Blue vinyl Doctor Who-related 12"

My copy of the 12" of Mankind's 1978 hit version of the Doctor Who theme - in blue vinyl. I'm fairly sure I bought this at a litle second-hand record shop in Leicester about 200 years ago when I was at university. It's a bit tatty but the extended version is a terrible record, so I'm not worried.

Dr Who mash-ups

Robin Bell tweeted about the Dr Who poster mash-ups by 'thedisciple' on the Empire Magazine website. This one is my favourite. See it and the rest at http://is.gd/kuGa2

Found Friday

Two Dr Who-related doodles from my biology textbook when I was 16. The top one must have been finished off at home: I can't imagine I'd have felt tips in school [although I would have done, given the chance - ho ho!]. The usual Tom Baker, Harry and Sarah-Jane group - Sarah is only visible by her enormous breast appearing round the side of the Tardis. I quite like the little biroed Tardis being menaced by a giant spider.

Found Friday

I'm enjoying this rummaging around for Found Fridays. Such is the joy of being a hoarder (as Genghis Khan used to say). This is the opening page of an exercise book I scribbled in when I was about 12. On the right is the start of yet another Dr Who story: 'Doctor Who and the Ultimatum Project' (note the Target paperback convention of writing a title). If I remember correctly the story was to develop with the Ice Warriors teaming up with the Cybermen and getting themselves cyborged-up. They'd have been unssssstoppable!

I have no idea what the stuff on the left is. There's some geezer zipping about in a futuristic flying car thing and a list of handy gizmos, I guess to have on board, just in case you encountered hostile aliens or whatever. I'd like to know what a 'point finder television' is. A TV with a remote control (pretty high-tech in 1976, but surely too prosaic)? I suspect it was intended as some kind of sat-nav, something to show you at what point on Earth or in space you were.

I really ought to have become a writer.

Wordy Thursday

Conclusion to my short Dr Who story, which was entered for a competition in which the brief was something like 'how meeting the Doctor changed my life forever', or some such feebleness.

IV

The Hall of the Absolutes was a vast cavern of deep blue crystal, softly illuminated by molten minerals coursing through myriad veins in the rock. Behind me stood the Tardis, its pulsating light reflected by a thousand glimmering points. Ranged before me was a series of black marble chairs – thrones, in fact – on which imposing, richly robed figures sat immobile and impassive. The crystal hall echoed to an angry, staccato rapping: the Doctor’s umbrella.

Bewildered by this alien splendour, I had kept my gaze firmly fixed on the Doctor throughout his audience with the Absolutes. After an initial ceremony of formal greetings, the Absolutes had remained silent as the Doctor pleaded for them to bring an end to the devastation wrought by the Thlaarx. Their lean, pale faces were set and expressionless. Their gaze remained fixed on a point somewhere above the small figure of the Doctor as he tried to put his case. Increasingly frustrated by their lack of attention, his began to shout and stamp, gesticulating extravagantly and almost dancing with vexation. He might have appeared comical if his words had not been so impassioned. At last, with an air of defeat, he paused and began his irritable tapping on the crystal floor.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘What will you do? Your Majesty, I appeal to you personally!’
He addressed a woman of exceptionally regal bearing.

‘We will do nothing, Time Lord, as you knew,’ she said in a voice as cold and sculpted as her marble throne. ‘These humans were not invited to the world you speak of. Now they are falling to another set of invaders. Such is the way of things. Why should we concern ourselves with such transient affairs? They are unpleasant, yes, but beneath the notice of We Who Live Forever.’

‘Balderdash!’ exclaimed the Doctor, and he poked his umbrella dangerously close to the Absolute’s face. She raised an eyebrow. ‘These are very pretty clothes you are wearing, your Majesty. And this is a very pretty place. Don’t try that “we’re above human experience” rubbish on me. I’ve heard it all before on Gallifrey. Zeris, come here!’

I jumped at the sound of my name. I hurried over and the Doctor drew me in front of him.

