Downtime

The Nineties saw a slew of fan produced Doctor Who spin offs of varying quality but none has the provenance of Downtime. It stars three iconic series regulars- Nicholas Courtney, Elisabeth Sladen and Debbie Watling - in their original roles and is written by Marc Platt who’s `Ghost Light` was part of the last regular season of the original series. Even more impressively it is directed by Christopher Barry who helmed such series classics as `Brain of Morbius` and `The Deamons` and it even features the Yeti, John Leeson as a DJ and Geoffrey Beevers! You can’t get much more Doctor Who than all that!  Shot during an unseasonably wintry late March in 1995 it is a good watch for fans of the series as well as a fitting tribute to the main stars none of whom sadly are still with us.

Golden Mile Years - The Blackpool Doctor Who Exhibition #2

Blackpool’s Doctor Who Exhibition had a perfect entrance. Sitting just off the main road but visible from it, a TARDIS exterior even larger than the `real` thing sat enticingly open. Colourful signs on the wall to your left invited the eager fan- who really needed no encouragement - to “Defy the Daleks” while clips from the series wafted through the air like sirens attracting their next victims! Not even the warning metallic command “Humanoids will stand still for identification. The TARDIS is under Dalek control” could deter the eager fan. The only ordinary feature of any of this was a toll booth and the fact that the ticket was a generic one without any souvenir value at all as it doesn’t mention what you’ve paid for. However it did only cost 30p! Still that ticket is soon stuffed into a back pocket as you negotiate a descent into darkness. Quite a daring entrance for a public display- normally the sort of thing you’d expect from a ghost train. This long staircase and the fact that from the top you couldn’t see what was down there but you could hear all sorts of noises gave a sense that you really were descending into another world.