Fish Fingers and Custard - Doctor Who Fanzine - Issue 8

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8

D Is For… I was actually going to put this in the Series 6 reviews bit, but I repeat myself far too much in this issue as it is! We’re at the end of another series, the reactions of fans are as mixed as always, and I think the key word that we’re all looking for here is development.

Doctor Who will always change and develop. I genuinely think the Moffat era will really kick off next year, as we're getting the supposed series with standalone stories. Many of his doubters (and there’s many of them!) underestimate him, he's like The Doctor in many ways - he's always one step ahead of everyone else. He's already got a plan for Series 7 and I wouldn't be surprised if he's already finished his plans for 2013. For me, I much prefer Doctor Who to have a future and I think it stands a better chance with Moffat in charge than anyone else. Do we really want to go back to having magic and potions, in order to raise the dead?

Doctor Who fans will always disagree and fall out. I don't want to go back to RTD's way of doing things, as it's always good to have a change of style or else it’ll get stale and boring. Some people love it, some hate it, but that's their problem quite frankly, as I (and many others) enjoy it! The problem was, I didn’t really see that RTD had a long-term plan for the future of the program - he always tried to better the previous year with his big storylines, castings and promotions. To be fair though, that’s exactly what the show needed at the time to establish itself and pick up millions of hardcore viewers. RTD stepped aside at the right time and now Moffat is trying to take Doctor Who further and establish it as a worldwide hit, rather than just a UK one. Something like that takes time, years infact, so people should take that into account. (Plus the fact that the majority of the viewers actually enjoy it, according to the much-maligned AI Index!)

There’ll always be people who’ll criticise him, without realising what actually goes on in the production office. I'm sick of hearing that he's doing too much work on Sherlock. He's only writing ONE episode and he's co-producing the (3 episode) series with his wife and Mark Gatiss. So he's hardly over-reaching himself. I don't remember many people saying the same when RTD had Doctor Who AND two spin-offs on the go...

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 As I said in an article in a previous issue - the producer of Doctor Who will always be on a hiding to nothing by its fans, most of whom don't understand how hard it is to make Doctor Who and keep it successful as it is. Don't get me wrong, I've actually been a bit underwhelmed by this series, but the high points have been Everest-high. The low points have been nowhere near that of some of the previous-series'. I think people should look at the positives and think 'what will happen when things fully develop and find their place?' Look at Matt Smith - he keeps on improving and (for me anyway) he's by far one of the better actors to play the role. All this AND he's only 2 years into the job! Just some thoughts…

I was going to change the above, after hearing about the utter scandal that is the Official Doctor Who Convention, but decided against it in the end. If you don’t already know, basically BBC Worldwide are running a convention in Cardiff in March 2012, with Matt Smith and Steven Moffat already confirmed as ‘guests’. It might sound great, but you’ll have to part with an initial £99 for just for a ticket and then pay even more for autographs and photos. The biggest scandal for me though is that it’s NOT for families. You’ll be able to read more about that later (as well as another dropped bollock by the BBC in the shape of Confidential). I don’t mean to moan and whinge all the time, this is supposed to be a fun fanzine after all, but it just isn’t right. Doctor Who shouldn’t be about making money, it should be about making people happy. As fans, we have to stand up for the show we love being mishandled like it is. (Don’t worry, there’s also a lot of fun bits in here too!)

Fanzine-wise, we’re going to be in hibernation for the winter, so we’ll see you sometime in 2012. If you’ve got any articles/feedback/abuse/money for beer, or you just want a penpal, don’t hesitate to e-mail us (at anytime!) at fishcustardfanzine@googlemail.com Cheers and see in you 2012 Danny FISH FINGERS AND CUSTARD is produced by a barely-educated simpleton, who relies on alcohol and friends to help him out and make things better, but at least he has a good heart. Like that slapper from Sex and The City.

Editor: Daniel Gee Contributors: Stuart Beaton, Chloe Hardy, Francis Cave, David MacGowan, James Heath Lantz, Lisa Carroll, Emma Donovan and Thomas Cookson Doctor Who is © BBC blah, blah, blah, blah. You lost Neighbours to Channel 5, you cretins.

Big thanks to all our contributors and readers. See you all in 2012! www.twitter.com/fishcustardzine www.facebook.com/fishcustardfanzine

FFAC110

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8

Series 6 (Part 2) Reviewed

A Mixed Bag – But Improving!

I'm finally warming up to Matt Smith as the Doctor.

Let me continue by saying I watched the original Doctor Who series as a boy growing up in Ohio. Tom Baker and Peter Davison were the Doctors I saw the most in that period. I had doubts about the revival series and held off watching it until one day I decided to take a look at it. Quite frankly, I'm glad I did. It's one of the best shows on television today.

Series five of Doctor Who was a transition period for me as Smith was just taking on the role after David Tennant's departure. I enjoyed Tennant immensely on Doctor Who, and he continues to my favourite Doctor to this day. Anyhow, the second half of series six proves Matt Smith has what it takes to be everyone's favourite Time Lord.

This is not to say that these episodes are not without their flaws. We'll get to those in a moment. I just wanted to point

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out that Matt Smith seems to be fitting into the role of the Doctor very well in this batch of shows.

Series six part two was a mixed bag for me. Episodes for which I had high expectations (Let's Kill Hitler and Closing Time) kind of fell flat in certain spots, causing the pacing to feel a bit off. One story (The Girl Who Waited) was disappointing to the point of feeling like nothing more than filler material. I found it to be the biggest let down of the series. Other tales (Night Terrors, The God Complex and The Wedding of River Song) were pleasant surprises. In the end, however, the second half of the sixth year of the Doctor Who revival series delivered the goods with a finale that knocked my socks off.

