Fish Fingers and Custard - Doctor Who Fanzine - Issue 6

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6

All Is Quiet At The Zoo Its funny isn’t it? When you’re successful, everyone wants to have a go at you. Doctor Who continues to do well but it’s the same old frustrations that always bubble to the surface. For various reasons, we’re (as in ‘internet fans’) not that pleased with the BBC and how they are currently handling things with our favourite telly program. Now I’m not for one minute trying to tell someone how go about things (how would I know, anyway?) but its clear from the mixed messages that we’re getting from BBC bosses and Steven Moffat, that there is just no commutation inside the BBC. On one hand, we have Danny Cohen (the new controller of BBC One) saying that Moffat is too busy with Sherlock to commit himself to a full series in 2012, and then we have Moffat tweeting that this isn’t the case.

Add all of this to the various rumours flying around about Piers Wenger’s exit, then it’s not surprising that fans are confused.

If you don’t get yourself embroiled in the soap opera that is internet Doctor Who Fandom, basically, a magazine called Private Eye revealed details of Doctor Who’s newlycommissioned 14 episodes will not run in 2012, but instead during 2012-13. The drama doesn’t end there – the BBC currently have NO IDEA when the series will run and their press office are (according to showrunner Steven Moffat) putting in false statements and spelling his name wrong. More recently, Moffat has told a Comic Con in France that 2012 will see 14 episodes! To be brutally honest, I’ve seen better organised shit fights in the monkey cage at Chester Zoo. It’s just a shabby way to treat loyal viewers of a show that does so well for the BBC and British Television around the world. I’m not even complaining about the lack of episodes, it’s just the poor communication that seems to exist within the BBC and the lack of information for the very people who fund it. One simple joint statement would have sorted this mess out - there would be NO rumours. Ever since Private Eye got hold of its information, things have been unravelling like a cat scratching at a ball of string, or my face when I shoo it away. Personally, I believe it’s a creative decision, but all this silence (no pun intended) is doing, is creating rumours and panic and giving something for lazy journalists to dig their claws into. I can understand the policy of the BBC not releasing information, but surely because of incidents like this, that policy should be changed? Have they learnt nothing from the debacle over the announcement of Chris Eccleston’s exit?

I’m not that intelligent, I’m no Britney Spears, but even I can pinpoint this problem. If it’s a creative decision – come out and say it. If it’s a budgetary issue – come out and say it. If it’s a scheduling decision – come out and say it. If it’s anything else (like an inexperienced controller trying to make his mark…) – come out and say it. It’s just really frustrating when the show is on the verge of a real mainstream breakthrough around the world, that we get all of these shenanigans. And in this case – it isn’t a beautiful word. More like an ugly word. With spots on.

I know that us fans shouldn’t be told everything, but all I’m saying is that with a little bit of forethought, press speculation won’t happen, people don’t jump the gun and the snowball that negative press forms, won’t be rolling down that hill. The BBC are doing themselves no favours and all I’m asking is that they pull together and be honest about the show we love. In all truth, Doctor Who has never been as popular, so don’t panic! Just wait for any official announcement. That’s if we get any of course!

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 In other news, we’ve been to London and had a great time attending the Comic Con there.

You can read the report in this Issue, but we managed to meet Mark Sheppard and (briefly) Alex Kingston, as well as attending the Doctor Who Experience! We also handed out a few fanzines, so if any new readers are reading this…hello! Apologies for frightening you!

Apart from that, we’ve also been starting Twitter hashtags for our own amusement.

Although the #drwhoadultvideos one got out of control as hundreds of adult-themed Doctor Who titles where posted. This all resulted in the fanzine account receiving a tweet from an ‘actress’, a star in the top-shelf hit ‘Dr Loo and The Flithy Phaleks’, who advised us to ‘have a good storyline’. That’s how we roll here at Fish Custard Towers.

Cheers, Danny This fanzine was produced by the following people. So it’s not all my fault.

Editor: DANIEL GEE Contributors: NICOLA PILKINGTON, STUART BEATON, DAVID MacGOWAN, FRANCIS CAVE, THOMAS COOKSON, ANDREW MYERS, SHAWN VAN BRIESEN, LOUISE KINER, SARA DIXON and EMMA DONOVAN Special Thanks To: BRIAN SNAPE, ANDREW MYERS and STEVEN DIETER Sin Miedo

FFAC107

THIS MONTH’S PAGE 3 STUNNA!

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6

At The Half Time Whistle…

Series 6 (Part 1) Reviewed

What's the opposite of a moment of epiphany? When something you thought you had a handle on becomes all confused and hard to pin down, unfocussed? Yes, I'm talking about the final episode of this series of Dr. Who. I'd wager most of the reviews in these pages will be slanted towards the finale, which is precisely a part of the problem, but before I get to that let me tell you what I thought of the preceding six episodes.

I loved them.

More than any other series of Dr. Who, this was the year that watching the programme became a communal activity for me. Four of the seven episodes were watched in the company of fellow fans and such was the atmosphere that those middle episodes I watched by myself felt slightly flat somehow, even when pirates (PIRATES!!) were swashbuckling across the screen or the TARDIS corridors (THE TARDIS CORRIDORS!!) were being manipulated as a sort of evil psychic space/time weapon. If I can recommend one thing to you it’s to join/form a group or club and watch Dr.

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Who with fan company (provided you're stable enough to accept that some of your friends might possibly have different opinions to yours). The opening episode featured about a gazillion different places and times, a peripatetic style that makes one wonder if Moffatt hasn't still found a way to make 'Tintin' after all. Comedy was forefronted even as events became darker and darker, my favourite example being River Song's apparent suicide jump being solved by her landing in the TARDIS swimming pool. And one thing I will always be grateful for is Dr. Who giving me some 'childhood moments', incidents where for a few seconds I get that feeling I got watching the series as a youngling – the Silent alien in the bathroom killing that poor woman by sucking in her life force, or whatever it was, was chilling.

Nostalgia mingled with genuine horror in the mainly TARDIS-set episode and here the laughs again served as relief from other emotions, the delicate almosttragedy of the Doctor being forced to separate from Idris was wonderfully handled and had the tears forming at the old ducts.

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 But then this brings us all inexorably to the final episode. Now, I watched it, and again, lots of humour (A SONTARAN WITH BREAST MILK!!) and lots of action (DESTRUCTION OF A CYBERLEGION!!) and some more Star Wars visual nods (LASER SWORDS!! RORY FRAMED LIKE ANAKIN IN 'REVENGE OF THE SITH'!!) ... but then as the episode moved towards its cliffhanger we got an awful lot of stuff thrown at us, and a lot of it was done through nods, tears, winks, giggles... Now, at the time of viewing I thought I knew what was being inferred. I flatter myself that I'm a smart media-literate cookie and understood the story being told, and where all the little clues and hints had been leading us up to, but... Tuesday night, three days after the episode went out, I saw a comment on the internet by someone whose take on it was totally different. And then I dipped further online to try and work out exactly what was being said, exactly what the story was about and exactly who the characters actually bloody are.

And... I.... still... don't.... know.

It's obvious that the production team are making things up as they go along. This is not a bad thing. Writing on the hoof is a good way of making drama. But when we're being promised that events will lead up to a fixed point it is reasonable to expect that everything really has been leading up to it and they're not busking.

Perhaps repeatability is the curse of modern TV (for old fogeys like me who don't watch it a million times on iPlayer during school lessons), that they expect us to keep all these narrative strands in mind whilst watching. Perhaps this 'problem' is one of my perception and not the 'fault' of the programme makers.

But for the first time I can remember, the programme I've been championing and watching with unambiguous enjoyment just... well it doesn't make sense to me. I find this confusing and I feel a little hurt by it. I hope that the second half of the

series will either explain everything we've just seen, or just wipe the slate clean. And if not, I just hope I can boost my IQ in time!  DAVID MacGOWAN Some people are idiots. They spoil it for everyone. How many message boards during this Spring’s run of episodes had posts from “fans” proclaiming that this was the worst series yet and that Steven Moffat is sending the series into ruin with his convoluted plotting and his weak stories? The answer is many. But why are people who supposedly love the show blasting it? And more crucially what do the general populace think of the series at large?

I think part of the problem is that everyone has their own ideas of what Doctor Who should be like. If you are of a certain age it should be like the Tom Baker years, if you are of another age it should be more like Christopher Eccleston’s run. And that’s fine.

Everyone should have their own opinion.

I’m not for one second knocking that. But seriously, this is the worst series ever?

My opinion - NO. How can you say that stories like ‘The Impossible Astronaut’ and ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ are worse than ‘Time and the Rani’ or ‘Dragonfire’? It’s just ludicrous. Are you trying to say that ‘The Space Pirates’ was better than ‘The Curse of the Black Spot’? Plot wise ‘The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People’ unashamedly borrows from Avatar, but hasn’t that always been the case. I only need to cite ‘The Brain of Morbius’, ‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang’ and ‘The Pyramids of Mars’ to name classic era stories from one of the best runs ever on Doctor Who to prove this point.

I think this season has been one of the most consistently well made in the history of the show. ‘Astronaut’ was beautifully shot in the gorgeous Utah desert, ‘Black Spot’ similarly on an

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 actual ship in Cornwall, but ‘Timelash’ has better sets? Seriously? The effects and ideas are top notch: a living, breathing TARDIS, a little girl regenerating, the Doctor dying. Never was Doctor Who so bold. I went to live in Thailand partway through this series and I still had to hunt down the episodes online. This year was brilliant.

So I just don’t get the hate.

Moffat’s a fantastic writer. I mean the imagery and monsters are really cool. A scary astronaut, the Silence straight from a Edvard Munch painting, and a Sontaran Nurse. Loving it! The other writers this season have produced top notch stories also featuring brilliantly weird and wonderful ideas such as a TARDIS graveyard and a flying pirate ship.

I don’t have children, but I’ve been lucky enough to speak to kids through my job and they all love it. They still 100% care what happens to Rory and the Legs.

They all still want to be the Doctor. They all still know what’s happening. I don’t get this “its too hard for non-fans to understand”. Really? Because if a four year old can tell me everything that’s happened so far are you telling me that an average thirty year old can’t?

Bonkers. Its just not the haters’ view of what Who should be.

I think the worst thing that’s happening on message boards is the call to have Moffat sacked. I mean that it just cruel and thoughtless and generally uncalled for. It’s like all his good work so far has been forgotten and the haters are throwing ‘The Empty Child’ and ‘Blink’ on a bonfire. And before people say it, yes these stories were simpler , and I’m not saying that Moffat shouldn’t write a more simple episode now and again, but hey, ‘The Pandorica Opens’ is genius. To the idiots calling for his sack, you would not be able to even come close to writing stories that are even half as good as

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Moffat’s. Heck, probably not even as good as Pip and Jane Baker. When Moffat eventually starts to dry up, he’ll leave. He’ll know its time. Russell T. did.

