And so a great darkness fell upon the land.
Then in 1993 came the news we’d been waiting so desperately for: Doctor Who was coming back. There was going to be a one-off special called ‘The Dark Dimension’. It sounded fantastic. Apparently, all the surviving Doctors were going to be in it – even Tom Baker had agreed to show up this time – and they would unite against an army of classic monsters: Daleks, Cybermen, Autons, the lot. If everything went well and the ratings were good, I thought, the BBC would have no choice but to revive Doctor Who as a proper series. There was still a chance that Nicol would grow up with a Doctor to call her own.
But two months later, the BBC abruptly aborted the project, citing budgetary concerns. I was livid. In fact, I got so worked up about it I wrote a protest letter. I typed it out on Sue’s second-hand Olivetti and I sent it to a semi-professional fanzine called DreamWatch Bulletin (formerly Doctor Who Bulletin). By semi-professional I mean the magazine was printed on glossy paper and you could buy it in specialist shops like Forbidden Planet, but also that it was a not wholly professional enterprise. DWB was full of inaccuracies, insane theorising and wild, libellous rumour and in some ways can be said to have invented the concept of Doctor Who online forums several years before the rise of the internet.
Reading this letter now, I think I must have been going through Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief.
It was nice while it lasted but it’s time to face up to the inevitable: Doctor Who is dead.
Clearly I skipped the first stage of grief – denial – fairly quickly.
The final nail in the coffin was unceremoniously hammered in on Friday 11 July by the faceless BBC Board of Management. They have acted like an evil, selfish parent who have (sic) taken away our present from under the tree on Christmas Eve.
Or a plug off a TV, eh me-in-1993? This is clearly anger, the second stage, expressed in grammatically uncertain terms. But I has learnt a lot since then.
How long can a fan-based network sustain itself with no new product to dissect and discuss?
Oh, about sixteen years, give or take.
What exactly is the point in petitioning the BBC? First we get Eldorado and now this debacle, what makes you think anything will change? It’s over. No amount of post mortems will change this sad fact, and no witch-hunts will result in a U-turn. It will merely create new false hopes to be stamped upon. I know when it’s time to get out of this vicious circle, and that time is now.
Hmm, the anger here is spinning out of control. Not only do I really have it in for Eldorado, I seem to be trapped in a vicious circle of mixed metaphors from which no amount of post mortems will result in a U-turn.
Maybe it was Colin Baker’s revenge against a corporation that had betrayed and humiliated him and then had the audacity to ask him for his co-operation in such a project; maybe it was a cunning plan on behalf of Alan Yentob and the BBC to shut the fans up once and for all; maybe the script was crap; maybe, maybe, maybe …
Welcome to the third stage: bargaining. If only, if only, if only …
This is all academic. I know when I am beaten.
Stage four: depression, leading to …
I know when it’s time to move on.
Finally, I have reached the acceptance stage. But acceptance came at a cost:
My attention has now turned to Star Trek: The Next Generation, not because it is a better show but it does have one thing going for it – new episodes.
OK, that’s quite enough of that. I then go on and on about how wonderful Star Trek: The Next Generation is for several pages, but I can’t bring myself to reprint it here.
Sue looked over the letter before I posted it.
Sue: You’re very passionate about this, aren’t you?
Me: It drives me up the wall. Doctor Who makes more money in overseas sales and merchandising than it costs to produce. The BBC’s decision not to make Doctor Who doesn’t make any financial sense!
Sue: You should put that in your letter instead of all that Star Trek rubbish.
*
I can’t remember now if the Children in Need special ‘Dimensions in Time’ was always planned as a fundraiser for homeless children or whether it was intended to placate hopeless fans who had had their spirits crushed by the ‘Dark Dimension’ debacle – two equally worthy causes, in my view. However, when I learned that all the Doctors and his companions would be teaming up to face the cast of EastEnders in a time-warped Albert Square – in 3D, no less – my heart sank. I just hoped that the homeless kids would get something out of it, because the fans’ new false hopes were surely about to be stamped upon. Again.
