Doctor Who Annual 1977

Doctor Who Annual 1977

"My word! No wonder there was no reponse! His whole brain is made of rubber!"

A severed hand with a bird perched on it was just one of the odd images that greeted the keen young fans who opened their shiny new 'Doctor Who' annual on Christmas Day 1976. It's an odd thing to bung in there, but at least it gave fair warning that what was to follow would have little in common with stories such as 'The Deadly Assassin', except maybe the weirdness of the stuff in the Matrix in Part Three.

For today's video, we thought it easier to play the exciting dice game 'The Terror Trail' than even attempt a serious look through the contents of this one. But even here, the pictures don't match the words, with a reference to Doctor Who's 'assistant' taking no notice of the fact that there are two of 'em in the pictures. We presume they are meant to be Sarah and Harry - both of whom have now left the series - though Surgeon Lieutenant Sullivan has rummaged in his seaman's chest for a chunky polo-neck jumper and applied some strong bleach to his barnet.

The stories are so strange in places you'd think they were scripted by Vic Reeves. You would not believe what happens in 'Menace On Metalupiter', ladies and gentlemen. Puskeet, the cat-headed robot, has had his brain replaced with rubber as part of a dastardly plot to fuse the planet into a giant crystal of Mithenium! Like you do.

'The Eye Spiders Of Pergross'  chucks made-up words around like there's no tomorrow. There's an astralfuturo-rocket (far superior to a normal rocker, we suppose), a dance called the Glubja-roo and a game called Controtortulus, which is described as a crazy kind of rugby-football.

You cannot complain about a lack of imagination with this one and even the filler articles veer towards the strange with the claim that one George King is the Earth Representative of the Interplanetary Parliament, who meet on Saturn. There's a cosmic leader, Aetherius, who lives on Venus and has already saved Earth from an invasion of the Fishmen...

You missed that on the 'Nine O'clock News', didn't you?

You can also amuse yourself by spotting which publicity photos have been used as a basis for the illustrations of Tom Baker, though I do like the 'INSIDE THE TARDIS' frame from 'The Body Snatcher' which gives us a glimpse of a stylish instrument panel picked out in black-and-gold. I'm always a sucker for a new TARDIS console design.

And we learn that the inhabitants of Jimorris are among Dr Who's favourite space people. One day, perhaps, that information will prove to be useful...

Our video may be daft, but we cannot hope to achieve the nutty heights achieved by the 1977 annual. It's freely available on eBay, usually for under a tenner, and really has to be seen to be believed...

(By Andrew Trowbridge)