Doctor Who - 49th Anniversary Favourite Fifty

01. Fury From The Deep - Patrick Troughton
02. The Invasion - Patrick Troughton
03. The Evil Of The Daleks - Patrick Troughton
04. The Web Of Fear - Patrick Troughton
05. The Tomb Of The Cybermen - Patrick Troughton
06. The Power Of The Daleks - Patrick Troughton
07. The Dalek Invasion Of Earth - William Hartnell
08. The Daleks - William Hartnell
09. The Caves Of Androzani - Peter Davison
10. Revelation Of The Daleks - Colin Baker

11. The Curse Of Fenric - Sylvester McCoy
12. The Greatest Show In The Galaxy - Sylvester McCoy
13. The Mind Of Evil - Jon Pertwee
14. Inferno - Jon Pertwee
15. Genesis Of The Daleks - Tom Baker
16. The Ice Warriors - Patrick Troughton
17. The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit - David Tennant
18. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances - Christopher Eccleston
19. Ghost Light - Sylvester McCoy
20. Remembrance Of The Daleks - Sylvester McCoy
21. The Ambassadors Of Death - Jon Pertwee
22. Doctor Who And The Silurians - Jon Pertwee
23. The Seeds Of Death - Patrick Troughton
24. The Moonbase - Patrick Troughton
25. Asylum Of The Daleks - Matt Smith
26. The Wheel In Space - Patrick Troughton
27. The Two Doctors - Colin Baker
28. Frontios - Peter Davison
29. Planet Of Giants - William Hartnell
30. Dalek - Christopher Eccleston

31. Blink - David Tennant
32. Delta And The Bannermen - Sylvester McCoy
33. The Daemons - Jon Pertwee
34. The Talons Of Weng-Chiang - Tom Baker
35. Vengeance On Varos - Colin Baker
36. Attack Of The Cybermen - Colin Baker
37. Resurrection Of The Daleks - Peter Davison
38. The Unquiet Dead - Christopher Eccleston
39. Planet Of The Dead - David Tennant
40. Daleks In Manhattan/Evolution Of The Daleks - David Tennant
41. The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People - Matt Smith
42. Planet Of The Ood - David Tennant
43. The Doctor's Daughter - David Tennant
44. Amy's Choice - Matt Smith
45. Midnight - David Tennant
46. Survival - Sylvester McCoy
47. The Sea Devils - Jon Pertwee
48. The Tenth Planet - William Hartnell
49. The Abominable Snowmen - Patrick Troughton
50. Earthshock - Peter Davison

Favourite Eras - based on the above list

01. Patrick Troughton - 402 points
02. Sylvester McCoy - 166 points
03. Jon Pertwee - 156 points
04. William Hartnell - 112 points
05. David Tennant - 100 points
06. Colin Baker - 96 points
07. Peter Davison - 80 points
08. Christopher Eccleston - 67 points
09. Tom Baker - 53 points
10. Matt Smith - 43 points

A special one-off drama about the creation of Doctor Who has been commissioned to mark the programme's 50th anniversary. An Adventure In Space And Time will tell the story of the genesis of the BBC science-fiction series in the early 1960s. "This is the tale of how an unlikely set of brilliant people created a true television original," said its writer Mark Gatiss. The 90-minute production will air on BBC Two next year.

Through the looking-glass

Two more storylines from the next series of Doctor Who have emerged from the show’s producer and chief writer Steven Moffat. He says, in episode two, The Doctor will take on pre-historic creatures in a story called Dinosaurs On A Spaceship! I had to suppress a snigger when I heard the title. It does sound a tad silly and more than a little preposterous until you remember Voyage Of The Damned and its spaceship, Titanic, almost crashing into Buckingham Palace! First thoughts are the episode is endeavouring to capitalise on the popularity of Primeval, but I remind myself that the current, probably final, series of the ITV1 dinosaur saga, while visually spectacular, is no more than a reworking of the Jon Pertwee Doctor Who story Invasion Of The Dinosaurs. The new dinosaur escapade is written by Chris Chibnall and features Being Human’s Mark Williams as Rory’s dad, Brian, and Rupert Graves from Sherlock.

Episode three is a western-themed adventure, written by Toby Whithouse and filmed on location in Spain, entitled A Town Called Mercy. It co-stars Adrian Scarborough and Ben Browder. Any mention of the Last Chance Saloon immediately conjures up images of William Hartnell’s legendary encounter at the O K Corral with Wyatt Earp and Johnny Ringo in mid-Sixties’ four-parter The Gunfighters, which not only gave The Doctor toothache but many fans as well! The new storylines are both directed by Saul Metzstein and follow the first episode of the new series in which The Doctor will be reunited with his oldest enemies in Asylum Of The Daleks. The first five episodes of Series Seven will air later this year, followed by the Christmas Special, with the remaining eight to follow in the New Year.

