Can it really be 2023? As we Doctor Who<\/a> fans prepare to celebrate the Diamond Anniversary in November, I realise with distinct unease that I\u2019ve been following this extraordinarily long-lived television programme for some 56 of its 60 years. Not always as a fan, mind you. It actually took me quite a while to become one of those, as I will relate, and even then across the decades my appreciation has soared and faltered.<\/p>\n All fans have a story to tell of their obsession with the Time Lord\u2019s adventures, and RadioTimes.com<\/a> has kindly allowed me to express mine here. My Doctor Who memoir. My \u201cWho-moir\u201d. In several chapters, I will revisit my childhood, adolescence and \u201cmature\u201d years and reflect on my changing relationship with the series and the work it has provided, the friends I\u2019ve made and the characters I\u2019ve met along the way \u2013 from fellow fans to people who\u2019ve worked on the programme.<\/p>\n The 1960s<\/strong><\/p>\n I might be expelled through the clenched sphincter of fandom for this admission but, although I\u2019m old enough and lucky enough to have watched Doctor Who in the 1960s \u2013including many episodes now missing from the BBC archive \u2013 I wasn\u2019t exactly captivated from day one. I know lots of people who were instantly hooked at jumping-on points across the decades, but as a toddler in the 1960s I had an aversion to Doctor Who. It spooked me. Not just the monsters but Doctor Who himself \u2013 Patrick Troughton. Strike me down but back then I found the American sci-fi series Lost in Space far more appealing. One of its main characters, Judy Robinson (Marta Kristen), was my first crush.<\/p>\n I was born in the mid 1960s halfway through William Hartnell\u2019s tenure as the original Doctor. Yes, I\u2019m that ancient\u2026 albeit too young to remember any of his episodes on first transmission (apart from his brief return in The Three Doctors<\/a> in 1972\/73). The Sixties may often be perceived as a black-and-white world. Sure, television was monochrome for most of the British population, but everything around us was vibrant with colour and bursting with innovation. I have excellent recall of those formative years. The fashions, the pop music, the cars, the toys and, yes, the telly\u2026 Especially the telly.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, Doctor Who simply wasn\u2019t on my parents\u2019 radar. Saturday TV meant an afternoon of sport with BBC1\u2019s Grandstand and the football results, then we\u2019d most likely switch to ITV. It was at my cousins\u2019 homes that I was exposed to Who. They were older, braver and they loved it. As a toddler, the throbbing, hissing theme tune alone was enough to make me flee the room; doubly alarming was the sight of Troughton\u2019s face bubbling up in the swirling patterns of the title sequence. To my young eyes, he had sinister features. The Dark Stranger no child must speak to. Years later, I realised that he\u2019d actually been smiling in that intro and quite benign.<\/p>\n So my earliest Doctor Who memory? It\u2019s an odd one. In the early 1980s, a creaky old episode was screened at a Doctor Who Appreciation Society convention \u2013 and my mind went \u201cPing!\u201d. It was part three of The Underwater Menace<\/a>, a derided Troughton story, and I knew I had seen the \u201cdance of the Fish People\u201d (a sort of aquatic ballet with strident music) when I was tiny in January 1967. Similarly, something clicked years later when clips surfaced from The Macra Terror<\/a> of companion Polly screaming at a giant crab claw.<\/p>\n I have a clear memory of the summer of 1967, toddling round to our neighbours, my dad\u2019s cousin (who looked like Dusty Springfield) and her hunky husband, who was the first adult Who nut I encountered. Enthusing about \u201can abominable snowman in Tibet\u201d, he coaxed me into their living room but, after one glimpse of the hairy monster on a hillside, I fled home for my tea, thus forsaking the first Yeti story, The Abominable Snowmen<\/a> \u2013 and my only opportunity to see a classic serial now mostly missing from the BBC archive.<\/p>\n Roll on, spring 1968. My mum was heavily pregnant with my sister Karen, so most Saturdays I was farmed out to my grandparents who lived in the big house up the hill. It was there, finally, secure in the company of my grandad (nicknamed Pampa) that my viewing of Doctor Who began in earnest. Pampa had enjoyed the series from the start, often telling me about the Daleks (whom I\u2019d never seen), about his favourite adventure when the \u201cold\u201d Doctor met Marco Polo<\/a> and Kublai Khan, and about how silly the \u201cnew\u201d Doctor had seemed when he first walked on with his tall hat and recorder.