At a comic con in Brighton in 2005.
It's 60 years to the day since the first episode of Doctor Who appeared on our TV screens. I'm not sure if I saw that first one at the time, but I definitely saw the first Daleks story which transmitted a few weeks later. Like most kids back then (I was 4 years old) it was the Daleks that hooked us onto the show. A year later and "Dalekmania" was the fad we all followed, with Dalek merchandise aplenty (or as much as our parents could afford). The Daleks was also my favourite comic strip when TV Century 21 launched in 1965.
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| A favourite Christmas present which I still have. |
In the 1970s it was the Doctor Who strip in Countdown / TVAction that captivated my interest (and I'm currently re-watching the Jon Pertwee Doctor Who episodes on iPlayer.)
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| Art by Harry Lindfield. |
I'm very grateful to the official Doctor Who Magazine for publishing my Daft Dimension comic strip every issue for the past several years. A pleasure to contribute to a magazine that I bought from issue 1 back in 1979 when it was Doctor Who Weekly. Here's one of my favourite Daft Dimension strips that I did in 2016...
Doctor Who returns to our screens with the first of three weekly TV specials on Saturday 25th November starring David Tennant as the 14th Doctor.
The Christmas issue of Doctor Who Magazine will be on sale on Thursday 7th December.
I'm currently selling the original artwork of some of my Daft Dimension strips on eBay, which you'll find at this link:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?item=203554298786&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562&_ssn=graphite47
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7 comments:
I definitely didn't watch the first episode of Doctor Who. I know that for a fact because a week later a family friend told me about this great new show and sat me down to watch the Cave of Skulls episode. I eventually saw episode 1 in the BBCs short repeat season in late 1981.
My wife didn't watch that first show either. She'd been to see the Beatles at the Stockton Globe Theatre on the night before and when she got home, all anyone was talking about was the Kennedy assassination.
I've been re-watching Pertwee too. I was hesitant in case I ruined my memories of that era, but his shows have generally aged well.
I think that Doctor Who story in Countdown was called The Celluloid Midas, and I’m amazed that I remember it. (I was 11.)
The Third Doctor is my favourite era of Doctor Who, which seems odd because most of it is the least like Doctor Who in general. (eg: Stranded on Earth, with the Doctor being a serious authority figure, and more prone to physical conflict than the others.) I think I was the right age by then (11) to appreciate the show more than the Hartnell and Troughton eras, and of course Katy Manning was there at a time when I started noticing girls, so all in all it was an unmissable era.
That's right, Cassiel. The title is above the logo in the resumé box.
Agreed. Katy Manning was my very early teenage crush as well, alongside Sammie Winmill from The Tomorrow People.
Ah - I clearly should have zoomed in to the image of the Countdown page. But I shall attempt to redeem myself by recalling that the story was about some kind of beam weapon that turned people into plastic - even if they were watching a film that featured the weapon in the background (so The Doctor had the bright idea of printing out all the film frames on paper).
Countdown Doctor stories I remember: something about time police (where The Doctor meets H.G.Wells' traveller) - was that a Gerry Haylock too? - and a competition where readers could send in their monster ideas, and the best would get worked up into a strip. (The Uggraks? Google turns up zero for that.)
I drifted away from Doctor Who when Hartnell regenerated into Troughton but was attracted back by the change in direction and format when Pertwee arrived. His first year had a Doomwatch / Quatermass feel to it, though I'm sure Nigel Kneale wouldn't thank me for making that comparison.
Katy Manning has been a revelation. I remembered her as a mildly annoying interlude between the more serious Caroline John and the immaculate Elisabeth Sladen, but she's been delightful to re-watch in the last few months.
Countdown / TV Action was the perfect complement to the Pertwee era. It launched during his second season and finally folded about 6 months before the news broke that he was leaving. I remember reading the issue you show here, on a seaside holiday during the summer of 1971. A glorious Saturday morning with the Eleven Plus behind me and the trauma of secondary school ahead of me.
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