Radio Times 1983 Doctor Who Special

 

The 1973 Radio Times Special (see Featured Post of go to November 2018) was an iconic publication for fans so it’s not surprising that a follow up was produced ten years later to celebrate the show’s twentieth anniversary in 1983. Selling for £1.50 it doesn’t actually make the best first impression courtesy of an amateurish looking overcrowded cover involving several Tardises each with one of the Doctor’s faces inset into them.  The design has these police boxes flying out towards the front which unfortunately means William Hartnell occupies a tiny square in the top right corner while at the foot of the page, you only see three quarters of Colin Baker. Its not a patch on the unique photo on the cover of the 1973 one. Fans may also complain that the show’s 80s logo is rendered in yellow rather than white. The back cover is more striking featuring a Dalek.

Published before `The Five Doctors` was transmitted the Special was edited by Brian Gearing and thankfully the front cover is not an indication of what the inside is like. Open it up and you find a collage of title sequences which actually would have made a much better cover. Amongst the credits Ian Levine and also the DWAS are thanked for their help so we expect the contents to be accurate.

`In The Beginning` is one of several features credited to Gay Search, at the time a regular Radio Times writer, who often seemed to be given assignments about the show or perhaps she was a fan. She succinctly tells the story of the show’s origins, familiar to fans perhaps but there’s still something captivating about the way Sydney Newman describes the show’s original idea and also how Verity Lambert ran with this and knew where to take it. It’s only a page so skips from the origins to now as John Nathan Turner talks about casting Peter Davison and Colin Baker. The then producer is also shown in a large photograph though it s interesting to see what was pinned to the wall of his office that day. Amongst dozens of overlapping photographs, there’s one of Peter Davison in cricket whites receiving a trophy, a picture of K9 covered in cobwebs (perhaps reflecting what JNT thought of him) and a still from `Invasion of Time`. There are Target novels on the shelf along with a doll of Leela looking rather more savage than she was on tv.

 

There then follows two-page profile interviews of each of the Doctors though in lieu of the late William Hartnell, it is his widow Heather who provides some detail of her husband’s tenure and how he had been relieved to get a different role to the characters he had been playing for the previous twenty years. She also says he believed the show would run for at least five years even though some acting colleagues were sceptical. Particularly delightful is her remembering when she would meet him at the train station and there would be “a tail of children following him, just like the Pied Piper.”

 Patrick Troughton is in philosophical mood –“I fully believe there is life all over the universe and it is man’s greatest conceit to imagine not just that we are alone but that we are the most important form of life there is,” he declares.  He also discusses his approach to the role- “he was always slightly off beat what with his recorder and his little jigs,” as well as how he and Fraser Hines added their own lines. Interestingly he says he felt it was important that the Doctor appeared as scared as everyone else of the monsters. “What I tried to do was give the impression that the Doctor was …terrified but that underneath he was at least ten jumps ahead of the monsters.” He is also pleased to be back for `The Five Doctors`- “sheer bliss.”

 Jon Pertwee’s reminiscences are more familiar to those of us who saw him many times at conventions and he definitely uses some of them here for example; “they said -play it as Jon Pertwee and I said, `who’s he?`”. His costume originated when he wore some of his grandfather’s old clothes for a photo shoot and of course there is his enthusiasm for machinery which manifested itself both with Bessie and the Whomobile. And, yes, he does mention a Yeti on a loo in Tooting Bec and how he didn’t care much for the Daleks. As I read this though, I can hear his voice telling these stories, he was definitely a top raconteur.

 

“I can’t tell you how dreary is was being Tom Baker” says Tom Baker explaining the appeal of what would become his career defining role. He describes meeting young fans; “All I had to do was be still and benevolent. The rest all happened in the child’s imagination.” As with Jon Pertwee, the anecdotes are familiar but well told – the accidental length of the scarf courtesy of Magnolia Pope, the “capacity for being surprised” and how he would have liked more historical adventures; “It would have been interesting for the Doctor to have met Izaak Walton and talked about fishing.” He admits he may have stayed too long, "but I was fascinated as an actor by how to be constantly surprising and inventive in essentially predictable situations.” Plus what you suspect was the main reason; “I just adored doing it.”

 Peter Davison admits he initially turned down the role being the first of the Doctor actors to have grown up with the show. “It took me a couple of weeks to realise that (the part) was too good to turn down.” He was still amazed when his appointment was featured in the BBC News. He says he drew mainly from the first two Doctors- “I felt it was important to put back the idea that the Doctor was vulnerable”. He ends with the well known story of the horse and cart malfunction in `The Awakening` and his decision to leave- “Of course I’ll miss it,”

 These are really concise, well collated features each illustrated by photos including a colour `Marco Polo` image of the Doctor and his companions, the second Doctor playing his recorder, the third Doctor squaring up to a Sea Devil, a publicity shot of the fourth Doctor, Leela and K9 and another promo shot of the fifth Doctor and his companions.