Meanwhile, Scots actress Karen Gillan has won the lead in a film about a haunted mirror, according to the Radio Times. Gillan, from Inverness, leaves her role as Doctor Who companion Amy Pond in episode five of Series Seven, and not in the Christmas Special as I previously suggested might be the case. In new US horror film, Oculus, she will play Kaylie whose brother is convicted of murdering their parents. Kaylie believes an antique looking-glass was responsible. It’s not the first time one of The Doctor’s companions has worked on a horror movie. Shortly before starting work on Doctor Who, Billie Piper played Jenny in Spirit Trap, alongside Russian pop star Alsou. It was released in August 2005 to generally poor reviews. After being returned to her own time and space in the classic series, Wendy Padbury appeared in Piers Haggard’s excellent cult 1971 British horror film Blood On Satan’s Claw as the unfortunate Cathy Vespers. And we shouldn’t forget Lalla Ward who began her acting career as Helga in the hypnotically stylish 1972 Hammer Horror film Vampire Circus.

Telly Visions: Anneke Wills

Despite the four decades that separate them, Anneke Wills and Billie Piper would have rather a lot to talk about if they ever met.

For starters, they are both former child stars who have played Doctor Who's female sidekick. They both won over fans of the sci-fi series with their blonde hair and thick dark lashes. And after closing the Tardis door for the last time, both turned their noses up at Hollywood.

But while 23-year-old Billie bowed out with a new £250,000 BBC role and a six-figure deal to write her autobiography, life wasn't quite so kind to Anneke.

Had anyone ever asked the Sixties star to pen her life story, they would have unveiled an astonishing tale of love and loss a thousand times more remarkable than that of former teen pop star Billie. While Billie recalls the details of her relatively brief life, Anneke is living like a hermit in a remote two-bedroom cottage on the edge of Dartmoor.

She survives on a tiny pension and knows an awful lot about fame and its pitfalls. 'If I could meet Billie now,' she says, 'I'd tell her to take the money and run. Life never quite turns out as you expect it.'

Anyone seeing the reclusive, bespectacled silver blonde woman pottering around her local Devonshire village would find it hard to believe that in her day, Anneke was at the zenith of 1960s celebrity London. Or that she was thrown out of Rada at 17 for 'behaving badly' with Edward Fox. Or that at just 18 she was pregnant with Anthony Newley's child and forced to abort it when he left her for Joan Collins.

Today, Anneke rarely goes out. She is at her happiest tending her vegetables. In a quiet corner of her garden, she has a bathtub set beneath a canopy of trees which is connected up to the kitchen sink by a hose. On summer mornings, she lies in the warm water, taking in the glorious view across the moors and reflecting on the astonishing events of her life.

The truth is that unlike Billie, who has apparently walked away from her youthful marriage to Chris Evans emotionally unscathed, the men in Anneke's life have always been her downfall. As she puts it: 'My heart has been broken several times. I have always been attracted to men who are extremely talented, beautiful and absolute bastards.'

From the start, Anneke's life was like something out of a film. The daughter of a Dutch-born Parisian catwalk model and a Harrow-educated artist descended from Elizabethan sea lord Sir Richard Grenville, she was born in 1941 in a private nursing home near Pinewood Studios. Her parents Anna and Alaric Willys (she later changed her name to Wills) had planned to buy a little house in the South of France but war in Europe put a stop to that.

Alaric, whose gambling left the family in severe debt, became a captain in the British Army and an absent figure. With no money, her mother took on a string of jobs - companion to a blind aristocrat, gardener, teacher - moving Anneke and her brother Robin around the country several times.

At the end of the war, Anna had saved a tidy sum. When Anneke's father returned, she gave it to him and he promptly fled to South Africa with his new lover.

'He left a ten-shilling note on my pillow,' recalls Anneke.

Her nomadic, bohemian childhood continued. In 1952, when she was 11 and living on a houseboat in Bray, Berkshire, she won her first role in a film called Child's Play and gave her £9 fee to her mother.

'I knew then I wanted to be an actor,' she says. 'All the other children in the film, including Peter Sallis (of Last Of The Summer Wine and Wallace and Gromit fame), were going on to drama school and I told my mother I wanted to go, too.'

She studied drama at the Arts Educational School in London and, with the pretty blonde elfin looks inherited from her mother, became one of the most employed child actresses of her generation. Early roles included a part as Roberta in the first TV version of The Railway Children in 1957.

Rada followed at 17, but she was already fast establishing her reputation as a wild child. She lost her virginity at 14 to 'a man who grabbed me in a corridor at a party'. She adds: 'I remember looking in the mirror afterwards to see if I looked any different. I knew what I was doing. I was searching for love. I wanted lots of love.'