Series six part two gave me something I had been hoping for, for quite some time - the story and origin of River Song. We already got to learn that River is Melody Pond, Amy and Rory's daughter, at the end of part one. This seems to be inspired by the X-Men comics character

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 Cable, the son of Cyclops sent to the future, but that's just the comic nerd in me coming out. Granted, I felt some things about River were slightly rushed and a bit contrived. The whole revelation that Mels was River Song seemed to be done in a hurry to get River's beginnings out to the audience. The Doctor's line, "You named your daughter after your daughter" is classic Who. Yet, Mels feels forced into the series. It would have been nice if Steven Moffat and company had waited just a little bit for that. Still, it did tie up some loose ends about River that seemed to be hinted at since she encountered the Tenth Doctor. Now, I did like the fact that River was the person who killed the Doctor at Lake Silencio. River's becoming the Doctor's wife was expected, but it is a welcomed addition to the Who mythos. I hope we see more of River Song. I like her character a lot. Alex Kingston is perfect as River, and she's an amazing actress.

In my opinion, nobody but Kingston could play her. I hope River Song is used more in series seven and beyond of Doctor Who. I'm not the biggest fan of Amy Pond and Rory Williams, admittedly. However, I do like Rory's evolution as a character in the second part of series six. I feel Rory has grown from an uncertain boy to a man that has become more sure of himself at this point in the show. This gives me hope for him in the future. Amy still seems a bit too two dimensional for my taste. I felt the same way about Rose Tyler in the beginning. Yet, her story eventually evolved well. Maybe the same will be done for Amy in series seven.

Series six part two had its ups and downs overall. In the end, I was satisfied with how things ended in it. More of River Song is given, and the unanswered question that frightened the eerie Silence was revealed. "Doctor who?" Will that question ever be answered? Will the Doctor's universe be

destroyed as a result of his name becoming common knowledge? Perhaps we will never ever learn. Then again, one never knows. It will sure be fun to see if the truth is told as Doctor Who progresses though.

See ya in the TARDIS!  JAMES HEATH LANTZ The Start of the New Age? I don’t really know how to react to Series 6. On the whole, it wasn’t brilliant nor was it terrible, it was just there. It had its great moments of course; the opening two-parter, The Doctor’s Wife, The Girl Who Waited and Closing Time, which are all solid episodes. I also seem to be the only Doctor Who fan to have enjoyed Curse of The Black Spot! But we’re nd talking about the 2 half for the series here and I think it ‘just being there’ sums it up quite well.

I’m not saying that as a bad thing, quite the opposite. Doctor Who has become obsessed with trying to better each year with their big ‘finales’ and surprises.

Series 6 took a step back from that, as fans (annoyingly) correctly guessed what was going to happen with ease. Series 7 will begin a new direction for the show.

And I couldn’t be more pleased.

I believe that the series as an whole, only served as a chance to tie up loose ends (how many question did Lets Kill Hitler answer!) and provided the beginning of the end, for the story of Rory and Amy. They’ll be back of course, but not that much, during Series 7 (or so we hear…) I grew sick of companions coming back during RTD’s era, as it totally destroyed the backstories which got built up superbly. With the gradual exit of Amy, Rory and (maybe) River Song, the show can move in another direction and provide new challenges for Steven Moffat and Matt

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 Smith. If I’m correct in what I’m thinking – we’ll be in for one hell of a series in 2012, as things that have been developing during the last 2 years, start to perform at their highest level.

Series 6 wasn’t without its controversial moments though. I’m still not really sure on the ‘River is Amy’s daughter’ plotpoint, as it just seems too convenient and if I’m being brutally honest, a bit rubbish! For all his faults, RTD would have been better at writing a bit of emotion to swell up the story - Amy really should have been more gutted than she was when she lost her daughter. I didn’t have a problem as such with the character of Mels, that some people do, but I agree that it does seem odd that Moffat didn’t reference anything previously. But I think that she served her purpose well AND dispels a long-held believe about Time Lords only being able to regenerate as one race, as we’ve seen with The Doctor and Cho-Je (although the latter regenerated into a poor imitation of a Asian man, which probably wouldn’t be tolerated these days!)

The other episodes in the series were solid enough - Night Terrors was okay, although to call it the ‘most scariest episode in Doctor Who history’ was a ridiculous claim by the BBC and Mark Gatiss should be taken to task. I really hope he is challenged to come up with something that doesn’t rip off old horror movies (or old Doctor Who episodes!) in future…come on Mark, do something original!

I don’t particularly share the view that The Girl Who Waited is ‘the best Doctor Who episode ever’, but it really did bring the best out of Karen and Arthur (Darvil – not the horse). I think what has been overlooked by fans, from this series, is the quality of direction. Now I wouldn’t have a clue about that aspect of television, if it wasn’t for Doctor Who. BBC Three - take note on that! But

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there were lots of glorious shots in the series – the Utah scenes were beautiful, but at the risk of angering a lot of people – The Girl Who Waited was one of the best directed episodes since the return of Doctor Who. Nick Hurran made great use of very little and considering there wasn’t much for him and the actors to work against, he made sure that everyone knew exactly what they were doing, as everyone just nailed it. And that’s before I bleat on about the beauty of some of the shots in the episode! I especially enjoyed how he blended together the shot of old Amy/young Amy. A beautiful scene which didn’t need any words. That’s what good direction is all about.

The rest of the series wasn’t much to write home about – The God Complex had its creepy moments, but what saved it for me, was its final scenes. Matt Smith’s acting just jumped out at me, as you could see the torment that was going through The Doctor as he said goodbye to Amy. Closing Time had its moments too, but was essentially a rehash of nearly every crashedCyberman ship-on-earth story (so I loved it!) I did enjoy Gareth Roberts taking the piss out of fans with his ‘Saving the world with love’ plot, though. I’ve seen many an angry forum post moaning about it. Love is a big emotion and makes you do wonderful things in the spare of a moment. Like when some of these whoppers on forums click on a Russian Bride website. It’s easily more believable than using magic and potions…sorry, I’ve supposed to have moved on from that!

