Fish Fingers and Custard - Issue 10 by Daniel Gee

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10

Going For Gold No, it isn’t a reference about the Olympics, nor is it about the classic gameshow hosted by Henry Kelly where you had teams from different countries answering difficult questions. Much like the passport control at your local airport. In fact, it’s actually a reference to our first new Doctor Who footage of 2012, the mini-episode ‘As Good As Gold’ which was written by children as part of the ongoing ‘script to screen’ competitions that the Doctor Who production team run. I’m a big supporter of things like this, simply because not many other (if any) television programs do it. Doctor Who is always held up to be a program that ‘breaks the mould’ not just in its story-telling (which to be fair, has ripped off many other things!) but in how it’s produced. If you look at the show now, many (if not all) of the people who work for the show are fans. Many others who ply their trade in media were also influenced by Doctor Who. You can already see by reading that, how much Doctor Who affects people and makes them behave. No, I’m not talking about running around and whacking mannequins with sledgehammers, I mean how they relate it to their life and use skills they’ve picked up just by watching it. I mean, I wouldn’t writing this rubbish if it haven’t have been for Doctor Who! I’ve recently got at the BBC for their OFFICIAL (just making that clear) Convention. It wasn’t really the price (which is ridiculous, regardless) but for the half-arsed attempt at explaining why children weren’t advised to attend (Because it would spoil the magic). Children aren’t stupid, I mean they’re not the ones who lose millions of pounds due to a number of bad decisions, or commission The Voice, they know that Doctor Who isn’t real. It’s this patronising view that contrasts so badly with what Steven Moffat and his team are trying to do. Doctor Who isn’t a money-making scheme for executives – it was started in 1963 as a CHILDREN’S EDUCATION series. The landscape may have changed somewhat, but the premise is still the same. And let’s face it - if the kids can understand storylines that adults can’t, then they should be running the banks! Even so, the development of young people today can prove to be difficult, what with the many distractions that exist these days. But if Doctor Who can play a small part in, not just producing the next generation of television people, but the actual development of a child, then that’s what the true legacy of the show is. I still don’t understand why the kids named the episode after a Beautiful South song though. Carry on Regardless, Danny

This Issue of Fish Fingers and Custard is sponsored by ANGRY GEEK (Diet). The new soft drink for all excitable young people with an Internet connection Editor: Daniel Gee Contributors: Mike Pearse, Tim Gambrell, Jacob Edwards, Tim Jousma, Steve James, Jamie Boyd, Jay McIntyre, Harry Sedgewick, Lisa Carroll and Simon Fisher-Becker This issue is dedicated to Penny Doctor Who is ©BBC. We’re just humble fans. Please don’t put us in prison.

FFAC112

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A Nice Warm Welcome To Jenna-Louise… ..or Jenna, as the lazy people amongst us will be calling her. Maybe that's what everyone calls her, who knows. Anyway, during the last few months, the BBC have announced that Jenna-Louise Coleman (that's how a double-barrel forename SHOULD be written, Sarah Jane fans!) will be taking over the bedroom (and knicker drawer) of Karen Gillan. Oh and Arthur too, but the press always seem to forget about him! Personally, I think this is a good move Jenna isn't that much of an unknown quantity, as people like to make out, due to roles in Emmerdale and the AWARD WINNING Waterloo Road, so at least we know that we're getting someone decent. There’s a lot of bitchiness about soaps and drama around. Most of the time, they provide a good breeding ground for actors, writers and producers to learn skills and gain experience in an environment which isn’t too taxing - and one with a huge audience. The likes of RTD, Gareth Roberts and Paul Cornell all had stints on soaps and they’ve not done too bad. Look at actors like Suranne Jones, who made most fans damp with excitement, as she played the TARDIS last year. It just goes to prove the point. I think it's fair to say that due to her roles in soaps, Jenna is more of an experienced actress than Karen, Freema or Billie were at this point in their careers. The work she’s done should mean that she’ll be used to long shoots and waiting around, so she seems a perfect choice for a job on Doctor Who! If she nailed her audition as well as we hear, then don't worry - she'll be good and hopefully, a nice change! Even more personally, I’ll be honest and say that I wanted to have a different sort of companion this time around. I'm sure other people are getting sick of the 'attractive, young female' route that Doctor Who seems to go down. It's a sad reflection of society when a television program needs these people to appeal to an audience. I find it wholly ironic that one of the best companions done on Big Finish audio, is a 50 year-old woman. See, it works! But let’s face it, we're never going to get a character so old, so wise, so able to stand up The Doctor. Doing something different should be the hallmark of Doctor Who, but sadly, it doesn’t seem to be anymore.

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 However, I will say that I’m 100% behind the castings, as they’ve all been proven to work (I learned my lesson from Catherine Tate!) If you read the forums (actually, don’t - they’ll make your eyes bleed) some folk are getting their knickers (2nd time I’ve mentioned that in this article) in a twist and are throwing accusations around of ‘sexist’, ‘ageist’ and even ‘racist’ like cheap confetti at a wedding. Obviously these people know much more about the character than Steven Moffat, as he’s only created her! But whatever happens, I do hope Jenna won't be a run-of-the-mill modern day girl, or using wishful thinking, not even human! But if she isn’t, I won’t be turning to Facebook, Twitter or whatever else these angry people use to berate other people who they have never met/know nothing about. I’ll just sit down and watch. And if I don’t like it – there’s always next time! I just hope Jenna has braced herself for life in Doctor Who though. Welcome to the madness.  DANIEL GEE The Trouble With The Next Companion (or, How Do You Solve A Problem Like Jenna-Louise) When Jenna-Louise Coleman was announced as the actress playing the new companion, I wasn’t worried. Moffat and company had proven, thus far, to know how to cast the major parts. No, my worry was what character she would play. Moffat had hyped her as being ‘different’ and found in an unlikely place; but how different would she be, really? If she turns out to be just another modern day random female British citizen, I’ll be very unimpressed. I like Amy a lot, but she is the latest in a long line of companions in Nu Who that are just ordinary modern day British females. In that, if nothing else, Rory surpasses her. So I’m hoping that she’s from the past, or the future, another country, or is an alien in some freaky makeup. Something. Some kind of context, some kind of axe to grind to make her interesting. Now, all of the above sentiments you can find on various Doctor Who forums online. And it’s a good enough starting point. But then I began to think about it more. And I realized that companions, whether from Classic Who or Nu Who, can be broken down into three basic categories. That doesn’t mean that companions from any one of the categories is exactly the same, nor does it imply pigeonholing them. But there are three general categories that define the companion. First, the action-oriented companion. Streetwise, military trained, or otherwise tough; these companions handle the physical side of things while the Doctor uses his brainpower to save the town/planet/galaxy/universe/multiverse. Ace, Leela, the Brigadier, Captain Jack during his brief tenure as an actual companion, Rory

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10

in his ‘Roman’ moments, and so on. This is hands down my favourite kind of companion. Next, the smart companion. A scientist or fellow Time Lord, these companions have the brainpower to operate at--or nearly at--the Doctor’s level, and can help him in that area. Zoe, Romana and Liz Shaw are good examples of this kind of companion. I certainly like a companion who can match wits with the Doctor, help him with his gadget-bashing, and ask more intelligent questions then “What is it/What’s happening?” Lastly, we have the ordinary companion. Neither particularly strong or tough, these companions are remarkable only in their ability to accept, after a brief period of adjustment, the idea of time travel. Sarah-Jane, Tegan, Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy and countless others are examples of this kind of companion. The case can be made, certainly, that an ordinary companion can appeal to everyone, in an everyman/woman kind of way. But how often is that really true? Amy and Rose both divided fandom. There are some that love both, and some that hate both. God rest the memory of Elizabeth Sladen, I was certainly sorry when she died; but how often was Sarah-Jane reduced to being a screaming damsel in distress? As I mentioned before, I do like Amy a lot. But she’ll have been a companion for more than two years when she’s done; that’s long enough. (Whether she and Rory should leaving in the promised ‘heartbreaking’ fashion is another question). But will Jenna-Louise play a truly interesting, different, and viable companion? Or will she be trapped in the same ‘ordinary’ mould? Any time that Amy was truly capable, she wasn’t herself. The elder, warrior Amy from ‘The Girl Who Waited’ and the colder, more calculating Amy from ‘The Wedding of River Song’ were undone. Amy may remember the latter of the two, but is she still that person? No. I’m also worried that Jenna-Louse will be a solo companion. I’m of the school of thought that says the best number of companions is two. It has to be the right two, of course. Just throwing two random characters together doesn’t work. But she could be a ‘smart’ companion, paired with an ‘action’ one to come after, and both could help the Doctor in their own way. I look forward to Jenna-Louise Coleman, in and of herself. The companion she winds up having to play? The jury is still out on that one.  JAY McINTYRE