<\/p>\n Sitting on Pampa\u2019s lap, aged nearly three, I had my second chance with the Yeti \u2013 though my mind computed them as bears with torch eyes, looming out of shadowy tunnels and roaring at soldiers. Compelling stuff. The Web of Fear<\/a> subsequently became my all-time favourite story but for decades was another long-lost classic. I was overjoyed when most of the episodes were recovered in 2013 and I was staggered that many of director Douglas Camfield\u2019s moody set-ups matched my hazy memories.<\/p>\n With Pampa, I also braved chunks of Fury from the Deep<\/a>. That six-part classic is entirely lost now (bar the odd clip and its soundtrack), but the madcap helicopter rescue out at sea is etched in my mind, as is the sorrowful farewell to companion Victoria. The following week we watched another now missing instalment, the start of The Wheel in Space<\/a>. A tense piece with mood music by the Radiophonic Workshop\u2019s Brian Hodgson, it follows the Doctor and Jamie clambering through the corridors of an unmanned spaceship, prising open sliding doors, all the while observed and pursued by a comical, waddling Servo Robot.<\/p>\n Sadly, I\u2019ve only the vaguest sketch of the repeat of The Evil of the Daleks<\/a>: a Dalek gliding through a gloomy mansion. It was the summer of 1968 \u2013 I must have been out playing. The first episode that I steeled myself to watch at home alone was the delirious opener to The Mind Robber. Jamie and Zoe get lost in a white void and are hypnotised by \u201cwhite\u201d robots. With no one older around to explain, I was confused why the duo were trapped in the Blue Peter studio (whose set was a similar vast white space). Funny to think that Don Smith, the Radio Times<\/strong> photographer and years later a dear friend, was standing alongside them on the day of recording at BBC Television Centre.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve always loved Unit (the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce) and the role it has played in the series over time: Soldiers v Monsters. Bring it on! And happily I witnessed its origins. In The Invasion<\/a>, Lethbridge-Stewart (familiar from The Web of Fear) was now a Brigadier and brought to life in a charismatic, chipper performance by Nicholas Courtney. There was an exciting, action-packed sequence in episode four (now missing) where a Unit helicopter rescues the Doctor and his young friends from the rifle fire of the bad guys. People always seemed to be \u201csaved by chopper\u201d in Doctor Who back then. I recall that rescue mission, and the Doctor repeatedly venturing into the ultra-modern lair of evil Tobias Vaughan, but as for the Cybermen\u2026 Nada. They barely featured across the eight episodes of The Invasion.<\/p>\n As the months passed and led into 1969, my Doctor Who viewing tailed off. I can still see the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe running through mine tunnels and tumbling down a shaft in The Space Pirates<\/a> (yes, another lost chunk). Troughton\u2019s last stand The War Games<\/a> sprawled over ten weeks and ended with him captured and put on trial by the Time Lords. Three weeks later Star Trek debuted on BBC1 in the same 5.15pm Saturday slot. The American sci-fi series was a sensation, far slicker than Doctor Who, and our families lapped it up. It mirrored the excitement in the air as the world anticipated the first Moon landing. While the real events unfolded on TV, I was inadvertently inhaling Bostick glue fumes as my dad helped me build an Airfix model of the Apollo rocket. That summer of 1969 was an exciting time to be alive as a young kid. The future was in the stars. Or so it seemed\u2026<\/p>\n 1970<\/strong><\/p>\n Colour television had finally arrived in Britain. BBC2 had been broadcasting in colour for a few years, but it was only at the very end of 1969 that BBC1 and ITV followed suit. Not that the majority of the country could receive the signals or had upgraded their aerials and TV sets. My parents certainly couldn\u2019t afford to until well into the decade, but Pampa always kept up with technology. In the vales of the Chilterns where our home town Chesham lies, the signal was patchy, but he and my Nan had a fully operative, colour telly installed in early 1970. For me, aged nearly five, this was nothing short of a marvel. I could gaze at their screen for hours. At any image. Sitting up so close that my eyebrows tingled from the inch of static energy radiating from the glass, I pored over the ever-shifting dots that made up the colour picture.