The Ood Cast

Metal monsters in human form?  Self-programmed, semi-sentient and (more importantly) evil robotic life forms, evolved into a planet-conquering,galaxy-ravaging, warmongering race?  Yep, that’s the Cybermen.

Cold, logical, unfeeling and ruthless, their mission is almost always to capture and colonise a planet – and to convert the inhabitants into Cybermen themselves.  Conversion seems not to be a pleasant experience.  However, if you’re a woman, they replace your underwear first to preserve your dignity.  Don’t believe us?  Torchwood’ll tell you…

There are reasons for their Cyber villainy.  Not that you’d know it from the walking Kenneth Williams statues that John Lumic built.  But those ones are from an alternative dimension I suppose.  Sticking with this one, it’s sort of important to remember they were the unfortunate victims when the earth’s twin planet, Mondas (the home world of these Cyber-chaps), left its regular orbit around the sun and froze.

As the planet became less hospitable, they started trying to colonise other worlds.  Like Telos, where they built tombs where they could hang out in suspended animation until salvation came in the form of well-meaning human idiots; and Voga, where they were beaten by a group of frail, beardy fellas who happened to have some gold dust.

Having quite obviously watched too many re-runs of Top Gear on Dave while swigging far too many cans of Castrol GTX, the Cyber lads decided to hook up a propulsion system to Mondas and drive it round the universe looking for a 24-hour service station.

They were beaten by the Doctor on several occasions, but also at times with the help of others – for example, most fondly in the mind of a certain Ood Cast member, when someone in a lycra suit and crash helmet threw arrows at them in a quarry.  Other notable battles took place with Nazis and Elizabethan women (at the same time – who says metal men can’t multi-task, eh?) and with a group of Daleks – who rather unfairly pulled out a special box that produced more Daleks – in the Battle of Canary Wharf.

In the alternative universe – a place where dirigible flight was the best they could do while advertising had already reached the magical Daily Prophet level - John Lumic had “invented” the next stage in human evolution.  It would not end well.  They were beaten when the Doctor essentially confused them.  They then reappeared in Victorian Britain, using child labour and offcuts of shagpile carpet to build a Cyber King.  This, also, did not end well.  And was daft.

Essentials

First appearance: The Tenth Planet (1966)

Best story: Tomb of the Cybermen (1967).

Worst, but funniest story: Silver Nemesis (1988).

Most pointless and incompetent appearance: The Five Doctors (1983)

Weaknesses: Gold things – from gold teeth to dust.  Oh, and confusion.  So maybe a good defence might be to show them a photo of say, David Guest and ask them why he’s famous.  If they tell you, please let us know.  It’s one of life’s enduring mysteries…

So, where was I…?  Oh yeah – somewhere, the 8th Doctor regenerated – as I said before, possibly during (or as a consequence of) the events of the Time War. But as we have no proof, however vague, let’s assume he was just bored to death by the advent of Big Brother in his absence from the screen and had to regenerate. Perhaps a foolish mistake for an experienced Time Traveller, but maybe a small gesture towards the dungheap of Reality TV… We’ll never know for sure. But just when Star Trek fans had started to think they could claim the longest-running series title… here’s the Oodcast Guide to what happened next: Doctors 9, 10 and 11.

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Ninth Doctor

Emerging from the swirling mists of time and onto a North London housing estate to pick up a cockney sparra and whisk her off around the universe, the Ninth incarnation of the Doctor looked for all the world like he’d just wandered out of the bookies after he backed a winner at 100/1 odds. His northern accent did nothing to move away from the stereotype. He was also hairless – a new image for the TARDIS’ designated driver.

In terms of companion, there was the cockney shop-girl, the unemployed Coronation Street actor/dull milksop character… oh, and the omnisexual, immortal cabaret performer.

But this ninth chap was energetic, fun-loving and naturally rather nosey – and although intelligent, quick-witted and very knowledgeable when it came to technological workings, he preferred to stick with the sonic screwdriver and a well-chosen pun in the face of danger. A little like the fourth Doctor, he was often jolly and cheerful when in company or confronting trouble, but melancholy and serious when alone.