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Six Appeal In February 1987, just after Danger Mouse, the ABC in Australia televised ‘The Trial of a Time Lord’. Some 25 years later, the Sixth Doctor is still appealing to Jamie Boyd …

I first clasped eyes on Doctor Who when I was six. It was December 1985, when ‘Vengeance on Varos’ was shown on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s TV service (or ABC TV for short). In the days before multiple digital ABC channels, most Aussies just called it ‘Channel 2’, ‘cos that’s where you turned the dial of your telly to find ABC TV – hence the infamous rhyme that once permeated the country’s playgrounds: ‘Doctor Who did a poo in the loo on Channel 2’. But I digress. My Dad had always liked this show and this was the first time I’d sat down with him to watch it. Mum wasn’t as keen on it and usually made the tea in the kitchen when it was on, so it was just Dad and me, sat on two big brown armchairs, watching the wood-panelled colour Sharp TV set, waiting for that dazzling star-field, that thumping theme tune, that glistening neon logo and Colin Baker’s smiling face to explode out of the box and into the TV room of our average, middle-class family home in Campbelltown (an equally average and middle-class suburb in Adelaide, South Australia). Like Colin, Dad was a tall, burly man in his forties who, in his youth, had turned his considerable wit and wisdom to being a solicitor. Unlike Colin, he had yet to quit legal practice to be Doctor Who and was ginger-haired (if only he’d quit the bar, he could have been the first ginger Doctor), but he did say I had Colin’s mousy blond mop and chubby chops (thanks, Dad). I didn’t care that the Doctor was done out in Ronald McDonald’s Sunday best. He was an alien. Aliens wore weird alien clobber. I was pretty sure his friend Peri wasn’t an alien, ‘cos she said ‘zee’ instead of ‘zed’ and only Americans did that. They travelled around in a phone box that was bigger on the inside on the outside, which, being an alien spaceship, I had no more trouble accepting than the Doctor’s weird alien clobber. Their ‘TARDIS’ had landed on a planet where Peri was captured by an evil slug called Sil who turned – no, worse, transmogrified – her into a bird! The Doctor couldn’t help, ‘cos Sil had trapped him in a mirage, not of an oasis, but of a desert, which was really clever. And it looked like the Doctor had fallen for it, as Sil was cacking himself watching him dying of imagined heat-stroke on a TV of his own! I could see why Dad liked this show. It was smart and scary and exciting and … and I just had to tune in the following day to find out what happened next! So that’s what we did, Dad and me, every weeknight at 6.30, which

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 pleased him as much as it pleased me as his previous attempt at father-son bonding – building model railways, which was his other great hobby – had fallen rather flat. The next story, ‘The Mark of The Rani’, saw the Doctor and Peri visiting an English village in the past. It didn’t surprise me that a ship as wondrous as the TARDIS could travel in time as well as space. Somehow I got the idea that the Master and the Rani were a married couple, probably ‘cos they bickered a lot (then again, so did the Doctor and Peri, but oddly enough I never saw them as anything but best friends). Whatever their marital status was, they clearly had it in for Colin as they’d tricked the villagers into throwing his TARDIS down a pit, with him to follow! I had great sympathy for the Doctor’s plight as I’d only recently narrowly avoided being thrown down a drain by a gang of bullies at school, but just as they got their comeuppance when Dad called upon the school’s principal to stop them bullying me, the Master and his missus got theirs for bullying Peri when the Doctor mucked with their TARDIS so that their pet baby dinosaur grew up when it took off. I don’t know how many times I dragged poor Mum to the SA Museum on North Terrace to see its prized TRex skull as a result of that one scene! Oh, and another poor soul was transmogrified – into a tree! How horrible! Sure, you’d live a lot longer, as the Rani argued, but to be rooted in the ground for hundreds of years, that’d be no fun at all. Now, booby-trapping a painting of a volcano by hiding a real one inside it, that was my six-year-old idea of fun! The story after that had two Doctors in it, which I didn’t find at all confusing. Play School had Big Ted and Little Ted, so why couldn’t Doctor Who have ‘Big Doctor’ and ‘Little Doctor’? Feeling that some explanation for ‘The Two Doctors’ was in order or, as is more likely, that he just wanted to buy himself a Doctor Who book, Dad bought me ‘The TARDIS Inside Out’ from the ABC Shop in the Southern Cross Arcade, in which I read that there were six Doctors! What’s more, all these Doctors were ‘incarnations’ of the same man! ‘Little Doctor’, I discovered, was the second Doctor, and Dad’s first. I was six, so it seemed fitting that ‘my’ Doctor should be the sixth. I felt a bit special – well, a bit smug, if I’m honest – knowing that this other Doctor had a Jamie too, but he’d been transmogrified into a ‘Hungryman’ who wanted to eat Peri! My Doctor had to turn this other Jamie into a man again (well, he was wearing a skirt) and return him to his Doctor, but the Sultanas had kidnapped him and hidden him in that big old house I could see from my backyard, the one with the big palm trees out the front, which could only mean one thing: Colin Baker and co had come to Campbelltown to make this story! At the time, you see, I thought all TV went out live, and ‘The Two Doctors’, filmed on a stinking hot Andalusian afternoon, was now being shown on a stinking hot Antipodean afternoon. I was too scared to knock on the door of that house and ask for Colin, ‘cos when Peri did that, the cook, a terrifying Hungryman called Shockeye, came after her with a steak knife! Ah well. Maybe my Doctor would call on his Jamie one day … Then came ‘Timelash’. I was utterly convinced this one had been made in Adelaide ‘cos the corridors of Karfel looked just like the ones in (late, lamented) John Martin’s in Rundle Mall! Their toy department had a little annexe going off it which made me think ‘Karfel council chamber’ ‘cos it had a fire door at the far end that I thought the Timelash prop had been plonked in front of so that the actors could fall through the door and down the stairs! And its tinselly cliff-face just had to have come from Santa’s grotto in JM’s Magic Cave, but why wasn’t there a Doctor Who float in their Christmas Pageant? It was good enough! I loved the Timelash because it was the edge of the universe itself and if the Borad didn’t like you, he threw you off it and you just fell forever, which would’ve happened to the Doctor but for the rope his chums threw him. I was dangling on the edge of my seat watching him ‘dangling on the edge of oblivion’, but not Dad, who was tickled that so many people were needed to pull him to safety! The Borad was a mad scientist who’d

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 inadvertently transmogrified himself into a dinosaur (yay!) and wanted to do the same to Peri so he could marry her (‘well, at least he didn’t want to eat her’, sighed Dad), but in came Colin, who elbowed him down his own Timelash (double yay!) – but not before making him cry. That was the most amazing thing. The Doctor was the only one who could see that for all that talk about having a dinosaur’s superior strength, the Borad actually hated himself because he looked like one – a tragic irony, as the Rani story had made me a dinophile. Similarly, it was this story, which made me seek out The Time Machine and other works by H.G. Wells in my local library, that got me going as a Wellsian (I still fancy the Martians in The War of The Worlds may’ve been Bandrils). Colin said he’d be taking th Herbert back to Earth just as I was having a 7 birthday bash at McDonalds. Gosh, were the Doctor and H.G. thinking of coming to my birthday party? As it turned out … no, they weren’t. ‘Revelation of the Daleks’ had definitely been done back in England because the TARDIS had landed on a snowy hillside like the one in that fantastic frontispiece from the 1985 Doctor Who Annual (another book Dad bought himself-I mean me). The Doctor, who wore a magnificent blue cape, had found his own gravestone! Needless to say, I was instantly intrigued, but no sooner had I wondered ‘is he going to die here one day?’ than the gravestone promptly fell on him! As it turned out, this had been a ‘gag’ pulled on the Doctor by Davros – a putrid, laughing head who put me right off my tea (Mum wasn’t best pleased). He’d done it just to make the Doctor feel bad before killing him for real. That’s why Doctor Who villains like Sil and Shockeye and Davros were more realistic than any others I’d seen on TV – their creators understood that like the bullies at school, they really enjoyed hurting you. Unsurprisingly, Davros transmogrified people too – into pizzas in big white salt cellars with gold spots called Daleks. One of them was made of glass, through which you could see a pizza-man inside begging his own daughter to kill him! Dad had seen the Daleks before, and I listened, enraptured, as he told me all about the Doctor’s past battles with them. By the time the ABC got round to screening ‘The Trial of a Time Lord’ (in February 1987) they’d repeated some old Doctors’ episodes in the same slot, but I never felt nearly as tense watching those as the new episodes with Colin. The ABC had now decided to show two at a time on Saturday nights. It was a blissful line-up: Danger Mouse at six, Trial from ten past to seven, and then Dad, a devoted rev-head, would take Mum and me to Wayville Showgrounds to watch the Speedway, where I’d eat chips and watch very loud cars flip mud into the Coke cans of kids who got too near the track. They always had a fireworks display at the end. I’d look up at the stars and think about the Doctor’s homeworld (that big spiky thing hanging in space) and his people. Why weren’t they pleased to see him? He should have been their most famous son, a local hero to be proud of, so why were they putting him in the dock? Was it jealousy, or had he done something so wrong they had to bring him to account? Was it something to do with the misplaced Peri? Was it something to