 

The 1973 Special had what was at the time the first detailed list of all the stories but for this edition we have an A-Z of companions. The format means these vignettes are non- chronological which does make the visuals more interesting, and they include quotes from the actors and facts about their post Who careers. So, we start with Adric and finish at Zoe. Along the way we learn these things:

·     Matthew Waterhouse was a fan of the show and describes the change to actually being in it- “part of it was really weird but very exciting.

·     Michael Craze was running a pub by 1983 in Dereham in Norfolk.

·     Nicholas Courtney based The Brigadier on Colonel Colin Mitchell whose exploits in Aden in the 1960s made him famous and who always led his troops from the front.

·     Jackie Lane is only five feet tall and by 1983 had changed career direction and become an agent with Tom Baker as one of her clients.

·     Ian Marter’s abiding memory of his time as Harry was the Daleks switching on the Blackpool illuminations.

·     William Russell’s was by 1983 acting under his real name of Russell Enoch.

·     Frazer Hines says playing Jamie was “marvellous” and in 1983 was still in Emmerdale.

·     Katy Manning in 1983 was married and living in Australia.

·     Adrienne Hill was teaching drama by 1983.

·     John Leeson says K9 developed a personality of its own.

·     Gerald Flood’s feature is as brief as Kamelion’s appearances on the show!

·     Louise Jameson received lots of fan letters “from the Dads” “but if you wear a leather leotard and you’re on after the football results, that’s inevitable.”

·     Caroline John had recently worked with Tom Baker in an adaptation of Hound of the Baskervilles.

·     Sarah Sutton describes Nyssa as “a challenge to play.”

·     Nicola Bryant says that Peri is her first role since leaving drama school and that she had watched the programme all her life (a clue as to the fact she wasn’t really American at all though we only learned this later on).

·     Anneke Wills had left the acting profession after Doctor Who to start a family.

·     Mary Tamm was appearing in a new sitcom called The Hello Goodbye Man.

·     Lalla Ward had illustrated a book called `Pets and their People`.

·     Jean Marsh “loved” the way Sara was killed off- “a terrible amount of giggling went on.”

·     Elisabeth Sladen enjoyed working with both Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker; “they’re both very good actors and very strong personalities.”

·     Peter Purves was presenting BBC darts coverage.

·     Carole Ann Ford says Doctor Who is still part of her life - “its never stopped. All these years, I’ve continued to get loads of fan mail.”

·     Despite actually being Australian Janet Fielding does not have a strong Aussie accent in real life.

·     Mark Strickson says he is looking forward to discovering who Turlough really is.

·     Deborah Watling recounts the period which seems to have made her the target of countless practical jokes “but it was a smashing two years.”

·     Maureen O’Brien’s most recent tv appearance was on Bergerac

·     Wendy Padbury says playing Zoe was “the happiest job I’ve ever had.”

 Next up is a page about The Master including a reference to the original idea for the role to be female and the feature runs briefly through Roger Delgado, Peter Pratt and Geoffrey Beevers. Anthony Ainley says “It’s probably the best television part I’ve ever had because if often requires me to disguise both my face and voice which really stretches me as an actor.” Does he do that “he- he -he” laugh after saying this? Yes, I think he probably does.

 The Fans come in for some coverage next under the title `The whole world is just wild about Doctor Who” Starting from the successful Longleat event earlier that year, the article talks to some of the DWAS executive, fanzine editors and fans from both the UK and the US. There’s some good photos from Longleat as well as costumed fans in the States (nobody called it cosplay back then).

The Aliens is a pictorial section showing some of the species from the show. As always seems to happen (remember the Doctor Who Monster Book?) art editors get a bit carried away with which monsters to highlight so you tend to lose perspective on their relative sizes and the pages look a bit messy. In those pre Internet days of course, this was quite rare material especially printed in colour on glossy paper. Though the photos are familiar to us now, they would be less so in 1983. Why though, when showing something in black and white did designers of this era choose to show them with a blue tint? At least, presumably due to Ian Levine’s involvement, the captions are correctly spelt and accurate. No sign of Saarl or Cell Guards here! As I recall some of these photos were entirely new to me such as the ones, from `The Sensorites` and `Keys of Marinus`. The middle ones open into a larger poster of the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough though something including all the Doctors might have been better.

 

Behind the Scenes articles follow so we discover…

·     Costume designer Amy Williams enjoys working on the show because it’s the one chance she gets to use her imagination. Her favourite was `Keeper of Traken`- “the director said he wanted it to look like the work of the Spanish architect Gaudi.”