The Wedding of River Song was supposed to be a huge moment in Doctor Who history, but just left fans arguing over whether the marriage was valid or not. Who gives a shit. Hartnell ran off from a lovely Aztec piece back in the day. Matt Smith doesn’t come anywhere close to the randiness of that old bugger, so get some perspective!

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 The episode did attract a lot of mixed reactions though. I thought it was great personally, one of the best finales we've had and visually - it was superb.

Narratively, I thought everything made sense and was tied up tightly enough.

You didn’t really think The Doctor would actually die, did you?

By far my favourite moment however, was the ending. ‘I’m going back in the shadows’ announced The Doctor, to the decapitated head of Dorian. I can tell you that I shouted a YES! when he said that! FINALLY after 6 years of pissing about trying to be God, The Doctor is

going back to what he should be – a mysterious alien time-traveller. Next, can we have more stories set on alien worlds please, with proper aliens. Not just humans. Humanoid aliens will do!

Series 6 can be summed up with saying that parts of it were creepy, funny and (especially the Brig moment in the final episode) sad too. It’s what Doctor Who is all about.

And I love it.  DANIEL GEE

This Month’s Hot’s and Not’s (Sponsored by The Association of Live Chess – TALC)

The Lorraine Heggessy’s

The Michael Grade’s

Fan-run Conventions (check them out!)

Heads in boxes Harry Sullivan

Official Conventions Heads on walls Adam (you know, that lad from Dalek and that other episode, erm…)

Victory of the Daleks People who put pictures of baby scans up on Facebook – why?

BBC Worldwide and their money-grabbing antics Fez’s (again) Still no more classic Doctor Who on BBC Four Justin Timberlake – the everything else Christmas Lights Switch-On’s Selfish Adults Talk Sport Downloading MP3’s The Simpsons Giggling and giving the game away, whilst attempting to take a mag from the ‘top shelf’.

Billie Piper (ooooh you’ll get in trouble! – Ed) Going back and saying ‘you forgot to scan this’ Boycott Human Nature Campaigns The Christmas No1 Chart race – not bothered anymore

Day of the Daleks People posting pictures of the Doctor Who Wrap Party on Twitter Dick Turpin and his loveable steed, Black Bess Eye Patches RIP The Brig Justin Timberlake – the actor Pantomimes Excited Kids BBC’s World Football Phone-In Taping music off the radio Futurama The Internet Bill Bailey Shoplifting Save Confidential Campaigns Fish Custard Christmas Party (bring beer) BBC budgets being spent on a guaranteed 3 series’ worth of Doctor Who Beer For Christmas Live Chess Kicking a ball around outside Doctor Who Fans

A Doctor Who Movie – just NO! Official Doctor Who Convention Tickets For Christmas Giant Pinball Tables Skyrim – Whatever that is BBC Worldwide

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8

THE TRAGEDY OF SERIUS SIXUS II

(Enter Fanboy 1 and Fanboy 2) FANBOY 1: Truly savoured is this warm globe that shines so Upon our series favoured.

FANBOY 2: F*** off, it was rubbish.

FANBOY 1: How can thou, who clutched at Series 5's hem like A loving babe, speak thus?

FANBOY 2: Easy. because it was rubbish.

FANBOY 1: True, the tangled threads Of plots many and design'd did trap me often.

But doust we not possess iPlayer? It has manytimes From taxing plotlines freed me.

FANBOY 2: Oh you'll like any old shit won't you?!?

FANBOY 1: Silence, I entreat you! Here comes our Lord, Moffatt!

(Enter Lord Moffat) FANBOY 2: Oh! Oh, bloody hell! Sign my series 6 Part 1 DVD box set? Please?!?

MOFFAT: Sign I shall yet not afore Certain troubles are dispelled.

FANBOY 2: Ask away.

MOFFAT: Have poisoned I become? Has promise of youthful days been verily Betrayed by tranistion of the seasons? Have my people's trust I lost?

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 FANBOY 2: I don't follow you.

MOFFAT: Have I gone shit?

FANBOY 1: Caution sir, lest your words construct Some new prison from which kindness may not free you!

FANBOY 2: Er... look, Series 6 has... well, I enjoyed it less this second half... (aside) Be in total truth I dare not 'er never will my set be signéd Er.. Don't get me wrong! It looked brilliant! The direction was superb, and the non-plot arc episodes were amongst the bext of New Who. MOFFAT: Ah, my noble knights of Gatiss, Whitehouse and Macrae!

FANBOY 2: I mean, if you'd just stuck with them instead of spinning out that fucking storyarc about River Song... and wasting that Hitler/WWII business... and having a ten minute exposition scene at the end of the last episode...

FANBOY 1: Away I must! An appointment waits me thus! (exuent) FANBOY 2: SHIT. (Enter Lord Wenger and Lady Willis) LADY WILLIS: You were saying, good sir?

FANBOY 2: Well, er... look, take that Cyberman story. I mean, on its own it could have been perfectly entertaining.., if you'd excised all that 'power of love' tripe... but the last 5 minutes totally robbed it. Just like how the last 5 minutes of the Gangers story totally ruined what came before.

LORD WENGER: Your words you must carefully choose, Else your most private portal I will to this Prop Sonic Screwdriver entrust.

FANBOY 2: I ... look I'm a FAN okay? I have to say it's shit!!!!

MOFFAT: Nay! Your words I hearest not!

