"Guy Fawkes MAY (OR MAY NOT) HAVE BEEN Doctor Who!!!"

"Guy Fawkes MAY (OR MAY NOT) HAVE BEEN Doctor Who!!!"

I know it's not the catchiest of headlines, but that's honestly what I thought when the parade of faces flashed part during the Mind-Bending contest in 'The Brain Of Morbius' Part Four.

With Season 12 having used up most of the Monsters Who Came Back For More, Robert Holmes is now free to do what all good 'Doctor Who' writers should do - Simply Make Stuff Up.

Aged 7, one could say that I still had the stabilizers on my Fandom Bicycle, but I was already keen to discard them in the nearest metaphorical hedge. I'd never seen a copy of 'The Making Of Doctor Who', but I was already reading Target Books and a trip to the Longleat Exhibition had secured me a poster magazine, so my collection of stuff had at least begun.

Obviously, I remembered Jon Pertwee and I knew there were some earlier Doctors, but if you'd asked me quickly, I'm not sure I'd have been too sure on exactly how many.

In short then, I knew the show had a long history, but anything earlier than about 1973 really was prehistoric.

But all kids like anything to do with dinosaurs and the sudden implied suggestion that there may have been loads of unknown Doctors fired my imagination like nobody's business.

And I distinctly recall being surprised that one of the faces looked like a drawing of Guy Fawkes that I must have seen in a school book. To me, this simply confirmed Tom Baker's line in 'Pyramids Of Mars' about being over 700 years old.

Now I know it's not a popular explanation in some corners of fandom these days, but remember that at this point the Twelve Regenerations Thing had never been mentioned. Sadly, it's too late to ask Bob Holmes whether he was suggesting that Tom Baker's Doctor was the penultimate one. And by 'The Caves Of Androzani' it's definitely not on Bob's radar.

Probably, if you'd raised the subject,  Bob would simply have chuckled to himself at the suggestion that anyone would do anything as daft as try and join the dots between two stories shown a whole 11 months apart - a lifetime in television terms!

The aim in this period is to make each story as exciting as possible, upping the jeopardy but with little thought as to what this means for the past or future. The production team are aware that there are fans, but that's as far as the relationship goes. Except, possibly for an in-joke aimed at Jeremy Bentham with the naming of a certain Panopticon.

There will be a new console room along shortly, underlining that there are great chunks of the Doctor's past previous hidden from the audience. And I was intrigued at the mention of the mysterious companion 'Tilly' in 'The Android Invasion'. Oddly, she never seemed to get a mention in any of the lists of companions that I read...

I like walking through the dark when it comes to the facts of 'Doctor Who' - it's mysterious!

Our chat about 'The Android Invasion', 'The Brain Of Morbius' and 'The Seeds Of Doom' can be seen here.

(By Andrew Trowbridge)