<\/p>\n January 1970 was the first time my dad took an interest in Doctor Who. Maybe he\u2019d spotted the glorious cover of Radio Times<\/strong> somewhere (we didn\u2019t subscribe to the magazine then) or caught trailers on BBC1, but I know he was lured in by the programme\u2019s cool new star, Jon Pertwee. Dad loved radio comedy, which had been Pertwee\u2019s milieu hitherto. Thus we sat down together at teatime on Saturday 3rd January and watched the first episode of Spearhead from Space<\/a>. Dad chortled at the scenes of the befuddled Doctor in a hospital bed, demanding his shoes and retrieving his key, and pulling at his new\/old face in a mirror. Dad rarely followed any series for long and, when the demands of the local football club took precedence, he drifted away. I kept watching, often at my grandparents\u2019 house.<\/p>\n 1970-vintage Doctor Who was utterly brilliant. In many respects it still is. There was nothing on television to match it. Go and watch a 1970 Doomwatch, Paul Temple, or Out of the Unknown\u2026 Nah. Boring! Actually, Catweazle and Ace of Wands were innovative and zany but still not a patch on Doctor Who. With strong storytelling, pacey, urgent direction and chilling cliffhangers, it had become a more adult-orientated show and presented a challenge for timorous little ones. I was barely five but up for the frisson of fear and dollops of horror delivered at teatime. Luckily, Pertwee\u2019s charismatic dandy Doctor teamed with the dependable Brigadier and rather severe scientist Liz Shaw (Caroline John) provided a reassuring, mature presence, while taking every threat extremely seriously.<\/p>\n Nightmare images etched in my memory are the hideous plastic Auton crashing through woodland to hijack a Unit Jeep; another Auton jerking to life from a line-up of dummies in a factory; then a group of mannequins smashing through a shop window and killing a policeman\u2026 Hot on their tail were the mysterious lizard creatures that were driving adults insane in caves, one of their number creeping up behind Liz when she\u2019s alone in a barn. Every fan knows what a Silurian<\/a> is now and what its shortcomings might be, but back then the slow reveal over several weeks was bloody terrifying for kids. One foggy Sunday morning in February 1970, Pampa took me on a dog walk over the fields and assured me he could hear one of those heavy-breathing lizard men coming towards us in the mist.<\/p>\n To this day, Inferno<\/a> is still one of the most gripping stories ever made. Unfolding over seven weeks and closing the 1970 season, it gave us a glimpse of the end of the world. Inferno had an augmented title sequence, which, in monochrome, appeared to be exploding mountains and a torrent of grey porridge. When I saw episode three on Pampa\u2019s colour TV, those images became red and fiery, and he explained the alarming concepts of volcanoes and molten lava. That episode transported the Doctor to a militaristic, parallel world and gave viewers a nasty turn when the \u201cBrigade Leader\u201d spins round in his chair and has an eyepatch over a deep scar. Courtney played the Brig\u2019s sadistic alter ego to perfection and in subsequent years got much mileage out of anecdotes about his eyepatch, but for weeks in 1970 I had a sickening horror of the gory hole that must lie hidden behind it.<\/p>\n Inferno<\/a> depicted soldiers and scientists regressing into ferocious werewolves (Primords) and there\u2019s a scene where the Doctor\u2019s locked in a cell next to a man who is slowly transforming. Soon this Primord is raving and bending apart the cell bars to enter and attack. Decades later, I was at one of mega-fan Ian Levine\u2019s dos, standing next to Ian Fairbairn, the actor who\u2019d played that Primord. He was diffident, charming and taken aback when I dropped into the chit-chat, \u201cI have to tell you, you gave me nightmares when I was a kid.\u201d \u201cWell, I can only apologise,\u201d Fairbairn shrugged.<\/p>\n The Silurians, the Primords, the eye-patched Brigade Leader and the appalling roll of lava that signals the end of the parallel Earth would now be only fading memories, had Ian Levine and others like him not stepped in to halt the BBC junking its own precious material. Early \u201970s Doctor Who is without question my favourite period of the programme, but very few episodes exist in their original format. The BBC made black-and-white film copies and colour conversions for overseas markets, and we fans are so lucky that every Jon Pertwee episode survives in one form or another. Devotees of Doomwatch and Ace of Wands are not so fortunate.<\/p>\n 1971<\/strong><\/p>\n The day after New Year\u2019s Day 1971, the Mulkerns settled down for the start of Pertwee\u2019s second season. BBC1 trailers had heavily promoted a bearded new villain, the Master, accompanied by hypnotic Radiophonic music, which lured us into Terror of the Autons<\/a>.