These ratings I shall wear around me as badge Of my office holy. Hints to the next series I shall to The Brilliant Book dispense. Begone with you! (exuent) THAT WAS A SPECIALLY RECORDED PERFORMANCE BY THE R.S.C. THE ROLE OF FANBOY 1 WAS PLAYED BY GARETH ROBERTS. JAMES CORDEN PLAYED FANBOY 2. LORDS MOFFAT AND WENGER PLAYED THEMSELVES WHILST LADY WILLIS WAS RENDERED IN CRAP C.G.I

BY THE MILL.

 DAVID MacGOWAN

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8

A Tribute To Rory Williams For me, there was one thing that made Series 6 of Doctor Who amazing. It wasn’t Matt Smith’s acting, impeccable and constantly improving though it is.

It wasn’t River Song kicking several different kinds of ass. It wasn’t Amy being a bitter bitch, though that was pretty awesome.

No, for me, the true star of Series 6 was Rory Williams.

Rory has come such a long way from The Eleventh Hour, when he was introduced as a sort of Mickey Smith character, the doggedly faithful boyfriend following his beautiful partner around and still loving her even though she’s clearly smitten with this dashing alien that’s dropped from the sky. Amy doesn’t even refer to him as her boyfriend in this episode; he’s her “friend.” Poor Rory is forced to correct her.

We see him cuckolded again as the Doctor whisks Amy away the night before her wedding, which she agrees to with barely a thought for her fiancé. She goes on flirt constantly with the Doctor and even throws herself at him, looking for a one night stand before she has to get married. The Doctor’s decision to bring her and Rory on a holiday to Venice causes her to react in a similar way to Rose when the Doctor brought Mickey to the good ship Madame de Pompadour.

It seems though, that dying was the best thing to ever happen to Rory Williams. Amy only realises how much she loves him after the Eknodine killed him. She willingly kills herself and the Doctor in the hope that she’ll see him again, and it is from here that we start to see the real Rory. Well, briefly. He dies at the end of the following episodes, a Silurian twoparter that I still bitterly wish had never seen the light of day. He dies very bravely though taking a bullet meant for the Doctor. He gets erased from space and time for his troubles, but the action is pure Rory: selfless, brave, wanting to help no matter what the cost. It is worth bearing in mind though that Mickey, when given the choice, decides to stay in a parallel universe to keep an old lady happy. So pretty much, up until this point, the pair are quite similar characters, with the exception that Amy, unlike Rose, as begun to realise just how important her other half is.

Of course, The Pandorica Opens/ The Big Bang is when Rory completely separates from the whole “another Mickey” thing and comes into his own. Reborn as an Auton Roman, Rory is able to remind Amy of who he is and nearly resists the Nestene Consciousness when it tries to turn him against the Doctor and Amy. He does, unfortunately, end up shooting his fiancée, but my God does Rory Williams make up for it. After she’s placed in the Pandorica, Rory stays with her to guard her, for almost two millenia. Bear in mind, this is a woman who has walked all over him, treated him like shit, tried to cheat on him, run away from him and has until recently given off an air of only barely tolerating him. Rory’s love for Amy allows him to forgive her for that, and his guarding of the Pandorica becomes

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 a legend across the ages, making him known as the Last Centurion. The scene where Amy realises all he’s done for her is almost painfully touching. Having her remember him back to normal and marry him is probably all Rory wanted from Amy in return, and was the very least he deserved.

Of course, this leaves Rory mentally almost two thousand years old, something that only rarely gets touched on. The Doctor brings it up in The Impossible Astronaut, but Rory gives the impression that he really doesn’t want to talk about it, and that’s pretty much all that’s said of it. The only other time it’s mentioned is in The Doctor’s Wife, when a horribly aged Rory screams at Amy that she’s “done it again” - made him wait for her.

From here on in though, Rory just starts becoming impossibly cool. Through the opening double parter of Series 6, Rory repeatedly stands up to the Doctor and calls him on treating humans like shit. He is the one character who does this, from S1 to S6. Donna does it occasionally, while weeping, but Rory is the only one who does it with a bit of weight behind him: Mentally, he’s twice as old as the Doctor, and the Doctor knows it.

It’s even just the little things that Rory does that are brilliant. He still finds Amy more attractive than the Siren in The Curse of the Black Spot. He’s kind to the Flesh in the Flesh two-parter, knowing how they feel about not being quite human. He re-dons the Roman outfit for A Good Man Goes To War, giving it its single cool moment: him taking on the Cybermen, and DEMANDING to know where his wife is. This is the defining moment where Rory Williams, nurse and all around good guy, becomes basically Rory Motherfucking Williams, successor of Chuck Norris, origin of an Internet meme and the best companion of New Who. Framed against an exploding Cyber-legion, he shows exactly how dangerous a man who loves can be; separated from his wife and child, he steps up to the plate and becomes the eponymous character of the episode, whether the writers meant him to or not.

And that has been a huge part of the new series: River is in prison for the murder of “a good man; the best she ever knew.” We know now that that was the Doctor; it is a credit to Rory (and of course, to Arthur Darvill for his wonderful portrayal) that for most of the series, we don’t know exactly who River means.

It is Rory who gets the good lines and actions in Let’s Kill Hitler: he who punches Adolf and locks him in the cupboard. Rory always rises to a challenge and though he may not always know what to do, he always does what is best for everyone.

He is precisely what the series needs: Someone who doesn’t follow the Doctor around slavishly, who questions him and has no problem with calling him on some of the asshole decisions he makes. And long may he continue.  EMMA DONOVAN

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8

And Then Colin Baker Appeared…

Day of the Daleks Special Edition Screening – Riverside Studios London Sunday 4th September 2011.

I originally heard about this event about two months before though one of the many Doctor Who news sites I regularly visit and applied for a ticket from DWAS. A few weeks later I received a note advising that due to overwhelming demand all tickets had now been allocated and I had not been successful. It did mention that the Riverside Theatre itself "might" have some tickets left, so I applied online not expecting to be successful.