In order to view ‘Dimensions in Time’ in 3D, you needed a special pair of 3D glasses; and in order to get hold of the 3D glasses, you had to buy a copy of the Radio Times. Of course, I stupidly decided to leave it to the day of the broadcast before trying to obtain a pair, by which time the special Radio Times had sold out and there were no glasses to be had anywhere – not at the newsagent’s, not at the supermarket and especially not at the opticians. (‘I don’t suppose you sell 3D glasses as well, do you …?’) With less than half an hour to go before the transmission – just as I was considering making my own specs out of a couple of Quality Street wrappers – Sue disappeared. She returned twenty minutes later with a pair of 3D glasses and no Radio Times.
Sue: I knocked on every door in the street until I found someone who would part with a pair. I had to give them two quid for the glasses and I’ve promised to donate at least another fiver to Children in Need. Here you go.
Me: But what about you and Nicol? We need three pairs of glasses if we’re going to watch it together.
Sue: Don’t push it, Neil.
Sue returned to the living room when it was all over.
Sue: Why are you crying?
Me: I’m fine. I just saw a sad film about some poor homeless kids. It really brings it home to you in 3D.
Suddenly there’s a flash and then Ace finds herself in the East End of London with the Sixth Doctor. There’s a lot for Sue to process and the penny only drops when …
Sue: Gita! It’s Gita and Sanjay from EastEnders!
Me: Finally, she gets it.
Another flash and the Sixth Doctor and Ace are replaced by the Third Doctor and …
Sue: That’s Bonnie Langford. I need a drink when Bonnie is on screen.
Romana: Have you seen the Doctor?
Phil Mitchell: Doctor Legg is the only doctor round here, love.
Romana: Doctor who?
Sue: I bet Steven Moffat loves ‘Dimensions in Time’. It’s timey-wimey and it’s got his favourite joke in it.
Later on the Seventh Doctor is joined by …
Sue: K9!
Me: Yes, but which version?
Sue: Oh, f**k off.
The Seventh Doctor: I’m trying to overload the Rani’s computer, enhance the power of the time tunnel to pull her TARDIS in and not me.
Sue: Does anybody actually understand this? Sober, I mean.
Me: No.
Sue: What a shambles. The BBC should have lost the rights to make Doctor Who when that went out. No wonder you were in such a foul mood that week. You must have found it really painful to watch. Oh well, Doctor Who came back in the end and everything worked out fine. And it could have been a lot worse. It could have been Eldorado.
‘Dimensions in Time’ was so mind-bendingly, humiliatingly dreadful the BBC didn’t dare broadcast the whole thing in one go. They were probably worried that Children in Need viewers would start withdrawing their pledges. The second part was transmitted the next day, in the middle of Noel’s House Party. Even Noel Edmonds – a man whose career was built on his seeming unembarrassabilty – introduced the segment and then turned his head away in shame. It was the final proof that the BBC didn’t just dislike Doctor Who; they were actively seeking to destroy it.
As if by way of an apology, BBC One broadcast a hastily commissioned documentary on the night of Doctor Who’s thi
rtieth anniversary in November 1993 – ‘Thirty Years in the TARDIS’, which was actually surprisingly good. But with no new episodes in sight, it felt like I had been invited to attend a posthumous birthday party for a murdered relative by the very person who had killed them. The programme concluded with a tight-lipped Alan Yentob teasing a possible comeback for the Doctor. But I didn’t believe him. Thanks to the BBC, Doctor Who had become the thing that nobody liked any more.
Except for the fans. If the Doctor wasn’t going to return to television any time soon, he would have to survive in other media – comics, books, videos. This wasn’t anything new for Doctor Who. From the very beginning the character has appeared in spin-off comic strips – TV Action, Countdown etc. – and this tradition still continues in the official Doctor Who Magazine to this day. But the comic strips were just one strand. The most exciting development was the launch of a brand-new series of books called the New Adventures.