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 do with the misplaced Earth? Like Peri, I was deeply disturbed to see it in ruins. Even the shape of this story was disconcerting – it started in the middle and was slowly winding its way back to the beginning as if it were working up to something really big and really scary/ In the next part of the Trial, Dad was delighted to see King Yrcanos played by his favourite actor, Brian Blessed, who was really big (uh-oh) and REALLY LOUD – much louder than any of the cars at Wayville. Little did I know then he’d go on to be my favourite actor too! But where Dad got a pleasant surprise, I got a nasty shock. The Doctor had ganged up with Sil to help put his boss’ brain in Peri’s head! Once the deed was done, the slug in her body sat up with a shaved head like Dad had had when he came out of hospital, started talking in a (gulp) really scary voice – and got liquefied by Yrcanos! Now, all this just made Dad break wind, but I fled the TV room in tears. Mum and Dad hugged me and told me not to cry as it was only a story, but I just couldn’t get horror of what I saw happen to Peri out of my head. I even had a nightmare where the villains dumped her brain on the floor, stomped on it and had a bloody good laugh! I knew the Doctor, like all doctors, could be a bit unnerving sometimes, but could he really have gone bad and betrayed his best friend? I was too scared to find out! We were out in the car the following Saturday arvo, heading home from a day at the bay. I was in the back seat, silently praying that we would get stuck in traffic so Dad wouldn’t get us home in time for Doctor Who, but he did. Mum suspected that I’d been so traumatised by last week’s episode to even be inside the house when it was on (‘why do you want to have your tea in the backyard?’) but I couldn’t bring myself to admit it, so I ended up sitting in front of the TV with a trembling tea-tray and the prospect of being plunged into another fifty minutes of Doctors gone bad and scary bald women. Mum was (finger and thumb) this close to having a normal son again! Imagine my relief when the only scary bald woman I saw was one who’d been (let’s hear it) transmogrified into a plant. Moreover, the Doctor seemed to be back to his old self – in fact, he was presenting evidence from his own future that would prove he was, and always would be, one of the good guys – but when it looked like he was letting his new best friend Mel walk into danger and the Valeyard said that she too was going to her death, I wasn’t so sure … Thankfully, he was wrong. Well, of course he was! If the Doctor said he’d told Mel to stay put and that something was making the trial screen tell lies, he had to be telling the truth … hadn’t he? I was staying with my grandparents in Walkerville the weekend of ‘Trial’’s finale. Now, no way was my nan going to switch over from the Channel 7 news bulletin for a show she held in the same esteem as people who mine their nostrils on public transport, so I had to watch it on a crummy black and white Thorn in her kitchen. I’m glad I did, otherwise I wouldn’t have found out that the Valeyard was fiddling with the trial screen to make it fib (must’ve been a Thorn), which meant that the Doctor was a good guy after all, as I knew all along (oh all right, I didn’t) and that Peri did not die, but married Brian Blessed (after joining the TARDIS crew, I still like to think!). When I came home Sunday morning, Dad said to me ‘there you are, didn’t I tell you Peri would be all right?’ to which I replied ‘No, you didn’t!’ Even so, it did come as a shock when the Valeyard turned out to be the Doctor of the future if my Doctor didn’t behave himself – especially after I’d found out that it had been his own people who had left our planet in ruins – but even that was good, in a way. No other show on TV gave you a rollercoaster ride like Doctor Who. Shortly after, Dad took us to Canberra for a holiday. He popped into a newsagent’s and bought himself-I mean me a Doctor Who Magazine as something to read on the interminable drive home (as if I hadn’t needed one on the interminable drive around Canberra!). My jaw scraped the floor of the nation’s capital upon seeing a very hairy Colin on the cover. The Doctor was gonna have a beard in the next series! And maybe become

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 a pirate! I turned to ‘Gallifrey Guardian’ to read all about it, only to see the headline ‘It’s Goodbye To Colin’. The Colin Baker years were where I fell in love with Doctor Who. The Sixth Doctor’s adventures made me a Doctor Who fan. Their vivid ideas and imagery cast a spell on me, one that enchants me to this day. After the BBC had forcibly regenerated ‘my’ Doctor, I missed him dearly, and felt sad for what might have been if he’d had a longer life. These were feelings I would become very familiar with. Three years after Colin’s summary dismissal from the role of Doctor Who, Dad died of leukaemia. In 2005, Colin Baker came to Adelaide as part of an Australian Doctor Who convention tour. Incredibly, I won a competition to go backstage at the Adelaide Festival Theatre to meet him. It was amazing just how much Colin’s kindness and cheeky sense of humour resembled Dad’s. It was as if I were seeing Dad as he would have been had he lived his full span. He isn’t my Dad, of course. He’s just the Doctor. My first and favourite Doctor, to be sure, but whenever I watch him, I think of my one and only Dad, the times Mum and me shared with him, and how very, very happy we were. You know, I always knew my Doctor would call on his Jamie one day – even if he did turn up two decades late! Now, if only I could get Brian Blessed to come to Adelaide …  JAMIE BOYD

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The Re-Mix Whilst Doctor Who has been off the air, have we been moping around, thinking of ridiculous theories and praising/criticising Steven Moffat on Twitter? No we haven’t. We’ve been doing something useful. We’ve been remixing popular songs to fit in with the WHO world we inhabit…

(To the tune of ‘Delilah’, as sung by Tom Jones)

Why, Why, Why Is He Crying? Why, Why, Why Is He Crying? So Before, You Go And Cry Once More, Regenerate David Tennant, I Just Can’t Take Anymore

(To The Tune of ‘The Lady In Red’ as sung by Chris De Burgh)

Dalek In Red Is Nauseating Me Bump To Bump You and Your Friends It Isn’t Just Me, Your Look Shouldn’t Be I Hardly Know, What Went Through The Designers Minds I’ll Never Forget, The Way You Look Tonight

(To the tune of ‘Living Next Door To Alice’, as sung by Smokie)

Oh I’m Really Glad She’s Leaving I Don’t Care Where She Goes I Guess She’s Got Her Reasons, But I Just Don’t Want To Know ‘Cause For 2 Long Years I’ve Been Travelling Through Time With Mel

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 (To the tune of ‘When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going’ as sung by Billy Ocean)

I’ve Got Something To Tell You I’ve Got Something To Say I’m Going To Write It On The Gallifrey Base Forum I’m Never Going To Let Anyone Have Their Say When The Going Gets Tough, The Keyboards Get Going

(To the tune of ‘Ring of Fire’, as sung by Johnny Cash)

I Slipped Into The Ring Of The Master And I Went Down, Down, Down Until The Screams Grew Louder And Here He Comes, Comes, Comes The Ring of The Master, The Ring Of The Master (Based on his ‘resurrection’ during The End of Time Part 1, obviously)

(To the tune of ‘Perfect’ as sung by Fairground Attraction) I Don’t Want, Another Fear Her I Need An Episode That Makes Me Want To Care Life Is Too Short, To Keep Smashing Tellies I’ve Promised Myself, I Won’t Do That Again It’s Got To Be, Perfect…

(To the tune of ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down’)

Harry Sedgewick Is A Who. Is A Who Harry, Sedgewick Is A Who. Is A Who Give Him A Job Moffat!

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 SORRY, I’LL WEAR THAT AGAIN by Jacob Edwards

Seventies tweed — that’s a coat now indeed the new breed not a patch on its twee elbow thatch did you catch the name? Smith — Doctor John (or Matt) Smith t’lord with reasoned rhyme, ‘Anything, anytime!’ how sublime this new flare, how his coat doth compare to an heirloom once worn beneath sideburns unshorn and now drawn on for dress sense and — from the man — gestures. I pressed Matthew Smith to explain this forthwith (not a whiff of reply) and the costuming guy just denied (playing dumb) that the jacket had come care of one very jocular, non-practised doctor who pocketed only belated an OBE fated for years but yet only appearing through fear from that man (Mr Moffat)’s askance thoughts of scandal, of royalties unpaid, embroiling his toiling star, bummed through space/time, goodie yum yum! play dumb when you’re asked about coats from the past. But it lasts — tweed of seventies — small world indeed the coat freed, reinvested, Smith tried it on, tested it hefted it (shameless) to chicken/egg famousness fait accompli, biggest steal on TV and if he’s ever caught out, he has the lines thought out time brought it, encouraged him, he’ll say with worried grin “Sorry, I’ll wear that again.”

