45 years of memories ...

[WhiteCrow]

Go back in time exactly 45 years, and probably no-one has ever heard of a Time Machine. Or of something being "bigger on the inside". Or of a TARDIS. Or of a Doctor.

All that would change on 23th November 1963. A nation trying to take in news of the assasination of President Kennedy would be offered escapism the likes of which they'd not seen, as an Unearthly Child is broadcast.

45 years of stories and memories. With the odd hiatus.

What are your favourite moments in Doctor Who, and memories related to the program as we celebrate it's 45th year?

[Dirk Gently]

[I]Go back in time exactly 45 years, and probably no-one has ever heard of a Time Machine.

Well those who never read H.G.Wells wouldn't.

[SiHart]

Where do we begin?
For me it was the Movellan Ship burying itself it in the ground, an image that stayed with me for years. I suppose until that point in my life I hadn't really seen anything like it before and then by the time The Daleks arrived and Davros came back to life I was hooked. Mum says it was a pretty instantaneous love!

Of course my biggest memories are Scaroth pulling off the Scarlioni mask and the end of Part One of The Leisure Hive (and the trailer, which seeemed SO exciting!)...Scaroth was my monster, of you can have such a thing- the one that scared and intrigued me and the one I used to draw!

Si xx

[WhiteCrow]

Well those who never read H.G.Wells wouldn't.

My point was meant to be "for the masses". I know sci-fi was around before that. Indeed we had Quatermass, but usually Earth based, with a single sci-fi idea extended from what we knew.

I remember by Grandma telling me about going to see The Shape Of Things To Come, and saying how frightening some of the technology in the film seemed then. Ideas like having a phone built into a watch, being able to travel into space.

My mum was 11 when Kennedy was killed, and remember she watched an Unearthly Child, and my grandad who was an engineer couldn't get his head around the idea of something being bigger on the inside. Yet it became a staple of family viewing for their family, esp when the Daleks came. As it became during my childhood, and then my son's.

Actually just saying that makes you realise what an amazing achievement it is - 3 generations of viewers across time. 4-5 if you're a Chav!

[Si Hunt]

My memories are: Tom changing, the Malus, the Kinda Tribe, Davros from "Ressurection", Cushing Dalek movies, Nyssa and K9 in the TARDIS (the memory cheats), Matt and his Doctor Who stickers, The Twentieth Anniversary Special, Longleat, writing my own stories (Cronoids! Disintegrators! Androgums!), sitting on the spare room bed watching McCoy, Survival, labelling lots of videos, buying Radio Times every week to see which story UK Gold would show next and Sunday evenings in bed watching old Pertwee stories, Space Mountain conventions and a room full of people watching "The Aztecs", my friend Christopher (I wonder what became of him...?), the book shop by the bus station which one day had all the rare Targets then none ever again!, buying "The Twin Dilemma" at lunchtime during work experience, Harlequin Miniatures, everyone watching The TV Movie and Season 16 videos at Uni, wine and "The Horns of Nimon", getting DWM 198 when I went into hospital, OG and old friends in The Leisure Hive, meeting up at Costa Coffee, Planet Skaro! and you know the rest.

Si.

[Lord President]

My first memory was the Pertwee/Baker regenration, I can oly have been 3 at the time.

After that my main memories consist of Sarah-Jane's face falling off in Android Invasion, Leela attacking Magnus Greel in Talons and the Baker/Davison regeneration (not many for 7 years I know, but I was only 10 when Logopolis aired! ;-)

Lots of Dalek memories too!

[WhiteCrow]

I have a whole host of memories and favourites, which I'm hoping to post here in dribs and drabs.



Ah one of the most influential things on my life?

Well as a teenage I was into Star Trek, and that really gave me through Spock my passion for science starting from 1982.

But before that I really grew up with Doctor Who. I used to get the Doctor Who magazine, and remember reading the synopsis of things like the War Machines and the Tenth Planet.

But it gave me an interest in computers back in 1978, probably due to a diet of Zen from Blakes' 7 and Tomorrow's World. I remember talking a lot about them, and borrowing book from the library about them.

At the time in 1978 computers were big clumsy things, which worked off large magnetic disks, or whole punched cards. We'd not even had home computers by this point. But I guess I was hypnotised by WOTAN himself by them, and their potential to solve problems. I remember asking my junior school teacher how my parents wanted me to do extra maths, because they told me I had to be good at maths if I wanted to work with computers. My teacher Mr Appleby thought my head was full of Star Wars gibberish and computers would not be a career in the future. Oh how wrong he was.