When Virgin’s publishing arm ran out of Target novelisations to reprint in 1990, and with no new novelisations on the horizon thanks to the programme being ‘rested’, the company decided to plug the gap with a series of original novels. These novels were called the New Adventures and they were, to all intents and purposes, the continuing exploits of the Seventh Doctor and Ace, no longer limited by budget or special effects. Described as being too broad and deep for the small screen, they certainly lived up to the claim, with many of them containing strong violence, swearing and even sex, the last of which, for many readers, demanded the biggest imaginative leap of all.
But these adventures weren’t constrained to the printed page. Industrious fans with access to increasingly affordable video technology managed to convince Doctor Who cast members to play subtly different versions of themselves for direct-to-VHS releases. So, Sixth Doctor Colin Baker took on the role of a pan-dimensional hero called the Stranger, while Nicola Bryant, best known for playing his companion Perpugilliam Brown, portrayed Miss, erm, Brown. The BBC’s lawyers were naturally suspicious, showing that when it came to protecting their intellectual property, perhaps the corporation did care about Doctor Who after all. However, the fans also knew that the BBC didn’t own the whole Whoniverse. They didn’t own the rights to the Daleks, for a start; Terry Nation’s agent was famous for driving a hard bargain whenever the programme wanted to use them. There were other cheaper monsters and characters not owned by the BBC, too. All of a sudden, if you wanted to make a sequel to ‘Terror of the Zygons’, say, and you could raise the funds, there was little to stop you except your own lack of competence and talent. And, as it turned out, this was easily overcome.
The result was a series of amateur fan videos like Wartime, which saw U.N.I.T.’s Sergeant Benton confront his haunted past; Shakedown, which featured Sontarans battling the cast of Blake’s 7; and Downtime, where the Brigadier took on the Yeti for the third and final time. And these videos didn’t have to include the words ‘Time’ or ‘Down’ in the title, either. For example, in The Airzone Solution, four actors who have played the Doctor team up for an edgy eco-thriller, although it’s probably best remembered – or forgotten – for the bit where Colin Baker climbs into bed with Nicola Bryant for a quick fumble, something that definitely never happened in ‘Attack of the Cybermen’, though no less frightening.
Sue: So what are you putting me through tonight?
Me: Tonight I’m going to give you a taste of how desperate Doctor Who fans were in 1995.
Sue: A desperate Doctor Who fan. Sounds wonderful.
Me: So I’m going to show you a fan film.
Sue: Haven’t I suffered enough?
Me: The fans grew tired of waiting for the BBC to bring Doctor Who back, so they did it themselves. Fans are like that.
Sue: But how could they afford it? Kickstarter didn’t exist back then. They must have had more money than sense.
These videos were not very good – some of them were barely legal – but none of them were as shameful as ‘Dimensions in Time’. The books, comics and videos were produced by the fans for the fans. Doctor Who was the thing that nobody liked, least of all the BBC; nevertheless we cherished it, we nurtured it, and we ultimately spent a fortune on it. But it was worth every penny because, for better or worse, Doctor Who belonged to us now.
Which is when the BBC decided to take it back.
Before We Get to the 1996 TV Movie,
Six Other Things I Hate
1. Mayonnaise
Of course I hate the things that most people hate – injustice, world hunger, the Liberal Democrats – but there is a special place in hell reserved for mayonnaise. ‘Mayo’ is the bane of my existence. In fact, I have thought about forming a lobby group called ‘Hold the Mayo’ to get it outlawed. It’s not just that I don’t like it; the horrible gunk is everywhere. Imagine that you fancy a sandwich but you don’t want it smothered in liquefied egg. Now look at the choices you have left. If you’re lucky, you might find a packet of Simply Ham at the back of the chiller. The sandwich company is basically saying, if you don’t like mayonnaise, you can’t be trusted with anything else – tomatoes, say, or a little bit of salad. It’s an outrage.
I appreciate this may seem rather trivial to those of you who are fighting homophobia or racism – or who don’t buy your sandwiches from the all-night garage – but as far as I’m concerned, this blatant pro-mayo discrimination is, to quote Bender from Matt Groening’s Futurama, the worst kind of discrimination: the kind against me.
