30 Years since The Five Faces of Doctor Who

[SiHart]

Today is the 30th anniversary of the start of The Five Faces of Doctor Who- the first and possibly most exciting retrospective set of repeats of Doctor Who.



Shown on BBC 2 after the children's programmes on BBC 1 had finished, this was a wonderful look back to the previous Doctors, which for a young fan like me was really wonderful. We'd been reading the books, but actually seeing some of the stories was absolutely tremendous.

So were you there for the series? What are your memories of late 1981?

[Andrew Curnow]

It was just amazing, and I suppose it's hard to explain just how exciting it was. Certainly speaking personally, not only had I never seen stories with previous Doctors, I never EXPECTED to. How JN-T managed to convince the powers that be, I don't know but good on him!

I've two main memories - the first is all four of us (Dad, Mum, bruv & me) sitting down to watch the very first episode. At the time our colour TV was a bit hit & miss, so bizarrely we spent a few weeks with the colour TV sat atop the black & white TV in the sitting room - so we had it on both screens!! I remember Mum had seen the episode back in 1963, and saying it had "flashbacks" in it (ie, to the classroom scenes) and I remember thinking, but luckily not saying, that I'm sure she was wrong because "our" show didn't do that!

The other, more general, memory is that even kids in my class who weren't that into Doctor Who seemed to be watching it. We discussed the 'making fire' business, and spent a happy playtime on 10th November guessing how the Doctor would escape the cliffhanger to part 1 of The Krotons (the main guess seemed to be that Jamie would yell something Scottish and then chop the snakething's head off!!).

But yes, really a happy exciting time to be a Target-loving 9 year old.

[SiHart]

We had a power cut and I missed the final episode of The Krotons. Fortunately my cousin who was and is a big Doctor Who fan recorded them all on tape, so I got to hear the last episode a few months later. I remember being really upset that I didn't get to see the end of that one at the time.

[Anthony Williams]

I hadn't been born yet!

[SiHart]

Excuses, excuses!

[Anthony Williams]

Blame my parents!

[J.R. Southall]

I was just about old enough to b e getting a little frustrated with the series as it was at the time, so the Five Faces were something of a Godsend, rekindling my love of the programme.

I remember being disappointed at the choice of stories, though. An Unearthly Child was hardly the most exciting of Hartnells for a youngi-ish fan to be watching; The Krotons was okay (but no Cybermen or Ice Warriors); Carnival seemed a slightly odd choice for a solo Pertwee (when there were two Dalek alternatives to be had) and as for Logopolis...

I think I'd have appreciated it a lot more as an adult. But it was still terribly special - and the repeats the following year made up for any disappointments this time around...

[SiHart]

I was young enough to love them all- but the Pertwees were my favourites. They were so colourful and exciting. I thought the Drashigs were scary and Omega was wonderfully chilling (I especially liked The Three Doctors because I'd bought the book with my birthday money in the summer and so knew the story).

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

Blame my parents!

I have sometimes wondered how different my view of Who would've been if I'd been born earlier - my parents were married in '69 so it could've happened. I would've been 11/12 when the Five Faces was on rather than 2 and half, although interestingly I must've been about 11/12 when I first saw Unearthly and Three Doctors on video.

[Andrew Curnow]

Like Si, I think I enjoyed The Three Doctors most - but I enjoyed them all a great deal. Even a couple of years later, and I'd have been an annoying teen moaning that The Krotons wasn't the best Troughton, but I loved it in 1981. The whole thing just seemed so exciting - DWM 57 gave a really strong build-up to the series, and I remember its Krotons piece ended with something like (as a way of trying to big the story up probably more than it deserves) "a mix of Holmes, Maloney & Madoc is a treat indeed". Why I particularly remember it is because I didn't really 'know' any of those names, not in the way we do now, but I always liked DWM when it was 'challenging' in that way, almost forcing the reader to come up to its level of knowledge.

In fact, that whole 18 months or so was just great - we had the first regeneration that I'd ever seen, then The Five Faces, then K9 & company, then the gorgeous season 19 & fifth Doctor, and then a second repeat season, The Monsters, in the Summer of 82. Just a really good time.

And to go totally for a mo, November 1981 was also the month when Crossroads burned down, and (so we thought for a week or so) Meg with it....

[Nyder]

I remember "Five Faces" vividly! My first glimpse at watching "whole" old Doctor Who stories. I loved it all! I remember making audio recordings of these stories (I think we* were months away from buying our first video recorder - a top loading beta-max of course!!)

*By "we" I mean my parents!

[SiHart]

And to go totally for a mo, November 1981 was also the month when Crossroads burned down, and (so we thought for a week or so) Meg with it.

Oh my god, the motel's on fire! Mum!

[Andrew Curnow]

Oh that David Hunter, I hate him.

