Whatever happened to the teenage dream?

When I was growing up, assuming that I did manage to climb to the top of that particular mountain, it was presumed that what children wanted on television in the way of drama was escapist fodder. Thus my memories are full of daring-do on the high seas, in shows such as Freewheelers, or moderately scary outer-space malarkey on Saturday teatimes during the late Sixties, in the company of Patrick Troughton and chums! Doctor Who was aimed at intelligent 12-year-olds, although I was a little younger when Pat was the Doc, but designed for all the family to enjoy. The lovelies that accompanied our hero were always suitably attired… yes, they wore miniskirts and, thus, showed a bit of leg but it never really went beyond that. If you wanted to see Wendy Padbury having sex, you wouldn’t see her engaged in the deed on either of the aforementioned series. You’d have to stay up late and catch her in Blood On Satan’s Claw for that kind of thing! Even when you got a bit older, sex was never really a staple for teenage consumption. The closest television was ever going to get to linking the two would be Marc Bolan and T.Rex encouraging us to Get It On, on Top Of The Pops in 1971. The girls dancing amongst the studio audience weren’t dressed to ever suggest that that prospect was an actual possibility.

So, here we are, 40 years on, and your offspring are more likely to want to watch Hollyoaks or Skins than an episode of Doctor Who or The Sarah Jane Adventures. It’s not hip to enjoy a rollicking good yarn with the faint hint of a moral message in these enlightened times. We’ve got to concern ourselves with the issues of the day and wallow in all things problematical. Is Johnny finally coming out of the closet or has he just been in the bathroom an awfully long time?! Is Jenny on the pill and having underage sex? Probably, considering how much mascara she has on, not to mention the boob spillage from her low-cut tops! It isn’t just 16-year-old girls that want to watch Skins. If they have a younger sister, the sibling won’t want to be left out. They’ll want to see it too, even though I presume it’s the older lasses who are the target audience. The lads will be tuning in to see how much flesh is on display, rather than to learn about safe sex. Childhood no longer exists anymore. It’s been gradually eroded away by commercial interests, despite self-appointed moral guardians doing their level best to stop anyone, of any age, from being remotely titillated by anything they see on the box. Alf Garnet once complained he couldn’t find the pornography Mary Whitehouse was fussing over… and he’d looked on every channel!

Telly Visions: Wendy Padbury

Deborah Watling’s successor in “Doctor Who” was the diminutive, but equally lovely, Wendy Padbury. Wendy became something of an icon for me in my formative years. Not only did she have a regular part to play in the adventures of the second Doctor but also with the team on children’s drama series “Freewheelers”. She joined “Doctor Who”, as Zoë Heriot, during another encounter with the Cybermen, in “The Wheel in Space”, and was returned to her own time and place, after forty-eight episodes, at the end of the epic ten-part story “The War Games”. It is during her final episodes on the series, the end of the Sixth Season, that we discover the Doctor’s race is known as Time Lords. I suspect this came out of desperation on the part of writers Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke having had problems securing enough scripts for the programme’s final days in black and white and having to hurriedly write new instalments themselves! Ms Padbury’s bottom gained great notoriety at the beginning of her third story on the show, “The Mind Robber”, when, at the end of episode one, the TARDIS explodes and she and fellow companion Jamie are left clinging to its console as it slowly spins round, becoming engulfed in swirling mist. I hasten to add she was wearing a close-fitting lamé catsuit with said derrière pointing directly at the camera! No wonder I was enamoured!!

After leaving “Doctor Who”, Wendy Padbury found employment as co-presenter on a BBC game show, alongside Paul McCartney’s brother Mike McGear, in a short-lived series called “Score with the Scaffold”. The Scaffold were a well-known pop trio of the day, with a humorous slant, who themselves scored great success with hits “Thank U Very Much” and “Lily the Pink”. Wendy returned to acting in the brilliant and controversial British horror film, dealing with witchcraft and superstitions, “Blood on Satan’s Claw”. Appearing as Cathy Vespers, she is ritualistically raped. The actress renewed her acquaintance with the small screen in the fondly remembered, by me at least, Southern Television series “Freewheelers” as Sue Craig. Then in its fifth series, “Freewheelers” can probably best be described as a sort of junior James Bond, being action-adventure orientated. Like “Doctor Who”, a series usually comprised several serials, each episode closing with a cliff-hanger. It had a jaunty opening theme tune but ended with a different part of the same composition, creating a more sombre mood. The credibility of the show declined in its final days but I loved it and used to rush home from school to catch it, in an era before the introduction of domestic video recorders! Towards the end of her career, Wendy played Rosemary Roberts in the ITV soap opera “Emmerdale Farm”, to give it its original title, where she was reunited with Frazer Hines, her co-star from the good old days of “Doctor Who”!!