I’d seen Sylvester’s last two seasons (88-89) but couldn’t
really remember watching them on transmission (although I do have a fuzzy
memory of watching the vampire girls approach Wainwright in the graveyard whilst sitting on my Dad’s lap). My videotaped repeats of those stories had been
watched to within snapping point and every story after that I was able to blitz through on VHS. I remember my first five
were: The Five Doctors, City of Death, Day of the Daleks, Death to
the Daleks and The Ark in Space.
But 1992 was really special. Firstly, we were granted a
documentary in the form of Resistance is
Useless, which I adored. So many
clips from stories I’d never seen before! Highlights included the Kirby dance from The Underwater Menace, the
krynoid attacking the house in The Seeds of
Doom and Susan hanging from the ladder in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. There was such a viscerally exciting
strangeness about these clips that it is probably the one programme that
absolutely cemented my adoration of the show. Most of the clips were in black
and white but to this seven-year-old they were no less tantalising.
Then the repeat season began. With The Time Meddler. After the promise of Resistance is Useless, The
Time Meddler fell a little bit flat, although it has to be said that the opening
episode is a masterclass in tension and atmosphere. And it contained my first
honest-to-goodness cliff-hanger. Hartnell’s expression as the wooden bars slide
down to imprison him completely sells the jeopardy he’s in and the danger of
the mysterious monk. I was hooked. The rest of the story though, in complete
honesty, I found a bit dull. Even watching now, the Hartnell-less Episode Two
grinds to a halt and the narrative has an uphill struggle before it can find
its pace again. Still though, there was that other, more celebrated, prize
cliff-hanger. I was as gobsmacked as the 1960s viewers – probably – when it was
revealed that “The Monk’s got a TARDIS.” Suddenly, there were worlds of Doctor
Who I’d never known about unfolding on the TV screen.
The Mind Robber
was next and how magnificent it was. Just four years after The Time Meddler and the energy, slickness and pace are completely
different. The first episode, set in the TARDIS and a white void rattles along,
and it’s bloody weird. The special sound gives the story an unearthly lift and
images such as a bleached-out Jamie and Zoe beckoning the Doctor smilingly as
we hear Zoe screaming epitomise what makes The
Mind Robber so spectacular a piece of television. The story speaks to
children perhaps even more strongly than adults: it’s about their fairy tales
and legends coming to life. The tautness of the episodes means we sometimes get
three or four characters personified in each twenty minutes. Clockwork
soldiers, Gulliver, Rapunzel, the minotaur, Medusa, the Karkus, Sir Lancelot:
across the five instalments, there is so much at which to marvel. As an adult,
it’s easy to smirk at the naivety of the structure but for me, it was
tantalising. It remains a firm favourite.
Next came the two Pertwees. Both fabulous. The Daemons had an almost
perfect first episode, but one which my Uncle Dave taped over with Episode Two
the following week. I was livid. I wouldn’t be able to experience it again.
Annoyingly, when the VHS was released, I bypassed it as I had the last four
episodes recorded and felt like other, unknown stories were worthier of my
pocket money. I didn’t see Episode One again until I bought a deleted VHS copy
at a convention during my college days. But I still remembered images from
those first spooky 25 minutes so much had they haunted me. Even as a
seven-year-old, I had been right: the first night was the best. I vividly
remember Bok storming into the dig site at the end of Episode Two though and Azal, the
real-life devil, growing at the end of Episode Four. But it was the next story
that made me fall in love with the cliff-hanger ending most of all.
Whilst The Daemons
had atmosphere, The Sea Devils had
pure, unadulterated excitement. It was pacier, more frenetic, it had even
madder music, rowing boats, speedboats, carrier ships, motorbikes, submarines
and a bona fide swordfight. It caught my imagination like no other story of the
repeat season. And most importantly, I finally understood the power of The Sting of the Cliff-Hanger. My
brother and I spent a week wondering what the thing was coming towards the
Doctor and Jo at the end of Episode One. “It’s the man in the yellow jumper,”
we managed to work out after rounds of talking. Episodes Two, Three and Four
have equally brilliant cliff-hangers, and the last five minutes of those
instalments have to rank amongst the greatest moments in Doctor Who for me. Just when
you think the swordfight is over, the Master wields a knife. And only bloody
well throws it. The Doctor and Jo are trapped on the beach: guards to the left
of them; minefields to the right of them; a Sea Devil in front of them and the
Master behind them. The Light Brigade had it bad but it surely wasn’t this
harrowing. At the end of Episode Four, I really wasn’t sure what Jo had seen in
the capsule: was it empty, was there a body inside? I didn’t have a clue and it
was all I thought about that week. The
Sea Devils, rubbery turtle heads and all, is a masterpiece. I absolutely
adore it. Even with so many belters (and future discoveries - how amazing is Ambassadors?) to contend with, it remains my very favourite of
his era.
The other repeats weren’t quite as much fun. By the time Genesis and Caves came around I’d seen them on VHS and the only McCoys I
yearned to see were the ones I hadn’t: ironically Season 24 (major
disappointments abounded with their eventual VHS releases). But Revelation of the Daleks was… well, a
revelation. I loved the violence, I loved the just-a-bit-too-difficult
language, I loved the characters and I loved the atmosphere. I have a vivid
memory of watching on a tiny TV in my half-attic bedroom and a storm causing
signal interference which interrupted my recording. (This happened with Twice Upon a Time this year: the more
things change…) I still love Revelation.
The only thing to knock it from its pedestal slightly is the moment when the
renegade Daleks arrive and you realise you need that awful thing to fully
understand it: backstory. I felt left out at the time and I still believe it to
be the script’s only failing. The rest is irresistible.
It is an irony that when Doctor Who was at its most unloved
– those dark early 90s when its resurrection seemed completely impossible and
only darker times lay ahead – a half-arsed repeat season to fill the schedules
meant that at least one young boy became a true fan. I learned to love black
and white, and Jamie and Zoe, and Roger Delgado and The Grand Order of Oberon
and the “Monk’s got a TARDIS!” and Jon and Katy, and Necros, and Patrick Troughton and Douglas
Camfield and white robots, and David Maloney and Eric Saward and Michael E Brient, a once
glimpsed-never forgotten Episode One of The
Daemons and the true majesty of The
Sea Devils. These stories caught my imagination like no others. They are
examples of the most triumphant television: television that gets kids hooked.
In 1992, there was still light in the darkness.
JH
JH
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