My TARDIS has a screw loose...

Saturday 29 October 2016

We have a storage problem: not enough room for our DVDs.   Husband has a brilliant idea: if he throws out all his remaining old Doctor Who VHS tapes we can no longer watch (he has slowly been replacing them with DVDs), then the Doctor Who DVDs can go in the TARDIS video cabinet, making space in our other storage units.

Problem 1: Find the autograph.  I distinctly remember Colin Baker signing a VHS cassette at the Who shop that briefly appeared in Little Chalfont, whilst avoiding falling Silurian masks.  Obviously we don't want to throw that one out. But none of the VHS tapes in the TARDIS are of Sixth Doctor stories. The later VHS tapes are downstairs, but the only Sixth Doctor story we have left is Trial of a Time Lord, and that hasn't been signed.  Have we already ditched the autograph by mistake? 

Problem solved: Husband finds the autographed cassette.  It turns out to be the 1994 Bill Baggs Video The Zero Imperative, starring Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, John Pertwee, Caroline John, Louise Jameson, Sophie Aldred and Linda Lusardi. (Spot the odd one out...) There is also an appearance by the writer, a young man called Mark Gatiss.  I wonder what happened to him?

Problem 2: DVDs are slightly deeper than VHS tapes.  The doors of the TARDIS no longer close properly, and one of them comes off completely.  Husband has another (not so) brilliant idea: we take the other door off to match.

I have a better idea: we put the Virgin New Adventures and Missing Adventures in the TARDIS, and the DVDs on the bookshelf.

The books fit, and I wield my (totally un-sonic) screwdriver to fix the doors.

Just one problem left.  Where shall we keep The Zero Imperative?

Revisiting some old faces

The UK Drama Channel (Freeview channel 20) is currently showing some classic Doctor Who stories, one for each of the pre-2005 Doctors on Sunday afternoons at 4.00 p.m.  Just the thing watch whilst doing the ironing!

They started with The Aztecs, which is watchable enough, but not one of the best surviving Hartnell stories, in my opinion. This was followed by Tomb of the Cybermen, which is one of the classic Troughton stories, and one which actually manages to make the Cybermen creepy and scary.  (In general I think Doomsday was quite right and that Daleks beat Cybermen any day.)

Last week it was the turn of Pertwee, and Spearhead from Space.  I enjoyed this so much that I followed it by watching Rose on DVD in order to compare the effects of two very different new Doctor stories/series reboots starring Autons.  In both cases the shop dummies work much better than the Nestene Consciousness, which is slightly disappointing in both its felt tentacle and orange CGI guises.

This Sunday the channel will be celebrating the Doctor's 51st birthday with one of my all-time favourite stories, and one which genuinely terrified me as a child, The Pyramids of Mars. Between that and Sexton Blake and the Demon God (broadcast in the Sunday teatime slot in1978), I was definitely traumatised by all things Eygptian.

 It won't stop me from watching on Sunday though, even if I'm hiding behind the ironing board.

What happened next

Reader, I married him.

(The Doctor Who fan, not Sylvester).  On a snowy day in 1991, we moved into our first house, along with a bookcase full of Target novelisations.

We didn't have much money at the time, as all our savings had gone into the house, and mortgage rates were high, but by the end of the year we were able to afford a VCR of our own. Doctor Who was no longer being made, but our Saturday night treat was watching an old episode and if we were lucky, eating a Wispa bar (3 for 60p from Tesco).  This may sound a bit like the four Yorkshiremen sketch, but I swear it's true.

After watching Terror of the Zygons, Genesis of the Daleks, City of Death and The Talons of Weng Chiang I soon realised that I had been mistaken and that Tom Baker, despite his Mum-frightening eyes, was in fact the best Doctor.  (I had previously believed this to be Jon Pertwee, on the same basis that everyone thinks their first Doctor is the best.)

After two years of indoctrination by video and novelisation, I was ready for my first convention.