http://dwin.org/ Recent news from the Doctor Who Blog and news from the Doctor Who Information Network en luca2006@rogers.com Copyright 2013 2013-05-19T01:27:32+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2283 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2283 .....the Valeyard! Or at least that was one of the names given in the episode. What did you all think of the season finale, The Name of the Doctor?  How many of you guessed that ending? How many of you guessed that beginning? Let us know your thoughts. Don’t stop for the next six months - because next up is the 50th Anniversary special! Or maybe we should call it the 2nd part of the 50th Anniversary special…. http://dwin.org/blog/article/2283 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-05-19T00:27:32+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2282 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2282 1981 was an extremely eventful year for Doctor Who, even with only 3 new stories (comprising 12 episodes) broadcast in the UK (Warriors’ Gate through Logopolis). Most notably, the longest running Doctor (which is still the case to this day), Tom Baker left after the end of this, his seventh season. Romana and K9 (each having been around a few years in different incarnations)  left a couple of stories before Tom Baker did (although K9 would re-appear on our screens before the end of the year, though not, technically-speaking, in Doctor Who). A new, fifth Doctor, debuted in the closing seconds of Logopolis. It would not be until January 1982 that viewers got to see a substantial performance of Peter Davison in the role, but his debut in 1981 was quite revolutionary and, as it has transpired all these years later, quite influential. The Doctor could now be played by a younger man. That wasn’t all. With a delay to a new broadcast slot for the next season to weekdays in January 1982, 1981 was the last of 18 consescutive years where Doctor Who was broadcast in Saturdays in the UK - quite remarkable when you think about the show being a tradition and an establishment. In anticipation of the season (and because of the then-unprecedented 9 month gap between seasons), the BBC broadcast a selection of stories from each previous Doctor for a repeat run in the autumn of 1981, entitled “The Five Faces of Doctor Who”. For many younger fans (at least, though younger or about the same age of the programme) this was the first chance to watch stories from Doctor’s other than Tom Baker, or to watch black and white Doctor Who episodes. The repeat run was the first shift in the BBC and those making Doctor Who to start regularly celebrating its past while also making new episodes. The run of five stories showed was An Unearthly Child (and yes, Doctor Who Magazine, that’s what the BBC called as they do now, and not “100,000 B.C.”), The Krotons, The Three Doctors, Carnival of Monsters and the 2nd airing in 1981 of Logopolis. The ratings - with the episodes shown on BBC2 - were excellent for repeats and for something shownn on BBC2. In fact these broadcasts did comparatively better against expectations than the Season 18 episodes did on first airing (including Logopolis, which was a part of both Season 18 and The Five Faces of Doctor Who). For many fans, the presence of The Krotons as the selected Troughton highlighted (or drew attention to) the fact that so many episodes in the archives were missing - The Krotons was the only complete 4-part Patrick Troughton story in the archives at that time (and there’s only been one more recovered since then). In 1981 Doctor Who Magazine published a list of what was missing from the archives, making the fact that so much of Doctor Who was missing in the archives public knowledge for the first time. The release of this information was a very dramatic event for many Doctor Who fans in 1981. But some fans didn’t accept this news passively - 1981 is also when the yearning for the recovery of missing episodes and the hunting for them began for so many fans, which still happenining even to this day….. 1981 ended with the broadcast of the first ever spin-off of Doctor Who - K9 and Company. Elisabeth Sladen and John Leeson were back, and nobody knew then that this was only to be the first of two spin-offs for Doctor Who that they would play their customary roles in together! Something else happened in 1981 with Doctor Who which was very eventful for this writer. On October 29th 1981, I watched Doctor Who for the first time! The episode was The Pirate Planet Part 3 on its Thursday repeat (although I didn’t realize it was even being shown on Saturdays, at least for the first few weeks I watched). Hooked by the cliffhanger to that episode of the Doctor falling off the edge of a plank, I had to tune in next week to find out how the Doctor got out of it. And I’ve been hooked ever since…... http://dwin.org/blog/article/2282 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-05-17T15:02:35+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2281 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2281 The Cybermen return in Nightmare in Silver, penned by Neil Gaiman and the first Cybermen story to feature “Silver” in the title and on going chess match in 25 years. Let us know your thoughts on the episode, and whether it was an upgrade on Silver Nemesis (or any other episode you care to compare it to). http://dwin.org/blog/article/2281 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-05-12T00:06:42+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2280 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2280 The 1980’s! Doctor Who’s third different decade that it has existed in, and one that started so brightly. Not with the UK ratings, which saw the show take a ratings dive in large part because the BBC were now losing the Saturday ratings battle in general from new and networked competition. But 33 years later it’s really tough to care about ratings in one country too much when the quality of the episodes being made and shown were so incredibly high-quality. 