During his time, he beat back a fresh invasion attempt by shop window dummies, discovered and then half-defeated the last remaining Dalek, Victorian ghosts, Rose’s should-be-dead dad and a Reaper who wants to make him dead again, children in gas masks, the bloke from Spaced and his hungry ceiling, and (if you were in any doubt as to whether it had anything for the kids) the green aliens distinguishable from other green aliens because they make that funny farting noise a lot… the Slitheen…

A brave and loyal friend, particularly to Rose, he regenerated having kissed her – not as a punishment, but because in doing so, he inhaled the Time Vortex’s energy – and re-emerged younger, skinnier, and in his Sunday best…

—-

Tenth Doctor

The Doctor’s ninth regeneration was a traumatic one, with the poor lamb needing a sleep once it was complete. And while he slept, the world nearly fell to an invasion by the family from the children’s classic Funny Bones. Happily, he woke up in time to beat the Big Skeleton using just a sword and a Satsuma.

And so began the era of the heartthrob Doctor. Good looking, eccentrically suave, sometimes cheeky and with a good mopey face when required, this Doctor was a sort of mixture of the third and fifth incarnations – with the former’s all-action style and enthusiasm for running about; and the youthful wisdom, naivety and touch of sadness like the latter.

Persuading companions to join him was simple (if they were female), and he travelled with the cockney shop girl, a cockney Doctor, and just for a change, a cockney temp… But he also encountered old friends in Sarah and the little tin doggy, was reunited with the Cabaret star and kept a civil face on for the shop-girl’s family and friends.

As for adventures, there were plenty… From cat nurses, werewolves and spiky queens to clockwork Frenchmen, deadly stone angels, interplanetary witches, small girls who could teach animators a thing or two about bringing things to life, northern comedians, robot Santas with Tuba guns, literally huge demons, face-stealing televisions, scarecrows, hungry shadows, fish people (who are all halfway through eating a glass), Aliens hidden under Roman volcanoes, walking diet pills, giant wasps, antsy headmasters and some older foes in a returning Davros, Cybermen, Daleks, Sontarans, Macra and the Master.

He should, of course, be best remembered for meeting the Ood. Without whom we would not have a podcast…

This Doctor’s end was long, drawn out, and I’m not really sure what did for him in the end. Perhaps it was the numbing inevitability. Nope, I remember. He regenerated having absorbed far more radiation than he should have) in order to save Bernard Cribbins so he could carry on with his plan to narrate a new series of the Wombles – at least, that’s what Bernard should be doing. A noble deed either way.

His reluctant firework display over, he went back to his childhood… Isn’t 903 too old for a mid-life crisis?

—-

Eleventh Doctor

Whether you see him as an old head on young shoulders, or simply a bent shoe coincidentally on the same coat hanger as a tweed jacket, the Eleventh incarnation is an exhilarating bundle of energy and floppy fringes. The Time Lord equivalent of Hugh Grant crossed with a Rugrat.

Old school in many ways, he is quick-tempered yet compassionate and bears more than a passing resemblance in manner to the second doctor. He’s the first to deploy sweeping the hair out of his eyes as a method of charming enemies, the second to pull off the bowtie and braces combination (it’s a classy man who can pull off the “Bobby Ball”), and the third to raid a hospital changing room for clothes.

Just a few months in, he’s already faced the threats of Daleks, Silurians, even deadlier deadly stone angels, a space snake with huge teeth, Star Whales, Smilers and gun-toting monarchs, vampirical fish women, a Dream Lord, a pilotless spaceship, a small stone prison and a paradox… Oh, and of course he faced an alien turkey in the crypt of a French church while visiting Vincent Van Gogh.

He also appears to be quite good at football, but I don’t think we need to go into that.

So, after a holiday and everything that surrounds a small Time Lord starting school (he’s doing fine, by the way), The Ood Cast Guide returns with the second of three instalments on our intrepid hero…

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Fifth Doctor

The Fifth incarnation came into being with rather a lot of difficulty, having to be carried around in what remained of the Zero Room to help his recovery from Post-regeneration trauma. No other Doctor suffered from this as badly (unless you count the 10th Doctor’s insistence that he needed bed rest…). And on top of this, he was also a few inches shorter and looked daft in such a big scarf.

Despite being dressed as an Edwardian cricketing gent, this Doctor was younger. While noble and wise with a strong compassionate streak, he was youthful in his wonder, enthusiasm and bravery, but also in his naivety and clumsiness.

