Lombard Street to a China Orange

Over the last few posts I've been revisiting some of the written texts about Doctor Who that consolidated my fan status. As the series and I both approach our fifth decade, Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith has recently announced that he's leaving the role. On this occasion, I really feel the wrong person is going. While I've been growing increasingly disenchanted with the series, it's not so much with Smith's eccentric playing as  showrunner's Steven Moffat's sexism; his unsatisfactory and self-referential plotting; and his smug, middle-class preoccupation with parenting.

Thirty years ago, however, the Fifth Doctor was at the height of his popularity. 1983 was a fine year for American comics, in my book. The Giffen/Levitz Legion celebrated the 300th issue by derailing my beloved  Adult Legion's future but in such a engaging way, it hardly mattered. Paul Smith had delivered a memorable and appealing run on X-Men. And on tv, Doctor Who marked its twentieth anniversary on tv with the simultaneous  publication of  Target's novelization of The Five Doctors. The story would be repeated on tv the following year; it would be the last Who repeat on tv until 1992. A chance discovery in '84 or '85 of a screening of the original Daleks adventure by the GFT's tv club would be my last chance to sample authentic 60s Who in the Eighties.

The DWM strip in 1984 presented the memorable Voyager sequence by John Ridgway. Just as Dave Gibbons' Tides of Time delivered a surreal blend of sci-fi and swords and sorcery for the Fifth Doctor, so Ridgway's strips, with their references to myth and Edwardian children's literature, offered a refreshing and epic alternative to the Sixth Doctor's sadistic and cynical tv adventures.

Xmas 1985: the best-written book on show today

As a would-be Glasgow pop scenester, the word "bumper" embarassed me

Over the next three years, while Doctor Who endured its infamous hiatus at the decree of Michael Grade, I alternated between Target books that revisited the Sixties and those that tried to spin some gold out of the eyesore Eighties series. The title of today's post is an idiosyncratic quote from Robert Holmes' Two Doctors.

Slipback was a shameless pastiche of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy broadcast as part of a summer holiday strand for kids on Radio 4. Now of course audio Who is commonplace but this silly sci-fi effort was something of a false start, continuing Eric Saward's bizarre Twin Dilemma idea of a bibulous Doctor.

Saved this book in hardback when our old school was being demolished last spring

In 1987, I despaired of John Nathan-Turner's take on Who: the combination of Sylvester McCoy and Bonnie Langford in the garish and goofy Time and the Rani signalled a long cooling-off period for me. it would last until the cancellation of the original series and the end of McCoy's era.

Unaware that the series would not be returning for many (many!) years, I cast a desultory eye over the first of Target's novelizations of the so-called Lost Stories. The Nightmare Fair is a Douglas Adams pastiche about the evils of arcade games- rather dated by 1986, never mind 1989. Like the rest of the planned stories for the 1986 season, it shows little promise of a revitalisation of the show.

During Mayfest in Glasgow that year, I bought a ticket to see Doctor Who- The Ultimate Adventure. I'm convinced it was performed at the King's Theatre but the tour dates say it was the Theatre Royal! At the time, I was directing a play called Pvt. Wars - a psychiatric US black comedy- at the Drama Centre in Ingram Street and was rather scathing about this Jon Pertwee vehicle. Again, with hindsight, I realise now it was effectively a summer panto and the production had a lot of charm and energy. But Doctor Who seemed to me then an uncool and juvenile relic of my adolescence.

Next time, we'll look at the Wildnerness Years of the Nineties and Virgin Publishing's New Adventures.

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