33 years later one can watch the first season with new producer John Nathan-Turner at the helm (with Christopher H. Bidmead now script editing) and seeing a show that is trying very hard. There was a whole new musical style to the show (which included a new energetic version of the theme tune, but also all of the incidental music now done by the Radiophonic Workshop at the BBC). Whereas previous seasons usually only tended to feature one or two new writers per season, Season 18 featured as many as 5 stories that had new writers (including one script, Full Circle, written by a 17 year old fan, Andrew Smith - something that you’ll never see happen nowadays with the television series). The show had never looked more stylish, with an entire new set of directors used by John Nathan-Turner - Lovett Bickford, Paul Joyce and Peter Grimwade amongst them. It made for a fantastic set of episodes for Season 18, although only 16 of the 28 were broadcast in 1980 - the rest we’ll get to in the next entry, for 1981. John-Nathan Turner wanted to take the show into the 1980’s and even 30-plus years later, when you watch Doctor Who from beginning to end (or rather, beginning to present day) you can still see what a great job he did. 1980 will always be remembered by Doctor Who fans as the year that JNT came on to the scene and put his stamp on the show. http://dwin.org/blog/article/2280 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-05-11T02:53:48+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2277 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2277 Dame Diana Rigg made her first ever Doctor Who appearance last night, and her first ever appearance alongside her daughter, Rachel Stirling. Meanwhile Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax featured for the third time. Tell us what you thought of The Crimson Horror - a sweet episode, or a did it cause your skin to go red? http://dwin.org/blog/article/2277 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-05-05T19:56:23+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2276 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2276 1979 was the end of an era for Doctor Who in almost as many ways as had been the case in 1969. True, the decade didn’t end with a change of Doctor or broadcast colours as had happened in 1969, but, other than two episodes that were broadcast in early 1980, the Graham Williams era finished in 1979, as did Douglas Adams involvement in Doctor Who. The Delia Derbyshire theme arrangement and Dudley Simpson’s incidental music also finished at this time, two staples of the show that had been there since its inception (or near-inception in the case of Dudley Simpson - he’d “only” been there since 1964. Not all of this was meant to happen this way - all of these elements should have gone well into the end of February 1980 with the broadcast of the six-part adventure Shada, but a BBC staff strike delayed production on the show that the original production dates were cancelled, and the BBC chose to prioritize its resources on getting other programmes back up to speed. It still seems incredible that the BBC would not choose to complete a 6 part partially-filmed story for 17 year old series that was now starting to earn the BBC a ton of cash in North America and was still garnering high ratings at home.  (Technically it got the highest ratings ever in 1979, though that was because another atrike at ITV put the BBC’s only competition off the air for about three months, including two months where new episodes - namely the entirety of Destiny of the Daleks and City of Death) were being broadcast. Nobody knew it at the time but it was in retrospect a sign of things to come in terms of BBC Management of the brand. But despite the incomplete Shada being abandoned during 1979, there were still a fine run of stories that are probably liked by fandom more now than they were at the time. The show was continuing to garner momentun in North America and Tom Baker and Lalla Ward were stars in the UK. Here’s to the end of the very fine and successful decade for Doctor Who that was the 1970’s! http://dwin.org/blog/article/2276 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-05-03T20:07:07+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2275 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2275 Come Along if You Care Leave your cares behind and come along to this Tell us what you thought of the Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS With apologies to the Amboy Dukes. http://dwin.org/blog/article/2275 