<\/p>\n Actually, during this time, individual story titles didn\u2019t register with me. Some adventures were distinct from what had gone before but, with the regular Earth setting and the Unit military base, the boundaries blurred. I was spooked by the policeman unmasked as a blank-faced Auton and a few weeks later believed Captain Chin Lee, an unsmiling Chinese woman in The Mind of Evil<\/a>, to be another Auton about to have her face yanked off. That story merged seamlessly into The Claws of Axos<\/a>, with its golden beings that turned into tentacled beasts, and they again blurred with the Primitives in Colony in Space<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, this was the time when I was developing as a fan. Exposed to Who for four years, I was finally obsessed. I loved the Unit set-up; I wanted to emulate Pertwee\u2019s Doctor \u2013 any large towel or tablecloth served as a cloak; the Master was a suave bad guy; and I simply adored Jo Grant. She was plucky, stylish, gorgeous, self-sacrificing, with that slightly croaky voice and effervescent personality. No contest, Jo will always be my No 1 Doctor Who companion. Thus I became aware of \u201cKaty Manning\u201d. And if you had told five-year-old me that 40 years later my childhood heroine would become a close friend, I\u2019d have dematerialised on the spot.<\/p>\n The TARDIS\u2026 Yes, the TARDIS was fascinating. I hadn\u2019t really noticed it before because it barely featured in the episodes I\u2019d seen. Then suddenly this old dark cupboard in the corner of the Doctor\u2019s Unit laboratory became an object of wonder, a police box (whatever that was), the portal to a magically larger dimension. Along with Jo, I was transported to another world in Colony in Space. The mention of \u201cTime Lords\u201d, which Pampa did his best to explain (\u201cvery old men from another planet who live for hundreds of years\u201d), made me realise for the first time that the Doctor and the Master were ALIENS.<\/p>\n From that moment I was captivated and couldn\u2019t bear to miss an episode. One Saturday, I rowed bitterly with Dad to drive us back after his football match on Chesham Moor in time for episode five of Colony (we missed the start). And then that story was followed by The Daemons<\/a>, still the era-defining classic. The Master in a red cape in his cavern conjuring up black magic, a stone gargoyle Bok and a giant horned devil, Azal. Crikey, it was a great time to be a burgeoning fan.<\/p>\n Imagine \u2013 or, if you were there, remember \u2013 the excitement of the 1971 Christmas holidays. Not only were we treated to a \u201ccomplete adventure\u201d repeat of The Daemons (the first of its kind, and one that helped imprint that story in the mind), but the BBC also kept blasting us with a trailer for Day of the Daleks<\/a>. It was a specially shot film (now lost, sadly) of the Daleks making a spectacular return after four years, gliding along the Thames Embankment, squawking \u201cEXTERMINATE!\u201d That ensured that our whole family gathered for episode one on New Year\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n 1972<\/strong><\/p>\n Doctor Who had remained solely a TV programme for me, a weekly appointment to view. I was only vaguely aware of it existing in paper form \u2013 a cousin being treated to Countdown (later TV Action), a weekly comic that sometimes had vivid cartoons of Pertwee on the cover. My mum, juggling the Mulkerns\u2019 limited resources to feed and clothe a family of five, flatly refused to waste 5p on that. One day in January 1972, a box arrived at Waterside Infants\u2019 School full of discarded magazines, and for the first time I became aware of the importance of Radio Times<\/strong>.<\/p>\n On the Saturday Television page I came across a billing for Day of the Daleks, adorned with a postage-stamp-sized cartoon of an Ogron. Rifling through the box, I found an earlier issue with a cartoon of a Dalek blasting out the word \u201cANNIHILATE\u201d. Thrilling! The next day at Waterside post office, I grabbed that week\u2019s Radio Times<\/strong> and insisted, INSISTED, that my mum shell out 5p for it. She agreed. I gawped at the simple but lovely cartoon of Alpha Centauri (from The Curse of Peladon<\/a>), one of the most comical but endearing creatures ever to grace Doctor Who. That was it. Thereafter I made a fuss if we didn\u2019t buy Radio Times<\/strong>, and before long it was added to our delivery from the newsagent. Each week, the brief write-up and cartoon gave devotees a taster of what was to come the following Saturday. Here we glimpsed for the first time a Sea Devil, in profile. Presaging The Mutants<\/a>, the Radio Times<\/strong> cartoon suggested to me a new robot to rival the Daleks, so I was dismayed when it turned out to be a space station, Skybase.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2023\/07\/RT-1967-Doctor-Who-Underwater-menace-feature-e963bd4.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C319\" "\\"RT")
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