faith.

David J Howe
1998

My Favourite Things

MY FAVOURITE THINGS…
by David J Howe

Over the years I have written extensively about the history of Doctor Who. I’ve delved into each era of the show with a methodical precision in order to eke out the facts and details which readers hopefully find as fascinating as I do. One thing I’ve never done, however, is to try and come up with a definitive list of my own, personal, favourite stories. The problem is, you see, that such a list will vary depending on my mood. However, there are certain constants. Stories which enthralled and entertained me on their first viewing, and which continue to enthral and entertain me even when I’m watching them for the second, third, or even twentieth, time.

This, then, is an attempt to look at those stories which fall into my own personal ‘classics’ list, those that are just outside of it at this moment in time, and a couple of others which I like, but not quite as much as the others listed here.

If you ask me tomorrow what my favourite stories are, however, the list I give might be different …

‘CLASSICS’

The Talons of Weng-Chiang

I suppose that most lists of ‘classic’ Doctor Who would include this seminal tale from 1977. Tom Baker was the Doctor, Robert Holmes was the writer and David Maloney was the director, and the end result was music to the senses.

I recently had the urge to sit down and watch 'Talons' again – something that rarely happens, as a matter of fact. Usually I’m far too busy to watch Doctor Who for pleasure. The interplay between Henry Gordon Jago, proprietor of the Palace Theatre, and Professor Litefoot, a police pathologist, was sheer delight, Weng-Chiang (or Magnus Greel) was a wonderful snarling, yet slightly tragic villain, and John Bennett turned in an Oscar-deserving performance as the inscrutable oriental man of magic Li H’sen Chang.

Supporting the cast – which was perfect down to the last detail, including a convincing hag who witnesses the rat-chewed body of the hapless cabbie Buller being pulled from the river – was some truly breath-taking photography and set design. London never looked as misty and Victorian as this, and I was particularly pleased when I discovered that my walking route to work each day took me along Clink Street, the location used for Mr Sin’s attack on Buller. I must also mention the faultless Chinese make-up for Chang (if you didn’t know, you’d swear John Bennett was Chinese), Dudley Simpson’s bravura incidental music … the list goes on.

There is absolutely nothing I can find to fault with this adventure. Even twenty years on, it is still absorbing, gripping and, above all, entertaining. A true classic among classics.

The Caves of Androzani

Again written by Robert Holmes, this time directed by Graeme Harper, 'Caves' was a rollicking good eighties Doctor Who adventure, complete with a disfigured madman in a mask (shades of Weng-Chiang), a totally evil and scheming company man (brilliantly portrayed with icy calm and deadly resolve by John Normington) and a bunch of memorable army-guys and gun runners to spice things up a little.

'Caves' contained possibly the best ever cliff-hanger ending in the history of Doctor Who, when, at the end of part three, with the Doctor at the controls of a space shuttle hurtling towards a planet a breakneck speed, he blurted out a lengthy soliloquy ending with the immortal words ‘Nothing in the world can stop me now …!’ as we crashed into the closing credits, breathless from sheer exhilaration.

It was a great story, and a great end to a very underrated Doctor. It’s a shame it took so long for Peter Davison to deliver the goods, but I’m pleased they were delivered so stylishly.

The Tomb of the Cybermen

'The Tomb of the Cybermen' is one of the earliest Doctor Who stories that I can remember watching on television at the time. It terrified me then, and I can still see, in my minds eye, the child watching as Toberman rips the chest unit off a Cyberman, which then dies, spraying foam everywhere.

This was one of the Doctor Whos junked by the BBC, however and so all I had to go on were my memories, Gerry Davis’ novelisation and the audio soundtrack, and I felt, along with a fair few other people, that this was a lost classic.

Then a complete print of the story was found in Hong Kong in 1992 and the story released, with much excitement, on video. Thankfully, the passage of years did not mar its impact. It contained some great moments of terror, as the silver giants emerged from their tombs; as the Cybermats attacked; and as the Cybermen planned to convert the unfortunate archaeologists into emotionless creatures like themselves.

There were some tremendous performances from George Pastell as the ruthless logician Klieg, and also from Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, who quietly assessed from the background before taking any action. As he said to Klieg at one point, his approach was ‘to keep my eyes open and my mouth shut’.