Imagine my surprise when I got a ticket. Hoping to bring a friend along I immediately applied again to get the response that it was now sold out so it looks like I got the last ticket they had!

Anyway, onto the event itself.

Thankfully I printed off directions as, although the studios are not actually that far from Hammersmith Tube station, it’s a bit of a twisty turney way to actually get there. Once there I picked up my ticket (still half expecting them to say I'd not actually been allocated one!) and joined the queue for the cinema where the screening was going to be. I then heard someone behind me explain that there was a merchandise stand in the bar area, but of course if you went in there you would lose your place in the queue!

After about 10 minutes of debating (and flipping a coin!) I decided to go out of the queue and check out the merchandise. It was the usual selection of DVD's, CD's and books but you know what it’s like - you just have to look! There was another DWASrun table where you could buy your DVD cover for signing. It was explained to me that what I would receive was a sleeve only, with the shrink-wrapped DVD following in the post in a week’s time. So basically you would end up with two sleeves, one signed and one not. Sounded like a good deal to me, so I bought one. There was also an offer to take out a six month membership to DWAS for only £5, so of course on the basis of in for a penny, in for a pound, I joined.

By this stage, the queue was moving into the cinema so I went in and fortunately still managed to get a good seat near the front. Per the event programme, five minutes before the presentation of episodes 1 & 2 would be a "prologue - unique to this launch event".

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 What this turned out to be was a recording of a transmission featuring two Daleks (not Nick Briggs) setting up the invasion of earth including some reference to the war with the Movellans followed by a "news report" explaining the fictional political situation at the time of the story's setting in the 1970's (or '80s!) with some video effects on screen.

Nice I guess, and it seemed to go down well with the audience, but it was a novelty really, nothing more and not something I think anyone will miss not having on the DVD. I won't go into detail in terms of the new "Special Edition" of Day of the Daleks, except to say that, perhaps obviously, it looks pretty stunning. There’s a neat effect, whereby anyone shot by an Ogron or Guerrilla gun, is blown up to bits by an effect used in Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (when someone is hit by the Martians heat ray). In addition, the CG shots of future earth under the Daleks, were impressive indeed.

I can’t say that it looked like anything other than a 21st century CGI assisted remix of the story, as I can’t see, even with a massive budget, that it would have looked like that in 1971. However, unlike the George Lucas attitude regarding his constant revisions to the Star Wars films (“this is the new version, the old version no longer exists!”) the original version is included in the DVD set, so I can’t imagine anyone complaining at the changes made to this version.

There were some additional shots with Orgons, Daleks and a Unit Soldier which stuck out a bit for me, but again for the same reason, it didn’t bother me that much.

I think this is probably the only time I have ever seen an entire Dr Who story on a big screen and I have to say it was quite a treat. I did find it odd how many times the audience laughed and don't know if this was because they found parts of it cheesy (admittedly watching the Orgons do their not-too-fast run, and later on "chase" The Doctor and Jo on their bike, was pretty funny) or if they were just so familiar with the story. There was also a loud cheer when the Brig first appeared and quite right too!

What I did notice watching it again was just how good Pertwee was in it and that is a lot coming from someone whose worst nightmare is sitting through a Pertwee SixParter! He really seemed to be playing the angry scenes very well, which was perhaps understandable due to the fact that, as explained in the actors panel afterwards, neither he nor the rest of the cast got on well with the director, as he seemed more interested in the action scenes, rather then giving them any actual

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 direction. It’s also on the big screen that I really noticed the difference between the studio and location filming, with some of the exterior shots looking very blurry indeed.

After Eps 1 & 2, there was an interval where SE producers Steve Broster & Michael Dinsdale, who were responsible for all the CGI effects, were interviewed. Being very techie it was more interesting than entertaining and most of it can be found in a recent DWM feature (as well as a special feature on the DVD itself) so I will move on!

The next item in the programme was described as "DWAS Honorary President Announcement" which I did not expect to be of any interest, having last been a member about 20 years ago. It was explained that following the death of Nicholas Courtney, a new president had been voted on - and the clear winner got more votes than all of the other contenders combined. In the back of my mind I thought "I hope its Colin Baker!" Lo and behold it was, and the reception he received was rapturous to say the least! Colin seemed genuinely pleased and humbled to be elected, he even managed to get a stunned response from the audience when he mentioned that he had been asked if he would appear in a multi doctor story in 2013. Until, he added that he had been asked this "by a fan", although he did reassure everyone that if he was officially asked by the BBC itself, he would let us know!

A one hour break followed and we were told that Colin would be in the bar and would be happy to sign any items for free. I took advantage of this and also asked if I could have a picture taken with him, explaining that the last time I did ten years ago, I got home to find I had no film in my camera. "Well duh!" said Colin, “indeed” I said and congratulated him on his presidency. I know it’s been said before, but Colin is a lovely bloke and there could not be a better choice for president.

Episodes 3 and 4 were screened after the break, followed by a panel featuring Katy Manning, Richard Franklin and Scott Fredericks. All were in fine form with Scott remembering working with Tom on Image of the Fendahl and how good an actor he was "totally mad of course!" Richard Added that, in fact Tom was the only actor he knew who was actually slowly going sane!

When talking about the Daleks there were a few knowing glances between Katy and the empty Dalek onstage and references to a certain magazine appearance post-Who! Of course this generated much laughter in the audience and even more when Katy said to Richard "of course you've not seen my twins have you?". The little boy sitting beside me asked his father what all the laughter was about and I would hate to be the one to respond to that question! The event ended with a signing by all three, again in the bar area. I think I queued for about an hour which gave me a chance to look at all the free bits and bobs that everyone got at the event, which included a free Fantom Films CD. Hey, free items at a free event. Can't be bad...