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 5 Reasons John Nathan-Turner is not to blame for the demise of the original Doctor Who Longtime fans of Doctor Who can’t help but have an opinion on producer John Nathan-Turner, the final producer on the original run of Doctor Who. Most folk’s initial reaction about his run on the series was that he helped get the show axed. The following are five reasons why I feel he is not to blame for the ending of the original show. 5. HIS RUN LASTED FOR NINE YEARS: To shove the amount of blame onto his lap without taking into account that he was producer for nine years in my opinion is kind of silly. While it’s easy to questions decisions he made while running the show, the fact is he was able to keep Doctor Who on the air for close to a decade after becoming producer before the BBC pulled the plug. If his decisions were that horrible, the show would have died earlier. 4. THE END OF THE SONIC SCREWDRIVER AND K9: Now don’t get me wrong. I love K9 and have no personal problem with the sonic screwdriver. But as can be seen in the new show, there can be too much reliance on the sonic screwdriver. By removing the sonic screwdriver from the Doctor’s arsenal, he made the Doctor rely upon his wit’s more. I would like to see more of that with the current Doctor. With K9, the design of K9 made it kind of a pain to film the character so I can see why he found a way to write the character off. In a perfect world, K9 would still have been around in some form or another. But the design of the K9 robot made it more of a pain to keep him included in the stories than it was to simply write him off. And remember, he tried to give K9 and Sarah Jane their own show, K9 and Company. 3. ACE: Ace was by far the best companion that was on during his time as producer. In fact, I would go so far as to say that without Ace, we might not have had Rose Tyler or Amy Pond. Ace was the first female companion that wasn’t the prototypical damsel in distress. When push came to shove, if a bad guy got in her path, she’d shove some nitronine down their throat and watch them blow up. Compare that to the Doctor’s previous companion Mel, whose picture would be in the dictionary under the word caricature, and you’ll see what I mean. Ace was a breath of fresh air and a new foil to bounce off the Doctor. She didn’t exactly worship him the way the other companions during that time did. 2. THE DOCTOR’S: While it’s fair to say that the storylines during this time period were shaky, you can’t deny the fact that each Doctor John Nathan-Turner chose (Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy) were absolutely perfect in their roles. If you don’t agree, check out the Big Finish Audio Doctor Who productions. The actor’s each brought elements to the Doctor character that are still being felt today. Each and every choice was the right one.

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 1. THE BBC DIDN’T WANT TO PAY FOR THE SHOW: During the 80’s, the BBC lost their interest in Doctor Who. In fact, the head of the BBC went on record as stating that he didn’t like the show. So with its budget being cut and it being placed against more popular shows on the television schedule, it was only a matter of time before the show was going to bite the dust. John Nathan-Turner is the Rick Berman (Star Trek producer) of the Doctor Who world. Similar to Rick Berman, folks tend to only remember the bad parts of their work on their respective shows. Both the producers are guilty of making some bad choices. I’m sure John Nathan-Turner thought the synthesizer music would be cutting edge but it hasn’t stood the test of time. But during the 80’s, everyone was using synthesizers. If ZZ Top used them, I don’t think you can blame the producer of Doctor Who for slapping them on the titles of the show. Was Nathan-Turner’s time on the show perfect? No. But to say he’s to blame for the downfall of the show is a bit of a reach.  TIM JOUSMA

This Month’s HOTS AND NOTS (Sponsored By OpinonProtect. Your opinion, kept safe) HOT (meaning ‘In fashion’ not ‘Oooh, I fancy that’) Jenna Louise-Coleman Meeting people The Avengers (the proper one with John Steed and his long line of attractive female assistants. Sound Familiar?) Colin Baker’s Goats The Inquisitor Roger Delgado as The Master Doctor Who Adverts all over buses in America GET IN THERE! Crowd-surfing Bears The Walking Dead Labradoodles Blue Men David Tennant in Pirates! Mel Bush (she’s alright really) The Beautiful South Kids writing short Doctor Who episodes

NOT Jessie J Internet Forums Avengers Assemble

Tom Jones’ goatee Judge Judy That CGI sperm as The Master in the 1996 TVM Keep Calm parody posters (it’s getting REALLY tedious now) EPIC WIN! Swaying along with lighters The Vampire Diaries The ‘new’ K9 Men In Black (2 and 3, anyway) David Tennant living with Richard Branson. What’s that all about then? George Bush (both of them) Eurovision Song Contest Frustrated (adult, apparently) fans moaning about it

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Season 18 – A Breath of Life or a Strangulation?

Whatever his impact on the show as a whole, the last few years of Tom Baker’s reign on Doctor Who were tumultuous behind the scenes. Needless to say, it’s a terrible shame that nearly all of the key players are no longer with us – many having died far too young. Of those that remain Tom Baker and Lalla Ward have the added baggage of an unsuccessful marriage, so it feels inappropriate to pry too much into their thoughts about the work they started taking home with them in 1979. Christopher H. Bidmead, on the other hand, is more than happy to talk at length about how wonderful he is and how much he improved the show. Of those dearly departed we only have memos from Graeme MacDonald, there’s minimal convention footage of Graham Williams, some archive interviews with Douglas Adams (thanks in the main to Kevin Davies), and an almost blanket refusal from Barry Letts to discuss Season 18. For JNT we have the lengthy 1994 BBV interview on Brighton seafront, and his Big Finish audio Memoirs (2000) which were hardly an unashamed exposé. One thing is obvious though: JNT and Christopher H Bidmead hated the show as they inherited it.

The recent novelisation of Shada reminded me that one of JNT’s first decisions when he took over as producer was to try to remount the story as a four-parter. I’m SO glad this fell through. Can you imagine the joie de vive of Douglas Adams’ material being strangled by the sobriety of the CHB / JNT machine? Not to mention being hacked about so it lost two episodes when it was already well-paced for six. It also reminded me of the key point from the excellent A New Beginning documentary on The Leisure Hive DVD: Bidmead clearly never ‘got’ Adams. According to Bidmead ‘silly’ was Douglas Adams’ watchword. According to those who knew him Adams was a scarily intelligent man, well-read and pretty much a polymath. He also had an incredible sense of humour and a gift for killer one-liners. Bidmead comes across as a dull, dry academic, a prog and an egotist - the type who would get annoyed because he never got invited to those kinds of parties. I only mention this because it’s frustrating to see Season 17 discarded as being ‘silly’ when in fact there were some intriguing, challenging and poignant scientific and philosophical ideas being raised and discussed.

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 Doctor Who didn’t suddenly become ‘scientific’ again in Season 18! But there’s the rub: I might have more patience with Bidmead if I felt he gave a balanced view. Derrick Sherwin is a frustrating interviewee at times too, for similar reasons – he’s very ‘poor me’. Dicks and Letts, on the other hand, were clearly not enamoured with the show that Sherwin had left them with – but there’s a magnanimity to them that makes the viewer feel they’re getting an honest, balanced view rather than an embittered ego. As it is there are very few occasions in Bidmead’s filmed interviews when he isn’t either bigging himself up or putting others down to big himself up by comparison – check out the E-Space DVD box set extras for some particularly sickening examples of this. I don’t believe the man has a generous bone in his body. Throughout A New Beginning he belittles Williams and Adams as the ‘previous regime’, like they were a weak pre-Revolutionary government. I don’t expect him to be false, not by a long chalk, but if you’re going to put others down at your own expense you have to be prepared to back up your arguments. Disparaging put downs of the production team and brushing off the show as merely ‘silly’ is not enough. Bidmead also talks about getting rid of magic and magical items. Bless him, while he wasn’t paying attention properly to what the ‘previous regime’ were doing he can’t have been paying attention to how the Doctor’s tools worked either. K9 and the sonic screwdriver were never ‘magical’, they were practical props for storytelling. They may not have been used in the best way all the time (heaven only knows what he thinks of the sonic screwdriver in the new series, let alone the psychic paper!) but they are not magical! He’s on record as saying that him and JNT wanted to take the show back to what it was originally about. So that’ll be over-lit technobabble and

question mark collars then? I’m not convinced he’d ever watched the show before, in all honesty. All right Bidmead, I’m done with you now, you can go and get changed. I wonder if JNT would have spoken differently in 1994 if Graham Williams had still been alive? I get the feeling JNT didn’t have a lot of respect for Williams’ work, which is a shame when they worked closely together for several years. There may also be some jealousy there: Williams had been allowed to walk away from the programme when he wanted to, unlike JNT. Certainly going on about how he wanted to lose the sense of ‘it’ll do’ that was prevalent in Season 17 was harsh. We know the various pressures that Williams was under, so did JNT – he shared many of them. He can’t answer back in an archive interview, but you want to shout at him ‘what about Warriors of The Deep? Or Timelash? Or all of Season 24?’ JNT was as eager as Williams to get the maximum amount of Doctor Who on screen that he could, sometimes at the expense of its own integrity. I can accept the criticism, but not balancing it out when he’d made similar mistakes himself smacks of hypocrisy. It’s all very well JNT saying he didn’t walk in on day one and think ‘what can I change?’, but because he’d been planning what he’d do for a few years he clearly did walk in on day one and say ‘this is what I’m going to change’ which in essence amounts to the same thing. It’s arguable that with Tom Baker resigning early on he could have left the titles, music and costume as they had been for one more season and rung in the changes with the new Doctor, but then he was a new producer looking to stamp his mark on the programme so those decisions were as much about his profile and his success in the role as they were about being direct responses