So to sum everything up, this season has been really good, and to all those haters who say it isn’t, as I said to Chancellor Messenec at the Congress of Strasbourg: `Pooh to you with knobs on!' We shall meet, sirs, on the hustings.  ANDREW MYERS Series is 6 is finely balanced at the moment, on the edge of a Silurian sword, if you will. With a few months between episodes, it’s even more of an arse-clenching wait to see what happens next. Strangely though, I’m finding myself not that bothered about the wait.

Maybe if this ‘cliffhanger’ wasn’t that bigged up, or the fact that ‘River is Amy and Rory’s Daughter’ wasn’t so easy to speculate, I might have been more on the edge of my seat than I was. I’m not saying that I didn’t like the episodes, I loved them, but as I’ve mentioned in previous issues - constantly bigging up something will always be doomed to fail.

You look at the regeneration at the end of episode 2 and that was how it is supposed to be done – no big fanfare about a ‘shock ending’, no ‘it’s the greatest end to an episode ever’ just a generally shocking ‘WTF’ moment at the end which took everyone by surprise.

Could you imagine the shock that the revelation about River would have had, if it hadn’t have been so easily telegraphed throughout the entire run? I must admit I was disappointed with it, I thought that Steven Moffat was always one up on the Interweb geeks (sorry, fans), but I’m slowly getting used to the idea. Maybe the end of the series will make us and our speculation look like tw**s (twits), again! (I do hope so!)

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 The episodes themselves were all tightly knotted together (with the exception of Curse of The Black Spot, which was a solid standalone story and a victim of fans high expectations) and you felt like you was watching one on-going story.

The first 2 episodes saw filming in America and the creepiest monsters of the lot – The Silence. They might have been easily defeated (this time…) but if you’re not a little bit creeped out by the idea of them watching you, when you can’t see them or even know about them being there - then you’re a liar! I mean, they can see you in the bath and everything! A truly frightening thought, although I found the clip of the moon filming/landing, with a Silent saying ‘You should kill us all on sight’, even more disturbing. That, for me anyway, was a very creepy voice effect that could have been so easily lifted from any early-80’s horror film. But a good one.

What’s easy to forget is that this series has only had 2 single episodes so far (A Good Man Goes To War is a 2-parter, we understand!) One of them wasn’t that well received, the other was too well received (in my opinion anyway!) Now don’t get me wrong, The Doctor’s Wife was very good, but best episode ever, as some people have suggested? Not a chance. If Neil Gaiman hadn’t have wrote this episode then I think the people praising it, would be going after it for being too ‘fanboyish’. I think people should remember that the script is only the ‘engine’ – the cast and crew are the ones who start up that engine and make it run. Everyone on The Doctor’s Wife was superb, so it’s them who deserve the praise just as much as Gaiman does.

The next 2-parter, The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People, proved to be an integral part to the whole series, with it introducing ‘Gangers’. Now, I feel sorry for the writer, Matthew Graham. He was given no time (and no budget) at all to

come up with Fear Her in 2006 and has been unfairly ridiculed for it ever since.

It’s an episode that could have been so much better if the cast and crew had been on form as the people on The Doctor’s Wife were. Now it seems that he’s been employed just to ‘fill the gaps’ left by Steven Moffat’s template for this story. It’s clear that the Gangers would be used as a device later on in the series and somehow he had to work a story from that. As it turns out, the story isn’t too bad, but by the end it seems a little overlong and would have been better suited to just a single episode. I do hope Graham is given a clean palette to work with in the future, which was afforded to Moffat’s mates, Steven Thompson and Neil Gaiman in this series.

We then come to the last episode, but without Amy of course. Yes, it’s another shock at the end of an episode that we didn’t see coming! I found A Good Man Goes To War a good romp and a homage to Sci-Fi in general. We have the Mondas Cybermen back, we have a similar army to the Clerics (from Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone), we have battles with laser weapons, Headless Monks, Sontarans with superb oneliners, a Lesbian Silurian, a big Blue Man – this is Doctor Who as it should be proper Sci-Fi with decent effects at last!

Obviously, if it carries on like this I’ll get sick of it, but it was nice just to have something different! There were more twists and turns than a Northern Soul allnighter, but as we all know by now - this all resulted in us finding out that River is Amy and Rory’s daughter. How the bloody hell are they going to resolve this AND solve the mystery of The Doctor being killed? And WHO is that girl in that spacesuit, because I’m not convinced its River…

Well, I’m sure we’ll find out. In time!  DANIEL GEE

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6

A Fangirl Writes: The Problem With Steven Moffat I’ve just watched Silence In The Library and Forest Of The Dead, from Doctor Who Series Four. It started as an exercise in charting River “Melody Pond” Song, but turned into a nostalgic longing for the days when Steven Moffat wasn’t the showrunner, and just popped up once or twice a season as an extra-special treat.

I’d forgotten how much I used to look forward to the Moffat-penned episodes. My first introduction to him was “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances” - before these episodes, you’d had classic Doctor Who aliens like the Autons and the Daleks and generic aliens-trying-to-take-over-the-Earth stories like “Aliens In London”. With the exception of Paul Cornell’s “Father’s Day”, there was very little in the way of originality in the series, which seemed basically more of a homage to the classic series than something trying to find its own way. In the first new series, it’s very hard to blame the producers for this; there was a lot of history there, they had a huge obligation to Classic fans to keep it interesting for them, and it generally worked for the Ninth Doctor’s tenure. But “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances” were completely different beasts.

The historical setting. The introduction of Captain Jack, a time traveller from the 51st Century. Malevolent forces having the ability to control things they really shouldn’t be able to. The child, trapped in a gas mask, searching for his Mummy. The young mother hiding the truth from her child. Creepy abandoned buildings. It was an old-fashioned horror tale clad in the trappings of the Who universe, and it was all new and wonderful. But this is my point. It WAS all new and wonderful.

Now, all these things that made Moffat’s episodes special have been overused to the point where I’m sick of them. It seems to me that in trying to remove himself from the way Russell T Davies made the series (essentially fan fiction with a special effects budget), Moffat’s gone to the other extreme: he pays way too much attention to the things he has created himself, the stuff that had the spark of originality, and wrung any of that genius and creativity out of it.

Bear with me.

Moffat’s next episode was “The Girl In The Fireplace” from Series 2, the Tenth Doctor’s first series. It was all new and exciting because it showed the Doctor dipping in and out of the same person’s life at different points in their timeline, and even falling a little bit in love.

The clockwork robots were a beautifully designed and terrifyingly logical menace, the next in Moffat’s line of wholly original threats. The story was engaging, showing what happens when the Doctor has such a huge, continuous influence on someone’s life. There were some familiar repeated elements from the previous season, however. The 51st Century reference. The abandoned spaceship. The robots controlling fireplaces and windows in Versailles. But because Moffat was only writing one episode per season, repeated themes were no bad thing. They put his mark on them and made them stand out from the rest.

Blink was the next, and I think possibly my favourite Doctor Who episode of all time. The Weeping Angels are a truly marvellous creation. You can’t kill them. You can’t even blink, or they’ll get you. The episode deals with the perils of time travel, of having to live your life in a different era to the one you were born in, it plays on primal fears like the dark and the feeling that someone is watching you, and even to this day I still warily eye stone statues wherever I go. Again, it was Moffat’s only episode of the series and as a result, stood out

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 and made a huge impact. Despite the Doctor himself not showing up very often, his influence is all over the episode, and it’s just one of those things that’s pure perfection.

This episode is mostly a completely original Moffat creation, though if you really want to pick holes, certain themes are popping up again. Criss-crossing timelines. How time travel affects individuals. But these ideas are presented wonderfully and again, in the context of the series over-all, quite stand-alone. When issues like this are explored so rarely, they feel special and interesting and precious. They were deviations from what had become the overblown norm, and were things to be savoured.

“Silence In The Library” and “Forest Of The Dead” were Steven Moffat’s last episodes for the Russell T Davies era, and you can really see him try to swing off in a different direction to show runner. Here he started introducing stories and themes that became incredibly prominent when he took over. The main one is of course River “Melody Pond” Song, but even within her story he begins repeating himself. The 51st Century connection.

Someone who can time travel. Someone who’s timeline criss-crosses the Doctor’s.

Someone who’s life has been vastly affected by the Doctor dropping in and out of it at different point. Even the name of episode contains the word “silence” which we all know now becomes hugely important under Moffat’s rule. It’s got a child in a pivotal role, as in “The Empty Child”; multiple realities; romance for the Doctor; an abandoned planet; Vashta Nerada; opening the TARDIS with a snap of his fingers. The Doctor in the TARDIS.” These two episodes basically being used here to set up Doctor Who from Series Five onwards. This is were Moffat stopped being a shining beacon in the middle of what turned out to be expensive fan fiction and started striking out on his own.

In his very first episode as showrunner, Moffat begins playing with the same themes.

Enemies that use your eyes to hide themselves, and take over technology to communicate with us. The Doctor dipping in and out of someone’s timeline and changing the course of their life. The introduction of Silence Will Fall as a series arc (though, in fairness, Davies had his series arcs too). The repeated line of “The Doctor in the TARDIS”.

On a side note, taking account of the most recent series, could “Silence In The Library” be clever word play? Amy is told that she will bring the silence - she gives birth to River River’s in the Library… It is astonishing how long Moffat’s been working on this story.

“The Beast Below” mainly just continues the theme of Silence and cracks in things, but it also pushes the focus more strongly onto Amy, which is a continuing thing up to the most recent episode. I like her character, but the show was never supposed to be about the companions. You can see the Doctor start getting sidelined here, as Amy saves the day by recognising that the Doctor and the Star Whale are one of a kind, the last of their respective races (another theme of the series).

“Time Of Angels” brings back both River Song and the Weeping Angels. Also, the concept of data-ghosting. It introduces the army of Clerics, who reappear in “A Good Man Goes To War”. It mentions the Headless Monks, who also reappear in that episode. There are cracks, criss-crossing timelines, 51st Century connections, “spoilers”, handcuffs, Pandoricas. And again with the focus shifting from the Doctor to his companions. Two very enjoyable episodes, I have no complaints about the entertainment value, but you have to admit that there are various things being repeated a tad too much.