One of her early boyfriends was Daphne du Maurier's son, Kits Browning. But Edward Fox, a year above her at Rada, was the first to steal her heart. Their relationship and her wilful attitude to staff resulted in her being asked to leave. They continued their relationship for about a year. She was flying home from Ireland after filming for four weeks with Michael Winner in 1958 when she picked up a newspaper and read that Edward had married actress Tracey Reed.

'My heart was broken,' she says. It was not for the last time. She met Anthony Newley during the filming of his cult TV series The Strange World Of Gurney Slade - she was playing one of his fantasy women.

'He took me by the hand and said: "Come on, Wills darling. You're coming home with me."'

Soon she was living in his London flat, along with Newley's mother, Grace, and his manager. 'It was pretty daring at the time,' admits Anneke. 'But I adored him. He was the most beautiful, talented, funny, sweet man. I couldn't resist him.'

During their year-and-a-half-long relationship, she helped him work on his musical Stop The World - I Want To Get Off.

'They were the happiest times,' she says, 'sitting by the piano writing songs together and I had my own little room as a studio where I could paint - mainly pictures of him and me.'

She knew he was unfaithful, but says: 'He made sure it wasn't under my nose and our little life was kept apart from all that.'

When Anneke discovered at 18 that she was pregnant, Newley took her by the hand and said: 'Darling, don't worry. I'll look after you. You'll have to clean out your studio and turn it into a nursery.'

'I was in heaven,' says Anneke. 'I started throwing myself into the earth mother role.'

Not long after that, Newley left to work in the U.S. and met Joan Collins. The first Anneke knew about it was when she found a telephone message scribbled on a pad in his manager's office. It said: 'Get Wills aborted.'

Abortion

She recalls being taken by Newley's manager to see the two psychiatrists necessary to agree to an abortion.

'No expense was spared,' she says bitterly. 'I was in shock, absolutely heart-broken. I didn't know why he had changed his mind.'

When she finally booked into a clinic in Hampstead for a Caesarean abortion at four-and-a-half months pregnant, she remembers taking a doll with her.

'It was ghastly,' she says. 'I was sobbing my eyes out.'

She moved in with her brother Robin at a flat in Paddington, but when Newley returned to London, she went round to their former home to confront him.

'There were pictures of Joan everywhere,' she says. 'It was obvious then what had happened.'

But despite abandoning her in the most cold-hearted way imaginable, Newley continued to see Anneke. 'He turned up at the flat in the middle of the night throwing stones up at the window,' she says. 'He never stopped loving me. Joan didn't know anything about it.

'There was one amusing incident when we were both having our hair cut at Vidal Sassoon - I realised with horror that Joan was sitting the other side of the mirror. Vidal was loving the drama of it. He said: "So how is Tony, Anneke?"'

Anneke felt no guilt about Joan, instead revelling in the opportunity to get her own back on the woman who had lured away her love. Within months she was pregnant again and determined this time that no one would take her baby.

'I wrote to Tony in New York and told him. I said: "It's my baby and I am not going to claim anything or mention your name. This is my baby and my life."'

By this time, while filming one of the Edgar Wallace mystery series, she had met Michael Gough, the actor who would later play Alfred the butler in four Batman films.

She was pregnant and in need of somewhere to stay and he offered her a room in his house.

'Mick absolutely loved babies,' she says. 'He wanted lots and lots. He let me have a little room and we fell in love. It didn't matter to him that I was pregnant.'

After Gough divorced his second wife, they married at Fulham register office on Valentine's Day 1965. Her daughter Polly, later adopted by Gough, had already been born and Anneke, then 21, was already pregnant again with their son, Jasper.

A year later, she was offered her role as Polly in Doctor Who, earning £90 a week - equivalent now to about £1,000 a week. It seemed to her that life couldn't have been more perfect.

'I loved Doctor Who,' she says. 'I took lessons on how to do the perfect scream without damaging my voice. I was the first sexy companion. My eyelashes were longer than my skirts.

'William Hartnell (the first Doctor) was pretty intimidating to work with, but when he was succeeded by Patrick Troughton it was so much fun.'

Even so, she confidently turned down a second series for fear of being typecast and went on to play the assistant to Anthony Quayle's criminologist in the hit series The Strange Report.

Little did she know that her professional acting career was rapidly drawing to a close.

'They were planning to film the second series in Hollywood,' she explains.

'I had two children and a husband, there was no way I could go.

'Perhaps it would be different today, but there was no way Mick would have come to Hollywood with me. I had to make a choice, but really there was no choice.'

Idyllic

Instead she travelled with Gough to Norfolk, where he was filming The Go Between with Julie Christie and Alan Bates. She found an idyllic Elizabethan farmhouse which they bought and she threw herself into motherhood and gardening.

For years they were happy, but when Gough started work at the National Theatre and returned to Norfolk only at weekends, the cracks in their marriage began to show.

