Looking back in time...

Well, it’s here. We’ve arrived. This is The Day Of The Doctor. Let’s all take a moment to reflect...

As I’ve mentioned before, my earliest memories are of Tom Baker, probably with K-9 and maybe Leela, but supported by the first few issues of Doctor Who Weekly so my first clear memories are of The Iron Legion while the first shows I really remember are the Five Faces repeats.

Although I knew enough to understand the awesomeness of getting a Fourth Doctor, TARDIS, K-9, Cyberman and Dalek for Christmas... 1979 I think? Still got them too.

Even then, looking back, DWW made a point of celebrating the show’s history, giving photo features to the previous Doctors starting with William Hartnell in issue 1 and then putting Jon Pertwee on the cover of issue 6 due to the special feature on the Sontarans. So I always knew it was older than I was, and larger and stranger than what I was seeing on a weekly basis.

And then it took a turn not to my tastes, and then it got a bit more interesting, and then it went away. And then it came back in an attempt to appeal to the US market, and then went away again, except in books and the like. And then... it came back.

I remember looking up at a huge billboard of Chris and Billie and thinking this could really work... and being rather glad when it started to.

By that point, I’d actually run a game using (some of) the FASA system, and dug out City Of The Damned to use as an adventure, along with a White Dwarf Traveller adventure about a wolflike alien loose in Victorian London. This was sometime around the McCoy era, when it was becoming something serious teen genre fans could talk about. I ran Vampire: The Masquerade for the same players. This was serious business. There were all-new novels coming out.

I nearly ran Time Lord once as well. But not quite...