I hope at this point I’ve given you enough evidence to back up my points. Moffat works best when he is a guest writer, not the main event. He’s at his best when terrifying you in “Blink” and “The Empty Child”, or giving you history with a sci-fi twist in “The Girl In The

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 Fireplace”. He’s brilliant at inventing monsters that make an impression on you after only one episode. He’s at his best when he leaves you wanting more. His mistake these days is to keep giving where he should withhold, and to keep dangling the bait with thing that he should just explain (one reason that the River = Amy’s daughter revelation was so underwhelming was because it had been dragged out so long). Ideas that were once energising to the series are dragging it down and being worn thin, and making the show into the sort of convoluted mess that Lost turned into. I miss the days when a Steven Moffat episode was something rare and precious that made you count the days till you could watch it. I can only hope that next season, with the River Song mystery finally out of the way, he’ll go back to his roots and pull something amazing out of the bag that will have us glued to our seats.  EMMA DONOVAN You can find more of Emma’s views on her blog at http://flaysome-wench.blogspot.com

This Month’s Hots and Nots Sponsored by the Headless Monks.

Nice Heads. Nice Prices HOT A Good Man Goes To War Being banned in China The Ood Cast Cans of Mild Sontaran Nurses Cheap train tickets Dressing up as a Dalek Madame Kovarian BBC Two Summer Drink - Fruli Being a Doctor Who fan, for as long as you live No Farmville on Google+ Alex Kingston Having a big sword Starz William Hartnell’s cheeky grin David Tennant in ‘United’ Tweeting Porn Stars Mourning in Blue British Sea Power Rory Williams Social Networking

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NOT The Empire Strikes Back Not reading because you ‘hate’ Comic Sans Everything on Radio 1 £4 Pints of pissy lager Cat Nurses Losing Oyster cards Wearing a Fez Jo Frost aka Supernanny ITV2 Pimms Being a Harry Potter fan now that its all over Knowing it won’t be long until Farmville and other games are installed on Google+ Certain actors who may have been In Star Trek Talking about having a big sword FOX David Tennant’s angry teeth Etihad Stadium Tweeting Actors who’ll never reply to you Being a wizard and wearing scruffy clothes The Brit School Luke Skywalker Tabloid Newspapers

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6

Heart of Gold practical intelligence and tough inner steel.

But she was also eminently likeable, always enthusiastic and spirited and in her brief time with Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, she developed a warm chemistry with him. In Death to the Daleks there’s a lovely scene where the Doctor tells her that if he doesn’t return alive from the city, she must go with the Earth expedition, and he strokes her face affectionately in goodbye.

This year the Doctor Who community was devastated by the shocking news of the death of Elisabeth Sladen. There are many involved in Doctor Who’s long history that have passed away, but Elisabeth Sladen was different. Her loss cut much deeper. None of us had expected it to happen, not to someone so spirited and full of life as her, and not when she was still the star of a beloved series like the Sarah Jane Adventures that still had such a bright future ahead of it, and when she was commissioned for further seasons. And we feel robbed and cheated.

She’d been with the series since Jon Pertwee’s final season, first appearing in 1974’s The Time Warrior - a seminal story for introducing Sarah Jane Smith, the Sontarans, and the name of Gallifrey to the series. Whilst Jon’s era was ending, her arrival as a companion was a shot in the arm to the show. The character of Sarah Jane Smith had such a strong, dreadnought personality and determination, as well as a sharp

As Jon Pertwee and producer Barry Letts left the show (although Barry made occasional house calls to direct The Android Invasion and oversee John Nathan Turner’s early producership), Sarah’s character crossed over into a new era. Tom Baker became the new Doctor; a new producer, Philip Hinchcliffe, took over; Robert Holmes became script-editor and started really pushing the envelope. A new golden age began, one which the character of Sarah Jane was most certainly part of. Perhaps without the presence of Sarah Jane, stories like Genesis of the Daleks and Pyramids of Mars would still be the classics they are, but this golden age was the culmination of many talents coming together, and Elisabeth Sladen was one of those talents.

What makes a good story into a ‘classic’ is the strong, punctuating moments that stand out, and many of those moments were Sarah Jane’s moments.

The “Do I have the right?” scene in Genesis of the Daleks is as much Sarah’s scene as the Doctor’s. She sees the scene entirely from our human perspective, as she empathises with the suffering of unseen millions on alien worlds besieged by the Daleks, and like the viewer she is baffled by the Doctor’s refusal to vanquish the Dalek menace forever and by his alien perspective on how some things could be better with the Daleks (indeed upon my first viewing I assumed the Dalek creature’s bite had affected his mind). She

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 also makes the story’s fourth cliffhanger what it is, as Davros threatens to torture her and Harry to force the Doctor to reveal information about future Dalek defeats. It’s her fearful but all the braver for it plea of “Don’t tell him Doctor!” that makes her so admirable, and her connection with the Doctor which makes his dilemma so crushing and forces the Doctor to cave in for her and Harry’s sake. This is nicely revisited in Journey’s End, where Sarah Jane’s reunion with Davros reinforces what a sadistic, nasty piece of work he is.

From the Genesis DVD commentary it seems Elisabeth Sladen was particularly proud of this story, working in a little “Are you my mummy” over the opening scene with the gasmasked soldiers, and remarking how groundbreakingly fast paced and snappily edited the story was for the show at that time.

There was much in her era to be proud of. She made for the most powerful scenes of Pyramids of Mars. Her wideeyed horror upon visiting a decimated alternative future Earth reduced to a stormy barren wasteland where nothing survives, and her deeply upset and unnerved realisation that Professor Scarman has been killed and her desperate inability to understand the Doctor’s shockingly inhuman cold response to the man’s death. But she also made the lighter moments what they are, like when the Doctor’s having a 750 year mark mid-life crisis, and reflecting on how he used to have Victoria as a companion whilst she playfully quips “Well as long as Albert didn’t mind”, trying to cheer him up. Still her funniest line in the story for me is still her remark about the unstable gelignite having no apparent detonators.... “perhaps he sneezed”.

Incidentally The Seeds of Doom contains my favourite Sarah Jane moment of all, when she’s besieged by Krynoids along with the cruel mercenary

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Scorby, and even whilst he’s holding a gun and acting tough, she stands up to him, tearing him out, shouting him down and tearing strips off him in a breathless tyrade at what a foolhardy and pathetic bully he is. Then when he storms off, she nervously closes her eyes, showing that she was afraid all along, all the way through her furious rant at him, but she still did it.

In this golden era of horror and machinations of death, Sarah Jane was the era’s heart, she was its joy de vie.

Because the Doctor was always the alien, and never moreso than in this incarnation, Sarah was not only our eyes through which to understand the Doctor, but she provided a link for him to humanity. It was his compassion for her that encompassed his love of Earth people as a whole, and it’s the very connection that hones his words in The Ark in Space, “It may be irrational of me, but humans are quite my favourite species.”

Sarah may have been conceived as the progressive, independent feminist character, but the Doctor remained the chivalrous gentleman who was fiercely protective of her. In the beginning of Genesis of the Daleks, the Doctor finds himself in a warzone of heavy artillery and constant flying bullets, but when he’s captured by the Kaleds and separated from Sarah out in the wastelands, the first thing he does is work to escape, and he doesn’t care if it means braving the deathly wastelands again, so long as there’s a chance to find Sarah again. Then there’s The Android Invasion where the Doctor realises he’s been with a robot duplicate of Sarah all along and suddenly he turns aggressive, a bolt of blue from his usual aloofness, manhandling the droid roughly and demanding “What have you done with Sarah? Where is the real Sarah?”

Sometimes it’s forgotten how ruthless Tom’s Doctor could be on occasion. In Terror of the Zygons he destroys the Zygons along with their spaceship, in The Brain of Morbius he uses cyanide gas to

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 despatch Solon, and as for The Seeds of Doom, I haven’t seen the Doctor behave like such a brutish thug since the likes of The Mind of Evil and Day of the Daleks.

But despite which, what always gave the Doctor’s actions a validity was that we always sense he’s acting in the protection of greater innocents and those that he cares about, and Sarah’s presence as his best friend is an important part of cementing that, and reminding us without ever saying it aloud, that the Doctor does it all out of an innate compassion and a desire to do what’s right. Even if sometimes, like in Robot, Sarah herself found it hard to forgive his actions.

Sarah’s run as a companion ended on The Hand of Fear in a long final scene between them which involved a lot of bickering and complaining on Sarah’s part, with her declaring adamantly that she was through with this lifestyle and wanted to go home, before climaxing with a message from the Time Lords that forces them to part ways, even though finally Sarah admits she didn’t really mean it when she said she wanted to leave. But as she departs she whistles down the street, ready to begin a new ordinary life. It wasn’t a bittersweet goodbye, it was a genuinely upbeat one.

But this is how they’d always been together, bickering like children, because in a way their time together was like a second childhood, full of adventures and wonders anew. The Doctor was particularly beastly to Sarah in The Ark in Space when she became stuck in the ventilation shaft and he began calling her useless and taunting her, to provoke her into getting vexed enough to force herself out. The moment where she furiously crawls out, ready to smack the Doctor is a gem moment. But importantly, we knew deep down that they cared about each other and that when together, a special magical chemistry came about of which the bickering and the flights of childish spirit

were merely a part. All great dynamic’s are made of this. It’s why I’m such a fan of the 80’s Anime series Dirty Pair, and why I never quite took to the 90’s reimagining of the series because there the dynamic duo’s bickering seemed too catty, and no longer as warm or sisterly as in the original 80’s version.

As Tom Baker became more lordy and difficult, it became rare that he’d have that warm connection with any of his other companions. Generally the Fourth Doctor companions that came after Sarah were ones that he barely tolerated. It was only really with Lalla Ward’s Romana that he had anything like his bond with Sarah again. But he just didn’t seem as warm or compassionate anymore without Sarah there. And that’s a lesson for the big mistake they made later with the Sixth Doctor and Peri.

It’s a tremendous shame that Sarah’s position as the heart of the series, and an affirming moral presence, was ignored and went unrecognised by Mary Whitehouse and her fellow moral busybodies who continually attacked the show for being too violent and amoral, and eventually put enough pressure on the BBC to have Philip Hinchcliffe ousted from the show, which is something the series never truly recovered from, as his hastily appointed successors from there became increasingly inexperienced (especially when one inexperienced producer nominated another) and thus more likely to have something to prove.

Sarah made brief returns to the show.

Firstly in the somewhat misconceived failed spin-off pilot K9 and Company, not a great story by any means but not quite deserving of all the flack it gets either, (and I’m occasionally a sucker for Terence Dudley’s terribly middle class, bread and butter writing style), and Elisabeth Sladen’s performance (this time as a rather more sharp-worded and steely Sarah Jane who’d be hard to envisage being babysitter to the brats of the Sarah

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 Jane Adventures) actually does a commendable job of holding it all together and makes it very watchable, even when paired with the show’s token Adric-clone, Brendan.