‘I will ask a boon of you, your Majesty, before I leave you to your idle contemplations,’ he continued. ‘Look into this child’s eyes and see for yourself what he has seen.’

It was a command. The Absolute obeyed (despite herself, I imagine). Her cold eyes dropped to mine and my brain seemed instantly to fill with ice. A thousand horrifying images span before me but I could not take my eyes away. I cried out and struggled in the Doctor’s grip. Then the Absolute closed her eyes and my brief torment was over.

‘I see,’ said the Absolute prosaically. ‘Yes, and felt it, too, as you intended, Time Lord. I had hoped never to feel such things again. Very well, it shall be as you ask.’

She turned and conferred for a moment with her fellows. The Doctor tried to interrupt.

‘Wait!’ he said. ‘I thank you, but please be guided by me. I do not wish you to destroy theThlaarx. There are other ways…’

But he was interrupted in turn by the royal Absolute.

‘It is done,’ she said. ‘Now you must leave us.’

‘Have you destroyed them?’

‘It is done.’

‘No!’ the Doctor yelled. ‘Why destroy them? You could have disabled their technology… transported them elsewhere...’

‘You must leave us now,’ repeated the Absolute.

‘Genocide,’ murmured the Doctor. ‘In an instant. On my insistence. It was what I feared.’

Forlornly, the Doctor led me back to the Tardis. Minutes later, we were in New London. The Doctor pointed out to me clouds of black dust on the horizon and told me they were all that remained of the Hooded Ones and their craft. They had been vapourised in an instant by the silent command of the Absolute. So, too, had every other member of the Thlaarx race, in orbit and elsewhere on the planet’s surface. The Doctor said nothing more, but hugged me and left me to sit alone among the rubble until, at last, the dazed and weeping human survivors drifted back.


V

Do you still wonder, then, why my answer to you is ‘no’? Why I refuse to put my name to your declaration of war against Persia Redux? Sixty years ago I was the unwitting means by which our race was saved. Yet you ask me now to wilfully contribute to its destruction. The Doctor saved the lives of all of us, including those not then born. The price was a heavy one: the extinction of another race. How can a man live with such a burden on his conscience?

So, brand me a traitor, if you must. Threaten me with death. That is no threat to me: my life’s purpose was fulfilled when I was 12. I shall not be a traitor to my conscience. Nor shall I betray the Doctor and make vain the sacrifice he made for us. He gave us all – every human in every colony on this world – a future. Take this step and you will prove the Absolutes right. The human race will prove transient indeed.

Wordy Thursday

Penultimate instalment of my short Dr Who story, entered for a competitioon a couple of years ago.

My eyes were struck by the brightness of the box’s interior and I covered them with my bloody, muddied knuckles. The Doctor guided me to an elegant little chair in the corner of a wide, white room.

‘Before you ask,’ he said, ‘yes, it is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. This is the Tardis. It is my home. It’s also my transportation. A “cosmic caravan” my friend Ace called it.’

He busied himself with a set of controls ranged on a central dais. A glass column, infused with instrumentation, began to rise and fall and the room juddered. This made me jump and I felt another flash of panic.

‘Don’t be nervous, there’s no need for that now,’ said the Doctor, who had noticed this. ‘I am the one who should be nervous. I know very well how this short trip we’re making is likely to end, and I am afraid it will be on my conscious for a very long time.’

The lights in the room dimmed slightly and from the central column there emerged a weird, metallic scraping.

As the sound faded into a background hum, the Doctor continued: ‘We’ve just got time to clean you up a bit and then… and then I’ll have to put you on show.’

He left me for a few moments, ducking out through a door at the opposite end of the room. I felt a faint vibration and realised we were in motion, that this inexplicable machine was travelling somewhere and taking me with it.

The Doctor soon returned with a silver bowl of steaming water and a towel over one arm. He had removed his jacket and there was something so cheerful and childlike about the pair of bright red braces he was sporting that I found myself smiling. They were reassuring somehow.

‘It’s good to see you smile. I imagine it is a long while since you have done so,’ the Doctor said, and he began to clean and dress my many minor wounds.