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-04-28T01:02:22+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2274 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2274 As alluded to a couple of episodes ago, 1978 was a big year for Doctor Who in the United States. Although the series had been seen in a handful of US markets since 1972, 1978 was the year the show went national and started to become popular. In the wake of Star Wars the previous year, the Tom Baker episodes (starting with Robot) became a huge success and made Tom Baker THE Doctor in this market - the definitive article, some might say. In the meantime, in the UK new episodes were proceeding as per usual. The show it its 15th anniversary in stride but without a great deal of fanfare - no special anniversary episodes were made nor was there much in the way of a celebration by the BBC - an appearance in costume by Tom Baker and Mary Tamm (and Carole Ann Ford in civies) on the BBC news programme Nationwide (where a seemingly annoyed and possibly intoxicated Tom Baker gets annoyed with interview Frank Bough for everyone to see nation-wide) was about it. A planned scene where the Doctor is given a birthday cake by Romana in the first episode of The Stones of Blood (the 100th Doctor Who story and also the story broadcast during November 1978, the anniversary month) was nixed by producer Graham Williams. Something interesting to note about 1978 which is rarely commented upon - when The Androids of Tara was broadcast in December 1978, it was the 101st Doctor Who story and the 51st to be broadcast in colour. As such, only by the end of 1978 could it be said that there were more stories made and broadcast in colour than there was in black & white. Of course by 1978, most shows that had all or a significant number of black and white episdoes made were long gone. Not Doctor Who. There would be plenty of life still to come. http://dwin.org/blog/article/2274 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-04-25T21:11:04+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2273 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2273 Just like Emma Grayling and Professor Palmer did in this episode, don’t hide your thoughts and feelings - let us know what you thought about Hide, episode 4 of the current season of Doctor Who. Whether it is your feelings about the plot, the script, the TARDIS & Clara, the on-going story arc, the continuity references to the Eye of Harmony (pronounced traditionally) and Metebelis Three (pronounced, erm…...differently), the comments section is your friend. http://dwin.org/blog/article/2273 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-04-21T11:23:43+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2272 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2272 1977 was the year that changed things dramatically for science-fiction in the English-speaking world. It was the year Star Wars hit the cinemas and science-fiction (and the trappings of sci-fi) went mainstream. The effect of the change was probably more profound in North America - and the US in particular, as sci-fi had already been mainstream in the UK, as evidenced by the success of Doctor Who. At the end of its 14th season the classic series hit a peak in popularity in the UK that it was never quite to regain again, with viewing figures regularly hitting 11 to 12 million viewers. The series was the subject of a proper documentary for television for the first time - “Whose Doctor Who” for the BBC2 Lively Arts programme. Broadcast in April 1977, the documentary points out that Doctor Who had domesticated science-fiction in the UK. One month later, Star Wars would start to do the same in the USA, something that would in turn help to have a positve effect for Doctor Who‘s fortunes in that country. Doctor Who of course was now featuring Tom Baker and Louise Jameson as the stars of the show, Elisabeth Sladen having left after an unprecedented length of time as the main companion towards the end of 1976. Before the end of the year however Leela’s arrival would be eclipsed by the addition of another companion - neither male nor female, but robotic. Unwittingly capturing the “cute robots in sci-fi” zeitgeist that emerged with Star Wars in 1977, Doctor Who now had K9, an enduring character who not only stayed with the show until 1981, but also was the first character to get his own televised spin-off adventure (later in 1981). Yes, Elisabeth Sladen was in K9 and Company as well, but you only need to look at the title of spin-off to see what was meant to be the top marketing draw. Brought back again in 1983 and in the new series, K9 is a character that is sure to live on as long as Doctor Who does, and 1977 was the year of his birth. http://dwin.org/blog/article/2272 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-04-17T00:15:49+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2271 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2271 So many people in this strange device. Let us know what you thought about Cold War, the 3rd episode of the 2013 season and the first television appearance in nearly 40 years for the Ice Warriors, and probably the closest the series has ever come to setting an adventure in Canada. In fact I like to think that this was on the Canadian side of the North Pole, and