Doctor Who And The Ghostly Leg

Doctor Who And The Ghostly Leg

It might not always be apparent, but we do try and plan ahead for 'Round The Archives' as much as possible and even with things done at short notice (hello there article on 'Roberts Robots') we do at least a basic amount of research before committing anything to the digital recorder.

The sheer amount of material we get through means that we can't write down every word we're going to say, but we've usually got some notes knocking about that we can refer to.

So, I guess you could say that we take a sort of Patrick Troughton approach - we vaguely know what we're going to talk about, but the fiddly detail might change from take to take. If ever did more than one take, that is...

But with doing a video virtually every night, the format has to be even looser and we often come out with things that take us both by surprise. Watching them back, Lisa is very good at reacting when I do something daft and/or unexpected.

I think our chat about 'The Deadly Assassin' and 'The Face Of Evil' is a good example of this. If you'd asked me ten minutes before we started, I wouldn't have put any money on mentioning the miniature train that used to run in Poole Park and it's only now that I wish I'd linked it with the similar one at Longleat.

Mary Whitehouse famously complained about the drowning sequence at the end of Part Three, but I do wonder if the staff of Longleat had to contend with any kids attempting a reconstruction of the end of Part Two stuff during the summer of 1977...

The fact that the Master's TARDIS is disguised as a grandfather clock suspiciously like the one used by The Burbles in 'Vision On' had never crossed my mind either.

However, I must confess that I had been meaning to talk about the Hicnhcliffe Body-Part Trilogy for some time, and I think I first made that joke on Twitter and/or Facebook a couple of years ago.
With 'The Hand Of Fear' being quickly followed by 'The Face Of Evil', it's no stretch of the imagination to suggest 'The Ghostly Leg' as the obvious next step, if you'll pardon the expression. I don't know why this one has stuck in my memory, but this generally rather forgotten character from 'Buster and Monster Fun' comic can be seen here.

Martin Holmes has also just suggested 'The Elbow Of Terror', which has conjured up an image of Jack Douglas with his unruly pint of bitter in 'Carry On Abroad', for which I can only offer my sincere apologies...

Wahey! Geroff!!!

(And I didn't know I was even going to do that in this piece when I started writing it!)

Our natter about 'The Deadly Assassin' and 'The Face Of Evil' can be seen here.

(By Andrew Trowbridge)