1975<\/strong><\/p>\n A deep sense of unease had fallen across Christmas 1974 with the advent of an unknown man as our hero, the Doctor. Who was Tom Baker? The BBC didn\u2019t make it any easier by screening a \u201ccomplete adventure\u201d repeat of Jon Pertwee\u2019s Planet of the Spiders on 27th December, the very day before Baker\u2019s Doctor was due to launch in Robot<\/a> \u2013 also heralded by a weird and (for Baker) unflattering transformation montage in Radio Times<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The newcomer went down like cold turkey at our multi-generational festive gathering. My cousins disliked him on sight. The verdict of my dad and both my grandads was that, with his wild curls and bulging eyes, Baker was like \u201cHarpo ruddy Marx\u201d. They liked the Marx Brothers but didn\u2019t want one in Doctor Who<\/a>. This complaint would be frequently levelled by my elders in the coming years whenever I had the programme on in their company.<\/p>\n The new incarnation certainly didn\u2019t lead to a dip in ratings (far from it) and, after a shaky start with the giant Robot, I was becoming used to Baker\u2019s zany take on the Time Lord. During 1975, we watched him fend off the ant-like Wirrn in the excellent The Ark in Space<\/a>, a Sontaran on Dartmoor and shonky Cybermen in caves. Genesis of the Daleks was a grim classic giving us our first exposure to their wizened creator, Davros. My mum banned me from watching during this period because I was having night terrors, but that had nothing to do with Who and was the fault of the ITV series Thriller I was following with my grandparents. We\u2019d call it \u201cpost-watershed\u201d now. A weekly appointment with the psychologically disturbed, which left me in a similar state of mind. Thus, all potentially spooky television was off the cards and I had to \u201clisten only\u201d to episode five of Genesis from our staircase.<\/p>\n That spring in Waterside, Chesham, our gang of local kids created our own version of Genesis on the wasteland of the half-demolished Royal Bucks Laundry. I bagged Davros, of course. I sat on a chair in the ruins doing the full shrieking maniac, just as my grandad Pampa was walking by. \u201cWhat the hell are you doing?\u201d he shouted over. \u201cPractising to be Davros,\u201d I replied. \u201cRuddy lunatic. You want locking up,\u201d he scoffed, hastening away.<\/p>\n All in all, Season 12 hadn\u2019t been a bad run. And in the summer hols of 1975, Tom Baker went on the road to meet his fans. Now aged ten, I was such a Doctor Who nut that I badgered Ken Crabbe, owner of Chapter One bookshop, to find out when the next Target novelisations were coming out. At my behest, he frequently phoned the publishers for updates. Thus, Chesham appeared on their radar as a hotbed of fandom and when Baker was up for a promotional tour in a catchment area not far from London, Chapter One was one of a few bookshops he visited.<\/p>\n Picture the scene. Thursday 28th August 1975. Small Bucks town. Tiny shop. Hot afternoon. Hordes of excited kids piling in to meet the newish Doctor. And in a blaze of sunshine Tom Baker arrived \u2013 a towering, beaming figure. A fictional hero suddenly made flesh\u2026 3D and tangible. He was ebullient and charismatic. He looked wonderful in his costume, the red jacket with elbow patches, like a fogey geography teacher, and gamely sporting The Scarf, even though it was summer. His dark curls were resplendent, and several admirers had the nerve to ask if his hair was real. He let a little girl tug his locks to prove they were indeed emanating from his scalp. My abiding memory is Tom\u2019s toothy grin, warming voice and obvious delight at being there.<\/p>\n Poor Tom, some kids were still muttering sotto voce that Pertwee was their favourite. Though there were piles of the Target book Doctor Who and the Giant Robot (Baker\u2019s debut story), far more units of Pertwee\u2019s newly minted Doctor Who and the Green Death were being sold and shoved under Baker\u2019s nose for his sweeping autograph.