The DWAS Yearbook 1976

 

In the Society’s early days as well as the regular fanzines they would also publish a Yearbook and the first of these covers much of what happened during the DWAS’s first year. Fronted by Stuart Glazebrook’s artwork of the  Doctor Sarah and the TARDIS in front of a planet and a sun (with the Doctor’s scarf providing a frame for the picture), the first yearbook had forty pages and was A5 size. Published in February 1977 and edited by Keith Barnfather it includes reviews of each Season 13 story accompanied by artwork.

In the reviews Richard Landen finds `Terror of the Zygons` “a bit run of the mill and predictable” and he seems to come up with his own theory that the destruction of the Zygon planet resulted in the creation of Axos. I don’t ever recall noticing that in the story!  He likes the Zygon ship and finds the Zygons themselves “colourful but non striking” Is that a typo? Just goes to show that stories we now think of as classics were not originally accepted as such. Richard is back for `Planet of Evil` and spends the first paragraph highlighting various guest star’s previous Doctor Who appearances. While this may seem basic now don’t forget this was long before fans could look this kind of information up anywhere. Richard’ mission it seems was to create an invented fact for each story; here he says that Morestra evolved fromm the Earth penal colony Desperus as seen in `Dalek Masterplan`. Did it though Richard? This sort of thing was quite common in those days; fans tried to patch things together and find connections that were not necessarily there on screen.

Steve Ocock reviews `Pyramids of Mars` with more enthusiasm and says that Stephen Harris “deserves a medal for an outstanding story”. Of course we now know now that it would have been quite difficulty to track `Stephen Harris` himself down to pin that medal on him!  The review for the `The Android Invasion` goes uncredited so it may have been penned by Keith Barnfather. Whoever it is finds the scope of the story “too wide” making it “too complicated and therefore rushed”.  Jeannette Napier takes on `Brain of Morbius` and calls it “one of the best stories since Tom Baker took over the role”  though the review is mostly a synopsis of the story it is peppered with superlatives. Jeanette also tackles `Seeds of Doom` though this is even more synopsis and very little opinion probably written, as I suspect all these reviews were, in a bit of rush.

Next up are features on the two Exhibitions at Blackpool and Longleat. At the time coverage of these was quite a rare thing so these are a very descriptive way to relive those summer trips and is penned by Stuart Glazebrook. The Yearbook also includes a couple of articles originally published in `Tardis, the Society fanzine. `The Tardis` finds Jan Vincent Rudzki detailing all we had found out about the ship up to that point.   As mentioned earlier, a paucity of alternative sources of information made articles like this vital fifty years ago. `Who Was Susan Foreman` sees Jeremy Bentham take a speculative look at the Doctor and Susan’s life before they left the Time Lords. It’s all invented by Jeggers of course and because this is the Seventies, the idea that Susan is the Doctor’s actual granddaughter was unacceptable. Instead Bentham creates a theory wherein the Doctor was staying with the Foreman family when they die in a fire, but Susan was saved by the Doctor and taken back to Gallifrey where she was brought up.

The Yearbook lists the Target books released in 1976, which was a bumper year for titles ranging from `Curse of Peladon`, `The Abominable Snowman`, `The Green Death`,  and more. The feature also covers things like TV Comic, the Ty Phoo cards and the revised edition of `The Making of Doctor Who`. Department reports follow on from this with summaries of the year’s activities from Jan Vincent Ruzki (Headquarters), Stephen Payne (Photographic), Jeremy Benthm (Reference), Stuart Glazebrook (Art), Brian Smith (Scottish office), Gordon Blows (Tardis), Keith Barnfather (Celestial Toyroom) and Mark Sinclair (Dramatics).

The season poll results feature on the next page. This was an open vote in which all DWAS members were eligible to vote and were early markers as to which stories would become classics and which were deemed duds. `Pyramids of Mars` triumphs on 166 points ahead of `Seeds of Doom` which gained 136 points. In third place with 110 was `Terror of the Zygons`. Just three points behind in fourth place is `Brain of Morbius` on 107. `Planet of Evil` is in fifth place on 92 points and coming last was `The Android Invasion` with 81 points with just less than half the votes of the winner. Strangely this is the exact order I would put them in today. Finally at the end of the yearbook is a list of DWAS department addresses.

The reviews could be better but don’t forget this was the early days and the concept of writing a review of Doctor Who stories (as opposed to just talking about them at school or wherever) was just catching on. Overall the publication reflects the confidence and creativity of the DWAS less than a year after it started.