He is particularly memorable for rarely being seen with less than three companions at any one time, and being the only Doctor to watch one of them die. His time also saw the destruction of the Sonic Screwdriver, and consequently the adoption of a sort of MacGuyver approach to Time Lord-ing…

In the 3 years he spent stumbling from battle to battle, he faced the threats of Daleks, Terileptils, the Master, Silurians and Sea Devils (along with their – ahem – glistening Myrka), demonic faces in the walls of 17th Century churches, Cybermen, a plot by the Black Guardian to kill him using a companion, the Mara and a deformed explorer who liked dressing up for parties.

His end came about in typically noble fashion, giving his companion all the vaccine for Spectrox Toximia while he regenerated into a bubble-permed bit part actor…

——-

Sixth Doctor

Nostalgia is not often kind to this incarnation. Tempestuous at the best of times, the sixth doctor was a rampaging torrent of blonde curly fury one moment, and a slightly shouty BFG the next – and in the rest of the time a little bit petulant and egotistical… starting from his first moments crammed into the cricketing blazer, when he tried to strangle Peri before recovering his senses (although let’s be honest, if you only heard the voice…).

And even with the temporal-boundary-defying (and headache inducing) fashion sense he displayed, this Doctor had to deal with far more earth politics than other doctors, as well as a full enough roster of aliens: from giant money-obsessed grubs, daleks and Gastropods (no, not a new range of poncey pubs) to Sontarans, a Gallifreyan take on the Femme Fatale, Audrey from the Little Shop of Horrors and in a slightly incomprehensible instance, the Cybermen…

All of which he coped with using his trademark mixture of grumpiness and annoyance, with the help of the vocal stylings of two female companions – a barely clothed American girl and the annoying little girl from Just William who “thcweamed and thwceamed until the wath thick” whenever something looked remotely threatening.

Understandably, he then went mental and let himself be tried on Gallifrey by a possible future incarnation of himself who wanted to steal his remaining lives.

Not sure how the end came about for this doctor, but I’m sure it was dignified.

What? What’s wrong with that?!

—–

Seventh Doctor

After a regeneration which had no bad side effects other than the appearance of an appalling wig and the deduction of several inches from his height, the seventh incarnation begun life as a sort of comical time-travelling gnome who seemed to choose a manic toothy grin as the best way to ignore the high-pitched wailing of his inherited companion.

However, despite the dodgy first steps, this was a doctor who went on much more of a progressive journey than many of his previous selves, and his next companion, Ace, would be the making of him – revealing both a darker, more determined and mysterious side to him.

A staunch pacifist, abhorring any kind of violence, he had a curious side as wide as the berth the production team ought to have given to that question mark tank-top, and his nosiness eventually outweighed the whimsical one. This Doctor was a skilful manipulator… his natural showmanship and ability to play the buffoon convincingly become the only weapon he liked using. It frequently meant he could slip in and out of places without being detected (although Lord knows how with that punctuation rash).

During his time in the TARDIS, he battled a number of familiar faces and some worrying new ones in strange places… such as space bounty hunters in Welsh holiday camps, Arthurian planet-wasting monsters next to a UNIT nuclear transport convoy, evils from the dawn of time in a Second World War military base, Daleks in 1960s London, an evolution-manipulating alien intent on assassinating a monarch in a Victorian Manor house, and cat-people (and the Master) in Perivale. Oh, and that’s not even mentioning the Cybermen, Nazis and Elizabethan strangers on the building site that became the Millennium Dome.

The end came when the Doctor was asked to transport the Master’s remains to Gallifrey after he was executed by the Daleks on Skaro. The Master managed to take control of the TARDIS and make it land in San Francisco. On emerging from the doors, he was predictably shot. Perhaps the most depressing of all Time Lord endings?

—-

Eighth Doctor

The briefest of all incarnations, this Doctor was a romantic soul who had no clue what was going on for most of the time. Half human and probably coping with the trauma of coming round in a body-store in a San Francisco morgue, he eventually showed himself to be a remarkable, enthusiastic and energetic incarnation with a fascination for people and the world around him.

His one outing contained a perilous (and seemingly endless) battle with the Master, some far too exciting car chases and the discovery that this doctor could walk through glass windows without breaking them first…

He dressed like a romantic poet, and enjoyed freaking people out by giving them small visions of their own future to encourage them to make good decisions.

It is thought that this doctor was the one involved in the Time War, regenerating into the 9th Doctor not long before he returned to the screens in 2005, but there’s nothing firm about this, and we still wait to find out how this incarnation regenerated… So hop to it, Mr Moffatt!