<\/p>\n Because I was \u201cthe<\/em> Doctor Who Fan\u201d in the shopkeeper\u2019s eyes and a prime reason for his ringing tills, I was given pride of place with the Time Lord and allowed to go up several times and stand gormlessly by his side. And all these years later I remember shaking Tom\u2019s huge hand and stroking his iconic scarf. After a couple of hours, as the show was leaving town, my mum asked Tom to pose for some snaps on our Kodak Instamatic camera. She stepped off the kerb into the traffic in Market Square to get the giant Doctor in the frame with her ten-year-old son. She almost succeeded but \u2013 to our lasting amusement \u2013 the money shot that eventually came back from Boots was cropped at Tom\u2019s eye level.<\/p>\n The other photo opportunity in the summer of 75 was our first visit to the Doctor Who Exhibition at Longleat House. We always holidayed in the New Forest so a pootle across to Wiltshire \u2013 a family of five crammed into a Mini Clubman \u2013 was manageable. My parents were principally indulging me, but the stately home, its rhododendron drive, lakeside lawns and safari park enhanced the excursion for everyone.<\/p>\n As we turned a corner into a yard at Longleat, we clocked the outsized police box entrance to the exhibition. Queuing to pay, we could hear the theme tune, the TARDIS take-off sound and Daleks quacking away inside. It was a small warren, built into a stable block, with a central chamber with the TARDIS control column at its heart, and alcoves displaying all manner of monsters: Cybermen, Ice Warriors, Daleks, Ogrons\u2026 I\u2019m pretty sure Alpha Centauri and Aggedor from the Peladon stories were there too. I took loads of photos. Sadly, my scrapbook dematerialised from the Mulkern archive long ago, but Longleat became an annual pilgrimage for the rest of the decade.<\/p>\n Girded by the exhibition and meeting Tom Baker, I was more than primed for his second season. Which came upon us suddenly. We didn\u2019t have to wait until winter as had been tradition; the BBC1 schedulers brought the episodes forward to the autumn. Their decision made 1975 the most bountiful year of the decade with brand-new Doctor Whos on 35 Saturday nights.<\/p>\n Radio Times<\/strong> had disappointingly ceased its thumbnail cartoons for each billing in 1974 but now heralded Terror of the Zygons<\/a> with a lustrous piece of artwork by Frank Bellamy. I feasted on Season 13 \u2013 a string of gripping adventures for the Doctor and Sarah, many of which still stand up extremely well today. Horror pastiches with the shape-shifting Zygons, the Loch Ness monster, the Jekyll and Hyde anti-men in Planet of Evil<\/a>, the mummies and Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n 1976<\/strong><\/p>\n The dark nights of January 1976 exposed us to the teatime horrors of The Brain of Morbius.<\/a> I loved its array of gruesome images \u2013 a headless monster, a brain splatting on a floor \u2013 and my eyes nearly popped out during the Doctor\u2019s mind battle with Morbius when a line of earlier unknown<\/em> Doctors flashed up on screen. I\u2019ll take no arguments on this; they were<\/em> earlier Doctors. Enthralling. Of course, almost nobody watching in 1976 realised the faces belonged to BBC personnel (Doctor Who luminaries like director Douglas Camfield and script editor Robert Holmes) only too happy to drag up and pose as mystery incarnations.<\/p>\n I was keenly aware of the phasing out of Unit and the Brigadier, and lamented that the Doctor no longer regarded his laboratory at Unit HQ as \u201chome\u201d. Sarah provided the one constant. And she will always be \u201cSarah\u201d to me, not the twee \u201cSarah Jane\u201d that only became prevalent in later years. In her heyday, the Doctor used both names rarely, only for emphasis. Sarah\u2019s sudden departure in The Hand of Fear<\/a> provided a farewell almost as sorrowful as Jo Grant\u2019s, and I was disappointed by the Doctor\u2019s companion-less mission in The Deadly Assassin<\/a> with its decaying vision of the Master and all-male Gallifrey. By the end of 1976, I was beginning to sense that Doctor Who might no longer be for me.