the Soviets were invading Canadian waters under the ice. So there. http://dwin.org/blog/article/2271 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-04-14T01:52:23+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2270 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2270 A biased change of approach for this week’s entry of 50 Glorious Years - we aren’t going to look so much at the content of the show in 1976 (though another fine year it was), but the developments that happened outside of the show - and outside of the UK. For the most glorious thing about 1976 from my perspective is that Doctor Who returned to Canadian television, one not one but two different television stations on the same day - Saturday September 18th 1976. The two stations were CKVU in Vancouver, and of course TVOntario, providing the entirety of Canada’s most populated province with the chance to watch the show. This of course was a huge development as far as Doctor Who fandom in Canada (and North America) was concerned - it was the first time since 1965 that the series had been seen in Canada. While CKVU showed the series until 1982, TVOntario’s run was so popular that it stopped only when the licence to show the series was given to a national broadcaster in YTV in 1989 (although TV Ontario would show some repeats into the early 1990’s). I would probably not be here typing this if it weren’t for TVO showing Doctor Who, starting in 1976. I didn’t tune in until 1981, but it was a TVOntario broadcast that did the trick. I am sure the same thing I am sure can be said of many Ontario-based readers of my age (or slightly older or slightly younger). Not only did Canadian fandom really start to get going thanks to the TVO broadcasts, but Doctor Who fandom in general has a lot to be grateful for - it was the sales of many of the Jon Pertwee episodes in colour to CKVU and TV Ontario that has allowed fans all over the world to enjoy these episodes in their proper colour, the BBC having wiped many of their original Jon Pertwee master tapes. Speaking of fandom, things weren’t just getting started in Canada - the Doctor Who Appreciation Society formed in May 1976, to date the longest running Doctor Who fan club (DWIN isn’t far behind!) and the one that made the most impact (effectively succeeding the Doctor Who Fan Club as the “official” fan club in the UK, to the extent that anything was “official”). They became the first fan club to organize and hold a Doctor Who convention, which would take place the following year in 1977. But 1976 is where things really started for Doctor Who in Canada (with all due respect to those lucky enough to watch the first 26 episodes of the series as shown on CBC in 1965). The story which began TVOntario’s run and introduced the show to a new generation of viewers who had never seen it before and probably knew nothing about it - why, none other than the “continuity-light” The Three Doctors.  The series was a huge hit, which should have nailed the coffin shut on the “continuity causes ratings dips and makes the show unpopular) about 9 years before the same crap argument was levelled at the show in the UK.  As for CKVU, they also got Jon Pertwee episodes to begin with. It is often forgotten with Tom Baker’s massive popularity in North America that in Canada at least, it was Pertwee who was the first “hit” Doctor. http://dwin.org/blog/article/2270 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-04-08T21:38:15+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2269 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2269 Alien oddness abounds in The Rings of Akhaten, the second episode of the 2013 season. Let us know what you thought of this episode - whether you want to sing its praises or if you walked away from the episode with criticism. http://dwin.org/blog/article/2269 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-04-07T04:16:12+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2268 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2268 Arguably the one of the best years to be a Doctor Who fan, particularly in the UK, where there were basically two seasons that had most of their episodes broadcast this year. It started with the 2nd episode of Robot broadcast in the first week of January of 1975. A run of 19 episodes continued all the way to the end of Revenge of the Cybermen part 4, before a gap of a few months and a new season of 26 episodes starting in September with Terror of the Zygons and with the calendar year ending off with The Android Invasion part 4.  