2. New Year’s Eve
I hate New Year’s Eve. I feel like it’s my duty as a human being to at least try to have a good time. But it’s freezing cold outside; you can’t book a taxi; all the decent parties sold out months ago; post-Christmas ennui is in full effect; and on the stroke of midnight, drunks will attempt forcibly to kiss you on the lips. If I want that, I can get it at home. And all that palaver to usher in the gloomiest month of the year.
The worst New Year’s Eve of all was Millennium Eve. We hadn’t planned on going out that night – I thought I’d be too busy avoiding planes dropping out of the sky to party like it was 1999 – but when I realised that a computer bug wasn’t going to bring civilisation to its knees after all, I felt we ought to at least make an effort to mark the big occasion. We had plenty of bottled water and tinned fruit under the stairs but no alcohol. So we got into Sue’s car and headed for Newcastle, thinking we might see some fireworks. No such luck. Tickets for the Quayside had sold out weeks ago so we stood shivering on the outskirts of the city with the rest of the cheapskates, staring up at an empty sky. It was cold, overcrowded and anti-climactic, but cold, overcrowded and anti-climactic in a special, once-in-a-millennium sort of way.
The most memorable moment was when, on the stroke of midnight, someone in the crowd proposed to their girlfriend. I’ll never forget his words to her after she’d slapped him across the face: ‘It’ll be another thousand years before I ask you again, you bitch.’
3. Michael Bublé
Sue loves Michael Bublé. She won’t stop playing his sanitised, soulless pop at me, no matter how much I plead with her to turn it off. Everywhere I turn, he’s there: in the car, in the kitchen, the garden, the bathroom and, if Sue had her way, our bedroom too. The chubby-cheeked crooner has been compared to Frank Sinatra by people who don’t know what they are talking about. Bublé is to Sinatra what a Care Bear is to a grizzly, only even more irresistibly punchable. Given half a chance, I would cheerfully smack him in the face myself. I just haven’t met him yet.
4. Jaws 4: The Revenge
The tagline for the third sequel to the best film ever made is: ‘This time it’s personal’. When I saw it – alone – in Coventry’s ABC cinema in 1987, that’s exactly how it felt to me: personal. In much the same way that finding out someone had eaten your cat with mayonnaise would feel personal.
Jaws 4 is so bad it makes Jaws 3 look like Jaws 2. The sequels prior to this one had been exponentially dire; surely the bottom of the yellow barrel had been scraped wit
h the previous film, which had been made in 3D. But no. The movie begins when Chief Brody dies – off-screen – from a cardiac arrest, a clogged artery succeeding where two giant sharks had failed. Nonetheless, his widow Ellen blames the Great White for her husband’s demise, convinced that it is pursuing a bloody vendetta against her and her grieving family. (NB This is the actual plot. It grows less credible from there.)
The film is set in the Bahamas and stars Michael Caine as a cheeky, Michael Caine-ish airline pilot. Caine is fond of saying that although he knew Jaws 4 was going to be a terrible film, he very much enjoyed the house it built. Of course, as a Jaws completist – and notwithstanding the fact that I hate it – I own three copies of Jaws 4, as part of various VHS and DVD box sets, which means every time I buy another copy, I am probably helping redecorate the bathroom of that house. I am literally a hostage to Michael Caine’s fortune.
5. Smoking
I smoke a pack of Marlboro Lights every single day. If I’m stressed, which is most of the time, I’ll break open a second pack. I hate the fact that I’m writing this paragraph with a cigarette dangling from my lips. What I hate even more is that if you took this fag away from me, I’d curl up in the corner of the room and cry. I’m going to stop smoking just as soon as I finish this book. No, that is a lie. Who am I kidding? I’m going to smoke until I die and then be cremated so someone else can inhale me. You know, to give something back.
The problem is I desperately need the cigarettes to help me cope with …
Adventures with the Wife in Space Page 9