<\/p>\n Solace came in the form of The Making of Doctor Who, published by Target Books that December. For fact-thirsty fans, it immediately became a second bible (to follow the Radio Times<\/strong> Tenth Anniversary Special of 1973). It was a vast revision of a 1972 book I\u2019d never heard of and packed with information on the evolution of the series. There was an up-to-date story guide, running from An Unearthly Child<\/a> in 1963 right through to The Hand of Fear. Most of the earlier synopses were directly copied from the RT Special, albeit with striking title changes for many William Hartnell stories. What I\u2019d known for three years as \u201cWorld\u2019s End\u201d was retitled \u201cDalek Invasion of Earth<\/a>\u201d, \u201cThe Executioners\u201d was now \u201cThe Chase<\/a>\u201d and so on.<\/p>\n As many fans now realise, most of the Hartnell multi-part serials had never been given proper overall titles, not publicised ones anyway. Instead, each individual episode had its own name and, in 1973, RT had taken the title of each first episode to refer to a story as a whole. To this day I still prefer The Dead Planet over The Daleks<\/a>, and The War of God to The Massacre<\/a>. Though clearly The Nightmare Begins, while appetising for a first episode, was inadequate to describe the entire run of the 12-part epic that The Making of Doctor Who was now calling The Dalek Master Plan<\/a>.<\/p>\n The point is that for many of us growing up in the 1970s the \u201cancient history\u201d of Doctor Who remained a mystery, a puzzle with many aspects (even story titles) that didn\u2019t match. Hard to imagine in today\u2019s world where every minuscule detail is covered in print and instantly discoverable online. Back then, unless you\u2019d watched religiously and kept scholarly notes since 1963, much of the history was untraceable, unknowable. Even the regularly changing BBC production team and the reliable Radio Times<\/strong> couldn\u2019t keep track of it.<\/p>\n 1977<\/strong><\/p>\n As Doctor Who shifted gear into 1977, my devotion nosedived. I missed Sarah and the Brigadier and found The Face of Evil<\/a> insipid \u2013 apart from one aspect. One person, rather. Louise Jameson as Leela, a warrior of the Sevateem and the Doctor\u2019s unlikely new companion. A phenomenal actress as an eye-popping character \u2013 wielding a knife and deadly thorns \u2013 who simply would not be sanctioned today. Even The Robots of Death<\/a>, which I now consider brilliant, left me cold, and my sisters and I guffawed at the hamster and \u201cwobbing sleeping bag\u201d that were supposed to convey giant rats in The Talons of Weng Chiang<\/a>.<\/p>\n My \u201cfan light\u201d switched on again brightly in April 1977 when BBC2 screened the documentary Whose Doctor Who. Melvyn Bragg assessed the appeal of a series that had been running for 14 years (only 14? Extraordinary!) and the psychological effect it could be having on children. Best of all the doc was stuffed with clips. I loved catching glimpses of Pertwee\u2019s Doctor for the first time in three years, and squinted to make sense of the snippets featuring his predecessors.<\/p>\n It confirmed that, though I might not much care for current Doctor Who, I had a burning interest in past glories. It also made me realise that I was not alone. There were other fans out there, who shared memories and enthusiasm \u2013 not the casual, dwindling interest of my mates in the playground. The Making of Doctor Who and Whose Doctor Who spurred my desire to know as much about the programme\u2019s past as possible. But how?<\/p>\n Louise Jameson made a guest appearance on Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, the live BBC1 show on Saturday mornings, and took calls from viewers. She was giving away some of Leela\u2019s accoutrements to a lucky fan who could answer one question: \u201cHow many Doctor Who companions have there been?\u201d Simple! I duly sent off my postcard to the BBC \u2013 not expecting to win but sure I had the correct answer. The following Saturday I was aghast when the number read out by Swap Shop host Noel Edmonds did not tally with mine. It was higher. How could this be? Someone had got it right, so what did they know that I did not?<\/p>\n In the summer, on my family\u2019s third pilgrimage to the Longleat Exhibition, I came across a pile of leaflets by the exit about the Doctor Who Appreciation Society. The name sounded pompous for a fan club but I kept one and my mum urged me to get in touch with the like-minded. I was hesitant but it proved to be a rabbit-hole moment.