Anyway although the Doctor is famous for not liking computers, they were ever present in his adventures and probably was my first introduction, and what fuelled my fascination.

I've made a whole career out of computers now. Past programs I've worked on help keep the army supplied, help submarines use their sonar, and sometimes help pilots to use their weapons acurately. Alas my ideal computer program which hypnotises women to want to take their clothes and do rude things to me still elludes me. But we can keep trying ...

[WhiteCrow]

Everyone remembers watching Doctor Who from behind the sofa. Actually isn't that a curious thing how we all had that reaction?

This has to be my ultimate behind the sofa moment though. Genesis of the Daleks, episode 6.

There are two chilling scenes in which the Daleks have never been more terrifying.

In the first, Davros is in his bunker, and after finding out which of the remaining scientists are still loyal to him, calls in his Daleks, and orders them to exterminate the traitors.

But there's more to come. The Daleks are supposed to obey him, but Davros has been blind to the Frankenstein's creature he's created. And they're fast outgrowning their need for him.

The round up the remaining Kaled scientists,

Dalek: All inferior creatures are to be considered the enemy of the Daleks and destroyed.
Davros: No wait! Those men are scientists. They can help you. Let them live. Have pity.
Dalek: Pity? I have no understanding of the word. It is not registered in my vocabulary bank. Exterminate!

I don't believe I slept well that night. Indeed I still find the scene as chilling as ever when I rewatch it.



[I know it's not quite the right picture, but nevermind]

[Andrew Curnow]

What an appropriate idea for a thread - 45 years isn't to be sniffed at. I think we probably all have so many Who memories, to the point where it probably runs through our lives like letters in a stick of rock. At work I had a spam email the other day with the header "Gas Companies want me dead" - and all I could think of was Romana's plaintive "Timelords want me back" from Full Circle. We have customers called Steve Roberts and Graham Williams, and when we started working with a plating company called Robert Stuart plc, I kept wanting to write it Robert Stewart!

I'm probably near middle-age, and my brother's just turned 40, and neither of us has ever really known a world without Who. My love for Star Wars waned and more or less vanished within a few years of ROTJ; whereas we spent the 90s as much in love with Who as ever, if not more.

Many memories - collecting the Target books, in an era where there was no other way of finding out about old stories. When I first read The Three Doctors I had absolutely no idea (apart from the obvious) what happened in it. Books like "And the Cybermen" and Tomb and The Cave Monsters and The Doomsday Weapon enlivened my childhood by expanding on that sense of excitement I got from a new episode on a Saturday.

Doctor Who just, for me, was always there, and has always been there. Even when in hindsight I look back and appraise season 22 as pretty stinky, I know that at the time I was as up in arms as anybody at the hiatus, and that I was still excited by John Craven's back page feature on MOTRani. Nowadays, with so many channels and the iPlayer, and DVDs, and all, it actually takes real effort to miss something - in the old days, an episode of Doctor Who was a real event because it was on, at a set time, and that was it. It might get a repeat the following Summer, but even that was a bit hit and miss - so there are memories of childhood outrage at having to miss Kroll part 4, or Warrior's Gate part 2.

I'm rambling, so I'd better stop. More (and perhaps more cogent, if rather out-of-date) thoughts here

[SiHart]

The scream into the Peter Howell theme! The Dum-di-dum bassline that makes your heart soar a little as we're off on a new adventure! Jon Pertwee in burgundy velvet! Peter Davison's breathless delivery of his lines! The crash zoom into Tom Baker's mouth as he screams at the end of The Leisure Hive pt 1! The TARDIS materialising/ dematerialising! The burbling sound effects of the 60s! Colin Baker smiling in his title sequence! The excitement when they rediscover some new footage you've never seen before! The TARDIS spinning in space! The TARDIS spinning into the CVE in Full Circle! Hartnell spitting out the word "Daleks"! Patrick Troughton confronted with an exploding seed pod in a sea of foam! The look on Sylvester's face at the end of Curse of Fenric pt 3! Tom's grin!

Si xx

[Andrew Curnow]

Not to mention...

