Summary
WOO-oo-oooooo, went the first few bars of the home-made title music of the most eagerly awaited programme of the week. Saturday night as I remember, round about 6pm. My older brother would thoughtfully fetch all three of us a cushion as we knelt in front of the telly. Then, if it all got unbearably scary, we could bury our faces in the cushions and not have an image of some truly hideous monster seared indelibly on our minds.
But actually we loved being scared. It was strangely thrilling and we knew the good Doctor would always save the day. And back then, to an eight-year-old, the monsters were frighteningly good. Most memorable for me were the Sea Devils - upright two-legged scaly creatures that predated the Predator look by a couple of decades; very nasty. Then of course there were the Daleks, which as you got older, became rather ridiculous with their toilet plunger attachments and silly voices. And how did they tackle stairs anyway? But I think the scariest of all were the giant maggots that appeared to be taking over the world after an underground mining experiment went horribly wrong. Just think of those witchetty grubs Jordan snacked on in the Aussie jungle then multiply by 1000. Extremely disturbing. It was pretty hard to eat your Saturday night boiled egg and soldiers after that lot, I can tell you. But you never forget your first Doctor Who, and mine was John Pertwee with his cape and New Romantic frilly shirts and that lovely voice his son Sean has inherited. Pertwee was big, posh and reassuring but not eccentric. That was the mantle assumed by my second favourite doctor Tom Baker, he of the long stripy scarf and the jelly beans. To this day, when I hear him on Little Britain, his Doctor Who springs to mind. And now it's all coming back again this month with the ninth doctor in the rather attractive form of big- nosed northerner Christopher Eccleston. For a warm shot of nostalgia turn to page 6 where Stephen Phelan does a bit of time travel himself.See the full content of this document
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