<\/p>\n There were details for the DWAS\u2019s Reference Department run by its historian, J Jeremy Bentham. This must be the man with all the answers! Aged 12, I wrote to Jeremy asking about the Swap Shop roll call of companions that had left me in a quandary. He wrote back in October 1977 with a full list. Some surprises there, including Sara Kingdom, whom I\u2019d only read briefly mentioned in one story (The Dalek Master Plan). But who the hell was Katarina? Turns out they were both short-lived companions who\u2019d travelled with Hartnell and come to sticky ends. I was agog.<\/p>\n It was the start of a long correspondence with Jeremy as, on a weekly basis over the next few years, I bombarded him with arcane queries. He was patient and forbearing. I ordered all his Reference Department synopses and STINFOs (story information sheets) that went into extraordinary detail on every televised adventure. Suddenly, instead of the ridiculously cursory summary of the 12-part Master Plan in the RT Special and The Making of Doctor Who, I was reading an incredibly thorough account of all 12 episodes that flipped my wig.<\/p>\n That 1965\/66 storyline put 1977 Who to shame. The Invisible Enemy<\/a> was dreadful on almost every level, with a ludicrous giant prawn emerging as the baddie. K\u20229 was an embarrassing addition \u2013 far too childish for me, even at the age of 12. I had a party at my house on the night of the final episode and couldn\u2019t be bothered to watch the end of the story, so I didn\u2019t see how the robot dog joined the Doctor and Leela until years later. I missed chunks of Image of the Fendahl<\/a> altogether. Truly drifting now.<\/p>\n I was thrilled in Christmas 1977 when my parents finally surrendered to my pleading and bought me a tape recorder. A basic Philips device with five buttons, taking audio cassette tapes: C60, C90 or C120, which indicated the minutes they could record. Heaven! Thus I was able to tape the BBC1 repeat of The Robots of Death over New Year 1978 and play it back to my heart\u2019s content. A fine story to start with. I enjoyed it far more than on first transmission and drank in the terse dialogue and fabulous incidental music by Dudley Simpson.<\/p>\n 1978<\/strong><\/p>\n Underworld<\/a> followed. A terrible production but not bad to listen to on tape; again impressive music. And The Invasion of Time<\/a> rounded off a patchy season with a diabolical brick-walled TARDIS, but also one of the most startling cliffhangers at the end of episode four, when a quartet of Sontarans unexpectedly invaded Gallifrey. It ended with Tom Baker breaking the fourth wall (not for the first time) and grinning straight down the camera as he unveiled K\u20229 Mark II. His flippancy could be sublime, very funny, but it also negated dramatic tension. Baker was treading a fine line between displaying star ego and valiantly keeping the audience on their toes. No mean feat with four years under his floppy hat.<\/p>\n In the summer of 1978, Pampa spotted a Doctor Who competition in the Buckinghamshire Advertiser. The lucky winners would meet Tom Baker. All you had to do was cut out and collect photos of monsters in the next few issues, identify the creatures (ridiculously easy) and send them in. Now 13, I huffed that I couldn\u2019t be bothered. Besides, I\u2019d already met \u201cthe Doctor\u201d three years earlier. Pampa and my Nan saved the photos and made me post my entry.<\/p>\n The news soon came that I was one of the winners. I was to report around midday on Saturday 2nd September at the Bull, a large inn outside Gerrards Cross. It was Dad\u2019s 39th birthday so we made it a family outing: my parents, my little sisters and me. We were ushered into a function room where lots of other families stood around \u2013 each brood including one immediately obvious, socially awkward, crushingly embarrassed Doctor Who nerd. I was one of those. Manky sandwiches and bottles of nasty 1970s pop drinks were set out on trestle tables.<\/p>\n Then word came. The Lord of Time had been delayed\u2026 but he shouldn\u2019t be too long. Half an hour later Tom Baker breezed into the room, loud and effusive, with an entourage of lackeys. We nerds twitched, our siblings stifled yawns and our star-struck parents shuffled us forward.