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 to things he wasn’t happy with from before. Just as Tom Baker’s mounting frustrations dictated much of his performance in Season 17, so Season 18’s lugubriousness surely owes much to his anxiety over what was to come. It’s almost asinine these days to point out that there’s a sobriety to Season 18 that’s largely at the cost of the sense of joy and fun of Season 17, if not the bar tab. That was a standard observation even when Season 17 was almost universally despised. Meglos is a fine example of this ‘sobriety’ – clearly a Season 17 story manqué and with a Season 17-style guest cast but so restrained that it comes out as neither summut or nowt. David Fisher has said that writing for Doctor Who stopped being fun after Season 17, so he wasn’t interested in pitching any more. Maybe ‘sobriety’ isn’t the best qualifier, perhaps ‘restrained’ is more apposite? There are fewer instances of Tom Baker steamrolling through situations without dramatic effect in Season 18, but overall his performance rather than being lowkey is possibly low-energy. In hindsight, though, I think the key difference between Seasons 17 & 18 really lies in the incidental music rather than the performances and the writing: the two seasons sound far more different than they look. JNT felt that Dudley Simpson’s music was becoming samey in his last few seasons. Many people these days may feel the same about Murray Gold as well, although Gold has the benefit of being able to re-use themes from episode to episode and

year to year giving the music the kind of internal continuity it could never have in the classic series due to the conveyor belt way it was written and made. The rationale for using the BBC Radiophonic Workshop at the time instead of Mr Simpson was that it would provide a broader palette of sounds – plus it was no doubt a lot cheaper! What JNT didn’t realise, I suspect, was that he swapped one kind of samey-ness for another; even with a variety of composers on the job it still all came out of the Radiophonic Workshop sounding keyboardy, synthesized and unreal. It’s often louder in the mix and not always appropriate, which distracts the viewer from the dramatic situation rather than enhancing the pictures as it should do. True variety is only had through using a number of composers, each with their own type of sound – i.e. not always a keyboard. Possibly what frustrates me most about all this is that I love all of the stories for one reason or another. I’m not blinkered, so I can see where Season 17 really doesn’t work and where it should, and the same for Season 18. It took me a long time to love Season 17 again, but I’ve found it rewarding. As a five year-old viewer at the time I was firmly on the side of the old look and sound. By the time I’d grown to love the new costume and the new music and titles (and Adric, believe it or not!) I had to cope with the loss of Romana and K9 and then to try to love a new Doctor as well - which took me a few years I’m not ashamed to say.  TIM GAMBRELL

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Philip Madoc – ‘The Villain’ That Everyone Loves I’m often told that the mark of a good actor is how well they can play a variety of roles. I’ve also heard that playing a villain is a lot harder than playing the hero. Throughout his long career, Philip Madoc ticked both boxes and more. His contribution to Doctor Who was vast - starting from the 1966 Peter Cushing film ‘Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD’. He then appeared in the series itself, with roles in The Krotons and The War Games. His most notable role however, was that of Solon in The Brian of Morbius. He later appeared in The Power of Kroll and even popped up in the Big Finish audio Master. Despite his vast CV, Doctor Who never really left him and I remember hearing tales of him enjoying the company of fans during the screening of The Eleventh Hour at a London pub! Born in Merthyr Tydfil in 1934, Philip was a talented linguist and spoke seven languages which helped him find a job as an interpreter. He would later enrol at RADA because he ‘was sick of translating rubbish spoken by politicians’! His early roles on television were in Manhunt and the 1971 TV version of Last of The Mohicans. His experiences playing an SS officer in Manhunt were to come in useful for an episode of Dad’s Army, recorded in 1973. The episode (The Deadly Attachment) is notable for Madoc’s performance of a captured U-Boat Captain and the immortal line Don’t Tell Him Pike, which is considered one of the best moments in British comedy. I urge you to track down a copy of that episode! Apart from Doctor Who, he also has a quite-notable Science-Fiction background with appearances in the pilot episode of Space 1999, two episodes of UFO and an episode of the (original) Survivors. It’s that madcap performance in The Brain of Moribus that we’ll all remember him for though, so go and dig it out to see a (mad) genius at work! Also be sure to track down the DVD of The Power of Kroll which contains the documentary Philip Madoc: A Villain For All Seasons, which depicts his career in Doctor Who. Philip Madoc 1934-2012  STEVE JAMES Ed’s Note: Coincidentally, Philip Madoc’s last acting role was that in the latest release of The Scarifyers, The Horror of Loch Ness, which we review on page 30. Photo courtesy of The Doctor Who Site – doctorwhosite.co.uk

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10

The Quad, Derby. 1st September 2012 10am-5pm Join us for a day of fun for the East Midlandsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; biggest convention for fans of Doctor Who.

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10

The Scarifyers – Horror of Loch Ness We’ve had some interest from our readers for our past reviews of The Scarifyers, so when the latest release landed on our doormat, we couldn’t resist in letting you know how we found The Horror of Loch Ness. The story sees Harry and Dunning investigating a mysterious disappearance in the Scottish Highlands, where Malcolm Campbell, real-life land and sea speed record breaker, goes missing whilst testing on Loch Ness. But who’s to blame? Shifty American spies or something stirring in the deep waters of the Loch? The Loch Ness Monster myth is a premise that has been over-done by television and film in the past, but the Scarifyers team manage to pitch it just right. They find the right balance of comedy, horror and (probably most importantly!) pacing of the story to keep the listener interested. As always, Terry Molloy is on top form as Dunning and David Warner already sounds at home in only his second outing as the co-lead. One thing I really do like about the series is that it likes to use real-life events and interweave them with the downright weirdness that goes on in the story! Real-life Occultist, Aleister Crowley (played by David Benson) returns for this adventure and plays quite a pivotal role in the story. One scene sees him messing about in a dining room (naked) because he thinks he is invisible. Apparently, that actually happened in real life! (Apart from naked bit. Maybe!) One thing I love about Doctor Who is its historical content and how one of its stories can interest you in a particular time or public figure. The Scarifyers plays a similar role with its stories, listening to it really does transport you to the 1930’s and interests you in the goings-on in that time period. But the most enjoyment I take from it, are the characters. From Benson’s whacky (but true) portrayals to a few old Army Officers relaxing at their club, passing humorous accounts of war that they were hardly involved in! Beautifully written, jokes and references aplenty as well as an excellent performance from the late Philip Madoc, makes this a must listen for any Doctor Who fan. Needless to say, we won’t be spoiling it more than we already have, but if you’ve been gripped by the likes of Brain of Moribus and The Wicker Man (not Loch Ness with Ted Danson – that was rubbish!) then this will have a similar affect. The Scarifyers ‘Horror of Loch Ness’ is out on CD and Download now. It’s shaping up to be a big year for Cosmic Hobo, what with more releases planned, more radio airtime AND the release of a comic book chronicling the adventures of Lionheart and Dunning. Be sure to check out http://www.cosmichobo.com for more information - and please support this excellent series!  DANIEL GEE

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10

In Conversation With A Blue Man

The last series of Doctor Who was successful for so many reasons. One of those successes was the characterisations of everyone, from The Doctor right down to Headless Monks, who didn’t even speak a line. The character of Dorium Maldovar, the dodgy dealer who helps The Doctor out, proved to be a big hit with fans. Here actor Simon Fisher-Becker talks to Lisa Carroll about his recent trip to the Gallifrey One convention in Los Angeles, as well as his role, career and adaption to life as ‘The Blue Man’. So how are you today Simon? I’m tickity-boo, it’s about ten to ten on a Sunday morning and I haven’t shaved, I don’t shave on a Sunday. Don’t you? Oh how terrible…. How was Gallifrey One? Gallifrey One was everything plus more, because everyone told me about how great Gallifrey was, so I was looking forward to it, but it really something that you have to be there and experience for yourself because nothing I will tell you will actually will give you a true representation of what a fantastic weekend it really is. It’s the largest Doctor Who convention in the world I understand?

