Remembrance Of The Daleks Part Two

Remembrance Of The Daleks Part Two

The world and her wife often seem to be doing 'Doctor Who' stuff on YouTube and we held off for over a year before we did a solely-'Who' article on 'Round The Archives'. It's a very crowded market and finding a new angle on stuff you've seen a million times before ain't so easy.

So maybe some random sampling would be a better way to go? Pull the handle on the Episode Fruit Machine and see what comes up. Our approach in 'Round The Archives' is to Quote As Many Facts As You Can whilst trying to place shows in the wider television landscape of the time.

We're not here to recite storylines (we hope you'll sort of get the hang of those by watching the DVDs), but joining-the-dots between actors, production crew and other shows that were on at the time will hopefully present the episodes in a new light.

So Trev and Simon swinging their pants with Sylvester McCoy in The Singing Corner on 'Going Live' in 1988 takes us to Joseph Marcell's cardigan (thanks to Clayton Hickman for pointing that one out!).

The menu on the wall in the cafe offers the choice of 'Harry's Special Fry-Up', but it remains a mystery as to what this actually consist of. The DVD production notes give us names such as Straford Johns and Ian Ogilvy, who were considered for roles in the story, as well as pointing out that the cemetary scenes suffered from an outbreak of noisy fans.

Mrs Smith's teapot is all 60s and shiny, but does reflect the studio lights and Sylvester's copy of 'Doctor In The House' seems to be a similar vintage to our 1954 edition, which costs you 10s 6d. Considerably more than Harry's Special Fry-Up, as it happens!

George Gallaccio is producing 'Miss Marple : Nemesis' (shown a few weeks before 'Doctor Who' viewers encounter a 'Silver Nemesis'),  Sandra Dickinson is appearing on 'I've Got A Secret' and Arthur Darvill's mum Ellie is operating The Why Bird on 'Playbus'.

You can argue about how to pronounce the word 'Spiridon', but no-one ever seems to stop to ask why The Land Of Fiction appears to be outside the windows of 'Chunky' Gilmore's HQ.

The devil is in the detail, they say, and applying this level of extreme nerdery seems to have provided us with some fresh insights. Amusingly, we've ended up with a video that is slightly longer than the actual episode, which was a surprise to both of us...

 Obviously, we're not sure where this experiment will take us next, but it seems quite a promising way to go.

Warren always says he learns something when he does an article for us and if we can find a 'Doctor Who' fact or two that we never knew before, so much the better.

Stay tuned!

(By Andrew Trowbridge)