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 I told Katy how touched I was by her comment that she found it hard to watch Jon and Nicolas Courtney again, and that she found it easier to remember, rather than see her again.

Asking if it was ok to have a photo with her, it was a case of third time lucky as the first two times, the camera was on the wrong setting! I don't have much luck with camera’s do I? Heading back to Hammersmith Station I was very pleased with the whole day. For a free event I don't think it could be beaten.

High point of the Day? Definitely Colin’s surprise appearance Low point? That would have to be me mistakenly operating the iPod part of my iPhone (which plays whether you mute the phone or not) during the cast panel with the result that Britney Spears was heard blaring through the auditorium till, after what seemed like ages, I managed to work out how to stop it. The shame of it….  FRANCIS CAVE

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL DOCTOR WHO CONVENTION! In the wake of the BBC getting things completely wrong and treating us like endless pockets of money, a group of us have decided to get together and promote those conventions and events near you, which you may not even know about!

Visit our Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/dwcons and check out our maps and information about any events near you. If you would like to promote or have any information about an event, feel free to contribute to our growing community. These ‘events’ can be anything ranging from major Conventions, with Doctor Who guests signing, or it could be small fan club events, or even pub meetings that you’ve set up yourself!

Whatever it is. Wherever it is. We’ll promote it.

Getting together with like-minded people, having fun and spending only a reasonable amount of money is what fan events should be about. You’ll also be able to take the family for the day out!

From experience, fan-run events are the most enjoyable so get yourself down to one!

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8

It’s Been A Wonderful Adventure…

I've seen amazing things out there in space, but strange things can happen wherever you are. I have learned that life on Earth can be an adventure too.

In all the universe, I never expected to find a family.

I’ve become somewhat obsessed with the word ‘project’ in recent years. I’ve mainly heard the words said from a minority of people in television circles, who are actually interested in being creative, rather than just going all out to make a short-term profit. I think we’re missing something in life these days – what has happened to working on something and developing it? People in television (as well as life in general) these days are very impatient and expect instant success. Causal viewers, fans & bosses of television just don’t seem to want to watch/work on something which could potentially do well. Is it the age in which we live in, where we can get information in a matter of seconds?

Elsewhere in this fanzine, you’ll read an article about how the BBC have got things horribly wrong, but with The Sarah Jane Adventures, they got it completely right. In my opinion, st Children’s Television in the 21 Century just hasn’t been up to scratch – what with re-runs of programming from when we were kids, despite it having the advantages of new technologies and it own channels. What the Sarah Jane Adventures showed is that it is worth going that extra mile in order to deliver something proper for children to watch and it being relevant to them at the same time. Throw some of the subjects the show has tackled into that, then it makes a case for CBBC to be pushing for more big-budget Children’s Drama in the future. Just like Doctor Who pushed for more big-budget family drama on BBC One. Television networks have a huge role to play in the development of children, considering the amount of time we spend around it these days. The plan of ‘get them into The Sarah Jane Adventures, then into Doctor Who’ has worked brilliantly.

From there they can branch off into other shows (like there are any others!) and hopefully be inspired and entertained by what they see. It’s a simple, yet brilliant way of keeping viewers. It’s like when you’ve got football clubs who have their own youth teams and, apart from training them up to be better footballers, they grow up in the culture of the club, learn everything about it and what it means to people to be a part of it. The Sarah Jane Adventures viewers will go on and grow up with Doctor Who, and a good percentage of

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 them will be soon calling for Moffat’s head, buying crap merchandise or coming up with more reasons why Time and The Rani is greatest piece of television in the history of the world…

One massive reason why Doctor Who is a success is because it’s long-running. It was already 23 years old when the BBC hierarchy started to mess with it in 1986. 23 years!

The revived (or as we say – continuation of the) show has already been confirmed to go into an eighth year, with (surely) many more years after that. How many current drama series’ have been running for 8 years? Not many I would imagine. But that’s how you keep viewers and keep something successful. By developing it over a period of time.

The Sarah Jane Adventures was an ambitious project. Could they develop a successful spin-off from a program that itself was historically a children’s educational program?

Despite a shaky start (Bubbleshock – no pun intended) it settled down, found a home and grew as time went on. RTD did the right thing and stepped aside to let Phil Ford become the head writer and things got better and better. The young kids grew more confident, their acting skills improved and with that – the storylines improved too. That’s how you develop something. Using the way of thinking which is rife in today’s life – it would never got past the Pilot stage. It helped that Doctor Who was a success of course, but again, anyone can see the potential in a spin-off from it. As fans keep saying after every single new episode!

But back to what I was saying before and you can see, even in the 3 stories we had this series, that the show was developing. With the kids getting older (Daniel Anthony is now 24!) things have to change as the audience themselves develop into older people with older tastes, so in comes young Sky to connect with those youngsters who are coming up and are beginning to watch television properly. She was one for the future and her development as a character (and the actress, as a person) would have been well looked after by the staff on the show. I mean, how can you not be inspired by a lady in her 60’s, who looks at least 10 years younger and has the energy to match? Reading the comments on the Newsround website, from young viewers on the show, just after Liz passed away, just showed that they feel the same as we do about her and The Sarah Jane Adventures.

The second story of the series The Curse of Clyde Langer should, by rights, win some kind of award for tackling the subject of homelessness (and indeed, young people being homeless) so well. The story was just quality and would easily transfer to adult viewing.

Daniel Anthony has been magnificent in the role of Clyde since day 1 and I hope he’ll go on to have a great career. If any of the actors go on and do well in the future, then it would have been this television series that has learnt them their trade. As I said, development and patience. It works!

