Today, we continue our voyage through Doctor Who ephemera and its influence on my reading and viewing habits. Doctor Who Weekly was repurposed as a slightly-less juvenile publication in September 1980. DWM of course continues to be published today and is, I think, the longest surviving, continuous format for the series. I was in my late teens then and welcomed the John Nathan-Turner Era, as it ushered in a more sci-fi, continuity-heavy take on the series. I had grown very jaded with the Tom-foolery of 1978-79.
I was still primarily interested in Sixties Who; nascent fan wisdom held that this was the Golden Age of the series. I especially liked former series regular Ian Marter's brutal take on this 1967 story of intrigue and world domination.
I also had a new set of "ur-texts"- a definitive brace of encyclopedias which were published just as I began life as a University student in October 1981.
Some weeks after the Fifth Doctor made his debut in a snowy January, he began his most surreal adventure in DWM. The Tides of Time remains, for me, Doctor Five's finest exploit in any medium.
1983, of course, marked two decades of Who. In the January, Davison's Doctor journeyed to Amsterdam ( just like me the previous year) and I attended a Q&A session with National Theatre actors (and sixties Who guest stars Derek Newark and Edward de Souza.
In April, as I've detailed previously, I travelled south for the twentieth anniversary celebration at Longleat, when thousands of people descended on Warminster. In August, however, while a young David Morrisey starred in One Summer, Peter Davison's departure was announced. The following week, the news broke that his replacement would be Colin Baker. I bought Peter Haining's weighty hardback Doctor Who: a Celebration the following month. It's a pleasant if rather shallow book, with some glossy photos and a number of technical errors.
In October of 1983, I bought the Radio Times Twentieth Anniversary Special on the same day that I attended a comic mart in Glasgow and stood next to comics magus Alan Moore!
Not only were there some rare photos of Sixties horrors like the Weed Creature and the Brains of Morphoton, the special featured "Birth of a Renegade":
This is a text story by Eric Saward that reveals the Secret Origin of Susan Foreman: the Lady Larn, a Time Lord child and political hot potato in a typical dopey Cyber-scheme to set up a puppet regent. This is the kind of leaden 80s thriller plot we loved in those days. The obscure character Larna, who crops up in BBC books in the late 90s, is a reference to this story.
What's most interesting about this early-80s period is that paratexts are excised. There's an orthodoxy to the history of the series that doesn't allow for Trods, the Eye Spider of Pergross or the Star Beast. The Fan Complex is consolidating and the series is being made to cater to their-our-tastes.
In future posts,we'll revisit a Doctor in Distress, a Silver Nemesis and Virgin Worlds.
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