DWM '82

http://www.lovingwho.com/DWMissues/issues/1982.html

The DWM collection of 1982 spanned issues 60 to 71, along with a Summer Special and a Winter Special.

What are your memories of these DWMs? Were a DWM reader at the time?

I'll get around to this I promise Si!

Those covers were a blast from the past! Think I remember most of them.
I was in primary school reading them. Dad had died a year earlier. Ah, the 80's...

My most vivid memory of DWM that year is bruv getting issue 61 from (I think) Carlisle pannier market.... and then nothing. We didn't get 62 through to 66, didn't see any of them anywhere, and I think we kind of assumed the mag' had folded for some reason-- and then (Merlin, against all hope) I spotted 67 (The Five Faces archive special) in WH Smiths. Ha-ha, what joy there was throughout the land when we discovered DWM was still every much alive!

We then caught up with 62-65 via John Fitton, getting the back issues in early 1983 - I think 66 was out of stock, but we did also get that a few years later, with its colour comic strip. So if The Tides of Time is confusing when you read it in order, just imagine how much more confusing it is when you read part 1, part 7, then parts 2 to 5, and then finally part 6.

Ah yes, good times, good times... :)

I'd started buying DWM with issue 48; previously, I'd been unaware of its existence. So I'd been reading it cover-to-cover for around a year by the time 1982 rolled around. And as a 'slightly older' reader by then, and with little interest in comic strips any more, even though I avidly devoured its entire content as soon as I had my mitts on the new issue, I still always found it disappointingly flimsy - although by this time it was at least trying to be a touch more substantial in its content (I don't think it was until the programme went off-air that DWM truly grew up). Mind you, even though the magazine couldn't seem to decide quite what age group it was aimed at, it was still one of the most exciting developments of the month when a new issue was due! (Shame about the majority of the covers, though - look at #70 for instance - they were a pretty bland bunch during this period, and they didn't exactly sing with excitement on the shelf of the local newsagents...)

It was a very strong run of issues with Jeremy Bentham as main feature writer. Once he left at the end of the year it did have a downturn in quality from 1983 that I don't think it quite regained until John Freeman became editor in 1988.

The comic strip was great, with the Stockbridge arc and I particularly liked the atmospheric stuff with the Doctor and Max exploring the abandoned spaceship and then the entity invading the TARDIS (the 2 strips following Tides of Time).

The other notable thing is that they really started to properly preview and review every story of the season, which hadn't really happened with S18. They were quite spoiler-free as I recall, notably Earthshock which hinted that the story would come to be seen as a classic in years to come, but did not mention Cybermen or companion departures (including Tegan's seeming departure one story later).

Also of note was the Summer Special for being the first one to have all-new material, the previous two years having been reprint material.