Her second appearance was in The Five Doctors, an indulgent but charming nostalgia fest that still stands out as special even when surrounded by so many other continuity navel-gazing stories that saw the show become increasingly backwards-looking and aimless. She was teamed up again with Jon Pertwee’s Doctor. This was a time when the Pertwee era was highly revered, hence why the early 80’s featured so many recurring Pertwee era mainstays, like the Master, the Brigadier, Omega, the Silurians and Sea Devils. So she got the best slice of the action since Jon Pertwee was arguably the story’s star.

Occasionally she gets a bit too much into the spirit of things, like when she and Jon are standing still as statues as the Raston Warrior Robot stalks its prey, and she struggles not to giggle (doesn’t undermine the scene’s awesomeness though). And in some countries this was transmitted in four-part segments and her falling roly-poly style down the hill became the first cliffhanger. But like the story, Sarah’s dignity remains as sturdy as a rock throughout. For me Sarah’s highlight moment of the story is her handgliding with Jon’s Doctor to the top of the tower and making a fraught and nervous climb up to the platform, still cursed with the vertigo she always had, only for the Doctor to pull her upright whereupon she starts giggling nervously, says the flight was “great” and gives the Doctor a playful punch. Likewise when she ventures with the Doctor further towards the tomb of Rassilon and begins to sense malevolent mental energies and gets chilled enough to be unable to go on, it’s a genuinely haunting moment because of Elisabeth’s nervy performance.

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“I’ve only got one life and I think I’ve lived too much already” she says at the end, and at 11 years old I found that line quite sad. She’s clearly happy and content with the ordinary life she has now, but it’s as if the child within her has gone. She’s now grown up and no longer wants to be in this life of being an eternal child with the Doctor. All things come to an end. As I said before, The Five Doctors really conjures the life the Doctor has led, the lives he’s touched and the firm friendships he’s forged, and it’s where the classic series ended for me. th

Ten years later, the show’s 30 Anniversary saw something of a renewed interest in the show with a fair amount of terrestrial repeats (remember them?), whilst Elisabeth Sladen enthusiastically reprised her role in Dimensions in Time, a Children in Need Multi-Doctor/Eastenders crossover sketch that was like a farewell party to everything tacky and incoherent about the show. She also appeared in the Thirty Years in the TARDIS documentary, still proud and supportive of the show, and she introduced her daughter Sadie and told us how Sadie had been watching the series on video and was becoming a fan and how wonderful it was to her that even with the show off-air, there were still young children getting into the show and how children still need a hopeful hero like the Doctor to root for.

During this time there was a growing fond nostalgia for Doctor Who and other old cult shows that were being repeated on BBC2, such as Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet (they really should repeat that again). It’d be almost unheard of today but there was a brief British nostalgic proudness towards our old homegrown classics. We were emerging from a recession back then, so we were more nostalgic and more inclined towards recycling. Resultantly the 1996 TV Movie got huge British viewing figures of nine million. Infact the public expressed dismay that for all its special effects, it was too Americanised and lacked the original

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 series’ quintessential British charm. The show’s absence had made the public’s heart grow fonder. Each time the BBC made a failed, drab new British sci-fi show like Crime Traveller and Invasion: Earth, it was greeted with Radio Times letters declaring that the BBC should really give up on trying to replace Doctor Who and just bring back the real thing.

However this good will didn’t entirely last. In 1999 the BBC did a terrestrial repeat run of Jon Pertwee’s era from the beginning, possibly to test the validity of reviving the show for modern viewers.

After the first two Pertwee serials, poor ratings compelled the BBC to jump to Genesis of the Daleks in an attempt to boost the viewing figures, before giving up entirely. I think what happened was this early 90’s nostalgia had given way to a much more ironic, ‘knowing’, impatient and demanding pop culture.

The late 90’s was a time of new affluence and a consumerism boom.

Tony Blair was in power and he’d brought his own long-standing adulation of the American life to the British masses. Our youth culture became a cheap imitation of American culture of the avaricious, melodramatic, selfinvolved, spoilt, and hungering for the hedonistic, the totally immersive and extreme. No longer did modern viewers have the residual patriotic nostalgic affection, or for that matter the patience for a once beloved homegrown, cheap and cheerful sci-fi show like Doctor Who. Back in 1993 Gareth Roberts had written a beautiful DWB article (available in Licence Denied if you can find a copy) appraising the Tom Baker years and arguing for a full BBC terrestrial repeat run of his whole era. Back then it didn’t seem such a bad or unfeasible suggestion, and it summed up how Tom Baker’s era could almost be considered its own TV show, and was certainly the last era of Classic Who that could standalone, before the continuity fixations of the 80’s. Indeed the 1993 repeat of

Genesis of the Daleks could almost have passed for something that had been made that same year, particularly given how pertinent its themes were to the recent Gulf War. When Genesis was repeated again in early 2000, I think it was just as pertinent given what had been happening in Indonesia at the time, but audiences were just uninterested and less forgiving of its dated production values and slower pace. I think this was what made fans realise that they couldn’t just take it for granted that their fierce loyalty to the show would be enough should the revival ever happen, and gradually they became accustomed to the idea that they would have to make any and all compromises for the modernising of the show.

Elisabeth Sladen was right though. The modern generation needs Doctor Who, and that was truer than ever in 2005. An age characterised by high-functioning sociopathy, where the information age had given way to a confusing, exhausting information overload and technoshock that generally bred a directionless and apathetic youth culture, and in which the events of 9/11 had brought about a mood of hazy uncertainty about the world and our place in it. It seemed hard for anyone to hold strong convictions anymore, and our drive had become far more towards a kind of fatalistic hedonism, and the media and TV landscape itself (Dawson’s Creek, Scream, Skins) seemed to be getting the viewers young in terms of making them want to be part of that high-functioning, consumptive, permissive, hedonistic highlife, and to feel sorely left out and unfulfilled in life if they weren’t part of that culture.

What was needed was a show like Doctor Who. A show that promoted a hero of convictions who cut through the nonsense and who did what had to be done out of an unshakeable belief in what was right. A show that taught the youth that popularity and living the high-life to the full isn’t as valuable as being a good person who cares for others, and that fear and

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 uncertainty should never scare you into not trying to make a difference for the better. Looking back on the early Christopher Eccleston stories like End of the World, The Unquiet Dead, Parting of the Ways, I see that Russell’s New Who actually lived up to that responsibility, and like the 1987 World War II series Fortunes of War, it conjured the ethos of past generations that had still believed in community spirit and having a stake in the wellbeing of your fellow man.

Up until this point, Sarah Jane’s offscreen life had been covered by many of the Missing Adventures novels, in which she could always be counted on to be as delightful and inviting as she always was (except when written by Lawrence Miles), and a wealth of online fan fiction, probably including considerable shipper fiction about Sarah and Bellal, and Elisabeth herself has done her own Big Finish audio spin-off chronicling Sarah Jane’s later years as a radical journalist, which ran for two seasons and in typical Big Finish fashion, ended on a cliffhanger that will sadly never be resolved now.

After New Who’s first season proved a mainstream success, it was decided early on to reintroduce Sarah Jane Smith in the story School Reunion. Older viewers with nostalgic memories of the show remember the Tom Baker years best (I think most casual viewers probably stopped watching after TimeFlight), so for some mainstream viewers Sarah Jane was already a familiar character. To younger viewers who’d never seen the classic series, Sarah was presented as representing an older Rose, allowing those younger viewers to accept her in this context. To me Sarah Jane’s presence in the story was a refreshing blessing, not least because this was where Rose’s character began to become catty, possessive, territorial and unlikeable and even took to jealous sniping at our beloved Sarah Jane.

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To me a meeting of companions should be like a meeting of two kindred spirits who’ve shared similar wondrous experiences, and not a case of “The missus meets the ex.” I had serious misgivings over Sarah Jane’s one-off 45 minute story being dominated by this Footballer’s Wives material. I felt New Who began to lose its sense of moral affirmation here, as suddenly Rose didn’t seem to have become a better person at all through travelling with the Doctor. Quite the reverse. She’d become spoilt and selfish- everything Sarah Jane was not.

It didn’t entirely ring true to me that Sarah’s original goodbye to the Doctor was reimagined as such a downbeat one or that she had never really gotten over the Doctor’s leaving. Generally the older people get, the less they need other people’s company. In some ways this did compromise Sarah’s previous independence, self-sufficiency and inner steel. I also reckon the original Sarah Jane would have easily torn Rose to shreds.

But Elisabeth Sladen played this heartbroken Sarah so well, and with such emotional delicacy and warmth that I believed in and was touched deeply by the story. From her first words to the Doctor “You’ve regenerated- you look remarkable” she still made Sarah utterly believable, and she still knew by hand how to play this character so naturally, with perfect facial expressions, the twinkle in her eyes, every nuance, every fibre of her being. Indeed here Sarah Jane actually represented us!

Longing for the show to come back and feeling robbed of something wonderful.

David Tennant and Elisabeth Sladen were superb throughout, right down to their last scene together and Tennant’s enthusiastic “Goodbye! My Sarah Jane!”, and her fraught, welling up as she turned and walked slowly from the vanishing Tardis as though a huge chapter of her life was ending. And I absolutely loved how overjoyed she was to see K9 all fixed up.

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 My first viewing of Genesis of the Daleks in 1993 was beautifully inspiring. The Doctor described how the fate of hundreds of worlds and the shape of things to come would be decided here, as though this were a microcosm of a greater story, transcending the TV screen itself. It felt like a piece of Doctor Who history happening here, and that this history was now, never-ending. It was enough to make a child’s imagination run wild, and it made me want to see more of the show, from all eras, so I started buying the videos. So I was dismayed when initially the young New Series fans seemed uninterested in checking out the old series, not giving it a chance.

But School Reunion changed this.

Suddenly these young kids wanted to know about Sarah Jane and more of

them started spending their pocket money on Classic Who DVD’s like The Time Warrior and Genesis of the Daleks, because Sarah Jane Smith was someone the young viewers could now feel an emotional investment in, and they could carry that investment into the old series now. Without School Reunion we would never have got the Sarah Jane Adventures, or got to see Jo Grant back, or Nicholas Courtney playing the Brigadier one last time.

Her very presence in New Who bridged the two eras for a new generation who might not have been interested otherwise.