The final episode The Man Who Never Was didn’t quite hit the heights of the previous episode (not many, if any, other episodes do) but it’s still a great tale of alien slavery and money-making humans. I found it wholly ironic though, that something like this was being preached to kids, whilst a section of the BBC were busy planning their Conventions and cutting those kids adrift…

The episode also deals with acceptance, as Luke is back and meets his Sister for the first time. It’s something that is true to life, as a viewer may have a younger sibling who is starting to grow up and thus occupies the attention of your parents, who then blame you for drawing on your bedroom walls with crayon, when it was that little shit...sorry I went away for a minute there! The plot-point was well done and you can start to see that torch being passed from Luke to the ‘new generation’ that would have probably come in during a future

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 series’. Clyde, once again, is on top form and delivers probably the funniest line ever heard in The Sarah Jane Adventures. It literally had me laughing out loud for a few minutes at the sheer cheekiness of it. Check it out if you haven’t seen it. The episode I mean, not Mr Harrison’s pen…

The final tribute to Lis is a bit of stock footage from some of her episodes, but it works really well. She utters the line at the top of this article and you can’t help smiling or crying, or both. It ends with the quite marvellous ‘And The Story Goes On. Forever.’ And it will.

No need for any clever lines or plot devices, lets just let Sarah carry on forever. There’ll always be room for books and audio readings and of course – fans memories of the character.

We’ll miss the Sarah Jane Adventures and it would have been fascinating to see how it would have developed. Sadly it wasn’t to be, but at least millions of young viewers got to see some decent telly when they came home from school. And who knows? Maybe they’ll be inspired by it? The Sarah Jane Adventures has succeeded in what it was meant to do, and for that very reason, is why it is the best Doctor Who spinoff.

If you’ve never seen The Sarah Jane Adventures, I would implore (whatever that means I’m using words that I don’t know again!) you to watch it. It has its childish moments (it’s for kids – what do you expect? And as The Doctor once said to Sarah “What’s the point of being grown up, if you can’t be childish sometimes?”) but it works on so many levels and is perfect for you to sit down with your kids and watch.

Go and watch it.  DANIEL GEE

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 A Safe Pair of Hands? itself, like watching horror films with a macho crowd who boast “That’s not scary”, thus defeating the object of watching a horror film.

It’s been two years since Steven Moffat became producer of Doctor Who. Being the author of the most highly praised episodes of RTD’s era, many fans heralded him as the show’s great white hope. But there was apprehension as well. Some felt that being a good writer of individual stories didn’t necessarily prove he had what it took to be showrunner or head writer. Some were convinced no-one could replace RTD and the show would suffer and be cancelled again without him. Some felt Matt Smith was too young to be a convincing Doctor. And then was the rediscovered, alcohol-fuelled Moffat interview from the 90’s which probably started the anti-Moffat backlash before Russell even left.

Now fandom’s seemingly divided between those who think the show’s never been better, and those who think everything’s gone wrong.

Has the initial fan apprehension been proved right? Well, prior to Series 6’s second half, I was totally team-Moffat, and considered the naysayers less than dirt. Before discussing what changed, I’ll start with why I gave little credence to the complaints.

Let’s start with the mid-90’s TSV fanzine interview where Moffat rubbished Classic Who as slow, embarrassing and borderline unbroadcastable, slamming even Talons of Weng Chiang for its giant rat.

I’ve rarely been to a fan group that didn’t involve watching and mercilessly mocking old stories (being gushing is usually frowned upon). The fan ritual of curbing your enthusiasm by giving your object of enthusiasm a major kicking. Sometimes this fashionable mocking becomes an ends in

Moffat was then working in a TV industry where it wasn’t fashionable to say you liked Doctor Who in any non-ironic way. Indeed Colin Baker deserves plaudits for speaking so passionately about the show in 1993’s Thirty Years in the Tardis documentary. It’s like alternative comedians of the 80’s who’ve now come out and admitted to always loving the old greats of stand-up comedy they’d once slated as ‘old hat’.

To me Moffat’s contentious remarks reflect a fan who’s dismantled his love of the show and reassembled it enough times that it’s now robust and his passion is always rekindled. And that his ruthlessly critical streak gives him a sharp understanding of what worked about Doctor Who and what didn’t, and how to utilise those strengths and filter out faults.

Then there’s the new Doctor.

I remember at one convention Wendy Padbury talking of being an actor’s agent and recognising a rare talent in Matt Smith. She knew he was going to be a great Doctor. But for many new fans, David Tennant was irreplaceable. He was such a heart-throb that Series 3 and 4’s finales even based cliffhangers around threatening to spoil his good looks forever. But apart from Tennant fangirls, there’s also older fans who complain that Matt Smith’s too young to carry the Doctor’s natural authority.

I was sceptical of Matt’s Doctor initially, and was always comparing him unfavourably to past Doctors. The Eleventh Hour left me thinking that no previous Doctor would have turned Prisoner Zero over to the fascist authorities who threatened to destroy the Earth, without trying to understand the creature and what it was supposedly guilty of, given that it hid in Amy’s house for 12 years without ever harming her. In The Beast Below I was shocked that the Doctor sent Amy to follow that schoolgirl by herself amidst a fear-state on her first adventure without accompanying her, since I’ve always from childhood seen the Doctor as a man of chivalry.

Victory of the Daleks gave me a stronger handle on Matt’s Doctor when pitted against his most hated enemies, demonstrating both shrewdness and recklessness, and being only able to make one choice when challenged to sacrifice Earth

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 to destroy the Daleks. I gradually found Matt Smith far truer to the Doctor’s alienness than RTD’s Doctors were. By The Pandorica Opens’ cliffhanger, where Matt Smith acted his heart out in the face of universal oblivion, I felt no doubt anymore that he really was the Doctor. He was possibly the first actor since Tom Baker to honestly seem born for the role.

Then there is the companion Amy, who’s received a surprising amount of hatred and slut-shaming from fans.

