The Early Years

The Early Years

With what might be termed Hartnellmania sweeping the land, at least on certain online streaming sites, we were surprised and delighted to see our 'Doctor Who On Twitch' video getting such an enthusiastic response. It's only been up a couple of days, but has already clocked up nearly 100 views as we speak.

So, that's lovely, of course, but inevitably some people will be after something in a little more depth, so our next move was to dig out a copy of 'Doctor Who - The Early Years', which is one of those books that is always placed fairly close at hand.

And if you know our system for filing merchandise, that's already a pretty big endorsment of  its contents, as over 30 years after its original publication it still earns its keep.

£13.50 seemed quite a lot for a 'Doctor Who' book in 1986, even for a hardback of over 220 pages, but in 1986 saw the future of the show in question, and one response to this was to examine the past in greater detail than had been achieved before.

Jeremy Bentham is the sole name on the cover, but Ray Cusick's contribution is highly valuable, supplying all sorts of fascinating photos taken on set, even allowing you to see Susan's red tights from 'The Daleks' in all their glowing glory.

When doing the video, we were aware that Twitch was only up to 'The Dalek Invasion Of Earth', we didn't want to do too much in the way of spoilers, we stopped just after page 100, but even so there's plenty to enjoy.

There are features on all the stories which Ray Cusick worked on with accompanying design drawings. The sketch for the Magnedon suggests the use of 'Sisilation' to give it the appearance of metal. This is apparently 'Copper Surfaced Sisal Kraft Paper' and is available from an address in Barking. Or at least, it was...

This is the sort of detail we love, of course, and who would have guessed that there would be a direct link between Ray writing 'BRAIN TO PULSATE & LIGHT UP INSIDE'  on 18th March 1964, and a chatroom exploding with numerous green icons of boggly-eyed slugs...

The five pages of camera script from 'The Edge Of Destruction' has reminded me that we really should pay more attention to this sort of documentation and the upcoming Blu-ray release of Season 12 gives us the chance to do so.

We'll return to this marvellous book later on, but for the moment we hope people enjoy this quick glimpse of the hard work that went into these early episodes.

You can see our video on 'Doctor Who - The Early Years' here.

Happy old times and places!

 
(By Andrew Trowbridge)