That’s a total of 35 new episodes that were broadcast in 1975, and that doesn’t even include omnibus-version repeats of The Ark in Space and Genesis of the Daleks both of which were originally broadcast in 1975 as well. And let’s not just talk about quantity, but quality. In addition to the above stories mentioned (many of which are amongst the greatest of all time in many-a-fan’s opinion), let’s not forget Pyramids of Mars was included in this as well. The quality was no doubt reflected in the soaring popularity of the series. Tom Baker became a house-hold name overnight and the series attained record ratings this year, with The Ark in Space garnering 13.6 million viewers and placing as high as 5th on the weekly chart - the highest chart position the series ever reached in the classic series days (generally speaking top 10 finishes were rare for Doctor Who back then, even when the show was at its most popular). It wasn’t all happening on screen - Target novels were now coming out more regularly, where fans could re-live some of the latest adventures and classics from the past. The Doctor Who Annual and comic strips were also still publishing. After being relatively quiet since the days of Dalekmania, Doctor Who merchandise was coming more and more to the fore, something that would only increase as the years went by. Thoughts started to develop about another Doctor Who movie for the big screen (which would have been the first in 9 years), but somewhat remarkably, a third motion picture cinema film still hasn’t happened to this day….. Regardless, 1975 was Doctor Who‘s year, arguably like no other year had been. With all this unparalleled success, Doctor Who was unquestionably the world’s top science-fiction series that was still in production, successfully seeing off competition from Space:1999 despite the larger budget the latter program had. The stories and characters for Doctor Who were simply too good and still stand the test of time. All the years later, there is something to be said about the heady days of 1975. http://dwin.org/blog/article/2268 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-04-01T15:09:14+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2267 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2267 Doctor Who‘s 50th Anniversary season is finally upon us! A run of eight episodes comprising what is arguably the show’s 35th Season (or Series 7b as some might call it), starting with the The Bells of Saint John. Don’t be a spoon-head - please risk using the wi-fi to tell us what you thought about this new episode. http://dwin.org/blog/article/2267 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-03-31T04:48:29+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2266 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2266 1974 was the end of an era for Doctor Who. Jon Pertwee, Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks all left their respective roles in making Doctor Who after a 5 year run (for Dicks, it was actually 6 years as he became script editor for Patrick Troughton’s final season).  Richard Franklin would also leave the series in Pertwee’s final story, Planet of the Spiders, leaving the UNIT team back down to the two members that had pre-dated the Pertwee era, the Brigadier and Benton (though in a neat bit of continuity, Harry Sullivan is referenced in Planet of the Spiders before making his debut along with Tom Baker in Robot on December 28th of this year). It was the first year with no Master stories since 1970. At the time this must have been quite the change - Pertwee’s five year run had been the longest to date and many of the younger viewers would only have known about earlier Doctors from having seen The Three Doctors. And the new guy coming in was so much younger than the Doctor typically was (a marked change from today with the likes of Tennant & Smith in the role) and also largely an unknown entity. In some ways, this year was also the end of the sixties - the sixties counter-cultural movement that is. Not just in Doctor Who of course, which was mirroring what was happening in the real world, even if unintentionally. Once Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks left, the stories no longer featured hippy characters or remained concerned with environmental issues, featured meditation, counter-cultural fashions and other aspects that were of interest to or symbolic of the 60’s counter-culture as a whole. In the UK there were a gradual fizzing out of the 60’s counter-culture in the mid-70’s which was to end with the birth of the punk movement in late 1976 - at which point Doctor Who (thankfully) ignored what was happening in the real world. It is an interesting contrast in that by watching Doctor Who, you can’t help but notice that the 60’s counter-culture happened, but you’d never know there was a punk movement in the late 70’s. By the end of the year, Tom Baker starred in his first episode as the Doctor. The Doctor Who world (and arguably, the world itself) was never the same again, and, quite amazingly, things only got better for the franchise’s fortunes as it headed into its 12th season on the air…....... http://dwin.org/blog/article/2266 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-03-24T13:40:44+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2265 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2265 1973 was Doctor Who‘s first big celebratory year.  10 years - an incredible accomplishment for a television series, and even moreso for a science-fiction series. The show began the year celebrating with a special story The Three Doctors, the first multi-Doctor story ever, and concluded the year with numerous special publications and BBC programmes looking back over the show’s decade on television.  