Far More Than Just Another Time Lord.

  Over the following months I’m going to be posting a series of articles about one of my favourite periods of Doctor Who. Now those reading this who don’t know me will be nodding their head sagely and muttering ‘Ah yes the Hinchcliffe era no doubt, with it’s wonderful gothic undertones and brooding performance by Tom Baker.’ Well no I’m afraid not, so perhaps they're now thinking ‘Well Adam perhaps you’re going to take us through your own personal journey concerning the master class in base under siege stories that where the Troughton years.’ again I’m afraid not.1 They may now be furious scratching their heads and saying ‘A look back at the glory of Pertwee or perhaps yet another spirited defence of the Graham Williams era?’ Once again dear reader no!  The era that I love the most is that of lucky number 7, Sylvester McCoy. Now I’m sure some of you have read that sentence and just gone ‘Oh....right’ and that’s OK, frankly I’m use to it by now and I bear no, well very little, resentment. Just the other night I meant a very pleasant fellow Who lover, who when I mentioned that I was a McCoy fan placed a hand on my shoulder and just said ‘I’m so sorry’. Now obviously he was joking but it does underline a certain attitude towards the last 3 years in the original series run. However the point of these posts will not be to say that people who don’t like McCoy are wrong, there purpose is to say why I like them and perhaps it’ll provide something of a cathartic exercise for me personal. That doesn’t mean I’ll be utterly gushing, like every era of Who it has it has produced its clunkers, but failures can sometimes be more interesting to examine than success, for such an example you should check out Tardis Eruditorum’s look back at the 6^th Doctor era.

This particular post is too give some personal context as to how I got into Doctor Who. I was very lucky, I grew up in a Who positive household, my parents watched the show regularly throughout its original run and I was always aware of its existence. I was born in 1981 so was around the right age to catch McCoy when he started, but here’s the thing dear reader I was an overly nervous child so I never properly watched it. I was aware of McCoy as the Doctor but never saw him until the first episode of The Curse Of Fenric in 1989, now in my head I knew it was brilliant but it was also absolutely terrifying so I didn't watch the rest. Who knows perhaps if the original series had gone on for just one more year I’d have tuned in but could'a should'a would'a is meaningless.3 So Doctor Who was cancelled and that could have been that for me. But then Doctor Who’s 30^th anniversary swung round and they started showing repeats on BBC 2 and I watched them with my parents and that was how I got to know the Doctor, by starting with Hartnell and going through to McCoy. Of course I really liked it but I wasn’t a fan, at least not just yet. Over the next few years I watched a lot of science fiction and read a lot of comics, sometimes I would go round to friends and we might watch the occasional video of Who, the Five Doctors for example, and once I borrowed Silver Nemesis (stop laughing) which I really enjoyed, especially as it had a cool making of documentary all about Doctor Who.4 Despite this outrageous flirting I don’t count myself truly becoming a fan until about 1996 when, a few months before the TV Movie, I made a conscious decision to use some birthday tokens to buy a Doctor Who video, from Boots5, that video was Time And The Rani and I loved it (no seriously stop laughing!). And that seems as good a point as any to leave you until the first proper instalment of what I’m going to be calling Sylvester Sundays.       

 

1. Has anyone ever written any fan fiction that mashes up series 5 Troughton with the Steven Seagal movie  and if not could they do so immediately please.

2. Though having said that once I have all the Pertwee on DVD I’ll definitely be doing a similar look back on the era as I think it’s weirdly misunderstood.  

3. It's also the name of a very good Farscape episode.

4. I'm still incredibly sad that they didn't put it as an extra on the Silver Nemesis DVD.

5. Does anyone else remember when Boots used to sell videos? Did any other chemists sell them?