Just like Elisabeth’s daughter Sadie, a new generation came to appreciate the classic series. That to me is Elisabeth Sladen’s lasting legacy.  THOMAS COOKSON

All Smiles In the late 1980's in Ireland saw the introduction of a free extra TV station in the form of Super Channel. All told, it was pretty rubbish except for the fact that it included a complete run of Dr Who from Robot to Horror of Fang Rock (minus Talons of Weng Chiang for some reason) in heavy rotation.

The Doctor Who I grew up on was from Logopolis onwards but this was an absolute treat, with of course the Classic team of The Fourth Doctor and SarahJane. Fast forward just under 20 years to School Reunion. Now like most fans I welcomed the return of Dr Who with open arms but with this was something else, tears at the end. And the reason.....??

I watched The Sarah Jane Adventures sporadically when I remembered to record it. Deciding I should really watch it in full I bought the series 1 box set shortly before the SFX convention at

Camber Sands in 2010 which featured Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen as guests. Normally I am not one for getting items signed but Tom and Lis were worth queuing for. Boxset in hand, I did not know what to say apart from the fact that I'd only watched part of it "but I like what I've seen so far"! Cheesy in the extreme but the smile I got back from Lis made it seem like I'd made some grand impressive remark. What a lady.

Watching the rest of that series I realised what I'd been missing - sure, it was made for kids, but top quality and none of that feeling that the audience are being talked down to. Needles to say I soon added series 2 to my DVD collection.

19 April 2011. Deciding to play something from my vast collection of recordings on my Freeview box I happened to choose the SJA episode "Death of the Doctor" (both parts of

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 course). With a big smile on my face after the viewing I thought I'd just check if there was any new Who news on the internet.... Like many others I am sure I checked other sites in case it was some mistake or terrible joke.

had health issues in the past but Lis, stunned and shocked are the only words I can use..

Tears, Sarah Jane? Of course.....  FRANCIS CAVE

With Nick Courtney it was sad news of course but hardly surprising. We all knew that he was getting on in years and

 SARA DIXON

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6

Are You Watching?

“DOCTOR WHO SLUMP IN THE RATINGS” scream the tabloid media. Well that’s not exactly true is it? By the sounds of it, the media would have people believe that Doctor Who has seen a Heroes-style slump and had its figures slashed by 60%. Not true, in fact Doctor Who has never been so popular. It’s currently smashing all kinds of records for BBC America, Space (Canada) and the BBC IPlayer.

So to dispel this myth we actually went out and did some research into the viewing figures, with a cup of tea and several chocolate digestives. Now I understand that press-types don’t comprehend what research is, not when you can copy and paste people’s views from a message board or Twitter anyway, so I’ve broken it down into an easy-to-understand guide. I’ve decided to look at the regular series of Doctor Who - NOT the specials. I think looking at 13 regular episodes of Doctor Who will give us a better insight into viewing figures, as they’re broadcast over consecutive weeks and rely on pulling people in to tune in each week. The Specials are (on the whole) one-off episodes which are broadcast standalone and on a significant day in the calendar, so adding them to the figures would be unfair.

I’ve decided to calculate all the figures of each series, add them together and then average them out to provide us a figure to work with. I’ve also displayed the highest and lowest figures of each series, which will help to show how consistent with its figures each series is.

Viewing Figures SERIES

Highest Figure (In Millions)

Lowest Figure

6.81 6.10 6.62 6.27 6.44

Total Viewing Figures (13 Eps) 103.32 101.60 98.13 104.61 100.43

Average Audience (13 Eps) 7.95 7.82 7.55 8.05 7.73

1 2 3 4 5

10.81 9.20 8.71 10.57 10.08

6 (So Far…)

8.86

6.72

53.56

7.65

So according to the above, Series 3 is statistically the lowest-watched series so far. It’s interesting to note that BLINK has the lowest viewing figures of the series at only 6.62 Million. The numbers are pretty consistent throughout the series though (in fact, Series 3 is the most consistent) with only 1.9 million separating the highest and lowest figures.

Series 5 is the next lowest, with 3.64 million separating the highest and lowest figures. I think its worthy to note however, that there was a 2 year gap in between Series 5 and Series 4, with the specials in between. Those 2 years saw an upturn in people investing in new technologies, such as PVR recorders, HD digital services and the BBC IPlayer, but more about that later.

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 Audience Share Index (AI) The BBC doesn’t just take viewing figures into consideration when reviewing programs, unlike commercial channels who rely on good figures to attract advertisers. The BBC also uses an AI (audience appreciation) Index which sees a number of people marking an episode out of 10, before a percentage is calculated. This is an important marker to gauge to how much the general audience (and I must stress the GENERAL Audience, as Doctor Who is made for them, not some fanboy smashing at his keyboard when replying to a cheeky tweet from Steven Moffat) enjoys the episode. An ‘average’ rating is 70, whereas anything above that is considered ‘very good’, with 85+ considered ‘excellent’ (no Cyberman voices, please) I’ve done the same calculations to the AI rating throughout the series, as the above viewing figures SERIES 1 2 3 4 5

Highest AI 89% 89% 88% 91% 89%

Lowest AI 79% 76% 85% 86% 84%

Average AI 82.76% 84.53% 86.38% 88.07% 86.15%

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88%

85%

86.71%

The figures above show that Series 4 was the highest rated amongst viewers, with Series 3 next, followed by Series 5. This is very interesting if you note that 3 & 5 had the lowest viewing figures of any series so far. Series 1 lags behind somewhat, but I think this is a case of the series being fresh and not established yet - from Series 2 onwards, people are used to the series and that will affect their ratings. Whether or not the AI is a fair system (91% for The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End?) is another question, but the BBC like to take these figures into account and they’re all constantly high, so no worries here.

The Audience Share Now, the audience share is probably the most crucial rating for any television program.

The percentage gives the figure of how many households, who were watching television at the time, were watching a particular channel. This helps us to get a better idea the proportion of people who were watching, as high viewing figures doesn’t automatically mean a huge share of the audience, the same going for low ratings. With Doctor Who broadcast over the summer these days, the figures are always going to be a bit erratic.

We do like our weather over here in the UK. When we get some that is.

SERIES 1 2 3 4 5 6

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Highest Share 44.9% 45.0% 41.0% 49.0% 41.2% 43.30%

Lowest Share 35.7% 33.0% 36.0 % 28.0% 30.7%

Average Share 40.22% 40.54% 38.85% 38.69% 36.88%

29.50%

34.97%

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 Bizarrely, despite being broadcast alongside the FIFA World Cup, Series 2 has the largest share of the audience. Although some episodes were directly preceded by a game, so a large percentage may have carried over. Then again, ITV would show a game at around 7pm, so the figure is still very impressive. Series 1 is adrift by just 0.32%, with Series 3 (the lowest rated series, in terms of viewing figures) just 1.37% behind. I think it’s also interesting to note that Series 4, with its high figures, saw its average audience share down from the previous year, whilst a gap of two years saw a 1.81% drop off from Series 5.

Series 6 At the moment Series 6 is averaging 7.65 million and the figures have been pretty consistent, with 2.1 million separating the highest (The Impossible Astronaut) and the lowest (The Almost People), which was quite an unusual dip for the series. Overall, along with Series 3, it’s currently the most consistent with its viewing figures and it should be nd interesting to see if the 2 half continues in the same vein. The AI is currently very high and is second only to Series 4 and again, is very consistent with only 3% difference between its highest and lowest figures. The audience share has seen a significant drop of 1.91% from Series 5.

It’s difficult to say what state the figures of Series 6 will be once all 13 episodes have aired, but we will, of course, work them out in due course. With it being ‘half-time’ in the series, a shift to the autumn and darker and colder nights should see an upturn in figures. As there are only 6 episodes remaining (rather than 7), the average figure will be higher if the series continues to attract a consistent 7 million viewers. The AI for series 6 is so far the 2nd best placed after 7 episodes. Now it’s very difficult to say whether these figures will rise or fall, as the AI is based on the actual quality of the episodes, as voted for by supposed neutrals.

Impact of The BBC iPlayer and On Demand Services I think it’s worthy to note that PVR recordings ARE included in the figures whereas iPlayer figures are NOT. People don’t need to tune in at whatever time Doctor Who is on now, which will affect the figures somewhat. The iPlayer itself was introduced during the 4th series of Doctor Who in 2008, since then the number of people using the IPlayer has rocketed in the 2 year gap between Series 4 & 5 - Series 5 lost an average of 300,000 viewers on Series 4. If you consider the IPlayer figures (more about that below), then Series 5 would seem to have been watched by MORE pairs of eyeballs than Series 4. If we go back to the missing 300,000 and compare them to previous years, then Series 5 comes out quite nicely. It’s actually 200,000 up on Series 3 and only 90,000 adrift of Series 2, all this AND with the iPlayer and other outlets to battle against.

The opening episode of Series 5 (The Eleventh Hour) was notable for smashing iPlayer request records, with 1.27 million people streaming the episode from the BBC Website IN A WEEK and is still the record-holder for the BBC with over 2.5 million requests. Every episode of Series 6, apart from the Almost People, has had more than 1 million requests, with The Impossible Astronaut’s 1.7 million only being beat out of the Number 1 spot of iPlayer request in 2011 by an episode of Come Fly With Me. It’s clear to anyone, that Doctor Who is one of (if not THE, considering the number of episodes) most popular programmes over the BBC’s various platforms.

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 Series 7 Series 7 is already confirmed and, at the time of writing, seems to be split up to run in 2012-2013. Now I’m not going to go into the politics of this (you can read that elsewhere) but from the figures I’ve shown here, another gap could potentially harm figures again.

What the show needs now is some consistency and we just don’t have that at the moment.

It’s always on early in the evening and always at different times. This is not meant to be a criticism of Steven Moffat, but RTD was always up against the BBC on this issue, and normally won. See the Series 4 figures for an example. Consistency is the key to keeping something successful and the episodes are very consistent with its figures but to get these higher, it needs to be on at a consistent time, or else people won’t be bothered to watch it live. If this is a creative decision by Steven Moffat, then I do hope he knows what he’s doing!

Conclusion It’s clear from the figures given that the number of people watching Doctor Who live on BBC One has fallen. On the other hand, it’s also clear that new technologies such as the iPlayer, PVR’s and Catch-Up Services severely affect viewing figures, not just for Doctor Who, but for almost every other program on television. It’s a result of the age we live in, where sadly, people just don’t get around the television to watch something live anymore, as it’s a lot easier to catch it later. As mentioned, the iPlayer only came into being during 2008 and only really established itself after Doctor Who’s ‘gap year’ in 2009. Doctor Who is a program that is perfect for gathering families around to watch and anything above a 30% share in the television audience is still an excellent figure, considering that means almost 1 in 3 people watching television at the time, will be watching Doctor Who! It’s a shame that Doctor Who has set itself unbelievable figures in the past, so that when they fall, people say it’s on the decline when they don’t know the full facts.