I think it’s the largest fan-based, there are other more what you would call ‘business like’ conventions like ‘Comic Con’ which is huge, but Gallifrey is absolutely fan-based and it’s run by the fans themselves and it’s all done on a voluntary basis. We had well over 3000 people on the weekend and that far exceeded what they themselves were expecting. Wow! That is so amazing! I think it gained a wider exposure because it was featured the Craig Ferguson Show last year? Maybe! But all I can say is everybody was wonderful but I was thrown slightly, because everybody quotes ‘Nerds’ when you ask them what jobs they do, they

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 are actually all scientists, researchers and one lady I spoke to was a professor of Stem Cell research in Plants, another one worked for NASA, and everybody else is some sort of top dude somewhere, it is quite extraordinary! And another was discussing with me the actual theories of time travel and he advised against it! It was absolutely fantastic! One of the girls who was my chaperone was doing her masters in Maths.

William Russell and Maureen O’Brien who are real ‘Early Birds’ in Doctor Who. So there was a lot of interest in those two, and quite rightly so. Did you watch Doctor Who as a child and if you did who was your favourite Doctor and what was your earliest memory of Doctor Who?

At least Doctor Who fans aren’t boring you know at least we go and get real jobs! Not boring at all! Far from it, but because of their ‘Nerd quality’ they examine everything to the minute so they know every script, every word, so if you get it wrong, they’ll pick you apart. Gallifrey is quite well known for it’s cosplay, I understand it’s very big on the costume front… That’s right, and they have their Masquerade Ball where people are encouraged to come along, so there are those who walk around all day, everyday, in an outfit, but there are those who don’t, but they do come along in fantastic costumes for the Masquerade Ball and some of them were quite extraordinary. I have to say that a lot of time and effort had clearly gone into them. It’s a bit like a carnival! Is it more a classic fan convention or is it more of a ‘New Who’ fan convention, or a mixture of both? It is a mixture of both, but I will admit they were more interested in the classic, I think what it is, they come to it because of the new, but what I didn’t know in America is that Tom Baker is their first. But they are fascinated by William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee as well as the new stuff and of course at this year’s Gallifrey we had

Well I was born in 1961 so I was 2, well I would have been 2, two days after Doctor Who started, Doctor Who started on the 23rd of November and I was 2 on th the 25 ! So I don’t really remember from the age of 2, but I do have clear memories of William Hartnell from about the age of 4 or 5 and I do clearly remember him changing from Patrick Troughton. As to my favourite Doctor, to be honest, I like them all, and all for very different reasons. And of course Matt

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 Smith is special because he’s the one I got to work with. So what’s he like? Is Matt a nice guy? He’s delightful considering the pressure he’s under and having worked with him in the last episode, solely with him, I was with him all day and I could see the Immense pressure that’s he under. Because not only is he working on the scenes that we were doing at this time they were also discussing that maybe they would have to sort a retake for another scene that was already done for a previous episode. Or they are talking about the next episode they are going to do, because all the episodes are filmed out of sequence as well which doesn’t help and if it’s not that, whilst the light’s being changed, he might be called off to do a quick interview or a photograph. So it’s absolutely from the start constant, constant, constant. Plus at the time that we were filming ‘head in the box’ he was suffering from jetlag as well. But he has a twinkle in his eye, extremely naturally polite, he very kindly arranged for me to get onto the inside of the TARDIS set and we worked very well together and it was an absolute delight. Fantastic! I understand that the shooting schedule on Doctor Who is really a gruelling thing like 12 hour days, 6 days a week, 11 day fortnights. I understand it’s quite a toll. Did you find that when you worked on the set, was it quite gruelling? Gruelling is not the right word really, but yes it is long hours, but because of the comradely of the team and everybody loving working on the program, it was a task of love rather than a challenge, but yes it is long hours and yes there are times when the script changes, so you can get a bit muddled, and yes it can be a little uncomfortable physically at times, but I personally was looked after extremely well. As you know I walk with

a stick so my only requirement is that I have chair to the side when I’m not specifically in front of the camera and they always arrange that for me, I loved it! I was able to sit around and watch the lighting crew, the camera crew, the sound crew and some of the special effects people and I discovered ‘Cobwebs in a Can’ What?! Cobwebs in a Can? What do you mean? ‘Cobwebs in a Can’ You know the plinth that Dorium’s box was on? Well they wanted it constantly covered in Cobwebs, and along came this girl, shaking this can and she squeezed it and stuff came out of the can and floated down and landed right on the spot where they wanted the Cobwebs, it was quite fascinating to watch. So how did they achieve the effect of your head in the box? It was quite straight forward really, they film the plinth, then they took it out of the way and put a bigger box in the plinth’s place on which I sat, then they covered that in green with just my head sticking out. And then on top of that they put Doriums Box. And it wasn’t until they put it on, that my vision was very restricted and I had no peripheral vision and the sound was very, very odd. It was a bit like talking with your headphones on, you can’t really judge your projection, so I had to rely on the sound crew to let me know if it was okay or not. But also what came to mind, which I didn’t think about until I was in the box, is that I normally use my hands quite a lot when I talk, but of course I couldn’t! So I had to do everything with my face! And it wasn’t until I was in situ that I realised that, plus to make it look like I was looking directly into the camera, I actually had to turn my body in the box, I was shaped sorted like a double helix, but I was a bit uncomfortable, but it was okay. And of course they would put the box on my

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 head and slide the panel in front of my face, and Matt would pull it open when he had to. But sometimes they would say “Okay lets get ready”, they close the box and then promptly they would discuss more details in there! They forgot you were there? Yes that’s right and Matt would kindly come over and open the box, he’s great, we talked about football! During the filming of The Wedding of River Song, how did they make you upside down in the TARDIS? I was on my back on a board lying on the floor, slightly raised off the floor, and they put the camera over my face and they turned the camera around, in fact it was the camera that was upside down. And that scene was rushed, we only had 10 or 15 minutes left of the day and it was the end of the production period and we had to get it done so a second director, Richard Senior, was brought in to do that and we just talked through what we do and basically they put me in place, they said ‘What we’ll do is that we’ll do it a line at a time, so we’ll throw you the queue and you deliver the line’ Which was absolutely fine but they didn’t do the lines in the correct order. So that’s why if I looked a bit puzzled, that’s the reason why. So basically it was all done in one take, and then the rest of it they did with special effects. When they asked you be Dorium, where did you get your inspiration from? He’s quite a roguish character, he a bit of a wheeler dealer, he’s quite likeable but you know you can’t trust him… Well I actually had to go for a casting, I was one of seven ‘roley poley’ actors that was seen, and we had to prepare a script that was sent to us, and it was only 5 or 6 lines. But in the script it said ‘Set – a homage to Star Wars’ So I knew

exactly where it would be, and it said ‘Dorium – large blue man, think Sydney Greenstreet’ As I fan of Casablanca I knew exactly who Sydney Greenstreet was and the character that Sydney Greenstreet was and if you go back to Casablanca you’ll see that Sydney was a roguish character, but he does one or two kind deeds, which shows there’s a bit more to him, so I knew instantly within myself what they wanted, and I clearly produced it and that’s why I was chosen and I’m very pleased to be here. And we’re very please you were chosen! Doctor Who fans have taken you into their bosom if you will, how does that feel? The whole experience has been extraordinary, yes, when I was putting the makeup on for the first time I could see that Dorium would be a very strong image, but originally it was six lines in one scene and that was it. We could hear noises saying ‘We must bring Dorium back’ but I didn’t expect to be asked back at all, but I have been advised that the fans took to Dorium immediately and that was part of the reason that they decided to bring him back and also Steven Moffat likes the character as well, so I’m very lucky and clearly I did what they wanted and they asked me back because they could of easily recast! And what has taken me by surprise is the extreme interest in Dorium. The line you have at the end of ‘The Wedding of River Song’ is magnificent. Is it something that jumped out at you, whilst reading the script for the first time? Well, I have to say when I first read it, I took I sharp intake of breath and had a panic for a moment because it was the huge responsibility of having the last line of the series, not just the episode, but the series. I thought shit! But, it only lasted for about 10 seconds and was

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 then bouncing around the room and I was practicing the line, how I would say it. It would be so easy for me to over-do it, so I had to work out how to pitch it, but it’s a fantastic line! And what I found at Gallifrey, was that people wanted me to say it all the time and when I went on the panels, I would tease them by saying just a few lines! I have to say though, full credit to Matt for not being upset that somebody else had the big line at the end of the episode! Did they explain to you how Dorium was kept alive in the box?

handed a sword! But I couldn’t see it! All I knew was that it was heavy! What were Karen and Arthur like to work with? Well I didn’t actually get to work with them much to be honest, but they were both absolutely delightful. I also have to say that Arthur, particularly in the revelation scene (at the end of A Good Man Goes to War) - just look at that simple facial expression, the gesture that he delivered – it’s a great piece of work. I know everyone goes on about The Doctor and Amy, but it’s really The Doctor, Amy and Rory. Everyone was lovely to work with, no airs and graces, everyone just got on with their job, all very friendly! If you ever wrote an Autobiography, you should call it The Blue Man! Do you think the fact that Dorium is a blue alien adds another dimension to the character for the viewers?