‘I owe you an apology for forcing you to view all that horror,’ he said. ‘You have seen more horror in your young lifetime, Zeris, than even an adult with a long, long lifespan such as mine should ever witness. But I believe it will prove necessary. We are on our way to the Hall of the Absolutes. The Absolutes consider themselves the owners of this corner of your galaxy, including the world you live on. They are a cold, proud, amoral race – cousins to my own people. But they have certain powers we do not share. They may intervene to stop the Thlaarx in their massacre. But I doubt it. They will probably need convincing. If so, that is where I hope you will help.’

‘Help? Yes, I’ll help,’ I said.

‘Good boy,’ he said. ‘Although, actually, you won’t really need to do anything.’

(Final part next week)

Wordy Thursday - My short Dr Who story continues

A dozen steps took me into a cave-like hollow, the cellar of a decimated house or shop. The source of the light was a lamp set on top of a large box. In front of this was a small man who leant wearily on a red-handled umbrella. He was clean, well-dressed – an apparition that did not belong in my ruined, dying world. He turned to me, and in the dim, intermittent light I saw a great sadness in his eyes.

‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘I cannot help you. I have come too late again.’

He brushed past me to the foot of the stairs and stood there listening to the confusion above: the relentless, merciless slaughter of humanity.

‘I arrived too late at New Persia and Landfall and I am too late now,’ he murmured. ‘I must go. I must go on.’

But he remained standing and listening. I crept up to him, impressed by his stillness, his lack of fear. I leant against him, my head just reaching his shoulder. So we stood for what seemed an age to me who had been running so long, but which in truth was perhaps no more than fifteen minutes, until all fell silent. Then the stranger ascended the stairs and I followed him.

The ground now was littered with corpses: skeletons pinkly veneered with blood and cocooned in clothing.

‘Too late, too late,’ the stranger repeated, and then he turned to me. ‘Have you ever seen your enemy? The Thlaarx? These creatures you call the Hooded Ones?’

I shook my head.

‘They are invertebrates,’ he said, ‘bulbous, bloated beings, composed mainly of mouth and stomach. Each person who lies here now was devoured by a Thlaarx in seconds; their flesh sucked off, their innards slurped down and the refuse discarded in the same unfeeling way you might consume an oyster.’

He stepped a few feet further into the field of desolation, picking his way between the skeletons. He gazed into the distance, muttering to himself.

‘I know it is in their nature to feed like this,’ I heard him say. ‘I know they are constantly, ravenously hungry and scavengers now their world is gone. But to feed on intelligent life, to destroy civilizations…’

To me he said: ‘Well, my young survivor, you had better come with me. Indeed, you must. Whatever the cost, the Thlaarx must be stopped and I realise now there is only one way it can be done.’

The stranger hunched himself over, his hands resting on his umbrella, and he peered intently into my eyes.

‘I need you to look around you,’ he said. ‘Yes, at all this horror. I need you to take it all in and not forget it.’

Taking me by the shoulders, he turned me about. I could not avoid the empty eye sockets of the fallen. I saw the twisted flailing of stick-like limbs, crumpled clothing over fleshless forms, strands of hair clinging to clots of blood on skulls. I heard the chirping and pecking of birds as they picked over bones. Disgusted and furious, I shook myself free of the stranger’s grip and kicked out at a corpse near my feet. Its lower jaw fell open and it seemed to laugh at me.

‘Come on,’ said the stranger, and he descended the stairs again. I followed. Back in the safe semi-darkness, I found my voice at last.

‘Who are you?’ I stammered.

‘I’m sorry, I’m forgetting my manners.’

The stranger raised a short-brimmed hat and gave a little bow.

‘I am the Doctor,’ he said.

‘The Doctor,’ I repeated. I raised a bleeding knee for his inspection and showed him the scrapes and scratches on my arms.

‘I’m not really that kind of doctor,’ he smiled. ‘But I’ll put something on those abrasions to help them heal. And what is your name?’