The way McCoy hangs his brolly from his pocket. The way Tennant puts his glasses on. The London Eye sequence in Rose. Tom enjoying himself so much in The Ribos Operation that we love it too. Childhood excitement at any and all clips on Blue Peter or Did You See? The end of Earthshock part 1. The end of Earthshock part 4. Waking up in the morning and only finding out Doctor Who and the Monsters is on by spotting it in the day's TV listings. Wheezing & Groaning. The end of The Gallifrey Chronicles. "There is a corner of the Doctor's head that is forever Benny."

[WhiteCrow]

"It's the end... but the moment has been prepared for."



What a strange moment this was. I was 3 when Tom Baker took on the role of Doctor Who. I'd never known any other Doctor, not remembering Jon Pertwees Doctor. This was the point a 10 year old lost his Doctor.

It was the end of an era. The idea of a new Doctor was kind of scary. I never managed to get on well with Peter Davison. The series was moved to Monday and Tuesdays, and I was at Scouts on a Tuesday trying to avoid being beaten up and abused (my mum said it built character). Videos being an expensive rarity, I never saw the ending of any Doctor Who Davison story until years later. So I guess this story was kind of my goodbye not just to Tom Baker but to Doctor Who as well.

I wonder how it will feel to watch David Tennant regenerate. I'm imagining it will feel like the end of a remarkable era.

[Pip Madeley]

Let me see now... this is just off the top of my head...

Watching part one of Dimensions In Time at my uncle's party with those stupid 3D glasses, didn't have a clue what Dr Who was. Watching an episode of the Green Death with my sister, although only she remembers that. Picking up DWM's TV Movie Special in Sainsburys. "These shoes, they fit perfectly!" Nicola lending me Tomb, Zygons, Day & Pyramids on old VHS. Meeting Tom in Waterstones. The magic of UKGold, sparklies, blank tapes & Glen Allen - Tommy B in episodic glory at 7.20pm weekdays from June to October 1997. Long Play recordings! I soon changed to Short Play. Gran letting me stay up till 3am with milk and cookies watching old Hartnell and Troughton. Sunday mornings with Who and Weetabix, getting my tape ready as Blakes' 7 credits rolled. Trying hard to edit the bumpers seamlessly. Buying SFX and looking in their classified ads, where I found Stuart Hargreaves from Leamington Spa and his generous parcels containing rarities beyond imagination - telesnap recons! Tenth Planet episodes 1-3!!! Dad buying me The Tom Baker Years to cheer me up when I was mugged as a young teenager. Making my own TARDIS console out of card and a mouthwash cap! Saturdays spent scouring Manchester for Who videos - The Dominators was chewed up! The Mind Robber for ?10.99 in John Menzies - I loved it! Daleks The Early Years on Middleton Market for just a fiver! Mike Bowen giving me his Target of Monster of Peladon, scuffed but magical. Getting my hands on The Fourth Doctor Handbook from Central Library - excitement! Lending cousin Gareth the McCoy era on video, he loves Fenric. Giving a talk about the Fourth Doctor to my fellow pupils in Year 8 English, complete with clips from Logopolis! Using the time corridor sound effect from Pyramids & TARDIS materialisation sound in a school play. Buying DWM for the first time, Sophie Aldred was the editor. Going to computer club after school to make my very own labels for my off-air recordings. Dr Who Night 1999! Dalek on the Radio Times cover! I made my dad sit in the back room that night. The joy of Dr Who on BBC2 every Tuesday at 6pm, Spearhead! Silurians! I missed episode 5, I almost cried. Genesis of the Daleks?! Such a waste. Walking to Cheetham Hill and back on a bus-free Bank Holiday just to get my copy of An Unearthly Child on VHS - unedited and remastered! The Lion rediscovered & an boring clip on the National Lottery. Buying my old Oritron DVD player for ?99 from Currys and seeing Robots of Death in glorious digital quality! Getting my first computer (Windows 95) and typing up my collection in Wordpad. Going to the library after school to visit the BBC boards, speaking to other fans for the very first time in four years. Getting Freeserve internet at my mum's house and creating TARDISite just as Planet Skaro arrived...

[WhiteCrow]

The end of Earthshock part 1.

That was going to be another of my chosen moments.

The Cybermen hadn't been in Doctor Who since 1974. Although they didn't leave the same impression on me as the Daleks.