Steven just told me to run with it really. Or ‘roll with it’! It must be the box itself that keeps him alive. How did they film the scene where Dorium’s headless body is being controlled by The Monks? I have to say it was very late - about 3-4 in the morning and it was filmed in this huge aircraft hanger, so it very-very cold at a very-very cold time - because there was snow! All we could think of was getting back to our hotel! The shot was very simple – all they did was put a green sock on my head! But the downside of that, was that I couldn’t see anything! All I could see was the verystrong lights, so I just walked towards the lights. Of course, I couldn’t see anything on the floor which was covered in all sorts of paraphernalia. And I was

If I were to write an autobiography, I would probably entitle it ‘On The Cutting Room Floor’ because that’s where 95% of my work has ended! As for Dorium, yes the fact that he’s an alien means that you can do anything, you only need a line of dialogue or a scene and it’ll be accepted. You were the ‘face’ of Thomas The Tank Engines’ ‘Fat Controller’ for 10 years. What was that experience like? I was the ‘Official’ Fat Controller for the Britt Allcroft Company who owned Thomas The Tank Engine. I was the face of the Fat Controller for marketing and promotional purposes, so I went around to schools to give talks and open shops and I turned up at various places where I was asked to. I did it for 10 years and it was wonderful and in many ways it was a ‘celebrity in training’ because of the experiences with dealing

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 with Children, dealing with everyone else, cameras, publicity and now because of things that are happening to me because of Doctor Who, I can take it in my stride and it’s wonderful. Britt Alcroft’s was eventually taken over by HIT Entertainment, who felt that I was too large to be the Fat Controller, so they didn’t renew my contract! But it is ironic, you go around and there’s this whole thing of ‘fat isn’t right’, as the Fat Controller I would often have people in officialdom in particular, they would get very upset because The Fat Controller is ‘Sir Topham Hatt’ so they’ll say ‘Well why don’t you call yourself Sir Topham Hatt, why do you insist on calling yourself The Fat Controller?’ I would upset them and say ‘Well, it distinguishes me from the Thin Controller’, because not many people know that’s there is actually a Thin Controller. I’d tell them that ‘you don’t have a problem with the Thin Controller, so why have a problem with the Fat Controller?’ And as a large person, I reject having F.A.T removed from the lexicon. And as we know, there aren’t any fat Americans, so maybe that’s why they didn’t want me to continue! Do you get much attention from Harry Potter fans, due to your (brief) role as ‘The Fat Friar’ in the first film? Well, this is a perfect ‘Luvvie’ story, I was over-the-moon because I was actually contracted for the first four films, as the ghosts were going to be appearing in all of them. And we filmed the lot of it, all in one go, over a fourand-a-half week period, and it was marvellous. At the time of doing it and because it was the first film and it was the biggest thing that was going on, I had radio interviews, newspaper interviews, I even appeared in Vanity Fair! And when it came to the Première, all you saw was this WOO-OOH-OOH coming out of the floor - I was very disappointed! And you’ve just got to laugh, because my name in the credits,

as it goes up, is on longer than I’m in it! But then the fanmail started coming. It’s quite extraordinary!

I understand that you’re quite a prolific Panto actor. Do you have a favourite play, or role? I’ve done everything in Panto – from King Rat to Dame Trott. I do like the Ugly Sisters in Cinderella, because Cinderella is a more sinister story. And there’s the scene when the Ugly Sisters tear up Cinders’ invitation to the Ball and whenever I’ve been a Ugly Sister, we’ve always played that particular scene absolutely straight, up until then it had been the usual Panto nonsense, but if you play that scene absolutely straight, the actual reaction from the crowd can be quite extraordinary. And it’s very sweet, it’s always the young kids that make it. I remember one year we did it, we tore up this invitation, threw it down and there was this silence, absolute shock. And then this little voice - ‘it’s not fair’! I understand that you run workshops for newly-qualified actors. Could you tell us a bit more about it? I was the chair of an actors and writers group in London, really it was a group for writers to hear early drafts of their work being performed, so they can then go

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 away and do some rewrites. The actors were really an afterthought of the group as it were. For actors it was wonderful because it was an opportunity to finetune or keep their craft up. Within the group, there was constantly this moan because they couldn’t get work, but at the end of the day you’ve just got to go with what the system is. There’s no point in trying to buck the system, because the system is the system! So I introduced to the group, a series of talks where I would introduce directors, producers and agents to come along and say ‘the way it Is’ and from that, I created my The Way It is and I go out, either by myself or with another colleague, and we talk to students who

wish to go to drama college, or those who have just left drama college and just say ‘this is the way it is’. My colleague talks from the perspective of a director/producer, what he’s looking for in a performer, and I talk from my personal experience. So the emphasis is my personal experience. Somebody else would go ‘No, Simon’s talking a load of twaddle’ but then those who say that I’m talking a load of twaddle, aren’t in Doctor Who! Thanks to Simon for his time doing this interview! You can check out Simon’s website at http://www.fisherbecker.info

(More) Acclaim For Fish Fingers and Custard “This is the worse magazine I have read in my entire life. And I should know what I’m talking about!” Mr P. Morgan. Los Angeles/Tartarus “It’s like they make it up as they go along. I mean what kind of charlatans would do such a thing?” Mr D. Lindelof, Los Angeles “If you pay for such rubbish, then you should be ashamed of yourself” Ms W. Deng, New York “Where do I start? Comic Sans. Poor editing. Spelling mistakes. More Rubbish Fonts. It’s like they are taking the piss on purpose” Anon “I downloaded this once. My Mom caught me looking at the words ‘fingering Karen Gillan’s knick knacks’. I’ve only just been allowed back on the internet again after a 6-month ban and questioning by Police” Anon “I picked this up from a pub to wipe up some beer I spilt. It worked a treat” Chris, Manchester, UK “I’m not interested in the tales of a rubbish actor called Harry Sedgewick, I’m only interested in hearing about what Matthew Waterhouse has been up to since 1983” Anon

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10

Doctor Who - Dead of Winter: Review (contains spoilers!)

I’m not massively read in the Eleventh Doctor books range so far. Of those I have read I thought Oli Smith’s Nuclear Time was possibly the worst original Who novel ever, Gary Russell’s The Glamour Chase was OK in comparison but nothing special, and Una McCormack’s The Way Through The Woods should have been a hell of a lot better than it was, or written as a short story instead. Thankfully last Christmas brought some relief to this trend, with Jonathan Morris’ excellent Touched By An Angel and James Goss’ equally excellent Dead of Winter, which I’ve only just now read.

(this isn’t Lost in book form, you’ll be pleased to know!) Events, though, would have happened or been recorded with far more pace if it was the standard third-person narrator and a lot of character and charm would have been lost as a consequence. Also a few neat twists. And there are some great twists and revelations in this book. I spotted the Doctor and Rory ‘swap’ early on and was chuffed to be found correct when all was revealed. Perdita and Kosov were flagged up as suspicious from the off, neatly masking what was actually going on with Prince Boris, and it makes a change for the Doctor to die and be brought back to life instead of Rory! It’s a good book for Rory-lovers this one, with some very touching inner thoughts revealed. I was expecting Maria, the young girl, to turn out to be someone famous or possibly infamous - in the way that Doctor Who stories often use historical figures – but expectation was foiled, although it was very moving to learn her true identity at the end and also very uplifting for the Doctor to make her happy at last, reunited with her mother. This book lacks an overall happy ending, so this little nugget of hope was needed to avoid leaving the reader in an unnecessarily bleak mood.

I enjoyed Dead of Winter for various reasons, not least of which is its selection of first-person narrators (I loved The Banquo Legacy for the same reason). It’s a refreshing approach and can also help pad out a story to a good length – not that I feel this book is padded, and Goss is careful not to offer too many contradictory points of view

The first-person perspective also allows for a refreshing approach to the story’s climax. We don’t really get to know what happened in much detail, as no one witnesses it in full, but this is fine and we don’t need to know all the precise details about tentacles and colours and noises and screams and odours and so forth. Goss has conditioned his readers by this point to accept what is going on with only scant detail and as a kind of natural reflex we will often fill in gaps ourselves

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 from what we believe these situations to be like and what we’ve learned from watching the TV series or reading other books. In that respect Goss has played his readers very well, using convention to fill in blanks and join dots. It’s a very ‘readerly’ text, deceptively easy and deceptively interactive.

important to the story - despite being important to the Doctor and his chums – because those who are important don’t give a fig about them. But that’s contemporary society’s fault, not the author’s, and he’s wisely not trying to change it because that’s not what this book is about.