I told him.

‘Well, come along with me, Zeris,’ he said. ‘Come inside. This is my home.’

He unlocked the door of the flashing box and ushered me inside.

Wordy Thursday

The opening section of a short Dr Who story I wrote for a competition Robin talked me into entering. It didn't even get shortlisted. How humiliating. My only consolation is that Robin's didn't get shortlisted either!

I ran with all the others, a small part of one great mass of panicking humanity. We ran, stumbled, fought our frightened way across the rubble-strewn plain that had once been our town. There was no reasoning, no plan. It was a stampede. Blind terror impelled us; our only purpose: escape.

Because I was small and wiry, I made better progress than the adults. I dodged round lumbering thighs and leapfrogged nimbly over those who fell. My survival instinct was sharply honed. My parents, sisters, friends and neighbours had all been taken and devoured by the Hooded Ones in the first wave of attacks on New London. Because I had no one to support me, to ask for advice, I had become like an animal, unhindered by doubts or uncertainty. I existed to survive. At the age of twelve I was a veteran.

My progress was made swifter still when the Hooded Ones fell upon us. Their silent craft cast wing-shaped shadows on the seething crowd and a soft metallic whirring, just audible above the cries and footfalls of the crowd, warned of the coming of the Snares. The clawed, flexible tentacles snatched up one – two – three – a dozen people in rapid succession. Few of their prey even had the time to scream before their struggling bodies vanished into the bellies of the spacecraft and then, no doubt, into the bellies of the Hooded Ones themselves. In this horrible way, the crowd soon thinned and I had more room to manoeuvre.

My smaller size also helped protect me from the Snares, for the taller adults attracted them first. However, when a woman running beside me tripped and fell, the Snare which had aimed for her swung over to me instead. I felt it brush the back of my neck as I, too, threw myself down. The claw snapped inches from my head, then returned to its original victim. As it latched onto her, the woman squealed with despair. Her shoe clattered down beside me.

This incident saved my life and led to the salvation of all of us.

Lying prostrate, only I of all the desperate crowd noticed the dim light pulsating from somewhere below the ground. Instinctively, I made for it, scuttling lizard-like over the blocks of rubble. The light emanated from a deep well of shadow beneath a slab of concrete ripped up from the shattered roadway. As Snares snapped above me, I dove under the overhang, then fell, barking my arms and knees on a short flight of stairs which dropped down into the gloom. I lay sprawled on the steps for a moment, then cautiously made my way down to the source of the flashing light.

(Humiliated I might have been but I might post the next bit next week anyway).

Found Friday

Isn't this great? I spotted it while wandering round the small north Devon town of Hartland while I was in the area for Weird Weekend earlier this month. It's a ceramic Tardis - a small post-box maybe (perhaps it's bigger on the inside than on the outside)? Anyway, it looked cool bertween these two Tardis-coloured doors.

Found Friday

I love this post card. It's copyrighted 1997, from the days when Who was still off the air and waiting to be reinvented. I went to a Dr Who convention in Chester about that time with my BBC chum Alan (we got in free, hurrah!), so I'm guessing I picked it up then. On the reverse it says 'Monoliths - No. 8 in a series of 12' and is copyrighted to IB Productions. I had a couple of others, one of the Tardis in a snowy landscape, the other also surrounded by standing stones, but as an aerial photo. I imagine they are knocking about the house somewhere, too, gathering a fine layer of dust just like this one. I assume they're clever Photoshopped-type affairs; I can't imagine they had a full-scale model Tardis to drag about - jolly clever though, eh? I'm fairly sure this is the Ring of Brodgar on Orkney, but there's no information about the locality on the card.

Found Friday

My adolescent Dr Who obsession took on a bizarre and perverse incarnation in the late 70s in the form of 'Ductor Who', a series of 'radio programmes' (ie cassette recordings) featuring me and my best friend at the time Joe McIntyre. They featured the classic early Tom Baker gang of Sarah and Harry, together with K9. It was all very filthy and stupid (and therefore great fun when you're 14).

