And a merry Christmas to all of you at home!

To all of you however you are spending your Christmas – have a wonderful day!

“I told you this silly disguise wouldn’t work!”

85 – Full Circle

Before story-arcs became the norm when Doctor Who returned in 2005, they were something of a rarity in the classic series. One such example was the so-called ‘E-Space’ trilogy of Season 18 – where the Doctor and Romana find themselves sucked out of the normal universe (N-Space) and into Exo-Space (E-Space) – a smaller pocket universe. Full Circle is the first in the loose trilogy, explaining how the TARDIS crew pass through a gateway to E-Space while meaning to get to Gallifrey.

Christmas Special – Doctor Bill

Tis the season to be jolly! So I am bringing some artwork to brighten up the blog in this festive season! The drawing below was part of a series of 12 I did for a Christmas calendar for my sister. We have been known to do a series of comics based on comedian Bill Bailey portraying the Doctor, so I amused myself by portraying that most important of scenes – choosing the Doctor’s outfit …

More artwork to follow in the run-up to Christmas!

86 – The Dominators

I cannot tell whether this post will please or sadden fans of the Second Doctor – undoubtedly they will be pleased that until this point I have not had a bad word to say about any of his stories, but I have noticed that Troughton fans in particular have a reverence for his era that makes all other eras pale in comparison – so I may well bring down their judgement upon myself by daring to imply some of the blessed Pat’s stories were less than good!

Colourisation of Black & White Doctor Who

I am a huge fan of black and white footage and firmly believe it should be used more as a medium in its own right. I’m also persuaded that certain stories would lose certain of their potency and fear factor if they were in colour – Tomb of the Cybermen being the first example that springs to mind. So to date I have not been persuaded that reproducing any of the first six seasons of Doctor Who in colour would be a good idea.

Today however I came across this archive photograph on Twitter and was astounded. My initial reaction was that it didn’t quite scan to see that generation of Cybermen in colour – but the more I looked at the picture, the more I nodded in approval. It looked good – it looked like what I imagined a Pertwee era serial to feature the Cybermen would have looked like.

And that got me thinking – why not colourise The Invasion? Although the U.N.I.T. era has its root in much earlier stories – The War Machines, The Faceless Ones and The Web of Fear being the obvious instances – there is no doubt that The Invasion was the building block for Season 7 and the creation of the U.N.I.T. family, and has a better claim than any other story from the first six seasons for continuity with the Pertwee era. While the Black & White version must of course remain to be enjoyed ‘as is’, I realised to my surprise that I actually wanted to watch The Invasion in colour – I have joined the lunatic ranks of Doctor Who fans begging the BBC to take my money! But I think that this story has the potential to be awesome in colour, and act as a wonderful bridge between Seasons 6 and 7. Of course, if they wanted to do the same for the other three serials I have mentioned, I would have no objections either!

There are of course two important caveats to this request:

1. It has to be done well to be worth the investment. Otherwise you end up resenting a poorly executed product and contrasting it unfavourably to the original, rather than appreciating a new expression of a classic story. In practice, that probably means improving the colourisation standards on stories such as The Ambassadors of Death or The Mind of Evil first before taking on a story that was never even filmed in colour to begin with.

2. The BBC need to find or animate the currently missing episodes first. I think I speak for all fans when we say that we want to be able to watch all of the classic episodes in some format before they go changing the ones we’ve already got!

87 – The Horns of Nimon

Let’s begin by acknowledging the elephant in the room – when you hear the character of Soldeed calling out “Lord Niiiiiiiiiiiiimon!” you do have to resist the urge to join in the pantomime and yell at your television “He’s behind you!” There is something rather comic about this serial, reflecting perhaps the hand of the Script Editor, some chap called Douglas Adams …

88 – The Mysterious Planet (The Trial of a Time Lord episodes 1-4)

After the hiatus of 1985, Doctor Who arrived back in 1986 with the distinct threat of doom hanging over the show – so it is appropriate that The Mysterious Planet, the first story within The Trial of a Time Lord begins with a bell tolling ominously and little indication as to why the Doctor has arrived without his companion Peri. Whatever misgivings Script Editor Eric Saward may have had about using the trial analogy to compare the idea of Doctor Who being on trial in real life, I thought the concept overall worked rather well.

89 – Attack of the Cybermen

There are no words for how disappointed I was when I watched Attack of the Cybermen on VHS. I had loved The Tomb of the Cybermen and enjoyed The Tenth Planet, and having read that this story brought elements of these two stories together (and included the return of Michael Kilgarriff as the Cyber Controller) I really wanted to see this story. My disappointment was reflected in the fact that it does not do the least justice to the older serials, and especially Tomb.

90 – Snakedance

This serial from Peter Davison’s second season as the Fifth Doctor is forever going to be associated with the rather ridiculous get-up Martin Clunes’ character Lon ends up wearing in episode 4. But it is unkind and undeserved, for Clunes plays a good straight performance and I would argue that Snakedance is even more effective than Kinda at exploring the nature of true evil.

91 – Terror of the Autons

Terror of the Autons is a perfectly respectable four-part story, whose only crime is to pale in comparison to the first story to feature the Autons, Spearhead from Space. It is memorable for a whole series of first appearances, not least of which is the mercurial Roger Delgado as the original (and best) Master. From the very first Delgado is mesmerising – not only in terms of his hypnotic prowess, but his calm command of any situation he finds himself in (Steven Moffat take note!)