The mix of characters is important, and Goss has done a good job with an international multi-social bunch of inmates at an early type of TB sanatorium. Many of them don’t play a strong role within the story, but they are all vivid in the reader’s mind thanks to their quirks and individualities and the opinions of the narrators. Because of the point of view narration we don’t learn until way into the book that there are also some paupers and non-special wealthy types in attendance. They’re not important to the Familiars or the controlling mind, and they’re not important to most of the social highflyers, consequently they’re not

Goss’ other strength is how easy it is for the reader to picture everything that goes on. He paints atmospheric images of cold, mist-covered beaches, long creaking corridors and over-stuffed chairs for us. Imagine if Fawlty Towers was used to shoot a zombie flick and you’d probably get the idea. I’d be hard pushed to decide between Dead of Winter and Touched By An Angel as the best Eleventh Doctor book so far, so I won’t – I’ll let you decide instead.  TIM GAMBRELL

Contribute to the fanzine! If you’re a regular reader, then you know we always bang on about how we’re always looking for people to contribute to the fanzine. Well, we still do! So if you have something to say about anything Doctor Who-related don’t hesitate to get in contact with us via e-mail at fishcustardfanzine@googlemail.com As you can probably tell, we literally accept anything, just as long as it’s written in clear English! If you need ideas, please feel free to browse our back issues (download from our website). We only exist to offer fans the chance to express their views in something more substantial than a tweet or angry forum post! Cheers

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10

Which Fan Group Are You? If you’re reading this then I’m pretty sure you’re a Doctor Who fan. (Not a great first sentence I know) However many new fans just don’t have a clue what they’re getting themselves into when they embark on the dodgy ship that is fandom. So with this in mind, here’s our guide to the types of Doctor Who fan that you may come across during your travels: Obessives Age: 35+ (but are known to be younger) This group of fans are like those bloody street canvassers – they’re everywhere! Whatever event you attend - they are sure to be there, stopping you in your tracks and spouting the gospel of Doctor Who. Although mostly harmless, they can be quite frightening when provoked. They are mainly obsessed with the ‘golden era’ of the 1970’s and can tell you at least one libellous (mostly untrue) story about anyone who worked on Doctor Who at that time. They also have a vast collection of merchandise and spend more on autographs than anything else. Just indulge them, don’t say anything negative about the Classic Series and you’ll be fine. Likes: The internet. Dressing up as Tom Baker. Bad trainers. Do Say: “The New Series isn’t a patch on the Classic” Don’t Say: “I think Logopolis is a tad overrated” The Future: As the series goes on it will only produce more of these people. Expect to see obessives banging on about the RTD era in 15 years time. Watchers Age: 35+ Don’t make the mistake of thinking these people retain a sleek and slender figure like Adrian Gibbs in Logopolis - they don’t. These people are the elite. Or they think they are. They’ve been a Doctor Who fan for a very long time, even forcing merchandise and other pointless tat on their children, even before they are able to form any words of protest. Though the vast majority of Watchers are pleasant company and are willing to impart their knowledge, there is a minority, a (Dalek?) faction if you will, that will be watching your every move with hunger, waiting for you to trip up on some random Doctor Who trivia, before pouncing like a ravenous Tiger. It’s all very sinister. Like a last minute Ebay auction. This group, despite its factions, are a strong pack - everyone knows who everyone is. It’s extremely difficult to break through their inner circle, so it’s best to stay away. But if you do manage to get inside their chambers of power - make sure you heed my warnings about getting wrong how many times John Abineri has been in Doctor Who. You’ll be blacklisted forever. Likes: (Classic) Merchandise. Fanzines. BBC Radio 2. Do Say: “That’s great advice. You’re so clever” Don’t Say: “My kids don’t really watch Doctor Who”

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 The Future: It looks bleak in all honesty, unless they open up and embrace folk from any other group. Weirdos Age: 18+ These people are a funny type. When I say funny, I don’t mean like great comedians such as Eddie Izzard, Bill Hicks or Bobby Davro. I mean strange. They’re quite clearly Doctor Who fans, but don’t purchase any merchandise or dress up at a convention. They seem to be interested in talking to people about anything that isn’t Doctor Who. At a Doctor Who convention! Likes: Alex Kingston. Beer. The sound of their own voice. Do Say: “Fancy a pint?” Don’t Say: “Want to buy a Doctor Who figure (toy)? It’s only £14.99” The Future: Endangered. Seeing as Fandom is mostly online these days - as the internet grows, the more of these people fall out of it. They either can’t be arsed with joining any of the other groups, or are in prison. Probably. Antagonists Age: 18-40 This group is a somewhat nomadic tribe. Very vocal during the 1980’s, they now seem to be hibernating and reproducing away from public life. These people like to criticise anything to do with the show, just for the fun of it. Ironically, they still profess to be a Doctor Who fan, but don’t let that get in the way of their tirade of abuse for the latest Producer. They normally hang around messages boards, Facebook or Twitter, waiting for a piece of bait. Like the Tiger mentioned above, when he’s not had his tea. Interestingly, these people have a pack mentality (which is ironic, seeing as individually, they are probably alone at their computers) and together, they latch on to any perceived ‘fan wisdom’ on the quality of a story and roundly abuse anyone who disagrees with them (i.e. “I’m not interested in the intelligent political themes, The Happiness Patrol is rubbish because it has Bertie Basset© in it. So shut up, you don’t know anything about Doctor Who. You tit”) Likes: Telling lies. The internet. Blow-up dolls. Do Say: “I agree with you 100%” Don’t Say: “I disagree. I think Steven Moffat is fantastic” Future: It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll see any of these people in actual real life, so you shouldn’t be frightened of them. However, with the internet being freely available, expect them to be knocking around for the foreseeable future. Fairweathers Age: 13-35 These people are mostly found on the internet, at a time when the series is on air. They’ve no time for participating in fandom, only to tweet to Steven Moffat, Karen Gillan or Arthur

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10 Darvill ‘how much they love’ them. Although they are quite enthusiastic, don’t expect much knowledge of past events. They won’t have a clue who Mavic Chen is, for example. Nor will they care. Likes: The internet. The latest television craze (based wholly on its first series, naturally). Bad music. Do Say: “Game of Thrones is AMESOMEBALLS!” Don’t Say: “You might enjoy a Classic Doctor Who story, if you actually watched one” The Future: Fairweathers are a follower of fashion. The star of Doctor Who will probably wane at some point, so this group will bugger off and follow some other television show. Though with a little gentle care and guidance, they could develop to be a fully-fledged member of any other group, so it could be worth your while in engaging them. A Woman Age: Any Historically, these beautiful creatures are a rare breed within fandom, but have been multiplying at an alarming rate since 2005. Though they are a welcome sight to the landscape, they can get quite angry at you if you say/do the wrong thing. So approach with caution. On the whole, this group are quite reasonable with their views and are well worth your time in getting to know. Just make sure to brush your teeth. Likes: Nagging. David Tennant. Jewellery. Do Say: “I like your hair” Don’t Say: “Hey Baby, what’s your opinion on UNIT dating? 70’s or 80’s?” The Future: As Doctor Who is becoming more inclusive than it’s ever been, this group of fans will only grow and continue to offer their valuable contributions.

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 10

WHO The HARRY Are You? A new column by Doctor Who actor, raconteur and super-fan. Harry Sedgewick

reetings my dear friends! Yes, I’m back with this new column which I hope will win the hearts of all of you. I’ve been doing many great things since my last appearance in this magazine, most of which are unprintable (so says the editor anyway) so you’ll just have to wonder what happened at a party I was supervising, where I witnessed first-hand, David Walliams using his straw to squirt his thick, warm milk all over Simon Cowell’s face.

’ve been taking time out from writing my novel (I LOVE WHO – still needs a publisher!) by working with my security firm, as well as holidaying at my plush seasonal resort in Benidorm. I do try and get away whenever I can though - as an actor, jobs can get very stressful, especially when you’re doing work as an extra and finding out all the cast and crew have been through the buffet van like a plague of locusts. It’s not nice having to gnaw on a half-eaten chicken leg. Sometimes it’s just nice to get away and lay down on a beach, like the Doctor Who production team did for a few years in the 1980’s. Imagine if the Blackpool episode would have been made - they’d have lost all the budget on coin pushers and novelty jokes! As you know, I was the star of The Greatest Show In The Galaxy (but my scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. Then in the furnace) and I only experienced the aforementioned chicken leg and budget constraints. These actors don’t know that they’re born these days, I just hope Jenna Jameson, the new assistant, won’t be moaning too much.

alking is what I do best. Contractually, I’ve got to talk Doctor Who at least twice in here, which is lucky as I was up to audition for the latest series! Sadly, my security firm didn’t get the contract and its back to square one. I don’t really understand why we didn’t get it. I just got some letter back from the production office that didn’t make any sense, was far too rushed and didn’t really come to a natural conclusion first time round. It required about 15 read-throughs before I got the gist of it - and even then, I didn’t understand it. It looks like its back to the Supermarket for me! Anyway, better go. Those kids won’t plant stolen goods on themselves. Harry x

Follow Harry on Twitter @theharrysedgers 43

“Do our bumps look big in this?”