A wonderful example of why, for me at least, the Troughton era was the best.

Terror of the Zygons

My final all-time classic is 'Terror of the Zygons'. There has always been something about this story that set it apart. At the time it was first transmitted, I remember writing a prediction on the cover of one of my school books – totally incorrect as it turned out – that the Zygons would return. I couldn’t believe that the BBC would create such a convincing, alien-looking monster and then not use them again.

Douglas Camfield’s direction was superb, the acting very easy on the eye, and the use of locations inspired. It was to this story that I turned when given the opportunity to direct one of Reeltime Pictures’ Myth Makers series of interview videos, and we took Ian Marter (who played Harry Sullivan in the story) down to Climping Beach near Littlehampton and the village of Charlton in Sussex in order to make use of the same locations as 'Terror of the Zygons'. I even asked for the incidental music to be an homage to that created by Geoffrey Burgon for the show, and arranged for a selection of bagpipe music to be recorded, as well as an ‘alien’ Zygon-inspired arm to be made for the tape’s dramatic linking sequences.

There was one aspect of this story that let it down, however, and this is why the story falls last in my list. This was the Skarasen, the Zygon’s cyborg plesiosaur-like creature. It was realised on screen through the magic of stop motion photography and CSO, and really didn’t work. Camfield noticed this shortcoming, however, and the shots of it are wisely kept to a minimum.

‘ALMOST-CLASSICS’

Pyramids of Mars

I knew when I first saw the first episode of this story that it was something special. The marvellous lead-up to the end of episode one was what convinced me … Namin played the organ, and, as the music swelled, the time-tunnel contained within the Egyptian mummy case came to life, delivering a sinister black-clad figure into the room. This figure then walked down a short flight of steps – smoke puffing from under his feet as he went – before stopping in front of the kneeling figure of a terrified Namin.

What made this story work was the sparkling dialogue and interplay between the main characters: the Doctor and Sutekh, the confused Laurence Scarman and his undead brother Marcus. The concept of something still being alive inside one of the ancient Egyptian pyramids was an intriguing thought, and the combined talents of everyone involved made this into another unmissable adventure for the good Doctor.

Although the original outline had been written by Lewis Griefer, it was Robert Holmes who scripted the final story. Holmes seemed to have that magic touch where Doctor Who was concerned and there is no real surprise, therefore, that many of my favourites come either from his pen, or from the time he spent script-editing the show.

Death to the Daleks

People often look at me strangely when I cite 'Death to the Daleks' as one of my favourites, and probably quite rightly as it does have a number of faults. However I’ve always enjoyed it, and particularly like the way that the Daleks are forced to become personalities rather than mere killing machines. This is as a result of a mysterious energy-sapping beacon which drains their exterminator weapons of power – although, despite the Doctor waffling on about them being powered by psycho-kinesis, it is not really explained how the Daleks can operate at all in an environment where all electrical power is absent.

Basically, the story was a classic Pertwee romp, with the Doctor doing his best to look stylish in a very effectively photographed alien gravel pit, while Sarah Jane Smith, his assistant, managed to get herself chased, kidnapped, drugged and locked up in very little time with practised ease.

The story was atmospheric and exciting, and created a spooky feeling of unease all the way through. It was good fun, and, for me, was certainly one of the better Dalek stories.

Snakedance

Sequels are usually never as good as the original, but in Doctor Who, as often as not, a sequel turns out to be better. 'Snakedance' was a good case in point. The first story, 'Kinda', was one of the best Doctor Who adventures to that point, featuring bags of imagination and some inspired imagery and casting. With 'Snakedance', rather than just try and do the same again, a different approach was taken, and the menace posed by the snake-like Mara, a demon from the mind, was more insidious. It still had the same aim – to be reborn – but this time it intended to do it in style.

What made any Doctor Who story work was when all the disparate elements came together on screen in a seamless whole. 'Snakedance' managed this, with some memorable characters and some interesting casting: Martin Clunes was excellent as Lon, for example.

As with 'Kinda', where 'Snakedance' really shone was in allowing Janet Fielding, who played the Doctor’s companion Tegan, full reign to show her talents when the character became possessed by the Mara. Her evil stare and cackling laugh were chilling, and the constant snake imagery that pervaded the show simply underlined the horror content.