The “Whoniverse” is a complicated place.  Ever aware of this, and the confusions that can arise, your friendly Oodcasters present the beginning of the end of your confusions…  The Oodcast Guide.  Each entry in this weighty online tome will be compiled using the very best of what remains of the Oodcast’s collective memory, and therefore absolutely and thoroughly under-researched.

So, let’s get cracking.  First up, we’ll take you through the most important part of the series…  The Doctor.

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The First Doctor __

The Doyen of doctors, the original was a crotchety old man who insisted on surrounding himself with young people and wearing a hat the shape of a fur-lined cone (which, combined with his white hair gave him the appearance of a time travelling Mr Whippy…)  He also chose the TARDIS with the broken chameleon circuit, presumably, so we can’t assume his judgement in travelling methods was any less flawless than his fashion sense.

He travelled with teachers, space pilots, resistance fighters, rescued spaceship passengers, secretaries and sailors before collapsing and regenerating for the first time.

Tremendously knowledgeable on scientific matters, but curiously awful at flying his own time machine, was the first to encounter Daleks and Cybermen, as well as taking jollies to Mexico, Ancient Greece, China and revolutionary France, met cowboys, cavemen and the Celestial Toymaker.

Oh yes, and he had a library card (see Vampires of Venice).  Eventually, old age took its toll and he regenerated for the first time, into a time-travelling bad-hair-day.

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The Second Doctor __

Slightly shambolic and unpredictable, the second doctor had the appearance of a tramp that wandered into Mr Benn’s favourite costume shop: with a shaggy pudding-bowl haircut, the occasional massive fur coat and Rupert Bear’s favourite trousers.

But there was more to him than fashion statements.  He was mercurial and fascinatingly clever, while clumsy and caring towards those in distress.  He also established the formidable team with Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, and was the first to openly (and shamelessly) use a sonic screwdriver on screen.

Surrounded by frightened Victorian teenagers, certain UNIT officers, hot-headed Scottish warriors and stupidly intelligent young women, he took on the cybermen and daleks again with nothing but his intelligence and a recorder, is still the only Doctor to take on the Ice Warriors as enemies, guided his friends through an attempted mind robbery, faced creatures from the deep and Yetis in the London Underground before being forced to become Worzel Gummidge by the Time Lords.

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The Third Doctor

Geriatric jujitsu exponents everywhere raised a cheer – for this was their doctor…

Beginning as a victim of friendly fire, and then becoming a confused clothing and vehicle thief as well as saviour of mankind in a plastics factory was something of a rollercoaster of a first day.  If it was possible for a Time Lord to have a mid-life crisis, this was it: fast machines, short-skirted female companions and more action than is seemly for someone of advancing years, this doctor was a kind of Budget Bond.  With his own Blofeld too: enter… the Master.

During the course of his careering about, he encountered the daleks again, the Master, daemons in Bronze age barrows, the Master, giant green poisonous maggots, the Master, fascist versions of reality, the Master, two sets of underwater cousins (who’s idea of “self-defence” is creeping aboard sea forts and murdering people), the Master, mind control machines, the Master, lost aliens, the Master, potato-headed warrior Sontarans, the Master, and the giant spiders which would ultimately be his end.  And the Master.

Did remarkably little travelling around his immediate environs for someone with itchy interstellar feet confined to just the one planet.  He did, however, reverse the polarity of more things than any other doctor.

Radiation brought his dashing about to an abrupt halt, and he regenerated soon after into that one-legged sailor in Blackadder II that drank his own wee and wanted to marry Nursey.

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The Fourth Doctor

Described as looking like a “Space vagrant”, the fourth incarnation was eccentric both in action and dress sense (although not quite as much as the previous doctors, it has to be said).  He pioneered the use of scarves as weaponry (see Hand of Fear), the use of confectionary to calm agitated beings, and the construction of jacket pockets from Mary Poppins’ old carpet bags.

Superbly intelligent, witty and fond of jelly babies, this doctor would stick around longer than any other and inspire thousands of children to beg mothers everywhere to get knitting.

In the TARDIS, which gained a glorious oak-panelled look for a time, he entertained journalists, (oddly clumsy but very likeable) UNIT medical officers, savage warriors, Time Ladies, robotic dogs, one rather annoying stowaway boy genius, an aristocratic brainbox and, just before his end, a loudmouth air hostess.