Doctor Who is still the highest rated program outside the ‘Big Two’ soaps (Coronation Street and Eastenders), reality shows and major sporting events. The current audience share of 34.9% (lets just call it 35) means that 35 out of 100 households, who are watching the telly at the time, watch Doctor Who. That’s an incredible figure and if you don’t think so, I would like you to show me another teatime drama series that achieves higher figures over a similar period of time.

There’s no reason to be concerned with the viewing figures, historically Doctor Who has always had differing viewing figures each year. Series 6 in 1968 only had an average audience of 6.5 million and this is with just THREE channels to watch at the time. A year later colour television and Jon Pertwee were introduced, but even then figures were still on the level, or even lower, than they are today. For Doctor Who today, to get 7+ million at 6pm, in this multi-channel age, is just extraordinary and fan or not, you just can’t argue with that. It may sound like I’m making excuses for the show (I know you cynical people will be thinking so) but just look at the figures in-depth and you’ll come to the same conclusion.

I strongly believe that the above figures prove that Doctor Who is in an healthy state going forward and with a Seventh Series confirmed, the BBC seem to think so too.

So to borrow a phrase from a well-loved Doctor Who writer DON’T PANIC With thanks to The Doctor Who News Page and The Mind Robber.co.uk

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6

Fish Custard’s Big Weekend Out Cheap return tickets to London and Doctor Who galore? Go on then, you’ve twisted my arm…

Day 1

You know, I’ve never actually attended a

The 9th Doctor, before he let himself go

convention/signing event as a fan before.

I’ve always worked them, so I’ve never seen one ‘from the other side of the fence’, so to speak. With me now trying to all-grown up (I’m still not) I decide to take my partner away for a weekend in London, she’s a fan of Doctor Who and comics, so a trip to London Film and Comic Con AND the Doctor Who Experience sounds like just the ticket.

Although with it being London, it’s an expensive ticket. So expensive that you’ll be putting mortgages on your body parts, with some backstreet doctor, just to have enough money.

2 cheap returns on the train later (£14 each from Manchester-London and back You can’t whack it) and we find ourselves rushing to the event. It’s 2.40 and the Karen Gillan talk is at 2.55! We make it and settle ourselves down for the talk.

For £20 each (yes, I know) it was slightly disappointing in terms of the questions asked (it would have been better if a proper interviewer was on hand to ask her some questions, instead of fans asking generic questions). The talk wasn’t without its interesting answers though, apparently Karen is ‘considering’ going on Twitter (sticky keyboards at the ready boys!) she gave us a ‘motorbike’ clue about an episode from the next part of the series and even sang a Katy Perry song.

She seemed very giggly, so I would imagine she was enjoying herself, which is always a plus at these events. Some fans can be a bit too demanding, which puts a lot of actors off, but it seems Karen was genuinely having a nice time.

After the talk we were queued up to leave, when we were given a poor photograph of Karen (which wasn’t numbered, as mentioned whilst buying the ticket). Queuing also gave me the opportunity to give out a few fanzines and people seemed happy to take one. I was expecting them to tell me to piss off!

Whilst in the queue, I met up with a reader of the fanzine (2cajuman2 on Twitter) who helped to hand a few fanzines out and some nice girls also took a few to hand to Karen. So hopefully Karen is now an ardent Fish Custard fan? Hello Karen if you’re reading! (Then again, maybe not!)

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 We spent the rest of what was left of the day by having a walk round, looking at stalls and handing out fanzines. We managed to pick up a few Doctor Who comics and a blister or two, but we had a nice time nonetheless! It wasn’t long until we retired to a nearby pub for a bit of a drink and a sit down before we buggered off to our hotel. Or Fawlty Towers, as it should be called.

Day 2 We’re up bright and early today and after breakfast is demolished, we make our way back to Earls Court 2 with a mission in mind: Get talk tickets for Alex Kingston. These tickets were free, so it was likely that they’ll go faster than Usian Bolt in a Ferrari. We had pre-booked tickets, but had a bit of a worry when we saw the massive queues snaking around the building! Thankfully, this was the pay-on-the-day mob and we just sauntered in and picked up our Alex Kingston tickets without any problems. Seriously chaps, if you’re going to LFCC in the future, consider getting pre-booked tickets!

We have a look round for a bit, I hand out 1 more fanzine before we rush off to make our time slot for The Doctor Who Experience! Just down the road at Olympia, the Experience is proving to be a very popular attraction and I was surprised at how many people were in our group, both young and old! After taking a few photos, we were told that photography wasn’t allowed inside, which is fair enough, I suppose. The interactive bit itself involved us helping The Doctor to escape from another Pandorica, so we actually flew the TARDIS! I don’t care if it wasn’t real, I can say I’ve flown the TARDIS, so there! I won’t go into it too much (just in case I spoil it for you!) but I was impressed with the effects of a certain battle, which looks very realistic! The only downside, is that I felt it was a bit short.

An extra 5 minutes would have made all the difference, as you’re left thinking ‘is that it’ by the time you get to the end. To be fair though, the exhibition afterwards was quality and just about justifies the ticket price. I’ve been to an exhibition before in Manchester, but this was bigger and had far more on show. There were nods to the classic series and had the latest items from Series 6. I felt like Augustus Gloop, let loose in Cadbury’s World. Full marks to them though for packing in as much classic stuff they did. Plenty of young fans will be badgering their parents to show them these old monsters now!

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 Before long it was time to go and a browse through the gift shop later (where the Missus got an Adipose for a tenner) it was time to head back to LFCC. Gift Shops are always going to be a bit expensive, but if anyone from the there is reading, please consider stocking those signs you had up! The ‘Blink, you’re on CCTV’ was very funny and I would have made a purchase, instead of swearing under my breath, at the poor expensive t-shirts you had on sale!

After our adventure battling monsters (that’s the people on the Overground) we got back to Earls Court, had a bit of wander and found ourselves queuing up to meet none other than Mark Sheppard! With him being in everything on telly, it’s like shooting a shark in a barrel (a big barrel) when choosing which photo you want him to sign. The Missus is a big Supernatural fan, but amazingly, they didn’t have any left! So replace that shark with a slightly-smaller fish. Michael Fish. She chose one of Canton and it wasn’t long until we met the man, she got her picture signed, I gave him a fanzine which he had a quick flick through and he just generally seemed like a very nice chap. There was even time enough for me to take a quick photo of him, which didn’t turn out quite well. Very much like this report!

We said our goodbyes to Mark and went on another sweep of the building, me suggesting that we go for a drink but walking straight out as it was £4 a pint! We decided to waste time until the Alex talk - by queuing for her autograph! I’m not really big on autographs, I find it more fascinating to listen to them give a talk, but I’d thought I make an exception. Alex was a very reasonable £15 compared to Karen’s £25 (no pun intended, you mucky buggers!) Now I’m not going to get into the debate over pricing for these things. I just feel that if people want to pay it, then it’s their choice (it is their money after all). I’ve crewed for Showmasters (who run LFCC) in the past and their aim is just to break even, rather than go all out for any profit, so the prices of autographs and photoshoots reflect on what kind of fee the actors are paid. I would imagine that most of that £25 would go in the pockets of actors and their agents. If you compare it to some of the entrance fees that other big conventions charge, then it works out roughly the same, as actor’s fees are incorporated into that entrance fee. Although I’m still mystified as to how Alex Kingston was charging a lower appearance fee than Karen, with her being a bigger name and all (not everyone likes Doctor Who, you know!)

Anyway, the queuing wasn’t actually that bad. It was getting to the end of the day and we were in that queue for no more than 10 minutes. I was going to give Alex a fanzine, but I could see she was in a bit of a rush to sign for everyone, so I

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 didn’t bother. She can always download one! The security would probably have destroyed it anyway! Kudos to her though, for taking the time to smile and thank everyone. I know of a lot of actors who wouldn’t even bother doing that. It just makes that autograph that little bit more special – it might be just a piece of paper but the memory of her signing it, is something more. And yes, she is just as lovely in public. Although her curls are nowhere near as good as my Missus’.

By the time we got to the talk, about 30 minutes later, the seating areas were getting a bit full. Sadly any hopes I had of sitting in the 2nd row were dashed by a ‘gold pass holder’ (basically someone who pays £170 for a pass and gets all sorts of benefits. Being polite wasn’t one of them) who very snottily told me that ‘this area is for Gold Pass holders’. I was tempted to reply with a clever quip about her rudeness, but I can’t do them without swearing and I was with my good lady, so I just settled for a dirty look. The nosy cow.

Thankfully, I spotted my Twitter friend from the previous day and was able to sit next to her on the 5th row. The talk itself was another generic Q&A, but we did get the hint that River would be back soon (don’t think that’s too much of a spoiler) and that Matt Smith was ‘incredible’ to work with. As I said, all generic stuff. Her favourite roles where that of River, Moll Flanders and the bird from ER. I was expecting jam or something, so what do I know. It was interesting to find out afterwards that she was genuinely shocked at how many people turned up at her talk, as it was pretty much full. Well it would be - they didn’t pay £20!

Soon it was time to leave and as Alex went off to a round of applause, we made plans to split and head back to Fawlty Towers. It was a great weekend, which I learnt a lot from and I’ll definitely be more organised in future! Like writing down things that are said in Q&A’s for a start!

What happened next is, quite frankly, none of your beeswax, so I’ll leave it there.  DANIEL GEE

Fish Fingers and Custard is available on Twitter (@fishcustardzine).

Facebook (facebook.com/fishcustardfanzine) Google+ and on street corners, wearing a provocative dress. You can also e-mail us at fishcustardfanzine@googlemail.com. Cheers.

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6

Doctor Who – Banned In China Greetings from China, “The Middle Kingdom” – a place that hasn’t really advanced that much since William Hartnell came to annoy Marco Polo all those years ago.

I teach “English Speaking And Listening” to groups of Post-Grad Med Students here, and, bored to the back teeth with trying to get them to talk, I made the fateful decision to show them “The Impossible Astronaut” and the Confidential that went with it.

Armed with a memory stick, I put the video on the big screen, and took a seat up at the back of the room. After a while, the conversation in the room started to get a bit heated, and then suddenly one of the students leapt to his feet, raced to the front, and paused the episode.

There followed a four minute rant in Mandarin, in which, I’m told (not being in anyway fluent in Chinese myself), this particular cardiologist decried both the programme, my choice in showing it, my parents’ marital status, and a few other interesting things.

