Checking in with DWM 339 [WHO-50—2004]

Worst Witch Week! Friday Links is not at Worldcon

Checking in with DWM 339 [WHO-50—2004]

It’s 2004! This is the year when everything is happening and not happening. There is a new Doctor Who coming, they PROMISE, but we don’t know much about it yet. And, you know, it’s not like we haven’t been burned before. Still, there’s plenty of Doctor Who to keep us amused.

Let’s check in on Doctor Who Magazine, which has been going strong all these years, and developed into a far more professional looking publication since the regular show last closed its doors in 1989. The current editor is Clayton Hickman – who will later be quoted as saying that they were seriously close to running out of material when the show was recommissioned. But this issue I have pulled out of my DWM stash looks jam-packed, despite being a lot thinner than its future incarnations.

It’s Issue 339, released on the 4 February 2004. The cover displays a rather nice image of Sylvester McCoy from his days as the Doctor, and the tagline promises Thrilling Adventures in Time and Space. We’re also going to meet Hex, the new audio companion, and Gary Downie is going to take us behind the scenes of the Sylvester McCoy era. That should be jolly!

We don’t have to wait for Hex. The image of Brookside actor Philip Oliver is emblazoned across the top of the Gallifrey Guardian news page. Apparently he played someone called Tinhead. It would be years before I started caring about this Big Finish development – honestly, if someone had squeezed a few details like ‘Liverpool accent + angst’ into this article, I would have been buying the CDs right there and then! Well, maybe not. I’m not sure if they had the download option sorted yet.

Gallifrey Guardian also reports on a The Weakest Link Doctor Who/Dead Ringers sketch, with Jon Culshaw alongside Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy. Well, it was all for charity.

In the always entertaining if a bit out-of-date (especially for those of us in Australia receiving our copy several months late – though ooh it’s 2004, only a year before I would finally subscribe thanks to pregnancy nesting) What the Papers Said we learn that in the previous October, the Sunday Express decided Alan Davies wasn’t going to be cast as the Doctor after all, Colin Baker though Dawn French should be given the role, and some TV executives on a plane somewhere were hoping for Rowan Atkinson.

In November, the papers still had something against Alan Davies, with The Guardian threatening an anti-Davies-as-the-Doctor campaign before the man himself wrote in to say it was all talk ‘cooked up by people who, like yourself, have to fill a certain amount of space each week…’ Some things never change, eh?

Other ‘next Doctor’ rumours include David Beckham, Bill Nighy and Ricky Tomlinson. Meanwhile, RTD notes that a female radio presenter asked him if the Doctor was going to wear a pink shirt and a chiffon scarf. Some charming homophobia there!

Never mind the papers, lets go back to DWM. We’ve only got as far as page 6 and that’s the letters page! DWMail features some mostly positive responses to Scream of the Shalka, a web animation featuring Richard E Grant as the Doctor, written by Paul Cornell. It is otherwise full of letters complaining (or indeed complaining about previous complaints) about the following: RTD’s writing background being challenged as a veiled attempt to attack him for being gay, repeats of old Doctor Who on TV (this is something to complain about???) because it’s likely to put people off the new show, Remembrance of the Daleks generally, and CDs being attached to the magazine with sticky tape, thereby ruining the cover.

Okay there’s also a really nice letter about getting to watch old Doctor Who on Australian TV (which was one of the most AWESOME things about 2004).

Upcoming audio adventure The Creed of the Kromon is previewed here, including a lovely comic and some entertaining behind the scenes photographs, none of which sum up what a gut-wrenching experience it will be to listen to. I have to laugh though to see writer Philip Martin described as ‘a distinguished scriptwriter and the man responsible for Vengeance on Varos and the confusing bits of The Trial of a Time Lord.’

Conrad Westmaas and India Fisher are adorable. Some things never change.

Also previewed in this month’s DWM: Paul Cornell’s novelisation of Scream of the Shalka, and Telos novella Companion Piece by Mike Tucker & Robert Perry.

After an 8 page The Fact of Fiction article analysing every detail of 1982’s The Visitation, we move on to The DWM Interview, the second part of a longer piece about former production manager Gary Downie, who was also the life partner of 80’s producer John Nathan-Turner.

I remember reading this article at the time, and thought back on it a lot recently when reading and reviewing “The Life and Scandalous Times of JN-T” so it’s a nice coincidence that this was the only 2004 issue of DWM I could find in my stash.

Gary is an angry man, in this piece. Angry at Michael Grade who cancelled the show, at Ian Levine, angry at people who think the show was too violent, at anyone who attacked or criticised JN-T or Bonnie Langford, and especially at the fans.

“What I hate about the fans is that they all think they can do it better. They’re working at Tesco service tills or as warehousemen, but they all know how to produce the show better than John…”

I remember being fascinated by this interview but also quite shocked at the anger and bile expressed – the clear resentment that came across. Looking at it now, in the understanding that it happened only two years after the death of JN-T, and that Gary Downie himself would have already been ill with cancer that would eventually cause his own death another two years down the line… well, it’s sad as well as deeply uncomfortable to see someone with nothing to lose venting his story with such heartfelt emotion and venom all mixed in together.

This was the first time that I had ever really heard any of the negativity around this era of the show, because I was so apart from Doctor Who fandom (and particularly British fandom where a lot of this stuff was common knowledge). It was eye-opening, but a bit depressing. It was also the first time I heard anything at all about the personal lives of anyone who had made Doctor Who – but of course, it wouldn’t be the last.

Gary Downie’s interview is a hard act to follow, but the magazine continues with an in-depth look at the history of Doctor Who on stage. The Time Team, who have been watching all 696 of the original series in chronological order have reached The Time Warrior and Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Deaths on screen so far: 538. In the comic strip, the Eighth Doctor is reunited with former companion/nemesis, the piscine alien Destrii.

DWM Reviews covers, among other things, The Visitation DVD, Big Finish audio play Master by Joseph Lidster, BBC Book Emotional Chemistry (featuring Fitz and Trix) by Simon Forward, and the Big Finish audio play Doctor Who Unbound: Deadline by Robert Shearman, starring Derek Jacobi.

It’s the end but… is the final column of the issue, dealing with the tongue-twistery that can come from Doctor Who mondegreens, that lovely phenomenon of not quite understanding what it is that person just said (or, more specifically, believing they said something quite different). The article extends this into other long-held Doctor Who related misapprehensions which various fans have admitted to over the years, and it’s a pleasant and amusing note to end on.

I will cherish forever the idea that the Master’s true name is Jehosophat Jackanapes.

And, it’s quite nice to know that I haven’t been saving all these Doctor Who magazines for the last 15 years for nothing…

ELSEWHERE ON 2004

Hex also comes as a blend of tea [Adagio.com]