'I was living a very earth mother lifestyle,' she says, 'while Mick was very theatrical and thespian. He had a terrible eye for the ladies. He started coming home less and less and we were having terrible rows.

'I had actually got what everybody said was the perfect formula for happiness - I had the husband, career, the two children and a lovely home. It should have equalled happiness, but it didn't. I felt so alone.

'For two years, I tried to keep it together. I thought I could still be Mrs Gough and an individual. But I was growing away from being his dolly bird. I was becoming a woman.'

The evening they agreed to divorce, she says, they went to bed, cried and held each other. 'We loved each other,' she says smiling. 'But we knew we couldn't continue to make each other so unhappy.'

Like Billie, who recently said she wouldn't take a penny of her ex-husband's millions, Anneke also walked away from her marriage empty-handed.

'Mick used to seethe about giving money to his first two wives,' she says. 'I told him I didn't want a penny. I said I'd rather be friends.'

In fact, what Anneke did next left friends thinking she'd gone slightly mad. While taking a course in meditation in London, she heard the controversial spiritual figure Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

Leaving behind her 14-year-old daughter Polly, then a boarder at one of the Rudolph Steiner schools in East Sussex, she took 12-year-old Jasper to Poona in India, donned the orange robes of Bhagwan's cult followers and joined his ashram where free love was the order of the day.

'For the first few nights I cried into my pillow,' she says. 'I'd swapped my wonderful home for a mattress in a communal dormitory.

'But there were some wonderful people there - including Terence Stamp. I was a bit bored by the free love thing. I'd had enough of all that. It was the meditation I was interested in.'

She stayed from 1975 to 1981 - at one stage spending ten days blindfolded on a cushion. Later she followed Bhagwan and his disciples to a ranch in Oregon, then to Vancouver where she scraped a living cleaning houses.

It was while she was there, in December 1982, that Gough phoned to tell her that Polly, recently engaged to be married, had been killed in a car crash with her bridesmaid-to-be.

'It was gut-wrenching,' she says. 'She was about to marry a farmer's son, a lovely boy. She had her whole future ahead of her.

'She was driving home and her car hit a patch of ice and skidded into a ditch. She and her friend drowned.'

Perhaps even more poignantly, Polly died never knowing that Newley was her father. 'We never told her,' says Anneke. 'At what point do you tell a child that? Mick had adopted her. She was ours.'

She told her son Jasper, now a photographer at Sotheby's, the truth about Polly's paternity only last year. Anneke adds: 'He listened and he said: "It's no big deal."'

Newley died in 1999, without ever discussing the fact that Polly was his child with Anneke.

When her daughter was still alive, Anneke met up with Newley in New York when Gough was on stage there. 'We had dinner,' she says. 'He showed me pictures of Tara and Sacha, his children with Joan. I showed him pictures of Polly.

'He said she was beautiful, but that was it. We cooed over each other's children. It didn't feel strange to me. I always thought of Polly as mine and Mick's.

'I was devastated to lose her but I always feel that she is here with me.'

Before she finally found peace in Devon, Anneke's life was to take a few more twists and turns.

After Polly's funeral, she returned to America, paid a man $1,000 to marry her so she could get a Green Card and set up her own interior design business.

'It was very common for followers of Bhagwan to do that so we could stay in Oregon,' she explains. 'It lasted as long as it took to get the paperwork stamped - I can't even remember what he was called.'

At 50, Anneke fell in love for the last time - with a 35-year-old deep-sea diver and marine biologist. They married in 1993 in Hornby Island, Canada, where she was living in a community of artists and running an amateur dramatics group.

But after Anneke remortgaged her house to pay for him to go to drama school, he left her for a 23-year-old fellow student.

'I thought: "This is the last time my heart's going to be broken",' she says. 'I couldn't stand it any more. There have been no men for ten years now. I have no need for anyone else. I am enough in myself.'

She returned to England ten years ago, moving first to a little cottage in Purbeck, Dorset, belonging to Edward Fox, with whom she is still friends; then to Devon four years ago, to a worker's cottage on the edge of a farm.

A portrait of her ancestor Sir Richard Grenville hangs on the wall - a reminder of the roots of her remarkable life.

Her memories could undoubtedly produce several autobiographies. But not surprisingly, after so much turbulence in her life, at 65 she craves only peace now.

'I just love it here completely,' she says. 'I love going to sleep surrounded by cows. Weeks go by and I don't talk to anyone. I am perfectly happy on my own. I don't have a single regret. Out of each heartbreak, you grow.

'Isn't that what life is about?'