Incredible to think then that its first big celebration year was now 40 years ago and “only” covers the first 10 years of the series. Sadly it would be the last time that William Hartnell would appear not just in Doctor Who, but appear in any sort of acting role. He would die just a couple of years later from the illness that, one way or another, had forced him out of the role to begin with. This year would also feature the last appearance of Roger Delgado as the Master, tragically killed in a single-car accident when filming a movie in Turkey. Delgado’s death would spark the departure of many more of the regular cast and crew and eventually bring the Pertwee “family” era to an end the following year. Katy Manning would also appear in Doctor Who for the last time (to date, not counting audios and tv spin-offs) this year. But it wasn’t all sad departures - this year also saw the debut of one Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, a role that she would play on and off until the actress herself passing away in 2011. Other than (arguably) K9, Sarah Jane Smith would become the most well-known and popular of all of the Doctor’s companions, helped in part by her original run as the Doctor’s companion which, in terms of length of time (but not number of episodes) remains the longest run (December 1973 through to October 1976 - 3 full seasons plus nearly half of another). Doctor Who was back its old format of the Doctor being able to travel anywhere in time and space, but there was one vital difference - the last time the show has this format (in the 1960’s) the Doctor couldn’t operate the TARDIS properly in that he couldn’t direct it to materialize where or when he wanted to. Now the Doctor could. By the end of the 10th season he would be taking deliberate trips to Metebelis Three. It is taken for granted now, but this actually must have been a huge sea-change for fans and viewers at the time - and also a major difference to the writers, because the TARDIS could and would be used in different ways than before - sometimes they would have to write it out of stories temporarily so that a plot resolution wasn’t so easily solved (a good example is Frontier in Space). Perhaps the best news of all for fans (other than the new episodes of course) was the start of Target novelizations this year - the first three Doctor Who novels from the mid-1960’s were re-published, so fans could buy and read stories from the series early days (with no repeats going back that far, this must have seem like heaven for fans whether they were around 10 years before or less than 10 years old). The success of these republished novels led the way to an incredible publishing success story with brand-new novelizations beginning the following year, eventually having nearly every story novelized from the original run with sales of over 8 million). For fans of this generation in the pre-home vidoe era, this was the only way to re-live classic episodes. Despite the departures by the scenes, 1973 must have been a great year to be a fan in the UK (being less than a year old and in Canada at the time, I can’t say I know this from personal experience) - Doctor Who was continuing to get more and more popular, doing new exciting things and celebrating its own past for the first time. If one can pinpoint a year where the show truly became a “national institution” in the UK, then 1973 would probably be it. http://dwin.org/blog/article/2265 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-03-17T19:03:59+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2264 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2264 Ah, 1972! What a year that was! Not just for Doctor Who, but so many things in terms of music, film, sporting events…..but let’s focus on Doctor Who. This is the year that started off (on New Year’s Day no less) bringing the Daleks back to television for a new adventure for the first time in 5 years, and then ended off (on the day before New Year’s Eve, no less) bringing back the 1st and 2nd Doctor’s to television for the first time in six and three and a half years, respectively - and what’s more, having the two of them meet up with the then-current Doctor (number 3) Jon Pertwee! Imagine if you were a long time fan back then to see this happening after you had probably given up hope of the Daleks ever coming back and never thought you’d ever see the first or second Doctor’s again…...unbelievable! That wasn’t all of course - there were a great bunch of stories in between those two as well, with no less than two trips to alien planets and one trip to the past to Atlantis along with sea-based adventure with the Master and the cousins of the Silurians. The Ice Warriors appeared in colour for the first time - and turned out (in this story at least) not to be the bad guys! What a twist! The Mutants was first (and only) story this season not to feature a returning monster or villain, and the first to do so since Inferno. Although the Doctor’s exile would not be formally lifted until early in 1973, for all intents and purposes the show had gone back to not being a contemporary earthbound series (only The Sea Devils fits that bill - the two UNIT stories of the season feature trips into the future and past, respectively). 