His battles though, were many and varied – taking on all manner of robots (giant ones, servile mining ones, mummified ones, half-human pirate captain ones and reproduction human ones), ancient alien powers, criminal time lords, Sontarans again, female radioactive creatures conveniently buried for centuries under a quarry, disturbing scary mannequins, amphibious lifeforms hiding in lighthouses, art-dealing monsters and – perhaps most famously – the daleks.

His end came when he met the Master again, and fell from a radar dish.  Thus becoming the chap off of All Creatures Great and Small.

Next time…  Doctors 5 – 8…

Saturday was supposed to be a momentous day for Doctor Who – it was RTD’s big finale, in effect. An episode where he pulled together as many loose strings from the last four years as he could fit into an hour and tried to tie them all together once and for all.

We finally saw the door slammed on the ridiculous Doctor-and-Rose-sitting-in-a-tree… “tension”. Mickey finally moved on (to Torchwood?). Martha finally seems to have joined Torchwood permanently. Donna is back with her family – having got better and better as the series rolled on. And we got that answer to the regeneration question.

But did it all come off?

I think so, yes – but to be honest, I’m not all that sure.

It was fantastic to watch – a real visual feast. But it was a disappointing way to close off such a massive story… There was so much to go on, so much promise, and we got a bit of a cop-out and a lot of confusion…

Personally I didn’t mind the cheesy family-stuff with the Doctor and his “children of time” as Davros put it. Actually, the way he said it made it all pretty chilling. I loved the delightfully-mad Dalek Kaan, his false prophecies and ultimate betrayal – and that the Doctor even offered to save Davros’ life at the end.

But I didn’t really understand why all the companions were needed – excepting maybe as a distraction for the Doctor. A particular highlight for me was Davros. The scenes involving him were magnificent – and particularly when he thought he was in total control. Ahough they could have and should have done a lot more with him than they did.

The two-way meta-crisis: interesting idea, although its back to RTD’s “imaginative” science… I really enjoyed the consequences – the Doctor who talked like Donna, and finally an explanation to the Ood’s mysterious Doctordonna… But for me, it was more Star Trek than Doctor Who, and I have never been a huge fan of Star Trek…

I thought what they did with Donna’s “death” was excellent – and she was finally properly likeable – proper human emotions in trying to deal with a situation so far removed from being “just a temp. From Essex.” The extra Doctor was borderline for me. I sort of saw it coming, but hoped that it would be something else. I think it was handled well until the Bad Wolf Bay bit, and then it got nauseating, but at least it got the romance element out of everything (every cloud and all that).

The ending in particular, with Wilf, was lovely. Very sad, and I am particularly sad to see Bernard Cribbins’ place in the series go with Donna. But it was a good ending to a very good year in Doctor Who.

Three things though – C, G and I.

The Daleks, for me, had their appeal in being an endless force – no matter how many were destroyed or disabled, more and more came after it. Part of the secret was that you couldn’t see or know just how many there were. Genesis, Revelation or Planet of the Daleks wouldn’t have been as tense or dramatic or good if you could seen thousands of them flitting around on their way to battle stations, coffee breaks etc…

But when the Doctor walks out into a massive space, filled with flying Daleks, I lose interest. It looks like a hoard of fruit flies bustling around a discarded apple core. Its not threatening, or scary. It’s preposterous.

The other bit that bothered me was the whole “towing the earth back home” bit. As a concept and a plot point, its fine – it’s a very Doctor thing to do. But why oh why oh why did they have to show it? It looked cheap and silly. We didn’t need to see it.

I could see it working with say, Tom Baker – but it would certainly not be shown… It would have been one of those little asides… You know, like this:

Sarah: But Doctor, what about the Earth?
Doctor: What about it?
Sarah: For goodness sake, its still stranded miles from where it should be!
Doctor: Oh that. I towed it back into position using the TARDIS. (Teeth fill the screen) Come on, let’s go and find a cup of tea…

And that scene where they’re all flying the TARDIS… it was the first time in a long, long time that I’ve wanted to go and make a cup of tea in the middle of Doctor Who (for the record, the last time was while I was watching a video at uni… and my VCR was a fancy model with a pause button and everything…)

All in all, it was brilliant – if self-referential and a bit messy- a real climax to the first four seasons, and despite its flaws, I’m glad it was so big and bold. What a fantastic way of clearing the decks for the Vast Toffee* to step in.

And then there was the trailer (or should I say “spoiler”) for the Christmas special. What was it again?