The intriguing story of Dr Who's sidekick by BARBARA DAVIES, Daily Mail - Last updated at 10:00, 25 July 2006

Remembering the Brigadier

Nicholas Courtney, aka Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, is sadly no longer with us… at least in person. But he has left behind an immeasurable contribution to my favourite television series, “Doctor Who”, ensuring he will never be forgotten. It all started when director Douglas Camfield cast him as Bret Vyon, opposite first Doctor William Hartnell, in the epic twelve-part story “The Daleks’ Master Plan” in the mid-Sixties. Nick and Dougie clearly had a good working relationship because when the director was hired to oversee the reconstruction of the London Underground, for the Patrick Troughton adventure “The Web of Fear”, the actor was cast as Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, ready to battle the Yeti in those dark, dank tunnels. A year-or-so later and Lethbridge-Stewart was back, this time promoted to Brigadier, in the eight-part Cyber-infestation “The Invasion”, engaging the silver giants down in the sewers of London and on the steps of St. Paul’s. It’s surprising the term Brigadier ever became a watchword in “Doctor Who” circles because the rank is actually a demotion from Colonel! Even more ironic is that Camfield was an ex-military man and could’ve had the error in the script corrected. But, in retrospect, maybe it’s just as well the mistake was left in because it gave birth to one of the series’ most-enduring and popular characters.

By the time the second Doctor regenerated into Jon Pertwee, and black-and-white pictures gave way to colour, Nick Courtney became a regular on “Doctor Who”. The year was now 1970. The Doctor has been banished to Earth to reluctantly work as scientific advisor to military outfit UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, tracking all manner of alien invasion in the style of “Quatermass”! In “Inferno”, just as Patrick Troughton had as Salamander in “The Enemy of the World”, Nicholas is given the opportunity to play an evil version of the Brigadier, the Brigade Leader, resplendent in Blofeld-style eye-patch, when the Doctor ends up on a parallel Earth. A year on sees Nick given one of his most memorable lines in “The Daemons”, “Chap with wings, five rounds rapid!” His time as a regular essentially came to an end when it was time for a new producer to be appointed. “Robot”, Tom Baker’s first story was Barry Letts’ last. New producer Philip Hinchcliffe naturally had new ideas and wanted to direct the series towards a gothic influence. Nick, however, would return occasionally, seeing off the Loch Ness Monster in “Terror of the Zygons”. By the time Peter Davison was the Doctor, Alistair was teaching maths at a boarding school for boys in “Mawdryn Undead”. The twentieth anniversary adventure, “The Five Doctors”, gave the character another of those immortal lines, describing the Doctor as a “marvellous chap, all of them!”

In the final series of classic “Doctor Who”, Alistair Gordon is now retired and married to Doris, played in episodes one and four of “Battlefield” by the lovely Angela Douglas. It was rumoured, at the time, that the Brigadier was to be killed off but, luckily, has a last minute reprieve against the Destroyer. The story includes a poignantly reverberating scene where seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy cradles his friend’s head in his hands, believing him to be dead, and calls him a “thick-headed numbskull”. The only Doctor Nick hadn’t acted with by the end of the Eighties was the sixth, Colin Baker. Producer John Nathan-Turner corrected this omission, after the show’s cancellation, with the 1993 “Children in Need” Special “Dimensions in Time”. This wasn’t to be the last appearance of the character on television. A few years ago, the Brig resurfaced aiding-and-abetting Miss Smith in the Season Two finale of “The Sarah Jane Adventures”. This story has become his swansong. Former Doctor Tom Baker remembered Nicholas Courtney as “a wonderful companion” with “a marvellous resonant voice”. Quite a legacy and to paraphrase a line from the aforementioned “Battlefield”, Nick just did the best he could!

The NICOLA BRYANT Years 1984-86

Most of my favourite “Doctor Who” companions hail from the 1960s. Carole Ann Ford was the original, back in 1963. She played Susan Foreman, the Doctor’s granddaughter, over the first ten stories. In her final story, “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”, the Doctor told her she was in need of a good smacked bottom. Perhaps that’s why she left! Anneke Wills personified dolly bird Polly, who saw Hartnell regenerate into Troughton. Poor old Pat didn’t know what hit him when she wore a t-shirt to rehearsals with the slogan “Bring back Bill” emblazoned across her chest!! When Anneke left the series to marry “The Celestial Toymaker” Michael Gough, whom some of you may know better as Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred, her immediate successor was Deborah Watling. As Victoria Waterfield, she was adopted by the Doctor when her father was exterminated in “The Evil of the Daleks”. She left for a spot of rumpy-pumpy with David Essex in “That’ll Be the Day”!!! And, last but not least, the diminutive Wendy Padbury played squeaky-voiced computer boffin Zoë. Between takes, Padders took the occasional nap until, one day, Doctor Pat and Jamie-actor Frazer Hines decided to undo her skirt, in a church, with disastrous consequences when she woke and stood up to greet the incumbent vicar!!!!