I'd seen them in Doctor Who annuals and in Doctor Who Weekly. Along comes Earthshock Part 1, mysterious and deadly androids killing off a party. Then right at the end, pull back and it's revealed in charge of the whole affair are the Cybermen.

Oh my God - I can't wait for the next episode! Although I couldn't watch it cos of scouts mentioned above. But that was a real "wow I can't wait" moment.

[Wayne]

I'm guessing that most people know by now that the first Dr Who i ever saw was 'Spearhead From Space' at aged 6. I remember nothing whatsoever of the Troughton era, even though my folks watched Dr Who from the Hartnell era. Although Mike will no doubt be pleased to know that i remember watching Star Trek when i was 5 or 6, because it's original British broadcast bridged the Saturday tea time gap between Troughton & Pertwee. So Star Trek has always been synomymous(sp?) with Dr Who, as my two favourite tv shows from a young age.
I was terrified of the Autons. Aside from the shop dummies coming to life, my earliest specific Dr Who memory was the Auton crashing around in the Seeley's house looking for the Nestene pod. The blank plastic face was really scary as aged 6. But i think it was the off screen death (presumably) squeal of the Seeley's dog that was my most potent & scary memory of 'Spearhead From Space'.
At that age, the grim realism of Season 7 probably made it the most scary season in my memory of Dr Who. I distinctly remember the Silurians, & the astonauts from Ambassaors being scary - But the peak of fear was actually the Autons again at the start of the next season. 'Terror of the Autons' was the only Dr Who story that gave me a genuine nightmare. The whole idea of inanimate everyday things like plastic flowers (everyone had them in the 70's) & chairs coming to life & killing you was utterly terrifying! I can still remember now dreaming about the plastic flowers on our dining table shooting a film of plastic over my mouth & nose & suffocating me. I woke my Mum & Dad up that night, & ended up sleeping in their bed with them!

Oh there are loads of other things, but it's late, so maybe i'll make more posts later. But for now, i found this piece that i wrote for the vervoid a few years ago, about 1973, which was probably the year i became a 'fan'.

http://www.thevervoid.com/columns/love_73.htm

[MacNimon]

Doctor Who just, for me, was always there, and has always been there...

Nowadays, with so many channels and the iPlayer, and DVDs, and all, it actually takes real effort to miss something - in the old days, an episode of Doctor Who was a real event because it was on, at a set time, and that was it. It might get a repeat the following Summer, but even that was a bit hit and miss - so there are memories of childhood outrage at having to miss Kroll part 4, or Warrior's Gate part 2. here

I know how you feel...it simply has always been there for most of us. It was a major part of our childhoods for many of us, growing up with our own Doctor then feeling a sense of trepidation when a regeneration was forthcoming: there was always a genuine feeling of an end of an era, particularly when Pertwee, Baker and even Davison left. A bit of fear even, the dread that the series would never be the same again once our Doctor left (a fear which arguably became reality when Davison left the series). And yes, it was a big blow to miss an episode in those days...you knew that the chances were that you simply would never see it again.

My earliest memeories are of watching the Pertwee era on my gran's b&w tv, of visiting her on a Saturday and not wanting to come home too close to an episode's broadcast time in case I missed the start (funny how I don't quite have as clear a memory of watching it at home, though I must have!)
Many scenes from that era all rolled into one vague memory...the Keller machine, the Doctor falling off a wheelchair, daleks coming out of a tunnel, dinosaurs, Sea Devils, the Master, Alpha Centauri, Drashigs, the first doctor on a monitor, Jo Grant, the Brigadier and UNIT, giant maggots, and many more. Although the series went onto greater heights in the first few Tom Baker years, it never quite had the same sense of magic about it imo. The Hinchcliffe years might be the best era of the series history, but in the nostalgia stakes it'll never come close to the Pertwee era for me.

Also worth a mention is TV Comic, Doctor Who (or was it dalek?) ice lollies, breakfast cereal box cut-outs, and all other sorts of stuff you came across in everyday life

[SiHart]

Waking up in the morning and only finding out Doctor Who and the Monsters is on by spotting it in the day's TV listings

I didn't know until my Dad got home from work and revealed that Doctor Who was on that evening and it was something called Curse of Peladon. It was really exciting!