The Ductor was basically a dirty old man, Sarah was a 'nympho' (who started off as a kind of rip-off of Karla from Kenny Everett's 'Captain Kremmen'), Harry was gay as ninepence and K9 was... just K9, since his dialogue consisted entirely of what I'd managed to record off the telly.

Here is one of the script books, for want of a better term, for 'The Three Crystals of Gettakwikiss' (oh god), presumably based round the recently shown Key to Time season. A glimpse at any page of 'script' within this book is deeply shameful... you can almost feel me and Joe scratching our pimples. And it would certainly come as no surprise to anyone reading through it that both youths involved in Ductor Who should grow up as gay as... well, as gay as Harry.

Weird Wednesday

Blimey! Never mind Van Gogh painting vague faces in windows, I reckon the Doctor better whizz off to Picasso's studio. I think he MAY have painted something a bit creepy into one of his paintings, too.

The Devil in The Workshop by Pablo Picasso, 1956.

Found Friday

I really do keep some crap. This is my Dr Who Appreciation Society membership card from 1984/5, in lovely goldie looking cardboard and signed by David Saunders. This is I guess the last one I owned; I joined in 1978 and don't imagine I stayed a member beyond 1985 (although that would have been the year I went to the Interface 2 Patrick Troughton-period convention, so maybe I did).

Who restart

Following on from my wild speculation re Amy's crack (ahem!), I suddenly had a sort of revelation re the mysterious ID tag on Amy's boyfriend's uniform in The 11th Hour. We saw an unnecessary close-up of it and for reasons that have had many of us pondering, it was dated 1990.

Can't help wondering whether this is another coded reference to the 'restart' hypothesis I posited. Steven Moffat likes to refer to this season as Season 1, not 5 or 35 or whatever it actually is (I forget). So suddenly, while I was doing the washing up (yes, actually doing the washing up - a surprise in itself), the image of that ID tag popped in my head and I thought, hang on, what year was Dr Who taken off the air? It was 1989, wasn't it? Final season, ending with Survival?

So, is Moffatt hinting here that this series is set immediately after, with no break - no hopeless special starring Paul McGann, no Russell T Davies revival with all the muddles he's brought to it. Is Matt Smith the EIGHTH Doctor in his mind - even if he can't be in actuality? A curious thought, but 1990 does have significance - it was the first year without Who on the air since 1963.

I feel at this point that I should point out that I find the word 'geek' really offensive. (And I really should stop writing about Dr Who!)

Amy's crack

OK, now I get it. The whole crack in space/time theme in the latest Dr Who series means that Moffatt will be able to effectively restart the storylines - sidestepping the nonsense of Dalek and Cyberman invasions etc supposedly happening in contemporary Britain - ie to us. Amy's forgotten the 'Stolen Earth' stuff, just as you and I never saw it happen either.

I wonder if the ridiculous sight of a Cyberman 'Iron Giant' stomping on Dickensian London was the final straw for Moffatt. It was for me. Notice how in Victory of the Daleks nothing happened the could have been witnessed as alien activity by the populace.

Mark Gattis did really real with his 40-odd minutes (I thought it was going to be a preposterous yarn but it wasn't). Loved all the Power of the Daleks bits, particularly carrying the box file and the sinister, grated out 'WOULD YOU LIKE SOME TEA?' Great fun. And Matt Smith continues to impress.

However, as my BBC chum Alan pointed out - and this is important, right - that wasn't an actual, legit Jammy Dodger he was holding up there because it had a circular instead of a heart-shaped centre (see above). That makes it a cheap 'Jam Ring' imposter, apparently, which Alan thinks may have allowed the Beeb to get round advertising bans. Or maybe they just didn't know the difference. Or indeed didn't care. Tch!

Exterminating for Jesus

Check out Darryl's latest Dalek toon at: http://darryl-cunningham.blogspot.com !

Time Lords came first

OK, Who geek alert here: so move on please, nothing to see here unless you too have Whophile tendencies.

