Every Who Ever

Something like four years ago I introduced my children to the joys of “classic” Doctor Who – or, as I would have it, “proper” Doctor Who without all this high budget CGI nonsense. Who needs to blue-screen an expensive set when you can just run up and down corridors at TV centre? This started off with the serial Genesis Of The Daleks for no other reason that it is the only one I bought on DVD. The rest were mainly rented from LoveFilm although not necessarily in order. This meant we actually finished up with the 1965 adventure The Romans.

So what did they make of this marathon viewing? Well, I have to say that I did lose some of them at various points. Jake was not that bothered with some of the early historical stories (no monster, no view) and I lost Raymond with 1980’s Who which apparently doesn’t chime with “his” favourite periods (1967-1977 and 2005-2014). In fairness, I couldn’t blame him with avoiding The Trial Of The Timelord which had very little to recommend it apart from Colin Baker, who was very good, and Brian Blessed, who was very loud. It’s a shame, actually, because I really rather rate the later Sylvester McCoy tenure as the timelord. In part, I think this was down to Andrew Cartmel as the script editor but also his interpretation of The Doctor managed to combine both the comic and sinister in a similar way to how Patrick Troughton earlier and Matt Smith later achieved.

In fairness, we haven’t actually seen “Every Who Ever” as many of the 1960’s episodes were lost due to a shocking lack of foresight by the BBC. In particular, series 3, 4 and 5 are very sparse although some stories have since been recovered and some of the missing episodes have been animated to the original soundtrack to create complete stories. I did try to get the kids to listen to the Evil Of The Daleks audio (the original soundtrack from the TV with some additional narration by Fazer Hines) but they didn’t quite take to this. It’s a pity as there are many more stories available with both the radio series and audio adventures. Maybe that’s one for when they are older?

So my Sunday afternoons now have a bit of a hole in them. I’ve recorded a few family friendly films off the TV to watch but since the Horror channel has started on Freeview they are also showing quite a lot of old Doctor Who adventures. They advise that the best place to start is at the beginning. Now, there’s a thought…

So how do I take my Whovian tendencies forward? Well, next week I’m actually attending a Doctor Who convention for the first time. It’s a small event called Who At The Hilbre which takes place at a pub on the Wirral. I’ve always shied away from these types of events as they tend to be the large Comic Con type of affairs which I would find rather daunting but this promises to be closer to an author’s type event which I have enjoyed in the past and usually end up meeting interesting folk. There should be a few of the series actors, writers and production staff there as well as some old friends. I’m rather looking forward to it.