·     Make up artist Dorza Nieradzik’s favourite characters were the Argolins and she describes the problem of hiding Tom Baker’s curly hair under the false bald head he had in that story.

·     Set designer Tony Burrough always finds Doctor Who a challenge but one he thoroughly enjoys. He talks about the sets for `Warriors of the Deep`.

·     The visual effects trio of Matt Irvine, Peter Wragg and Tony Harding talk about exploding Daleks, K9 and The Malus. “You need to be creative but you also need the technical know how to translate your ideas into three dimensions,” they conclude.

·     Squashed into a box at the foot of the page, graphic designer Sid Sutton talks about the latest title sequence. “I came up with the idea of a moving galaxy which formed the face of the Doctor,” he says, “It involved shooting the same piece of film over forty times.”

·     Peter Howell of the Radiophonic Workshop talks about creating different themes for each character like the metallic sounds for Cybermen.

·     Sound effects man Dick Mills talks about ray guns, machinery and grease removing compound, items we all use in our daily routine.

·     Video effects guy Dave Chapman talks about the rays that come from those ray guns.

·     Richard Gregory from the Imagineering company talks about building props such as the Terileptils, Malus and the recent Cybermen in a workshop in a small Oxfordshire village.  Behind him as he poses with a Cyberhelmet, is a strange mask hanging off a shelf. It really should have found its way into Doctor Who.

      The next two pages showcase some of the merchandise you might like to buy including “the very first Doctor Who software”. It is an early computer game with those simple graphics in which “you share with him the perils of a four part adventure”. There’s a deadly labyrinth, an “awesome” Space Citadel, a great Space Time void and more. Of course however exciting they make it sound I imagine it was a basic bleepy game with these Universal wonders depicted in ordinary pixels.

For those who prefer to use their imagination there is a new adventure story called `Birth of a Renegade` penned by Eric Saward.  The Tardis crew answers a distress signal in Sector 19, a remote and dangerous place near a supernova. They find a battlecruiser which is undamaged and starts to pull them in so the Doctor materialises into the massive hold. As you might expect given his role as script editor Saward ably captures the bustle of the console room and interactions between the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough. His synonyms are especially fun – at one point Tegan is described as scowling “her face resembling a ploughed field on a hard frosty morning.” Print allows Saward the luxury of a dimly lit but vast set and you can’t help thinking how cool this would look on tv.

Given its 1983 have you guessed yet who is on board this ship? Yep, its both The Master and the Cybermen though if you glance over at the opposite page a rather good piece of art gives them away. The battleship is really the Master’s Tardis. “Always so gullible my dear Doctor,” says The Master, and you can easily imagine Anthony Ainley saying it,  “You are like a mouse. All it requires is but a small stale piece of cheese for you to spring my trap.” He, he, he.

The Master has managed to get the Cybermen to help him by promising them the secrets of time travel (though they could just take his Tardis).  He also tells the Doctor there are gaps in his knowledge of Gallifrey’s history which is an idea that presumably a junior Chris Chibnall remembered subconsciously. “Your memory was selectively wiped,” The Master tells him, though it seems to be more political shenanigans than involving the Matrix in this case. There is a lot of exposition delving into Time Lord history but the upshot is a connection with Susan. She wasn’t- gasp - really the Doctor’s actual granddaughter but a political fugitive and The Master now plans to rule through Susan who has some claim to the Presidency.

For all its canon crushing ideas, I do think this may have made a better anniversary story on tv albeit one lacking the all star cast approach. At least it challenges the Doctor’s methods, even if the idea he didn’t realise Susan wasn’t his granddaughter is too improbable to believe. The story is fantastically illustrated by Mark Thomas - why couldn't Annual stories couldn’t be like this?

The next section of the magazine is a potted history of every story.  Unlike the 1973 list where each story had a separate section this time it’s a linked narrative with only the story name and brief plot details. I suppose it has to be succinct as there would now be twice as many stories to summarise as there were a decade earlier. It’s penned by Ian Levine so is mostly accurate (though he still calls the first story `An Unearthly Child`) and illustrated with familiar photos, some of which I’m sure appeared in the first special.

 Like the earlier publication this one includes a preview of forthcoming stories though no photos and ends with an interview with Colin Baker. It strikes me the mostly light blue and white with dark shirt ensemble he is wearing in this would have been a perfect enough look for his Doctor. The Special ends with a poem by Roger Woddis who was a humorous poet who worked for the `Radio Times` and also contributed to `Punch` and the `New Statesman`. He manages to sum up Doctor Who in six verses which provides an ample finish to what is a really well compiled and produced magazine