Interesting line in tonight's 'Beast Below' episode. When Amy points out the Doctor looks human, he says something like: 'No you look like me. Time Lords came first.'

Now I had this idea yonks ago that the reason the Time Lords are so adamant about non-involvement is that when Rassilon first opened the time vortex and saw all-creation-at-once he went a bit mad (as we know) and in a fit of unparalelled egomania decided to make all creation in his own, ie the Gallifreyan, image. In other words he seeded every life-supporting planet so that it would evolve Gallifreyans, or near as dammit. The other Gallifreyans stopped him but he'd already managed to interfere with the evolution of life on many, many worlds.

And that is why there are so many humanoid (or Gallifreyan-type) races in the universe: Thals, Movellans, Peladonians etc etc. And in addition loads more that are broadly humanoid: two legs, two arms, a head etc etc. A great way to excuse cheap science fiction, of course, but also the reason why the Gallifreyans set themselves up as Time Lords and made themselves guardians of this appalling technology they'd created: they'd already fucked up big style once and they weren't going to let it happen again.

God didn't make us in His own image: bloody Rassilon did.

Has Steven Moffat had the same idea? How exciting that would be (for me, I mean, not for anyone else). Of course, it's also possible this is an old idea and I'm just remembering it from somewhere, in which case I shall do the honourable thing and blush.

But enough of that. Here is a cute picture of the 11th Doctor by Alejandra Gamgeek, whose thoroughly enjoyable blog I've just discovered. Have a good scroll down and find adorable versions of previous Doctors, the Brigadier, Sam Tyler & Gene Hunt and loads of others at: blogspot.whosname.com (or follow link top right).

Exdrawminate

I've just discovered this fab Dalek-oriented blog managed by Darryl Cunningham. Lots of Darryl's Dalek-inspired work is up there, plus contributions from many other artists. Although there are lots of funny pix up there I fell in love with this Big Brother-inspired image by a San Francisco graphic designer, Chris Kisler. Wouldn't you just love to have this on a T-shirt?

It looks like the blog hasn't been updated for a few months but I notice that a tiny-wee Dalek has just been added to Darryl's general blog - so hopefully the new Who series will inspire some more contributions.

Links to Exdrawminate and Darryl's blogs can be found top right.

Tuneful Tuesday

Like many people, it would seem, I was rather dismayed by the strangely lacklustre new version of the Dr Who theme - although considering how fab everything else was, it seems churlish to complain. Now I've watched the episoide again (ahem!) I find I don't dislike it as much as I did on first listen but my friend Alan Daulby discovered the attached version on YouTube in which the missing dum-de-dums have been subtly reinstated.

Much better in my opinion (but hey, I'm the kind of guy who still writes 'Dr' Who), although I note that the chap who has done the mix, JamesPotter76, is perfectly happy with the new theme. I rather like the fact that he's rendered the title sequence in black-and-white, too. I'd still rather have a scary theme, though. There was something unnerving about the grinding bass lines and the spooky whoo-hoos over the top of it. Imagine watching the first episode of Web of Fear or an episode of Seeds of Doom with one of the new themes. Pah!

Still, at least it's an improvement on the previous closing titles version with its 'Hello Dolly' strings and fills, or the tinny Davison period theme.

This is very sad, isn't it? I'm in danger of becoming a Whocumudgeon, or as Russell T Davies offensively described fans who didn't like him - a 'ming-mong'.

Tweed sensation

Hah! Who does this Matt Smith think he is? Here I am - ever the trend-setter - in tweed jacket in 1993. I owned two tweed jackets at the time: the other was a genuine Harris tweed of a chestnut colour and with a length similar to the new Doctor's but not as crisply cut as his. I used to refer to the one I'm wearing here as my 'primary school teacher's jacket'. I guess I'd ditched the floral psychedelic stuff by about the end of 91 and had decided to go all Jethro Tully instead. Granddad shirts and waistcoats - it's been a long time since I've been able to find a waistcoat in a second-hand shop that will fit my ever-expanding belly, alas.