I say “most of my favourites” because the exception to the rule is Nicola Bryant. Peri Brown joined the TARDIS crew, two decades later, in the mid-1980s. And what an entrance! Many fans assume she spent her entire time on “Doctor Who” in a bikini because of the first episode of her debut adventure, “Planet of Fire”. However, it is true that she spent some of her time in tightly fitting leotards and hot pants! In “Attack of the Cybermen” she sports a nice little bright-pink number until the Cybermen come over all caring and suggest she change into something a little warmer, more suitable for the cold climes of the tombs on Telos. Luckily, Nabil Shaban’s Sil wasn’t as thoughtful on Varos! Here Peri dons a super little bright-blue outfit for the entire serial. A couple of stories later, while opposing Laurence Payne’s Dastari’s illegal time-travel experiments, she’s back in skimpy shorts shaping up to the Sontarans in “The Two Doctors”, the excuse for her attire, this time, being that it was filmed in Seville, Spain… where it’s hot! But, hey, I didn’t mind!! I pretty much thought Peri looked perfect during the tail end of season twenty-one and for the whole of season twenty-two!!! Following the hiatus, Peri’s appearance changed for the first two stories of “The Trial of a Time Lord”. Gone was the cute bob, maybe inspired by Jenny Agutter’s hairstyle in “Logan’s Run”, to be replaced by a longer permed cut and more sensible clothes. Michael Grade had ruined everything!!!!

Almost a quarter-of-a-century after Nicola’s departure from “Doctor Who”, I’m happy to report that all is not lost! As of today, Monday, 14th June, 2010, Miss Bryant’s three-year portrayal of Peri is now available complete, to drool over as-and-when you choose, on DVD. With the release of “Planet of Fire”, partly filmed in Lanzarote… where it’s even hotter, all her adventures are, at last, available on disc. Coupled with a Special Edition of the story, on a separate disc, featuring an augmented soundtrack, “Planet of Fire” forms part of the boxed set “Kamelion Tales” and is complemented by the earlier two-part Peter Davison adventure “The King’s Demons”. At the RRP of £29.99, or even with a moderate discount, it’s fairly expensive for what is essentially six twenty-five minute episodes of “Doctor Who” but this is a special case. Well, it’s probably made of card and plastic, like all the others, but you know what I mean! Go on, be a devil, pretend you’re Mark Strickson’s Turlough, for the day, and go rescue Peri from drowning in the ocean in her pretty salmon-pink bikini!

(And, I didn’t even mention Nicola Bryant’s two best “Doctor Who” stories, “The Caves of Androzani” and “Revelation of the Daleks”!)

Beginnings

It was terrific to see “Doctor Who” back on BBC television, early Saturday evening! Engaging, through the sincerity of its performances, suspenseful, in that you really didn’t know in what direction the tale was going to turn, and full of hidden terrors, in the shadows flickering across a seemingly deserted and unknown terrain. Whatever dangers are to be faced, it doesn’t help any companion if they don’t feel able to trust the Doctor! He makes up excuses to have his own way, oblivious to the hazards in which he may be placing them, allowing curiosity to get the better of him. Unrushed, with time to slowly build the narrative, to dwell upon ideas to consider their implications, the story places the TARDIS crew in considerable peril. What is the object found on the forest floor outside the ship - a bomb? Who has left it there and what is its purpose? Who can be relied upon - the Thals? Who is to be believed - “The Daleks”?

How unfortunate for Russell T Davies, supposedly the saviour of British television drama, that his latest offering should premiere on the same night as a welcome, and long overdue, repeat of a serial representing a master class in economically effective writing! And, written by a supposed hack!! Almost immediately, Terry Nation has the explorers fall ill, succumbing to radiation sickness, and just as they encounter the conniving inhabitants of Skaro for the very first time. But, the mysterious old man, leading the crew, is equally devious - disastrously to the travellers’ detriment… One of their number, a science teacher, is paralysed from the waist down. They are all imprisoned inside an alien city, forced to lay a trap against those who have befriended them, while the youngest has to face her fear and journey again amongst the petrified trees, alone, to fetch drugs to combat their deteriorating and debilitating condition. Will “The Daleks” allow the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara to use the medicine or do the exterminators want it for themselves?