Oh yes:”Coming this Christmas… The return of the Cybermen.”

Well. Thanks.

That’s the surprise taken out of that one then. Where are your spoilers now, River Song?!

Still, I suppose that stopped The Sun leaking it later on.

*Vast Toffee MN (Master of Nightmares) – Steven Moffat – brilliant anagram courtesy of Staggering Stories…

I wasn’t wrong this time! Love it. There was a moment where the Doctor made wordplay with ‘source’ and I wondered what sort would go with my preview if I had to eat my words. As it was this was really really what I’d hoped it would be and totally unexpected too.

Doctor Who is like a packet of Revels – love them too. The variety. Some are crunchy (like The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky) some are chewy (Planet of the Ood), and some a bit surprising and not what you thought you might get (The Doctor’s Daughter).

Just so many lovely, rich ideas. Humans versus fish, fighting for so many generations that they have forgotten precisely why, but each generation lasts only a few hours so the war has taken a matter of days. Brilliantly implausible! And so much more besides: a deceptively layered story with plenty for the regulars to get their teeth into, even asides on the Child Support Agency and a turkey baster. There’s no other series that could cover such a broad rang…, ha, I’ve said it enough times before haven’t I? This blog is getting hard to write. This year is so consistently superb that I am getting stuck for superlatives. I wonder if the time has come for a new word to describe such consistent excellence. The English language has already embraced Dalek as a noun, so why not Doctor Who itself?

Doctor Who
1. BBC Television series. From 1963 to present.
2. Adj, (pronounced: dok-ter hoo). Consistently brilliant; defying expectations.

Here is another reason why I like Doctor Who. Those moments and ideas that plant the seeds of ‘what if’ in your mind. Those extraordinary moments that leap out and grab our imagination and often scared us stupid as kids. Walking stones, Kinda’s dream sequences, The Kandyman, the Marshmen. The other week a friend came up to me out of the blue and went, ‘I found these in the attic and I know you like Doctor Who‘ and gave me copies of The Tenth Planet and The Silurians. I’ve never seen either so this is very exciting. So I cracked open Tenth Planet last night. I was struck by the entrance of the Cybermen and then how they just command the screen. My goodness they are creepy. Terrifying actually. The way they speak with that voice (by the geniuses who did the voices for Captain Pugwash and Zippy and George in Rainbow!) that is emotionless but still recognisably human with their mouths breathlessly opening and closing. These days the idea behind them still seems fresh no matter how much it has been used in fiction, and the shock of their first appearance is so discernable 42 years on that I am very impressed. Not just the moments of awe and creepyness though. The ideas. Compare the breadth and depth of the ideas in your average Who story with almost anything else on telly and you’ll wonder why you watch anything else ever. Two more episodes to go and then it’s the first regeneration. I need another night in and fast!

What? Oh, yes; The Doctor’s Daughter.

It’s unfair to single anyone out, but this was David Tennant’s master-class in the full gamut of acting skill. There were many moments this week in which he effortlessly showed us what the Doctor was going through but one that really stood out for me: that smile that crosses his face when Jenny asks him what the Time War was like – goodness knows how he made that look so much like a father’s reaction to an innocent question from a child and be so full of anguish at the same time. He claims on the commentary that before the scene he’d accidentally bashed his leg on a table that that had helped ‘the moment’. But that’s just being modest if you ask me. The man is a genius. Oh, and another one: the ‘I never would’ scene was like the manifesto of the series and was incredibly powerful. There are all sorts of parallels to life there and it was a proper stare straight at the telly blinking regularly without looking at anyone else in the room moment.

Georgia Moffett was effortlessly brilliant. There’s loads of subtlety in her performance: moments where you glimpse bits of the Doctor in her; in the smile, the quickness of her actions.

Now then, I have a certain track record with my predictions on this blog don’t I (ahem). I predict that Jenny will be back – with an outrageous amount of running. Can’t wait.

I had two beginnings. One false start that sent me scurrying for cover, and then the reunion…

My first happened when I was plainly not ready to see Dr Who. It’s actually one of my first memories (other than falling asleep in front of Live Aid and waking up to see that now-famous video to the Cars song…)

I clearly remember seeing a scene from Earthshock – where Cybermen march up a metal staircase. It genuinely frightened me, and I then remember running and wrapping myself in nearby full-length curtain to hide… 15 or so years later, watching it back again while at university, the same feelings flooded back and I felt a chill down my spine.