The Curse of Fenric

Coming right at the very end of Doctor Who’s regular run on BBC television, 'The Curse of Fenric' gave us all hope for the future. Alongside the masterful, but confusing, 'Ghost Light', 'Fenric' was a throwback to the great Doctor Whos of the past, with hideous monsters rising to attack a seemingly defenceless group of humans.

Ian Briggs’ script was inspired by Viking stories and the idea of an ultimate evil controlling peoples actions throughout all time and made for gripping television. The advances in prosthetic make-up and cable-operated effects resulted in the blood-sucking Haemovores and their leader, the so called Ancient One, looking far more horrific than the standard ‘man in mask’ monsters, and the locations lent a totally realistic air to the story.

It was a cracking good adventure story and I’m glad that Doctor Who managed to deliver some classic moments in its final years.

Doctor Who

Yes, it’s the 1996 television movie. This really has to be high on my list of classic Doctor Who as, quite simply, it was everything I had hoped the Doctor’s triumphant return to be.

I was lucky enough to first see it at a preview screening in London, and, as the opening titles started to roll, and the familiar shape of the TARDIS scooted down the time vortex, shivers went up my spine. I was totally thrilled by what I saw. I loved the TARDIS, I loved the effects, I loved Grace (the companion) and I most especially loved Paul McGann’s Doctor.

Here, finally, was a Doctor that seemed to embody facets of real humanity and weakness, alongside the Time Lord’s almost supernatural knowledge and abilities. Here was a Doctor you could be friends with, who would not manipulate and use you, who was not devious, and who showed genuine emotion when things didn’t go well.

I’ve seen 'Doctor Who', as its title was clearly seen on screen to be, several times, and each time I notice something new, and enjoy it a little more. Whether it was what others hoped for, I don’t know, but for me it was certainly something of a classic.

‘BUBBLING UNDER’

In compiling the above list of stories, there were some others that I placed in a ‘bubbling under’ position. Stories that I have a great affection for, some for specific reasons, others for more general observations, and to end, I thought I’d mention some of them.

'The Invasion', the Patrick Troughton Cyberman tale, holds a special place simply because I love the music. Don Harper’s only work for Doctor Who consisted of several repeated themes, but all of them were so evocative that they never failed to thrill. In fact, I have probably listened to the soundtrack of this story more often than I have sat down to watch it.

I normally loathe historical stories in all science fiction series, and I don’t like the majority of Doctor Who’s historical romps either, but 'The Aztecs' is one that I do enjoy. This is probably because John Ringham’s Tlotoxl, the Aztec High Priest of Sacrifice was such a fine villain. He scuttled about, hissing and predicting doom, whilst scheming and plotting to get his own way. The rest of the story was pretty good as well, and although the history lesson tended get a little tedious after a time, the majority of the story worked well.

So there you have it. A brace of classics, a handful of almost-classics and some bubblings. I’m sure that others will have their own views on the stories I’ve mentioned, and some will violently disagree with my choices, but that’s fine. Doctor Who was all about diversity and change. Over nearly thirty years we saw a vast variety of different stories set in different times and places. Everyone will have their own favourites, which is why Doctor Who lasted for so long in the first place.

David J Howe
1997

Doctor Who Where Are You?

DOCTOR WHO WHERE ARE YOU?

6 December 1989 was a sad day for the millions of Doctor Who fans world-wide as this was the date on which the final new episode to be made was first transmitted on BBC television in Britain. Since then there have been vague promises from the BBC that Doctor Who was safe with them for the nineties, there have been several attempts to produce a Doctor Who film, none of which have as yet come to fruition, there were several production companies interested in making a new series if the BBC did not wish to do so themselves, but none of them seemed to be able to get the project off the ground. Finally, Stephen Spielberg’s Amblin production company was involved in talks and discussions about a new series, these plans having given way to a single producer, Philip Segal, and a single studio, Fox, and the current proposition to produce a two-hour long TV movie of Doctor Who, which, if successful, might lead to a new series going into production. As of writing there is still no news on the casting of the Doctor – suggestions have included Alan Rickman, Eric Idle, John Cleese, Dudley Moore and, the current favourite, Simon Callow – or his companions – Pamela Anderson was a hot favourite for a time – or production dates, although it has been suggested that the movie could be in production in 1995 amid new rumours that its start date has moved to May 1996.