The Triumph of The Daleks

It’s impossible not to see the irony that while the present Executive Producer of “Doctor Who”, Russell T Davies, criticises the 6.20pm time slot allotted the new series’ first episode, on BBC One on April 5, the original Terry Nation serial introducing “The Daleks”, starring William Hartnell in the second-ever “Doctor Who” story, will begin a very rare repeat run on BBC Four later the same evening, as part of the “Verity Lambert Tribute Night”, at the more sensible time of 8.30pm! I can understand how RTD feels about the earlier transmission of “Partners in Crime” and agree with him that the show may possibly lose many viewers as a result. Shop assistants, for example, of which Rose was one, don’t finish work until 5.30pm and it seems very unlikely they’ll be able to immediately head for home. Had “Doctor Who” retained the 7pm position in the schedules, of recent years, there can be no doubt there would definitely be more bums in front of the telly. Having said that, the later showing of the 1963/4 serial does actually represent a minor victory for the classic series. All seven episodes were originally broadcast on BBC One at the even earlier start time of 5.15pm and the show somehow managed to survive rather well in spite of it! In fact, it was during the transmission of the first four episodes of “The Daleks” that “Doctor Who” really entered the public consciousness. The last three are slightly disappointing, insomuch as they are padded out to fit the running time, but only in comparison to the brilliance of the first half. Had Rusty’s opening gambit been on later, as he hoped, with the possibility of a clash between new and old “Doctor Who”, I know which story I would choose! Call me cynical but maybe Russell knows the new series is rubbish and is already trying to shift the blame before the whole Catherine Tate casting travesty comes crashing down on his head!! “Daleks conquer and destroy”, indeed!!!

Happy Birthday to Who

Forty-four years ago today BBC Television gave birth to a little science fiction series which went on to become a national institution. That show was, of course, “Doctor Who”. It was carefully constructed so that three generations were represented aboard the TARDIS. The Doctor was a Grandfather. This was so embedded on my consciousness that when the original Doctor, William Hartnell, requested a holiday, and a plea went out for someone to replace him for a couple of weeks, long before the concept of regeneration was introduced, I responded in keeping with the original concept. I wouldn’t dream of going so far as to suggest that I gave the Producer the idea of replacing dear old Bill but I wrote to “Junior Points of View” and naturally suggested my Grandfather take over at the helm of the console room. My letter was read out on the programme. There are records kept of these things at the Beeb and what I wrote, all those years ago, later resurfaced in an article in “Doctor Who Magazine”. In turn, the periodical of all things “Who” requested that if anyone who had featured on this comments show of the Sixties had stayed with “Doctor Who” would they please get in touch. I turned out to be their only respondent which probably means nothing other than that I need to get out more!

Anyway, I digress! Alongside the Grandfather figure of the Doctor were the two parental symbols in the guise of history and science schoolteachers Barbara and Ian. Clever idea that, to have figures of authority and learning to contrast the lead’s non-establishment outlook who could both look forward and back at events in time. Then there was the teenage girl, Susan, for all us children to relate to; a brilliant child in some respects while a typical transistor radio-listening teen at other times. And she was the paradox pivotal to hooking the viewer in “An Unearthly Child”, the opening episode of “Doctor Who”. Four characters providing the perfect model of how to root a fantasy show in reality. I’m told by my own parents that I watched the series from the beginning but my earliest memories are of the two stories, recorded as part of the first series but held over to open the second, “Planet of Giants”, with its oversized box of matches and rather large kitchen-sink plughole, and the disused warehouses at the start of “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”. It saddens me, more than a little, to think that the singular wise old sage has given way to the common young action hero but it is remarkable to think that the thirtieth series of travels in time and space will be on our television screens in 2008... A double Happy Birthday to “Doctor Who”!

Several Holidays for the Doctor!

At 6.35pm, 41 years ago, “Doctor Who” was broadcast on Christmas Day. It looked as though “The Feast of Steven”, episode seven of the twelve-part epic “The Daleks’ Master Plan”, would remain the only episode of the series afforded that privilege. Until last year. Forty years on, “The Christmas Invasion” became the second time of such an illustrious event. On this occasion, it wasn’t simply because the next Saturday’s episode just happened to fall on 25th December. It was a bona fide special. Now, here we are with the second specially prepared episode, “The Runaway Bride”, making it a hat trick and pitting the tenth Doctor against more killer robot Santas than you can point a sonic screwdriver at! Especially from a moving TARDIS down the M4!! But that original Christmas episode wasn’t without acknowledging the fact. Realising that they never got a chance to celebrate Christmas during their recent visit to Earth, the Doctor produces a bottle of champagne and some glasses…

The Doctor: “Here’s a toast, a happy Christmas to all of us.”

Steven: “The same to you, Doctor, Sara.”

The Doctor: “And incidentally, a happy Christmas to all of you at home!”

Desert Island "Doctor Who"!

With only two episodes left before the first new season of "Doctor Who" for almost sixteen years reaches what promises to be a tumultuous climax in a battle against the Daleks, I thought it might be an opportune time to compile my list of favourite stories that, as well as reflecting on some of the great stories of the past, also includes one from the ninth Doctor’s era. There are several new classic stories to choose from that have indeed justified all the hype and kept the show true to its original spirit and as fun as it always was. Coincidentally, I have the requisite number of eight choices as per the radio show from which this idea is affectionately borrowed!

