It feels like only a year ago that Doctor Who underwent a strange and cataclysmic soft reboot, and it looks like it’s happening again this week. Or is it?
Jeremy Bentham (yes, a relation) was the co-founder of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society back in the 70s. To us, he was more famous for contributing a section to Peter Haining’s 1983 coffee-table book Doctor Who: A Celebration, a section which briefly covered every Doctor Who story up to the final story of Season 20, The King’s Demons. We mentioned it last week; it wasn’t just a source of information about the history of the show, but a massive influence on received fan wisdom for years afterwards.
There exists a three-minute training video from 1972 in which Doctor Who producer Barry Letts talks about how CSO works. It can be found on the Carnival of Monsters DVD release and on the more recent Doctor Who: The Collection Season 10 blu-ray box set.
According to this story’s TARDIS Fandom page, stuntman Terry Walsh was actually hit by one of the cars during the scene in the quarry, but he just got up and continued with the scene, so it made it into the finished episode. Barry Letts’s recollection is somewhat different, however.
And inevitably, we end up talking about the eccentric way the Pertwee Era was shown in Australia in the late 1970s, so you might want to jog your memory by re-reading the shownotes for last week.
You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.
Flight Through Entirety will be back at Christmas in July to discuss The Return of Doctor Mysterio, and we’ll be covering Peter Capaldi’s final year on the show after that, concluding with Twice Upon a Time at Christmas.
The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be back in just over two weeks, soon after the screening of the first two episodes of the 2024 season on 11 May. In the meantime, you can hear our hot takes on the fourepisodeswe’veseen of Doctor Who’s second RTD era.
Last week, Brendan and his friend Bjay returned to the mic for another episode of their gaming podcast, The Bjay BJ Game Show. This month, they enjoyed There is No Game: Wrong Dimension, a surreal and metatextual point-and-click adventure with a surprising amount of heart.
There’s also Startling Barbara Bain, our Space: 1999 commentary podcast. We should have Episode 5 to you in about a week, so you can prepare by watching the first of Sir Brian Blessed’s appearances on the show in Death’s Other Dominion.
Maximum Power will be back later in the year to talk about the final series of Blakes 7.
In the first week of the 1970s, Doctor Who is back, with a new Doctor, a new alien threat, new companions and a new earthbound premise. So what makes it the same show?
Notes and links
Jon Pertwee’s Doctor is well known for regularly going into a coma to heal himself. He does that in this story, in The Dæmons, in Planet of the Daleks, in The Monster of Peladon and in Planet of the Spiders. (I’ve probably left some out.) This phenomenon is so well known that is has a name — the Pertwee death pose — characterised by Pertwee lying flat on his back with one knee bent. Flight Through Entirety named its Jon Pertwee retrospective after this — Episode 31: One Knee up for Pertwee.
When Peter and Simon refer to “625-line Pertwees”, what they mean is the episodes that still existed in their original PAL format, as opposed to episodes that only existed as film transfers. The 625-line Pertwees were the only episodes repeated by ABC-TV in Australia in the late 70s, which meant, roughly speaking, that we would go from Spearhead from Space straight to Day of the Daleks, and then to Seasons 10 and 11, skipping Planet of the Daleks and Invasion of the Dinosaurs, each of which had one episode that only existed as a film transfer. You can find an account of the history of Doctor Who repeats in Australia on this page from BroaDWcast, and you can find details of the state of our collection of colour Pertwee episodes on this page from The Destruction of Time.
Malcolm Hulke’s novelisation of the Season 8 story Colony in Space was called Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon (1974). Colony in Space was Jo Grant’s fourth story on TV, but the novelisation describes her arrival at UNIT and her boredom in the job until she is whisked away by the Doctor to an alien planet. It’s not until the following year that we get the novelisation of Jo’s actual first story in Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons.
The sting is the screaming sound that leads into the music of the closing credits of the Classic Series, starting with The Ambassadors of Death, two stories after this. (It can now be heard at the beginning of the opening credits as well.)
Startling Barbara Bain is our commentary podcast on Space: 1999, a lavishly expensive British TV show from the mid-70s shot entirely on 35mm film, with lots of visual effects done in-camera (including the famous model sequences).
ADR is part of the post-production process: actors are brought into a recording studio to record dialogue for scenes that have already been shot.
You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.
Flight Through Entirety will be back at Christmas in July to discuss The Return of Doctor Mysterio, and we’ll be covering Peter Capaldi’s final year on the show after that, concluding with Twice Upon a Time at Christmas.
Last week saw the release of Episode 2 of the new Avengers commentary podcast, The Three Handed Game, featuring our very own Brendan and Richard, as well as frequent-guest-of-the-podcast, Steven B. In Episode 2, they continue their Reach for the Stars theme, with a Tara King episode called Invasion of the Earthmen.
There’s also Startling Barbara Bain, our Space: 1999 commentary podcast. We’ve covered the first four episodes of Series 1; Episode 5 should be out in the next couple of weeks.
Maximum Power will be back later in the year to talk about the final series of Blakes 7.
A big week for beginnings this week, with a new Doctor, a new origin story for the Daleks, and a whole new approach to defeating the bad guys. Oh, and a new podcast to discuss them all on. So let’s welcome Patrick Troughton to the studio floor, as we discuss The Power of the Daleks.
Notes and links
The most recent Blu-ray release of The Power of the Daleks was the Special Edition in 2020, which includes a compilation of all the surviving footage, including material shot on an 8mm film camera pointing at a TV screen. This material was also included on the Lost in Time DVD release way back in 2004.
Simon also mentions a site which chronicles the upsetting history of Doctor Who’s missing episodes. It’s called The Destruction of Time, and it’s well worth reading, if a bit dispiriting at times.
The Omnirumour was a series of rumours arising during 2013 that as many as 90 missing Doctor Who episodes had been found and were ready for return to the BBC Archives, possibly as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations. This didn’t happen, obviously, but we did at least get nine episodes: five episodes of The Enemy of the World and four of The Web of Fear.
Let’s continue the tradition: here is Elizabeth Sandifer’s essay on this story, which (inevitably) discusses the importance of mercury to the new Doctor’s character.
James very thoughtfully plugs Brendan and Richard’s new podcast about The Avengers, called The Three-Handed Game, in which they are joined by old friend of the podcast Steven B to discuss episodes from different eras in the history of the show.
At the end of the episode, Simon recounts the story of the gradual revelation of The Power of the Daleks throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s. Among the things he mentions are Peter Haining’s Doctor Who: A Celebration (1983), the Radio TimesDoctor Who 20th Anniversary Special (also 1983), The Making of Doctor Who by Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks (2nd edition, 1976), an edition of DreamWatch Bulletin (possibly issue 121 in December 1993) announcing the upcoming publication of the telesnaps in Doctor Who Magazine, and the discovery by Damian Shanahan of some clips from this story in an Australian TV Show called Perspective: C for Computer.
You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s a summary of where we’re up to right now.
Flight Through Entirety will be back at Christmas in July to discuss The Return of Doctor Mysterio, and we’ll be covering Peter Capaldi’s final year on the show after that, concluding with Twice Upon a Time at Christmas.
The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be back a couple of days after the screening of the first two episodes of Season 1 of the Ncuti Gatwa Era on 11 May. In the meantime, you can hear our hot takes on the fourepisodeswe’veseen of Doctor Who’s second RTD era.
There’s also Startling Barbara Bain, our Space: 1999 commentary podcast. We’ve covered the first four episodes of Series 1; Episode 5 should be out in the next couple of weeks.
Maximum Power will be back later in the year to talk about the final series of Blakes 7.