The story of Doctor Who starts way back in 1962 when the BBC commissioned an internal report into science fiction with a view to getting some sort of SF-related show on the air. The results of this initial report were taken forward by Sydney Newman, who had just started as the BBC’s Head of Drama, Donald Wilson, the head of the Script Department, Alice Frick and John Braybon, drama script editors, producer/director Rex Tucker and a writer called C. E. Webber, who between them eventually outlined and formalised a format for a series in which an elderly man and his granddaughter, together with two schoolteachers from the granddaughter’s school, have adventures in time and space via the elderly man’s own time machine.

Doctor Who actually started transmitting on Saturday 23 November 1963, with the elderly man now known only as ‘the Doctor’, the title of the series reflecting the unknown background to the leading character and also the nature of the series itself.

The first story, 100,000 BC, saw the Doctor and his granddaughter Susan, and the teachers, Ian and Barbara, travelling back in time in the Doctor’s time machine, called TARDIS, the initials standing for Time And Relative Dimension In Space, to the stone age where they all became involved in a power struggle between two would-be leaders of a tribe that had lost the secret of fire. From this humble beginning, Doctor Who was to become the longest running science fiction series anywhere in the world, and was seen by viewers across the globe.

One of the aspects of the series that has enabled it to survive for so long is the concept of changing the actor playing the lead role. The first Doctor was played by William Hartnell, an elderly, white-haired figure, but towards the end of a battle against the dreaded Cybermen – one of the Doctor’s greatest foes – he collapsed. To the amazement of his companions at the time he then changed his appearance before their eyes.

This process was called regeneration, and using it the Doctor could effectively cheat death and build a new body for himself. The Doctor has so far regenerated six times, and each time his new persona has been markedly different from the one before.

The first Doctor could be brusque and harsh, but there was always a human side to the character. He had a strong sense of justice and of what was right, and always sided with the oppressed. He was very fond of his granddaughter Susan and was visibly moved when she left him. He also became quite attached to his other companions, Ian and Barbara, Vicki, Stephen, Dodo, Ben and Polly, and always tried to ensure that they were safe as they travelled through space and time.

The second Doctor was played by Patrick Troughton and was a marked contrast to the first incarnation. The second Doctor had a Beatle-like mop of brown hair, and a pixie-like enthusiasm for all the situations in which he found himself. He liked playing the clown as this was the best way to lead his enemies to underestimate him, and he often pulled a recorder from his pocket to tootle a tune in times of stress. Initially his companions Ben and Polly were very suspicious of this stranger who claimed to be the Doctor but they soon came to realise that this was the same person. Others who travelled with the second Doctor were the young Scot Jamie, Victoria and Zoe. This was the era of the great Doctor Who monsters with Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors and Yeti coming up against the Doctor and his friends.

Eventually the Doctor was captured and put on trial by his own people, the Time Lords, and sentenced to exile on Earth with a new appearance, that of actor Jon Pertwee. Along with the change of appearance came a change in style and manner. The third Doctor was a bit of a showman and a bit of a dandy. He wore velvet smoking jackets and shirts with frilled cuffs and fronts. He loved action and took every opportunity to leap into hovercraft, auto-gyro, fast car or multi-terrain vehicle in the pursuit of his enemies. His companions were Doctor Elizabeth Shaw, Jo Grant and journalist Sarah Jane Smith and his greatest foe was the Master. The Master was a renegade Time Lord dedicated to the downfall of the Doctor, and the third Doctor came up against him on numerous occasions.

The Doctor had to regenerate once more after his body was riddled with deadly blue radiation from the cave of ‘the Great One’, a giant spider on the planet Metabelis 3. The fourth Doctor, played by Tom Baker, was typified by his incredibly long scarf, battered felt hat and a child-like innocence to all around him. This Doctor was perhaps the most alien of them all, and could agonise over the death of a daisy, while remaining apparently unmoved over the wiping out of an entire civilisation. The Doctor travelled with Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan, the savage Leela, K-9 the electronic computer shaped like a dog, the Time Lady Romana who went through two incarnations whilst travelling with the Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan and none of them, with the possible exception of the second incarnation of Romana really got to grips with who the Doctor really was.