He then made a great show of leaving the room, and slamming the door behind him. Cautiously making my way up to the lectern, I began to find out what had just occurred.

It seems that the Central Communist Party here has outlawed TV shows and movies that use time travel as a plot line. According to them, programmes that do so, “erode historical integrity “, and encourage people to rewrite things as they see fit.

Ironic, given the fast and loose way that Chinese history has been spun about in the last sixty-odd years.

So, standing there like a bunny in the headlights, I asked if anyone else objected to seeing the rest of the show - after all, I didn’t want anyone else to feel like they were taking part in something morally suspect.

“No, turn it back on!”, came the overwhelming reply, “that guy’s always doing things like this – he wants to get promoted in the Party.” The rest of the lesson went on without any incident… and the next week I showed “Day Of The Moon”.

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 It’s strange to think that the very watching of Doctor Who can be an act of political rebellion. That being the case, I’m going to keep breaking this strange law as often as I can.

Allons-y La Revolution!  STUART BEATON (Ed’s Note:) Days after receiving this article from Stuart, he e-mailed in again Just as a total aside to the piece, I went to have a look at your website just now, and, guess what…

It’s blocked in China.

Amazing, really, even discussion on the topic is censored.

Just thought you’d like to know!

Cheers Stuart, it’s nice to know that a whole country is offended by the fanzine…okay, maybe not, but it’s provided me a tale to raconteur with - and I shall!

Stuart hosts a book podcast, which you can find at http://rastous.podomatic.com/

Separated At Birth?

The Dream Lord

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The Gingerdead Man

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6

Who’s In The (Brass) Band Nearly four years ago, I was in my final year of my BA Music degree at the University of Salford. I’d taken the “easy” option and chosen elective which would be simple and get my decent marks. A dissertation was one, and arranging was the other. Arranging is the process of taking pre-existing music from one medium and rewriting it for another. In my case I rearranged music for the brass band. My university is famed for its brass bands and has one of the greatest geniuses/genii in the brass band world as its chair of composition, Professor Peter Graham.

In my first meeting with Peter, we spoke about what sort of music I would like to arrange for the brass band. An itch in the back of my mind kept saying “Doctor Whooooooo, Doctor Whoooooooo”, but I was initially reluctant, thinking that this might be viewed as something too simple and childish. Doctor Who had only been back on television two years and some of the old stereotypes were still prevalent in people’s minds. In truth I did not want to seem like a massive nerd to someone who was so well respected.

Eventually, I convinced myself that actually the music was pretty awesome and I would be hard pushed to find music of that quality which I would spend a year arranging with the same kind of zeal. So I set about learning the structures and colours of the brass band and Peter and I talked about the different techniques which I could use, and I was told to go away and come back with something the next week.

So for nearly a whole week I sat frantically listening to the soundtrack for series one and two, digesting everything and trying to work out what would translate best for the brass band medium. There were so many classics to choose from: ‘Hologram’, ‘I’m Coming to Get You’, ‘UNIT’ and ‘Doomsday’ to name but a few.

Then came the release of the series three soundtrack and even more amazing scores such as ‘All the Strange, Strange Creatures’, ‘The Runaway Bride’ and ‘The Master Vainglorious’. How was I ever going to decide what pieces I choose to arrange? By this time I was only just starting off arranging and didn’t have the necessary knowledge to sit down and choose what piece to arrange based on what would work for the brass band. So I decided to start by arranging something which sounded fun.

‘Westminster Bridge’ was the first piece of music I ever arranged for brass band.

It’s also the first piece of music ever heard in New Who, which I now think on consideration is very fitting. A right rollicking jazz, funk piece, ‘Westminster Bridge’ scores the meeting of the Ninth Doctor and Rose. It is also later used in ‘New Earth’. It’s got an amazing ‘Peter Gunn’ style walking bass line which really grounds the music and keeps it moving. Imagine four tubas playing this and you’ll be smiling your face off.

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 Now, maybe you aren’t aware, but there isn’t any sheet music available for the score for the new series so I had to arrange everything by ear. I managed to find some freeware called ‘Audacity’ which enables you to slow down your music at the correct pitch. If you imagine slowing music down normally, the voice will go all low and melty. Well, ‘Audacity’ solves this problem and saved my degree. It was still a massive slog, mind you, but so much easier than hearing the rhythms and harmonies fly past you at 180bpm.

After ‘Westminster’, I picked ‘This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home’ to arrange. The beautiful music which Murray Gold scores as the Doctor talks about his home planet and the ceremony in which you have to look into the Untempered Schism. This has proved a real favourite among fans and was a delight to arrange.

After ‘Gallifrey’ I moved onto the ‘Doctor Who Theme’ and became the first composer/arranger ever to arranged the Who theme for brass band. This ended up being a mixture of the two Russell T. Davies themes. It now feels a tad outdated. The Matt Smith theme would sound really good with the brass band, especially with the raising horn motif at the beginning.

‘Boe’ was the next thing I arranged. However I did change the name back to ‘The Face of Boe’. ‘Boe’ would have proved too hilarious to a room full of uninitiated banders. I love that old Face! ‘Boe’ is such a beautiful piece, but sadly it didn’t translate very well for brass bands. I have had the most amount of negative comments off banders regarding that movement. ‘Westminster Bridge’ has proved really popular with its stomping tubas and driving tempo.

After four months of arranging I was persuaded to make contact with Murray Gold and I sent him the scores and MIDI files of the four movements I had already arranged. Murray was really sweet and enthusiastic, saying that he liked my arrangements and ‘loved the soul’ which brass bands offer.

Bouyed on by Murray’s comments I decided to arrange one final score as the finale piece to my suite. This was ‘The Doctor Forever’, the Tenth Doctor’s epic theme. This was really complicated to arrange and took about six weeks to arrange with lots of different sections and choirs and everything to keep my pulling my hair out until three o’clock in the morning most nights.

With the completion of ‘The Doctor Forever’, my suite was done and I was ready for it to be recorded for my degree portfolio. I had decided to name my suite ‘Doctor Who: A Journal of Impossible Things’. I took the ‘Journal’ to Pemberton Old Wigan Band in Wigan and they were kind enough to do rough recordings of all my suites.

So with the completed score printed and bound and a recording hot in my hands, I handed my portfolio in. Other pieces which I arranged for brass band for my

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 degree were Radiohead’s ‘Just’ and ‘Tery Bin’ by Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn. To my eternal joy, I was awarded a first for my arranging portfolio (a massive 85%!) and a first overall. Not only that, but a publishing company was interested in my Who suite!

With this knowledge in hand I got back in touch with Murray Gold who gave the suite his blessing and said how he would be in favour of getting the suite published. To cut a very long story short, a year later after a long period of negotiation with the BBC, Kirklees Music published my suite, now entitled simply ‘Doctor Who’. The suite has continued to sell well over the past two years since and I have received very positive comments, with the piece being sold as far as Australia. Unfortunately I will never know who performed the world premier of the ‘Doctor Who Theme’ brass band, which is quite sad, but usual for a new composer/arranger.

The running order for ‘Doctor Who’ goes: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

The Doctor Who Theme This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home Westminster Bridge The Face of Boe The Doctor Forever

A couple of the Who tracks Pemberton recorded are on my Myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/andrewmyerssongs If anyone is in a brass band and wants to buy the suite, they can buy it from: http://www.kirkleesmusic.co.uk/ On a final note, after I had finished my BA I decided to stay on at Salford and study for an MA in Composition. Whilst I was on my way from an MA meeting and on my way to a fancy dress party (I was dressed as the Tenth Doctor), I bumped into Russell T. Davies in the middle of WHSmiths. I stuttered and panicked and looked like a complete idiot dressed as the Doctor, but finally I managed to tell him about my suite and gave him a CD of my rough recordings. I have never met a taller man! I don’t know what he did with that CD, but I like to think that he listens to it whilst he is writing Torchwood in Los Angeles. I’ll carry on dreaming.  ANDREW MYERS

Think you can contribute to the fanzine? E-mail us at fishcustardfanzine@googlemail.com

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6

PUBCON – VIEW FROM THE TICKET TABLE!

Vworp 4, Lass o' Gowrie pub, Manchester. Sunday July 3rd 2011

The fates were against me as Vworp 4, the Dr. Who pubcon (it's a convention, in a pub, it can't lose) reared. When I said I couldn't go due to lack of funds, Gareth (owner of said pub, con organiser, co-editor of Vworp! Vworp! and all-round good egg) said they did need someone to be on the doors, handle any cash sales, hand out wristbands, pamper the guests and do some meet'n'greet. I was in!

Hence many drunken tweets that night along the lines of "I will get 2 meet Donald Tosh lolz".

Butterflies in my stomach as we got set up, knowing that outside in the blazing summer sunshine attendees were already queuing up waiting for us to stop rearranging tables and checking the A/V equipment. I met two of my Manchester not-part-of-festival assistants, one of whom was a nice young lady called Leela.

She is not in fact a Dr. Who fan, though I suspect her parents are.

And then... the doors open! There was me, cheerfully going into my usual bumbling-but-nice mode as I checked off people's names and handed out wristbands and told them "Donald Tosh is on very soon so get a seat, get comfortable and enjoy the day!" The smiles on everyone's faces sent a great and happy vibe about the place. After about 25 or so people had arrived it was time for Donald Tosh to kick things off. He started off with a fantastic anecdote involving him being stuck in a lift at Granada TV with Sydney Bernstein and Orson Welles, and from then on we were on a whirlwind tour of life as a manager in 60s TV-land, from Granada, through to the BBC ("They offered me three times as much money to take care of one programme instead of four...") and thence to Doctor Who. Donald was fulsome in his praise of Hartnell as a man and as an

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 actor. The magical scene for Hartnell, at the end of The Massacre, was written for him especially by Donald, and after it was played (in recon form) to us all there was a huge round of applause. Donald explained the tangled genesis of 'The Celestial Toymaker' and 'The Daleks Masterplan', and the sense of fright when Terry Nation delivered all of 21 pages (for 6 weeks worth of episodes!) before fucking off on his holidays. Donald was told by John Wiles, "You're going to be very busy!"

It was very odd to greet the guests as they arrived. Although sadly I missed the arrival of Katy Manning I got to shake hands with everyone else. My two assistants (who were there to take over should I need guests getting a drink or if I had to pop to the loo) kept asking who they were, not at all flustered... unlike me, quaking nervously in the presence of Dr. Who royalty!