[SiHart]

If you'll allow me a Stephen Morgan moment- here's the Top 40 for this week 30 years ago:

http://www.everyhit.com/retrocharts/1981-NovemberA.html
Top 40 Hits of Early November 1981
1 Police Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
2 Dave Stewart With Barbara Gaskin It's My Party
3 Altered Images Happy Birthday
4 Four Tops When She Was My Girl
5 Squeeze Labelled With Love
6 Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark Maid of Orleans (The Waltz Of Joan Of Arc)
7 Elvis Costello A Good Year For The Roses
8 Julio Iglesias Begin the Beguine (Volver A Empezar)
9 Rod Stewart Tonight I'm Yours (Don't Hurt Me)
10 Tweets The Birdie Song (Birdie Dance)
11 Jam Absolute Beginners
12 BA Robertson / Maggie Bell Hold Me
13 Human League Open Your Heart
14 Haircut 100 Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)
15 Olivia Newton-John Physical
16 Barry Manilow Let's Hang On
17 Fureys / Davey Arthur When You Were Sweet 16
18 Shakin' Stevens It's Raining
19 Queen & David Bowie Under Pressure
20 Toyah Thunder In The Mountains
21 Laurie Anderson O Superman
22 Bad Manners Walkin' In The Sunshine
23 Earth Wind & Fire Let's Groove
24 Depeche Mode Just Can't Get Enough
25 Rush Tom Sawyer
26 Diana Ross Why Do Fools Fall In Love?
27 Ottawan Hands Up (Give Me Your Heart)
28 Kool & The Gang Steppin' Out
29 Godley & Creme Under Your Thumb
30 Electric Light Orchestra Twilight
31 Trevor Walters Love Me Tonight
32 Genesis Keep It Dark
33 Modern Romance Ay Ay Ay Ay Moosey
34 Adam & The Ants Prince Charming
35 Madness Shut Up
36 Ultravox The Voice
37 Diana Ross & Lionel Richie Endless Love
38 Soft Cell Bedsitter
39 Japan Quiet Life
40 Pretenders I Go To Sleep

[Stephen Morgan]

If you'll allow me a Stephen Morgan moment- here's the Top 40 for this week 30 years ago:

I love it...

That's a great chart there, full of absolute classics.

[SiHart]

Certainly is Stephen. I remember most of those songs from back then, which considering I was only 6 is something of an achievement!

[Andrew Curnow]

I have particularly fond memories of Happy Birthday (no 3) because me & a couple of school mates kept singing the chorus line in the playground for some reason; and also Barry Manilow's no 16 - my brother I'm sure won't thank me for revealing that he got the single of it for his birthday during November 1981...

[SiHart]

Prince Charming was a big playground favourite at my school. Adam Ant was hugely popular around that time, wasn't he?

[Andrew Curnow]

He still is with some people's wives, mentioning no names....

[SiHart]

It's OK Andrew, just let her know that ridicule is nothing to be afraid of...

[Dirk Gently]

@Si.

I was a big fan of Adam Ant. I still have vinyls from then.

3 Altered Images, Happy Birthday (It was my Birthday early October so this got played when I had my 10th birthday party).
10 Tweets The Birdie Song (Birdie Dance) I got this as a birthday present. 19 Queen & David Bowie Under Pressure, And this! 22 Bad Manners Walkin' In The Sunshine, Ditto!! 34 Adam & The Ants Prince Charming, And this!!
35 Madness Shut Up, And this.
Prince Charming is the only one I still have. The others got thrown away when my parents got rid of all their old vinyl stuff.

[Alex Me]

Like Ant, I missed out on this on account of not being born in time. Being a 90's who child I grew up on UK Gold and the Doctor Who Videos, so not having relatively easy access to all eras of the show seems odd to me. Like Richard, I wonder if my view of doctor who would be different If i had been born a bit earlier.

What was it like only having the latest series, or the odd repeat season like this, to watch?

[Andrew Curnow]

What was it like only having the latest series, or the odd repeat season like this, to watch?

Speaking personally, that's just how it was 'back then' - not just with Doctor Who, but other shows we watched (Grange Hill, for example) would show the current series, and then later in the year some repeats (in the case of GH, the whole series). There was no expectation of anything different, and (again, speaking personally) even until I was well into my secondary school days VCRs were more an exception than a rule in friends' houses.

Maybe that's why we weren't all stressing out about missing episodes in the late 70s/early 80s, because frankly we never expected to see them anyway, even if the BBC had them.

[Awesome Wells]

I was just six and had - to the best of my memory, which is pretty shash - no prior knowledge of Doctor Who until I watched the repeat of Logopolis: my first ever experience of the programme.

To this day, I've never seen any of the other Five Faces... stories.

[J.R. Southall]

Maybe that's why we weren't all stressing out about missing episodes in the late 70s/early 80s, because frankly we never expected to see them anyway, even if the BBC had them.

This is so true. When I first discovered that there were a huge amount of 1960s episodes that were no longer in the archives, my reaction would have been, What difference does that make? We so very rarely ever got to see anything from the archives anyway...

Going back to the original question, though, the one thing we (or I, at any rate) did stress out about, was making sure we were back in front of the telly by the time Doctor Who started. I remember Saturday afternoon family day-trips that would be interrupted at half past four by a young J.R. whining, "Shouldn't we be leaving for home now?"