After the Doctor sustained a nasty fall from a radio telescope during a battle against the Master, he regenerated once more into the form of Peter Davison. In contrast to the fourth incarnation, the fifth Doctor was perceived as an English gentleman. He had a passion for cricket and liked to dress in cricketing whites even when there was no game to be played. He flew breathlessly and headlong into danger and always tried to look after his companions in a brotherly way. He travelled with Adric, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough and Peri and all of their lives were changed by their experiences with him.

The next regeneration was brought on by the Doctor contracting the fatal disease Spectrox Toxaemia and Colin Baker took over the role. The sixth Doctor was initially unstable and prone to violent fits of temper. His companion Peri was initially very unsure of where she stood, but the Doctor eventually settled down and she enjoyed several lively adventures with him. With a bright coat of clashing colours, the Doctor was always the centre of attention, and his personality reflected his dress sense. His companions were Peri and computer programmer Mel. This incarnation of the Doctor underwent another trial by his peers, this time led by the Valeyard, an evil manifestation of the Doctor. The Valeyard’s plans failed and the Doctor was found innocent of all charges.

After the TARDIS was attacked by the Rani, another evil Time Lord, the Doctor regenerated into the slighter and more mysterious figure of the seventh Doctor, played by Sylvester McCoy. This incarnation of the Time Lord revealed hitherto unseen talents and harboured deep, dark secrets. His companions Mel and then Ace really did not understand what the Doctor’s motives were, but more and more clues and hints emerged that the Doctor might really be much more than just a Time Lord. He seemed to have a dark history which was on the verge of unfolding, and which we may now never discover.

One of the most popular aspects of the series has been the monsters. In only the second story, called 'The Mutants' (aka 'The Daleks'), and written by Terry Nation, a race of alien creatures was introduced that were to become as popular as the programme that spawned them and ultimately led to their own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The exterior of a Dalek is just an advanced travel machine for the twisted and mutated being that lives inside. The Daleks have no morals and no pity and their attack cry of ‘Exterminate!’ echoes around the galaxy as they conquer and destroy everything that stands in their way. The Doctor and his friends have crossed their path on several occasions and he has become their greatest nemesis.

The Daleks were the first alien menace encountered by the Doctor, but they were by no means the last. Over the years there have been many different alien races, monsters, creatures and enemies featured in the series, the majority of which have come to a sticky end at the hands of the Doctor.

Along with the Daleks, the silver Cybermen stand as perhaps the second most popular creatures to appear in Doctor Who. Once human, they had steadily replaced their bodies with limbs of metal and plastic until only their brains remained. In this form they finally abolished emotions from their race, becoming coldly logical and dedicated to their own survival. Other memorable foes include the Ice Warriors, green, scaly creatures from Mars which tried to invade the Earth, and the Yeti, robots created by an alien intelligence which tried to take over the Earth, first using a Tibetan monastery as a base, and then by invading the London Underground train system. More recently we met the Haemovores, blood-sucking creatures from the depths of the sea, Sil, a maggot-bodied creature intent on maximising his personal profits and gains at the expense of others, and the Vervoids, a race of lethal plant-creatures which tried to take over a space liner.

As the years passed, so the creatures became more sophisticated. Doctor Who featured early examples of animatronics as well as puppets, cable control, radio control and more traditional forms of monster costume and make-up created from latex and clay. Doctor Who has always been at the forefront of technology and was among the first television programmes to make use of Colour Separation Overlay (CSO) or Chromakey (where one image is overlaid onto another by using a blue-screen process), the Quantel digital image processor and HARRY, a sophisticated electronic paintbox. Doctor Who even pioneered the use of rubber and latex masks, slave cameras (where the camera movements on a model can be synchronised with those on a real-life subject allowing the two to be seamlessly combined) and even a slit-scan process developed from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey to create the innovative title sequences for the late Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker years.

Despite the fact that we have not seen any new Doctor Who on our screens for some six years now, there is still an incredible wealth of merchandise being produced about the programme. Virgin Publishing have been developing the Doctor and his companions in two series of original novels for several years. The New Adventures pit the seventh Doctor against foes old and new, while The Missing Adventures are completely new stories featuring older Doctors and companions. Virgin have also been at the forefront of publishing high-quality and critically acclaimed factual books about the series, including titles like Doctor Who The Sixties and Doctor Who The Seventies which look in detail at the decades in question and also a series of Doctor Who Handbooks, one per Doctor, which look at the era of each of the Doctors. BBC Video have been releasing old Doctor Who stories at the rate of one or two a month and are over half way to having the complete available back-list available to rent or buy. Marvel Comics publish a monthly Doctor Who Magazine, and there are also telephone cards, trading cards, belt-buckles, lamp-shades, calendars and all manner of other tie-in pieces of merchandise being produced.

