Vworp Vworp

Over the past few years I've been filling the gaps in my Doctor Who Weekly/Monthly/Magazine collection. The big rush started after I bought about thirty of the Weekly and early Monthly mags for about a quarter apiece (this included the first issue, in a very nice condition with the original transfers included, such a deal!). After that wave subsided, I slowly filled in more of the gaps and now there are only a handful left for me to find. As a collector, gaps are bad.

A couple weeks ago I was suddenly drawn to the shelf where a good forty or fifty of these collected magazines sat. They hadn't been read yet and, therefore, couldn't be filed away with the others just yet. Afterall, what's the point in buying them if I'm not going to read them? It takes all the fun out of having a twenty-five year old magazine if you're not going to look at it at all.

So I started reading them. Few of these were consecutive as I was just filling gaps. The earliest of these issues still had Tom Baker as the Doctor (to put this in perspective for the unfamiliar, he left that job in 1981).

I rather expected to find these to be rather boring. Afterall, the news would be dated, I'd seen most of the comic strips before, the research would get better with time, what would there be to see?

It got very interesting. I time travelled.

Peter Davison became the Doctor and we loved him although he wasn't the same as Tom. Sometimes he was very good though. Colin Baker came along and we loved him and hated him and occasionally loved to hate him. The cancellation scare was suddenly upon us in the mid-80s and then was gone. The show was back with Sylvester McCoy and was rubbish and brilliant at the same time. Some argued that the show was being killed by the BBC, that ever since the scare that they'd wanted it gone. That couldn't be true though; this was Doctor Who! Didn't everyone know about it and love it in some way? Tradition, right? And the audience grew smaller and smaller.

And then in 1990, it was gone. There were promises that it was 'resting', just like the last time, in the 80's, but in the 80's there had been a definite restart date. There was no date this time. The show was 'resting' just as John Cleese's parrot had been.

And then my collection jumped ten years worth of issues. I time travelled into the future, despite still being in the past. Videos! DVDs! Audio Adventures! Books! Everything you could want out of Who!... except the return of the show. In early 2001 there was no reason to believe the show would ever return so we loved what we HAD or, if we didn't love what we had, we made what we loved. Fan videos and fan fiction magazines were peaking around this time. I was in there, muddling about a bit, writing things.

I'm just finishing up issue Doctor Who Magazine #299, cover dated 10-Jan-2001. That's over five years ago already. Five years. Two formerly missing episodes from the 60's were yet to come home. More DVDs. Better ways to restore the old episodes, to make them shiner, easier to watch. Might as well take the time and do it right. We had to watch something, right? It's not like that tv movie in 1996 did anything. Heck, it was five years ago already. Five years. If the BBC wanted Doctor Who back, they'd have done something about it by now, right?

I guess I'll find out in issue #336 (12-Nov-2003). It says something about a New Series on the front. Or I suppose, if I can't wait, I can set the TARDIS controls and just read it now...