<\/p>\n This was a different man from the one I\u2019d met three summers earlier. No longer fresh-faced. Hair lighter and straggly. Wearing the Doctor\u2019s long tweedy coat. When my moment came to be near him, it hit me that \u2013 like the old geezers who patrolled Saturday Morning Pictures at the Chesham Embassy cinema \u2013 Tom Baker reeked of booze and fags. My mum observed afterwards that he was \u201cdeeply unsavoury\u201d.<\/p>\n And yet Tom was attentive to the child winners of the competition. He fielded all our banal questions. The only one I remember now is the timeworn \u201cWhat\u2019s your favourite story?\u201d Mainly because I helped to answer it. \u201cWhat was that one set in the big mansion?\u201d muttered Tom, vaguely. \u201cPyramids of Mars<\/a>,\u201d suggested one acolyte. \u201cSeeds of Doom<\/a>,\u201d ventured another. \u201cEh? No, no, no,\u201d he puffed, dismissing these treasured classics. \u201cThat one last year. At Mick Jagger\u2019s house.\u201d \u201cImage of the Fendahl<\/a>?\u201d I piped up. The Doctor beamed at my 13-year-old self. \u201cYes! That\u2019s it! That was a good one.\u201d In that instant, I warmed to him again. He may not have been clued up on the titles of even his most recent adventures but he was, in person, so like the benevolent alien he portrayed on screen. Inventive, disreputable, unpredictable, charming.<\/p>\n When my family were leaving, we spotted Tom in the car park and my parents asked him to pose with me. Another classic photo. Me wearing my Doctor Who badge and clutching my lever-arch file of Doctor Who bumph. After her botched attempt in 1975, Mum carefully framed his eyes, forehead and hair. I remember glancing sideways and thinking, \u201cThe Doctor has just put his big hand on my shoulder.\u201d I was chuffed.<\/p>\n Then a few hours later, there he was on telly in the start of his fifth season with\u00a0The Ribos Operation<\/a>\u00a0Part One. I squatted in my grandparents\u2019 lounge a few feet from the screen, primed to tape the Doctor\u2019s meetings with the White Guardian and new Time Lady companion Romana (Mary Tamm), and the beginning of their quest for the Key to Time. I lapped it up. My faith had been restored. Nan bustled in and asked, \u201cIs that how he looked this afternoon, Patrick?\u201d I shushed her and she retreated, trilling, \u201cOooh, sorry!\u201d For years, Nan\u2019s interruption was preserved on my Ribos cassette tape. I wish I still had it.<\/p>\n I was captivated by the Key to Time season, enjoyed the Doctor\u2019s antipathy\/rapport with Romana, and the breadth of storytelling and ripe characterisation, even as the production line ran out of steam and money across those 26 weeks. The Stones of Blood<\/a> remains to this day my favourite Tom Baker adventure, among stiff opposition, largely for its Sapphic undercurrent and the charm of Beatrix Lehmann\u2019s bumbling character, Professor Amelia Rumford.<\/p>\n 1979<\/strong><\/p>\n As the 70s drew to a close, Doctor Who shifted in tone, veering between witty and silly under the stewardship of the great Douglas Adams, who\u2019d signed up for a one-year stint as script editor. In the summer of 79 I had the temerity to submit a storyline to the BBC. I remember writing an adventure where the Doctor and Romana arrive on a world, initially unaware it\u2019s the Dalek planet Skaro, and she falls into a subterranean abyss and regenerates. Maybe this was the codswallop that landed on Adams\u2019s desk. In any case, he responded with courtesy and advice. The eternal Hitch-Hiker\u2019s status wasn\u2019t as legendary as it deservedly is today, so I\u2019m delighted I kept his letter from August 79, which pre-dates by a few weeks the start of Destiny of the Daleks<\/a>.<\/p>\n For Season 17, Baker\u2019s sixth, he was teamed with Lalla Ward as a hoity-sour, regenerated Romana, and frivolity and shoddy production values trampled over any chance of spookiness. Just not my cup of tea, not even perennial fan favourite City of Death<\/a>, where the BBC pushed the boat out for location filming in Paris.<\/p>\n![\"Radio](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2023\/07\/RT-1974-Doctor-Who-Robot-montage-b4e5a57.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C188\" "\\"RT")
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