The second beginning was a trip to a video shop with my dad. I’d begun watching the TV series properly by then (starting with Sylvester McCoy), and I was playing all the requisite playground versions – everyone wanted to be Ace. Boy or girl, it didn’t matter. Ace was clearly cooler. And so I, being smaller than most of my peers, became the Doctor. On the upside, quite clearly, I was better – after all, I had my own Tardis. And everyone else was a girl. Technically. But anyway, I’d become obsessed with the Doctor, and I wanted more.

Somehow (memory is hazy on the exact details of how I managed it), I got my dad to buy me Spearhead From Space. I took it home and devoured it. Again and again. This was a Doctor I didn’t know, I had never seen before, and was totally different to the one I’d met. But this one was dashing, erudite, and was basically a scientist dressed like Adam Adamant. But I took that in my stride. And their special effects were better than the ones on telly (because they didn’t have to go over the top). I loved the story, and was very wary of shop window mannequins for a VERY long time afterwards.

There was something different about all this, though. I immersed myself, but all the while I was picking up the rudimentaries of right and wrong, of the value of life. Of love for others. And after all, while my friends were totally obsessed with football, I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for them. They watched 22 men in shorts kick a ball around while I loved cricket and watched an eccentric, clever and funny man help up scantily-clad women while he was saving the earth. Sigh.

Favourite Doctor:

Patrick Troughton. While my first was both McCoy and Pertwee, I suppose, and I always thought Paul McGann was brilliant but never got a fair go… my second (dad-bought) video was The Seeds of Death. And I’ve always had a sweet spot for the “Cosmic Hobo”, so I’ll go with him. Maybe it’s the daft trousers and the blatant darts at comedy. Maybe it was because he died of a heart attack after (allegedly) attempting to seduce another actor’s wife at a Sci-Fi convention. I don’t know. But the Seeds of Death is one of the finest things I’d ever seen, and I’ve always loved the way his doctor dealt with some terrifying monsters (Cybermen, Yeti, Daleks, the Ice Warriors, the Great Intelligence) with fantastic grace and panache (for the time) and still found time to get everyone else’s back up by practicing the Recorder…

Favourite Story:

This is tough! There are a few that really and truly drew me in until I was completely hooked. The Ambassadors of Death, Robots of Death, The Pyramids of Mars, Talons of Weng Chiang, Ghostlight, The Android Invasion, The Daemons.
I’ll plump for The Web of Fear though. Pulsating thriller set in the tunnels of the London Underground, with Yeti stalking, looking for prey. Oh, and green stuff on walls. Always good. Really threatening, close thriller which is captivating just from the soundtrack (only episode 1 still exists on film).

Monster/enemy:

This used to be the easiest answer for me. It was always the Cybermen. Daleks, like Andrew, I thought were dull. Really, really not scary and not too hard to run away from. Cybermen were virtually unbeatable (except of course if you happened to have a wrinkly old woman from the Sixteenth Century who came with her own gold arrows… ahem), and they were determined. And Colin Baker’s brush with them (The Attack of The Cybermen), is an overlooked gem.
But for me, it’s the Master.
There’s a series of encounters with Pertwee’s doctor that are absolutely riveting – The Mind of Evil and the Claws of Axos in particular are brilliantly simple but complex thrillers… but the master always has the advantage over the Doctor that gives way to a fascinating story while the Doctor fights to reel him in. And his return last year with Derek Jacobi and John Simm was just, well, perfect. It was classic Master and bang up to date all at once.

Which companion did you either want to be or fancy:

The years watching old videos made a huge impression on me… Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen)…

I always wanted to be in UNIT. I suppose they count as companions…

What are you looking forward to:

The return of the Sontarans – OK, they look a bit like rubber-moulded humpy-dumpty models in shiny suits, but they’re another one of the old-school monsters who were genuinely interesting to watch. Oh, and UNIT returns in the same episode too!
I’m also looking forward to stories by two particular writers – Gareth Roberts and Stephen Moffat…

Dreading:

I am thoroughly dreading what they’re going to do with the return of Rose…
I’m really beginning to hate the whole romance element of the series. Rose was far enough for me. But then Martha, and now Donna too – falling in love with him. Maybe its naiive to expect that love could be kept out of this, but its making David Tennant’s doctor look like a ladies’ man, when traditionally, I suppose, he’s always been a bit above that.