From William Hartnell’s era my choice of favourite story would have to be "The Dalek Invasion of Earth". The use of extensive location filming, for the first time, enhances the atmosphere greatly. I know that, forty years on, the Robomen look and sound silly and the flying saucer is obviously dangled from a piece of string but the serial’s shortcomings are compensated by the imagery of the Dalek rising from the River Thames and a group of them patrolling Trafalgar Square, not to mention crossing Westminster Bridge in the trailer. And then there is the sensitive ending marking Carole Ann Ford’s departure from the series after playing the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, for ten stories...

So many perfect serials from Patrick Troughton’s time on the show! "Fury from the Deep" is my choice simply because it frightened me more than anything else I’ve ever seen. It has several excellent cliffhangers and I’ll never forget one of the characters walking out to sea and not stopping as she becomes totally immersed by the water or Victoria trapped in a locked room as the seaweed and foam threaten to engulf her. I long to see this story again but, alas, it seems gone forever. Years later, when I became interested in the programme in a more academic way, I discovered the director Hugh David (David Hughes) had taught my Dad maths at Grammar School and his wife, who had been the English teacher, guested in the Tom Baker story "The Ark in Space".

My favourite period of the Jon Pertwee era is the beginning. I love the first six serials because they are complex and challenging. Of the six, "The Mind of Evil" is my favourite though writer Don Houghton’s other serial, "Inferno", comes a close second. The reason I like it is because the idea of a parasite feeding off the fear in men’s minds is so much more frightening than some lumbering monster! It’s a cliché now but the camera closing in on the prisoner’s hand, pulling the trigger on the Doctor, only to pull out the following week to reveal the Brigadier’s gun preventing the death of our hero was new, and therefore clever, to me at the time.

My favourite Tom Baker serial is "Genesis of the Daleks" despite the BBC always falling back on it for repeat seasons! Writer Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks, devised the character of Davros in order to raise the standard of dialogue between hero and enemy, succeeding here in discussing many moral issues. Sarah Jane Smith seemingly falling to her death from the rocket scaffolding, as she tries to make her escape, and the freeze frame is another moment that will stay with me for the rest of my life. I just couldn’t see how they were going to get out of that one when it first aired!

Cliffhangers play an important part in making a good serial and "The Caves of Androzani" boasts two of the finest. When Peter Davison’s Doctor and new companion Peri are shot dead at the end of the first episode I didn’t foresee the resolution. It’s a shame it took until the last story of this era to get it right but director Graeme Harper presents us with a thoroughly gripping tour de force. Christopher Gable is electrifying as Sharaz Jek and I love the scene of the dying Doctor, coat caked in mud, struggling to carry his companion back to the TARDIS in an act of self-sacrifice that leads to his premature regeneration at the story’s close.

"Revelation of the Daleks" is "Doctor Who" for adults. Writer Eric Saward presents us with an alternative take on the Doctor through the character of Orcini, and his sidekick with personal hygiene problems, which is why Colin Baker’s Doctor doesn’t really enter the fray until over halfway through. Nicola Bryant, as Peri, is lucky to have worked with Harper on both his serials which probably accounts for why she is one of my favourite companions when all the others, Polly, Victoria and Zoë, hail from the mid-to-late Sixties. There are moments of real pathos in this serial such as Natasha discovering what has really become of her father and the death of Jobel, which is no mean feat when you consider the ghastly nature of his character!

From Sylvester McCoy’s three years on the show, my choice has to be "The Curse of Fenric". This period has come in for much criticism when, certainly during the last two years, the show was actually beginning to find its feet again. It wasn’t all played for laughs as is often suggested. One of the scariest things in this serial isn’t the Haemovores or the rather placid Ancient One but the transformation of the two girls into vampires because the allegory, equating loose morality with bodily decay, is far more frightening than any monster could be, even when those monsters are well-realized. The story contains some very memorable dialogue too. Who can forget the chilling menace of "We play the contest again... Time Lord", at the end of episode three, and "Don’t interrupt me when I’m eulogizing"?!!

Finally, from the single season that constitutes the Christopher Eccleston era, my eighth choice is Steven Moffat’s two-part story that begins with "The Empty Child" and concludes with "The Doctor Dances". Set during WWII, like "The Curse of Fenric", this production has everything including a spine-tingling transformation sequence featuring "One Foot in the Grave" actor Richard Wilson towards the end of the first episode. The unearthly boy of the title is called Jamie, no doubt after the second Doctor’s Scottish companion. His mum is called Nancy, undoubtedly after the character who befriends Fagin’s boys in "Oliver Twist", linking back to the earlier Dickens episode. And the Glenn Miller tunes were previously aired by the DJ in "Revelation of the Daleks". Just a few of the subtle references that help make this story as near perfect as possible.

And, if I was only allowed just one of the eight to take to my mythical island it would have to be, if it still existed in the BBC’s archive, "Fury from the Deep". I don’t think I would be disappointed, given the opportunity to see it again, as anything that can leave such an indelible mark on the memory has to have been an extremely powerful piece.