Everything You Know is Wrong

The Target novelization of the last William Hartnell story reminds me of a bout of mumps in my dad's house in the early spring of 1976. I was always more interested in the books that harked back to the seemingly-unobtainable black and white era.

Certainly, I considered myself an expert on Doctor Who's history, thanks to the 1973 Radio Times special. My complacency of the previous three years was shattered by the publication of the heavily revised Making of Doctor Who:

Suddenly, the Hartnell stories had prosaic new titles: Temple of Evil became The Aztecs; The Slave Traders became The Romans; and most surprisingly, The Nightmare Begins became The Daleks' Master Plan!

Surely Dicks and Hulke had got their facts wrong? My confusion was compounded by a contemporaneous letter in our daily paper about someone called Katarina, who had been killed in the 12-part Dalek epic.

The Making of Doctor Who reclaimed and redefined the history of the series but it's actually a little flat compared to the 1972 original. Here the Doctor's adventures are written up as evidence forhis trial at the end of The War Games. The book, which I picked up at a comic mart in Glasgow Uni about three years ago, also reveals the Doctor's real name (Steven Moffat, in case you're reading...)

The next "ur-text" of Who was the jumbo-size 1977 annual, which was a present for Xmas 1976. It features  truly deranged  prog rock adventures with Mattermonks, the Eye-Spiders of Pergross and Paul Crompton's surreal, nightmarish illustrations.

The second Weetabix promotion ran from March to May 1977. While for me, the cards lack the simple elegance of the 1975 collection, the artwork is more garishly "Seventies" to my eye. Each of the larger packets featured a board-game layout on the back of the box.

The next most significant paratext however was The Lively Arts "Whose Doctor Who". This was aired on BBC2 on Sunday 3 April 1977- the day after Season 14 ended with The Talons of Weng-Chiang's final episode. It was a serious, learned production, with vox pops from children and rather portentous professionals from the teaching and care sectors. Tom Baker gives an effervescent and lordly performance while interviewed but it was the numerous clips from the Sixties that enthralled me.

I taped the soundtrack of the programme on to my casette recorder: something I would do regularly up until 1981. This was years of course before anyone owned a domestic VCR and I memorised the recording. Dialogue from The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Web Planet, Galaxy Four, The Mind Robber and The Invasion were engraved in my memory.

I was still very interested in the novelizations of  older tv adventures. A shopping trip to the grim concrete arcades of Kilmarnock with my parents that same April garnered a pair of Targets: Pertwee's Claws of Axos and this 2150 AD-style version of Terry Nation's 1964 Dalek Invasion.

The vinyl Sound Effects lp was one I owned in cassette format and obtained in the late sping of 1978. It's a strange idea I suppose, listening to the heartbeat of the Dalek Control Room , in the same way that other kids listened to Pink Floyd.

The autumn season preview issue of Radio Times introduced the late Mary Tamm as the imperious Romana in a photo-text feature on some of the previous Who girls. But my next significant "paratext" was the Letraset-astic launch of Doctor Who Weekly in October 1979:

The tv series was at the height of its popularity, thanks to the ongoing ITV strike which began that summer, while we were on holiday in a rain-lashed Arran. There was literally nothing on the "other side", so the Graham Williams/Lalla Ward episodes commanded large audiences.

A regular order for the Marvel weekly marked my return to comic strip adventures for the first time since TV Comic,some four years earlier. At first, I wasn't very keen since a) there was no continuity with the tv series; b) the strips were very much in the Brit-Punk style of 2000 AD and c) I was now at Hanilton Grammar School, sitting my Highers; I was supposed to have outgrown comics, Doctor Who and his robot dog some time before. However, the trove of b/w archive photos attracted me back every week.

Next time, we'll trace the development of Doctor Who Magazine in the Eighties.

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