TV Even though I watched Doctor Who right through to Survival, I didn’t really notice it being cancelled (if we can still call it that now). Search Out Space was never on my radar and I didn't see it until the dvd release.
Doctor Who was always just something else to watch, part of diet of programming which included Thundercats and latterly Transformers, though it was really the British run of the comic which sparked my interest, the Simon Furman material (which meant the closest I probably got to reading a Doctor Who story in that period was one of the reprints of the Death's Head story, The Crossroads of Time).
I didn’t mourn. It was on. Then it wasn’t. The long history of the show, even though it had always been there, didn’t much occur to me, as I awaited the television broadcast of Star Trek: The Next Generation having already hired the rental compilations from Video City in Garston and watched a friend's tapes of the original series / classic series / Trek Prime / whatever Paramount are calling it this month.
I did borrow some Doctor Who videos from another friend including aforementioned The Tom Baker Years, City of Death, Castrovalva that sort of thing. He was a big fan of Tom and Peter. But again this was more as part of diet of other television of a certain type. He leant me his Blackadder collection too.
Which is why last week’s entry about Timewyrm: Genesys was a guest post. In 1991, the Virgin New Adventures simply weren’t on my radar. Filling my hands, eyes and mind were the Pocket Books Star Trek novels (reprinted in the UK by Titan) and collecting every issue of Marvel UK's weird reprint comic (which married DC originated material with articles from Starlog).
By 1992, I was well into my Star Trek t-shirt wearing phase, my favourite being the white one with The Next Generation logo across it and a rubber comm badge printed at breast height for role-play fun. The key topic of discussion at school was starship security and the practicalities of the warp drive and who was fitter, Councillor Troi or Doctor Crusher. My secret obsession was with Salia, the future ruler and dauphin of Daled IV. Oh yes.
I didn’t know of the existence of the Doctor Who Yearbook 1993. I didn’t read the New Adventures from this year including the format flexing Transit or Bernice Summerfield’s debut in Love & War or any of the reference books published in 1992 or watch the BBV spin-off Summoned by Shadows.
I still haven’t. With so much other stuff to catch-up on and with prices sky-rocketing for this twenty-year old gear, it’s not been a priority, which is why I'm in no position to offer a critique of the annual’s many Brief Encounter entries, written by some of the franchise’s great stalwarts and some others. I don't think I even own a copy. Whatever happened to Karen Dunn, anyway?
My lack of Whodom was such that by the following year, I’d even sold off, on a pre-college flea market stall, whatever bits of Who merchandise I’d been given as a child, including a 1968 Troughton era annual, wondering at the moment of transaction why these two blokes seemed so happy at having purchased it for one pound (I know! I KNOW!).
I’m here now, somehow, wondering what possessed me to let go of such treasures and over half way through this project (and wondering what possessed me). Glancing forward I can’t see any other gaps thanks to some retrospective catch-up, but I thought it important to notice that at a certain point I was very much a not-we and now I’m not a not-we but a we again.
No comments:
Post a Comment