Doctor Who

The newest series of Doctor Who has started on Saturday nights and much to our surprise, we are actually quite enjoying them. Of course it is via Emma that we started watching them again a few years back, when she, like all her friends picked up on the David Tennant version. I saw perhaps half the episodes with him in - but I was not a great fan of either Billie Piper or Catherine Tate as his "assistant". The episode "Waters of Mars" was pretty scary I seem to remember.

But Emma was not at all interested in viewing some old Doctor Whos from Linda and my generation. I personally don't remember the first two Doctors and only have the occasional recollection of Jon Pertwee (though I do remember the Brigadeer from that period, and possibly episodes with the cyber men, and a vintage car - can that possibly be right?). It used to be on in the early evening on a Saturday just after Dad and I would be getting back from which ever football match we had been to.

For me, the first Doctor I remember well is actually Tom Baker with sidekick Sarah-Jane.


Clearly a great portion of the appeal of Doctor Who for a teenage boy relates to his sidekicks and Louise Jameson as Leela was definitely in the top category (not sure Sarah-Jane was - I was just a bit too young to see her that way when she was on!)

I seem to remember that Leela was forever threatening people with a knife!

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By the time I got to University, Doctor Who was one of the absolute essential viewings of the week - very much a student's show. By now, Peter Davison was the Doctor and he had several sidekicks at once - an extraordinary idea! And Nyssa and Tegan were suitably extraordinary in my view. I would have been delighted to be flying through time with either of them - but both? On the other hand, he also had the ludicrous Adsel in tow as well. I would have dropped him off somewhere very quickly.

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Hard to say who I preferred most. Nyssa was an alien and I remember she did have some rather odd characteristics (and some extraordinary outfits), while clearly the idea of an Australian air stewardess was about as erotic as anything could be for an 18 year old. I do remember one quite scary episode where Tegan was trapped in some sort of strange labyrinth - not sure of the exact details though

Nyssa in her first series outfit

And one of her odd outfits from her second series

For me, this will always be the "classic" Doctor Who team

Later, Tegan began to wear 1980s outfts - thus often looking like Sheena Easton! I wonder if "Sheena's barmy army" - an organisation associated with the John Peel show for many years - is still going?

The classic Tegan pose!

And so to the new series with Amy Pond. Perhaps this is best summed up by a cartoon in one of the papers showing two daleks, one of whose antenna are dropping downwards. The other, with normal straight antenna asks, "So you haven't seen the Doctor's new assistant yet?" Some commentators suggested that an assistant who was a kissogram girl (in a police uniform) was going a bit far - I wholeheartedly approve, it must be said

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Will this become Amy Pond's classic pose?

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The current week's two parter with the weeping angels was very good we thought - roll on next week and vampires in Venice. But despite all this, we have to admit that our current favourite t.v. is "Iron Chef UK" - a truly extraordinary idea!