Vintage Item no.3: Doctor Who Weekly

It was the first time I was allowed to go down our town precinct by myself, the first Saturday DWW came out. Well, I say alone – I mean with my two best friends, Richard and Tully. We were nine. Our town was rough. We planned it like an expedition. Which sweets, what drinks, where we’d sit – on the bench outside the library where usually we scrapped over first dibs on the new T. Dicks – to read the first issue of DWW together. I’d seen the advert in, I think, Spiderman Weekly and we were unbelievably eager.

They say nowadays that the young fans of New Who are fascinated by glimpses of Classic Who and it was the same then. I was agog at the pics from the Sixties. Photos of Hartnell and the Daleks in shiny Skaro corridors seemed as faraway and spooky as the Universal Monster Movies depicted in my (treasured) ‘Dennis Gifford’s Monsters of the Movies’ book. It too was a glimpse into a prehistory of terror.

Every week I’d learn a little more about the history of The Show. I’d have all these Recovered Memory Syndrome flashbacks about episodes I’d watched when I was too young to remember. The Giant Spiders were etched on my memory and how they seemed to live on supermarket shelves or something. And Linx and Styre’s heads deflating like burst footballs on a barbed wire fence.

I wanted the Wrath Warriors and the duplicitous Star Beast to crashland in our town. The Iron Legion was more real to me than the Key to Time. I really thought the Doctor dictated his ‘Letters from the Doctor’ himself. I wanted to win the Crazy Caption more than anyone could imagine. I wanted a TARDIS Tuner just like Romana had – even though you could tell from the ad it was just a tarted up radio.

I was gutted when it went Monthly and the logo went neon. It was the Eighties and they stopped having as many monsters in Doctor Who on the telly and fewer laughs, somehow. DW and DWM went a bit more serious. We were all growing up.

I don’t know why I never wrote in – like seemingly everyone else I’ve ever known - or sent in a drawing or a photo of a police box birthday cake or me in a scarf and a hat or a pinickity fannish critique of last season that I’d sweated over. But I never did. Anyway, Dear Doctor – I’m sending my letter in now. Hello, back there in 1979! It was great! Well done! We loved you!