Doctor Who may be out of production for the moment, but it is still as popular as ever. There seems little doubt that one day it will be back.

David J. Howe
1995

Going Through the Pictures

This is a piece I wrote for the Doctor Who Appreciation Society just after Jon Pertwee's death. It still brings me to tears when I read it.


GOING THROUGH THE PICTURES

‘Now, will you look at that …’

Jon has just picked up a photograph from the top of the pile which rests on his lap.

‘That was at Billy Smart’s Circus, and the lady under the elephant is Jayne Mansfield. I was ringmaster at the time.’

Another picture.

‘That’s me scuba diving. The water was simply marvellous. Clear, blue … you could see for miles.

‘Now that … that is me, and David Jason, and Ed Stewart, and a famous motorbike racing driver whose name I can’t currently recall. We’re all lined up at the start of a race for charity.

‘Ah … there’s old Worzel. The warts were made from halved breakfast cereal that they stuck on my face. I had a grand time with Worzel, he’s like the Doctor, timeless.

‘Ah ha. That’s Ingeborg and myself with Phil Silvers. It was taken on the set of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. I had appeared in the stage show on Broadway but the producers of the film wanted more ‘names’ in their production and so they got Phil Silvers in to play my part. I was given the part of a sea captain as a sop. Shame really.

‘Now that’s me outside the front door of my old house in Chester Row. I used to nip across the road to use the showers and one day the press caught me at it.

‘These two pictures are from an advertisement I did for Sharwood’s pickle. I was playing Mr Sharwood, who was visiting various restaurants and other food emporiums testing the various pickles – it was a little like the Man from del Monte, or that woman who tests the coffee. John Bluthal was in it and we had hoped it would turn into a series of advertisements all on the same theme, but it didn’t.

‘That’s me in the vampire cloak and teeth from The House that Dripped Blood. They had me hung up on a harness to film that end scene. Very uncomfortable.

‘You remember we spoke about when I was touring the Music Halls with my one man variety show …? Well that’s a picture of me with the dummy that I used to pull out of the pit with a pitch fork, pretending it was a member of the orchestra, before hurling him across the stage.

‘That’s Ingeborg and myself on our wedding day … was it really thirty years ago?

‘And that’s me skiing on the slopes in Kitzbuhel. As you can see, I hadn’t yet busted my leg.

‘I had the first Vespa scooter in London and that picture was taken in Chester Row. I remember being so proud of that scooter, but then I’ve always loved bikes.

‘There’s me and Sean on our bikes outside our house in Barnes. I had a new bike and Sean, as you can see, had a smaller version for himself. Like father like son!

‘That’s me and Bill Maynard in our tank during the Korean war. We lost it you know? The tank. It ended up at the bottom of a river that was too deep for us to cross although we didn’t realise it until it was too late.’

The pictures kept coming. The memories flooding back. What should have taken an hour or so was taking the best part of a whole morning. Jon kept stopping at images as they kicked off his memory, here there were more motor bikes, here was a picture of Jon with Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, here was a picture of Jon water-skiing at a charity do on the south coast. Worzel meeting the Queen; Jon with Frank Bruno; with Thora Hird; with Roger Moore and Joan Collins; with Bob Hope; Jon in cabaret in Australia; Jon at Doctor Who conventions all over the world; Jon with Patrick Troughton, water pistols drawn; Jon as the Doctor; Jon as Jon.

Eventually I had amassed a huge pile of pictures and an even larger number was returned to the musty boxes from which they had emerged. Jon seemed enlivened, enthusiastic. Our going through of all the images, snapshots of his life, had recalled so many memories. Some vivid, some dulled by time.

Eventually, armed with a bulging envelope full of images, I bade my farewell and promised to speak to Jon as soon as I could regarding the next stages of putting the autobiography together.

The date was Saturday 4 May 1996.

David J Howe
19/06/1996