Si xx

[Andrew Curnow]

Absolutely, we knew nothing about it till the Monday morning - and even then the Daily Mail TV pages just listed it as "Dr Who and the Monsters: The Ice Warriors" so we had no idea really which of their stories it was going to be until it started in the evening.

Yet more random memories: Gran finding some old Wheetabix cards in her bureau (I still have Lynx!); Duncan Goodhew being interviewed on some TV show (again, we were at Gran's) and revealing he was a Who fan - cue some clips from DioE!!!; the Summer of 1980, coming back from Summer holidays to find that DWW was now DWM; the casual statement, "And in Blue Peter we'll be meeting the new Doctor Who" in early 1987; and perhaps most wondrous of all, the whole exciting period between October 1980 and January 1982, as I got my first taste of 'changing Doctor' excitement.

[shada pavlova]

Since I wasn't born when the classic series finished, I was astounded at the amazingness of, well, just how MUCH of it there was! Many an hour have I spent browsing the shelves of WHSmith's, dithering between The Claws of Axos and Vengeance on Varos. (Eventually I just bought Earthshock).

Great days. Here's to another 45!

Also, on Sunday, at a quarter past five, I shall drop everything, lever the DVD of An Unearthly Child out of the Beginning Boxset, sit down, cross-legged, in front of my 50 year old black and white television, and experience the amazingness that began on that very day, in 1963.

[WhiteCrow]

dithering between The Claws of Axos and Vengeance on Varos. (Eventually I just bought Earthshock).

Good choice!

[Andrew Curnow]

And, and...

The dropjaw ending to The Dying Days; the wonder of rattling through Iceberg in a single weekend; enjoying Happy Endings; the Friday lunchtime update on the old BBC site, and particularly the weekly instalments of The Well-Mannered War

[Lissa]

I see a couple of people have linked to their "I Love..." pieces at a certain footling website. Anyone wanting to expand their thoughts (not in a 60s drugs way) is welcome to pen one and send it along. Just pick a year which means something special to you and ping it to me. Any year from 1963 to 2008 is good.

[Stuart Wallis]

I never used to hide behind the sofa, but my brother did. I used to sit on it though, ready to join him if need be.

The kitchen wasn't somewhere I used to like going at night after The Deadly Assassin, since nobody washed the dried fat from the outside of it, and it had the same complexion as the Master. I remembered who the Master was at the time, but apart from the Doctors meeting in The Two Doctors, the only memory I have of watching Pertwee Who at the time is Wakey-wakey rise and shine from Planet Of The Spiders.

The giant snake was embarrassing at the time, but I can watch Kinda now without cringing. Funny, that.

The giant robot is, design-wise, a thing of beauty. I saw it in the "flesh" at MOMI, and it didn't disappoint. Neither did the Ice Warrior; the Kraag did. My other memory of it was, I spent six months trying to remember which story I'd seen it in. Pointless exercise, really...

[Ralph]

Go back in time exactly 45 years, and probably no-one has ever heard of a Time Machine.

One of the finest classic sc-fi movies "The Time Machine" was released in 1960

As for memories of the show pretty much what Wayne said - I feel quite privilaged to having been 6 at the start of the golden era, just old enough to enjoy it at it's maximum impact

and yes when you've just turned 8 then this is scary!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vXrAK6...eature=related

[Stephen Morgan]

44 years for me. Memories? Loads of them. My first? DIOE, the Radio Times cover and the Dalek rising from the river. WOW!! loads of Hartnell memories, The Web Planet, still my favourite despite the way everyone feels about it. Dalek Masterplan, the Varga plants and Sara Kingdom aging to death. My dad checking the football results and me impatiently waiting for Who to start after the end credits of Grandstand.
Troughton, The Moonbase Cybermen, the virus in the sugar, the Tomb Radio Times cover, my auntie with her knitting and Kent Walton as commentator on the wrestling just before watching Fury From the Deep.
Pertwee, everything, Power cuts, Glam Rock, Sunday's BBC Wales crazy scheduling for Pertwee's final season and my first colour episode, the regeneration on a warm Sunday afternoon.
Tom's darker, gothic style of show and the winter of 1976, Swap Shop, lovely, comfy dark evenings. My sadness at his leaving after 7 years.
I could go on in more detail, but we've all got memories of our favourite times, some very similar, some so very different and diverse, and we're all very fortunate to have them.
Splendid memories, all of them.