1972 also saw something significant happen which rarely gets talked about - which is the publication of a book called “The Making of Doctor Who”. Written by Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke, this was the first professionally published factual book about the show. A lot of people who would go on to work for the series in later years first got interested in the idea from reading this book, showing how it could be done. Considering how many more factual books or magazines would follow in the decades to come (not to mention documentaries, DVD extras and an entire tv series), Doctor Who is likely the television series that has had its production documented in some way more than any other. No other tv series (certainly that has been running this long, or even close to running this long) has had its production ins and outs made publicly available - especially the classic series (with the new series there is still a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff which will one day be revealed). It all started with the publication of this book in the fine year that was 1972. http://dwin.org/blog/article/2264 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-03-10T12:50:02+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/enlightenment/article/2263 http://dwin.org/home/enlightenment/article/2263 The Snowmen Cometh (Christmas Special Reviewed!) : The 2012 Christmas special gets a look-over! Plus… Can good Doctor Who be bad television, and vice versa? Robots with human souls News and reviews http://dwin.org/enlightenment/article/2263 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-03-08T22:19:34+00:00 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2262 http://dwin.org/home/blog/article/2262 1971 is remembered best for two reasons - one, it is the year with the largest regular cast in the show’s history (The Doctor, one companion, 3 regular members of UNIT and a regular villain for a total of 6 regulars) and also the introduction of the last of the top 3 most iconic adversaries for the Doctor - his most personal one, that of The Master. Eight years in, all of the big three (the Daleks and the Cybermen being the other two) were now in place, and the creative team of producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks ensured the Master’s iconic status by featuring him in every single story of this year. In his first story the Master teams up with the Nestene Consciousness, allowing the Autons to become the fifth returning monsters in the series history (after the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Yeti/Great Intelligence and the Ice Warriors). With the 2nd year of the Doctor’s exile and the establishment of the Time Lords in the Doctor Who universe (outside of the Master, there are two other cameos featuring Time Lords in this season, in Terror of the Autons and Colony in Space and all these returning enemies, Doctor Who had slowly but surely built up its continuity, something it would never truly go back from. 1971 was also the year of synthesizer’s in Doctor Who - they were a relatively new bit of technology now available in the market and featuring in the popular music of the day (in particular, in the British progressive rock bands that were starting to dominate the charts - something that can also be reflected in the narrative of the episodes of this season as the Master actually listens to King Crimson in his limousine in The Mind of Evil - the track “The Devil’s Triangle” for you trivia fans out there). Dudley Simpson handled all of the incidental music for this season (which was the very first time that had happened) but was instructed by Barry Letts to use synthesizers for all of the compositions in an effort to make the series more modern, futuristic and alien sounding. All these moves clicked with respect to the ratings - they increased for the 2nd consecutive year, with the turning point being the lack of a ratings decline when the episodes were broadcast in the warmer months of May and June, as had happened the previous two years. This time ratings held up in the warmer months, with the turning point story being Colony in Space which saw good ratings throughout its run, demonstrating once more that “received wisdom” of the fans and what the general public liked (at least in the UK) are not necessarily the same thing. But while the programme was becoming more successful in the UK, worldwide the show was in a bit of a decline. The BBC hadn’t marketed the colour episodes of Jon Pertwee yet as not enough markets that traditionally bought Doctor Who had colour television (which would lead the BBC to make black & white copies of the Pertwee-era episodes, which is the only reason why several episodes from the Pertwee era exist at all - including this season’s The Mind of Evil). Meanwhile, party affected by the lack of rights to show Dalek stories, the BBC had found that sales of Troughton episodes were not as brisk as the Hartnell ones had been (it was also much easier to start off a new market with An Unearthly Child than it was with any other 60’s story, where you needed some background for who the characters were), and the series had no profile in North America. This would change soon…. This season, the 8th in the show’s history, was the last to feature 25 episodes (the previous season being the first). Presumably concerned about the requirement to have at least one story feature an odd-number of episodes, the decision was made to increase the seasonal episode count to 26 starting in 1972. But that is another entry….. http://dwin.org/blog/article/2262 The Doctor Who Information Network 2013-03-03T11:36:04+00:00