Speaking of being flustered, it was assigned to me to collect none other than Andrew Cartmel and Ben Aaronovitch from Piccadilly Station! My chum Anthony came with me for much-needed moral support. Of course we shouldn't have worried. Meeting them off the train (and desperately resisting the urge to prostrate before them saying "not worthy!") they were wonderful company, chatting away about season 26, the regeneration of major cities, Doctor John Dee and some of Manchester's public sculpture. This was the weirdest aspect of the gig for me.

Unusually for me I was actually trying my hardest to NOT talk about Dr. Who and found it was incredibly easy to do even WITH Dr. Who people! It obviously helps when, like Messrs Cartmel and Aaronovitch, the people in question are funny and true gents.

Come 4 o'clock, I was able to take the big bucket of cash upstairs to the office and was able to mingle freely. This actually meant in practice staying more or less near the bar, chatting away to friends old and new. Rejoining 'real world' fandom was the best decision I ever made. One minute you're talking about Mark Gatiss' scripts... the next you're talking about someone's interesting new job as the manager of a swinger's club ("not my chosen career path")... the next you're grabbing Stephen Gallagher for a quick interview... and the next you're feeling naughty in a childish way as we were asked to keep the noise down during Bob Baker's panel, a futile hope given Dez Skinn was in ‘da house’ and noisily clanging a platinum business card repeatedly onto the floor!

Anyway, that was my view from the ticket table and beyond. A very interesting way of experiencing a convention, and it makes you realise just how much hard work goes into these things behind the scenes, but also how much they operate on goodwill, friendliness and general fun times.  DAVID MacGOWAN

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6

Apart from having the ability to drink and wax lyrical, David can also ask some interesting questions to convention attendees;

perspective given that the programme's back on television now and what they make of it. And the magazine itself has changed. We have a different approach now than we might have done in 1984.

The sad thing is there are only so many Dr. Who stars around.

TOM SPILSBURY (Editor of Doctor Who Magazine)

This year has been especially…difficult

Who would win in a drinking contest between Dez Skinn and Tom Baker?

It has. It has. I mean, unfortunately the sad facts are that's going to happen more and more... When we're talking about a TV programme that's almost 50 years old, by the time it gets to 60, 70 years old, within our lifetimes, we're just going to lose all of those people. But that's life.

Pubcon Interviews

The two of them now? I mean back in the day I don't think they'd ever have stopped. But I'd put my money on Dez actually. I'm not sure Tom drinks that much now. I have a feeling he doesn't drink...

You said you met Donald Tosh last night?

Yeah, we had a good chat and I was asking him about The Daleks Masterplan but it was so loud I was straining to hear what he was saying.

That anecdote (About Terry Nation delivering about 21 pages of script for The Daleks Master Plan) is fantastic.

Oh yeah, I mean that's one of his favourite anecdotes I think. But it's so funny! What I love about Donald Tosh is he's absolutely on the money about things, he has an opinion about everything. I'm actually quite surprised about the opinions he's got about other periods of Dr. Who and what he feels works or didn't work. We interviewed him in the mag about a year and a half ago I hadn’t heard much from him before that article There are always people that we're looking to interview for the Dr. Who Magazine who we either haven't spoken to at all or haven't spoken to for a long time, especially getting a new

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Can I ask, are you planning a Lis Sladen Tribute?

Of course, yeah. The reason we haven't done it earlier is partly because we were already planning the issue for Nicholas Courtney. And also, these things take time to do and do well. And not to sound awful about it, they don't have to be the very month afterwards. They'll still be gone.

It’s nice that fans have time to collect their memories Yes, it is, and also of course - the programme goes on STEPHEN GALLAGHER (TV and Target writer, Terminus and Warrior's Gate) Was there an highlight for you, doing the commentaries for Warriors Gate and Terminus?

I didn't actually appear on the Warrior's Gate commentary, not 'cause I didn't want to but it was a schedule clash. So what I said was, when we're doing the extras for Terminus I said "ask me some

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 questions about Warrior's Gate now and slip them wherever you can."

You don’t often get that much dedication…

I did notice it was referenced quite a lot

Well what I did find with Dr. Who was that a lot of people who were working on it, particularly in design and special effects, relished and welcomed the opportunity to do something a bit out of the ordinary. And they would go that extra mile for it even though there was no money, you know? And they would do their best with the resources they had, and actually push it and push it and push it. And that I think is possibly the secret of why the show has been so endurable, because people have committed themselves. They didn't have to! (laughs) Nobody was paying them any extra for it! But they did.

This is true. The day we spent doing the 'Terminus' commentary we more or less did it in real time. I think we had to stop a couple of times... but I just absolutely had a blast.

I love how you became everyone’s phone-a-friend because of your (laughs) My geekiness?

- Extensive Knowledge!

Well I'd done the research and I was determined to get it in somewhere! It was a really enjoyable day. And I hadn't actually SEEN the show for about 20 years 'cause I never watch my own stuff, so it was my first time seeing it all round again. I will admit though I did have a crib sheet, because I'd gone through the credits beforehand, and the Internet Movie Database, and all the crew, so that if I needed to reference anybody I wouldn't insult them by grasping for their name, so I just had that to hand.

Otherwise the four of us just sat round the table with the monitors in front of us and headphones on and absolutely loved it. And Strickson was great...

Oh, Mark Strickson’s amazing And Sarah was great. And Peter was great!

So watching it back, was there anything that really stood out?

I loved those costumes that the Vanir wore. Dee Robson went to so much trouble to get them right. And she absolutely nailed it, to the extent that I'd described the Momento Mori carvings in York Minster and she actually tracked down pictures of the sculptures there.

You’ve worked with Stephen Tomkinson in Chimera, Patrick Stewart in The Eleventh Hour, 2 Doctor Who’s... Which would you say had the best, not the best actor, but the interesting acting personality?

I'm, er, I'm not gonna go there!

It’s a very ‘fan’ question Well I also directed 'Oktober' and...

Sorry, Oktober NOT Chimera!

Oh don't worry about that. I'm sure you'll fix it in post! But because I directed that, and because the main character sort of exhibited a lot of personality traits that my daughter calls it a self-portrait... I felt that Stephen Tomkinson did a brilliant job performing in that. There was one point where we needed a stunt guy to come on and do a backwards flip onto solid concrete. Tomkinson insisted on doing it, to the extent that I couldn't watch. But he brought incredible commitment to the role. Because Steve was known, and still is known to a great extent, as a very good light comedian.

BUT, I think he absolutely excels in

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 darker, more kind of edgy, slightly dangerous...

Okay. Um... I wanna do something really clever... and I can't and you're taping me..!

He has that sinister glint…

God’s honest truth, who’d win?

Yeah. Because the thing which brought him to fame, which was the role in Drop the Dead Donkey, was actually quite an extremely complex and psychotic personality, played for laughs! And I think that's where his strength lies. And after he'd done the backwards flip onto solid concrete I kind of whispered in his ear, "please be in everything I ever do."

And of course that put the curse on it and we've never worked together since!

DEZ SKINN (Publisher, first editor of Doctor Who Weekly, now DWM) Who would win in a drinking contest between me and Tom Baker?

Um... I don't need mixers. (pause) That was rubbish!

I’ll have to ask Tom and Compare Your Answers No you can't do that! Um.. I'm usually so good at this What’s been your highlight of the Convention (says something unpublishable) I shall publish that!

No you woooon't!!

 LOUISE KINER

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6 Questions You’ve Asked Yourself Whilst Watching Doctor Who…What Does The Doctor Do When He’s Hungry?

We’ve never really seen much food in Doctor Who, apart from a few classic moments – Tom Baker’s Jelly Babies, Peter Davison’s Celery, Christopher Eccleston’s Chips, and, of course, Matt Smith’s Fish Fingers and Custard.

But with the entire length and breadth of space and time to explore, what does he do when he’s peckish? There’s been no mention of a galley or kitchen on the TARDIS, nor a pantry… so does the Doctor put the brakes on at an interstellar Little Chef? Or would he pop in on some of the more major players in the history of food preparation? (Whatever happened to the TARDIS food machine? – Ed) Even if he was to only slip back a few hundred years, he could feast with Antoine Careme, who revolutionised the way we eat food today. He helped introduce the idea of dining A La Russe, or in courses, rather than simply bringing out all the different dishes at once. He also created the infamous Piece Montes, huge sugar decorations for tables, which drew on Careme’s architectural and drafting skills – think of what the Doctor could have inadvertently created by a few extra pencil strokes?

The Doctor spent time with Da Vinci, who was that most rare of things during the Renaissance, a vegetarian – perhaps the Doctor’s disdain for taking life influence Da Vinci’s culinary habits? Or he could just hang out at Alexis Soyer’s soup kitchens, and help those in need. Maybe a close encounter with the Doctor and a few Sontarans caused Escoffier to come up with his idea of a kitchen run along the lines of a military unit? The 1980’s, with the introduction of Nouvelle Cuisine, has always seemed like an alien experiment gone astray, so perhaps he had a hand in fixing that? Who knows what influence the Doctor really has had on our Earthly eating….

I, for one, would like to see more food – even in passing – in future episodes.

Not even the Doctor can live by bread alone.  STUART BEATON

Fish Fingers and Custard Issues 1-5 Download from www.fishcustardfanzine.co.uk !

Issue 2’s are also on sale!

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6

Compulsory Eye-Testing, For People Who Say Matt Smith Is A ‘Rubbish Doctor’

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6

Even More FIVES (You Not Getting Sick of These Yet?)

5 Top Characters From ‘A Good Man Goes To War’ 5 Things I Don’t Understand • Ghost Light • The New Adventures • The appeal of Ianto Jones • The hate for Love & Monsters • Women 5 Names For A Potential Spin-Off Series With Madam Vastra and Jenny • The S Word • Cagney and Lacey Knickers • Wagging Tongues • The Green Queens • Torchwood 5 Drinks I Had In London • Magners (it was on offer) • Coca-Cola • Tea • Tizer • Cans of Mild

• Commander Strax • Madame Vastra/Jenny (at the same time…)

• Dorium Maldovar • Lorna Bucket • Madame Kovarian 5 Carry On Films Based on A Good Man Goes To War • …Doctor • …Nurse • …Girls • …Screaming • Don’t Lose Your Head 5 Things I Miss During The Summer • Football • Showing off my great choice in coats • Kids being at school • The sunshine • Doctor Who

5 More Doctor Who Adult Videos • Lust of The Timelords • The Underwear Menace • The Sexorites • The Bumfighters • Let’s Drill Hitler

5 Characters We Saw People Dressed Up as at LFCC • The Doctor (2nd, 4th, 5th, 10th & 11th) • Amy Pond (Pirate/not a Pirate) • River • Donna • A child dressed as a Dalek!

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 6

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