With Amy we’re back to the platonic Classic Who dynamic that many fans fear won’t appeal to modern viewers. Many fans said the contrived Doctor-Rose romance was essential for making the show popular and emotionally resonant. Yet the iconic dynamic between Mulder and Scully worked for popular viewers because of that intrinsic bond between the female and the fantasist. That’s how the Doctorcompanion bond always works, and Amy is the biggest fantasist of all.

The other issue is the new dayglo Daleks.

RTD was praised for giving us in Rose a fullrounded character with unprecedented emotional development. Indeed modern fandom seemingly believes Doctor Who had no emotional content prior to RTD, as though Susan’s emotionally wrought goodbye in Dalek Invasion of Earth, or Arthur Stengos’ “You are my daughter, how could I forget that?” in Revelation of the Daleks never happened. Many fans see Amy as a huge step back, and don’t seem to feel they can identify with Amy or see a believable character in her.

The Eleventh Hour had cut ahead 12 years into Amy’s life from the Doctor’s perspective, and wrongfooted us into thinking Amelia and Amy were different people, and that Amelia actually had been abducted by Prisoner Zero and that the Doctor and Amy would have to rescue her. Perhaps we should have seen those 12 years from Amy’s perspective and seen her growing up, writing her fan fiction about the raggedy Doctor.

It’s true whenever I listen to Seven Keys to Doomsday (my favourite Big Finish audio), the companions Jimmy and Jenny feel like a 1970’s Amy and Rory, but I don’t think this means the companion role has regressed.

Infact there’s something very real about Amy. I personally know an ‘Amy’. Someone who’s lived alone for years and is stuck in childhood, slightly defensive, often in a dreamworld, impulsive, forward and flirty, but wary of commitment or demonstrating appreciation, and often careless in what they say and do.

Hence why Amy’s Choice was the perfect dream-like setting for Amy to inhabit, and I loved how after being so reckless with Rory’s feelings, she was so numb with devastation when he died, showing that she really did love him all along.

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I’ve seen Daleks on stage at 2005’s Trial of Davros play, and at Doctor Who Live. The crucial difference with Trial of Davros (besides having more of a plot) is that the old Daleks on stage really conjure a sense of fear and death incarnate, like they might start gunning down the crowd at any moment. A fear factor matched only by Peter Miles’ luxuriatingly nasty performance as Nyder. The New Daleks on stage just don’t conjure that fear (particularly since they spend the play threatening a prerecording of Matt Smith). On paper the redesign should’ve made the Daleks more looming and formidable, but the proportions are wrong.

But after Journey’s End reduced the Daleks to an unthreatening joke that were easily turned into spinning tops and destroyed en masse just by pulling some levers, I think the Daleks needed this new redesign to disassociate themselves from that undignified failure. Infact Victory of the Daleks saw them actually win against the Doctor, which makes them seem far more formidable and makes the universe seem a far less safe place.

Incidentally I loved the spitfires in space sequence. It’s as whimsical a moment as Alexei Sayle blasting Daleks with rock and roll lazers, or the Doctor and Romana escaping Meglos’ timeloop by rereading their lines. Although in A Good Man Goes to War, I did wonder how the Doctor got the spitfires all the way to Demon’s Run in the far future. I mean how did they fit through the TARDIS doors?

Some fans have complained the new era’s too ‘dull’.

I don’t get this. During Series 5, there was never a point when I was looking at my watch. Nearly every story was captivating and unpredictable, without a single wasted moment, in a way rivalled only by Enlightenment.

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 I suspect it’s closer to the truth that it’s more subtle. I think New Who’s become an addiction to its fans, possibly to its creators too. Resultantly there’s always a demand for a bigger fix. Russell was good at making the show energetic and exhilarating, but he could also often try my patience, i.e, with soap opera material which thankfully Moffat has gotten rid of. Moffat’s era has somewhat scaled things down and so I think many consumptive fans, conditioned to RTD’s excesses are dissatisfied and angry at their comedown.

I think this scaling down is good, making for a more focused, solid show I can invest in. It’s allowed them to concentrate on more rewarding ‘little’ stories like Vincent and the Doctor that would be unthinkable under RTD. Likewise The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang concentrated on ‘less is more’ by making a single decrepit Dalek and a dismembered Cyberman into near invincible threats alone.

Then there’s those who tirelessly insist ‘the ratings are down’.

Fandom has suffered recurring ratings-fall trauma ever since Attack of the Cybermen’s rating drop allegedly caused the show’s cancellation. Even seven years after the revival, it’s almost impossible to discuss the show without ratings figures being quoted.

This probably stems from teenage memories of the show being a public laughing stock. Of having to watch Time and the Rani at a friend’s house because it clashed with Coronation Street, and then having to explain, embarrassed to their friend that the show ‘isn’t usually this crap’. We’re scared that once again the casual audience might not ‘get’ it. There’s a tendency for fans to penalise The Beast Below and Flesh and Stone as too complicated for casual viewers, even though Doctor Who’s surely supposed to take risks.

Fans seem unable to enjoy the show unless they can trust that the public approves of and shares their love.

Many fans hated The Pandorica Opens’ coalition of familiar monsters (a shaky premise perhaps, but the furious fan reaction smacks of self-loathing), or were horrified at seeing William Hartnel’s library card in Vampires of Venice, as though millions of viewers who didn’t ‘get’ it would instantly feel

alienated and switch off. This baffles me since I’ve found Remembrance of the Daleks to be a consistently successful story to convert nonfans with.

Fans have trouble imagining how their favourite cult, slow, creaky show could ever become a runaway mainstream hit, and because RTD achieved this impossible feat, many fans deify him as a miracle worker. Many fans won’t give anyone else a chance, as though no-one else is capable of performing Russell’s ‘miracles’.

So what were my issues with the Moffat era?

I had huge problems with The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood. It was Chibnall’s usual meanspirited writing that contrived to put a mother through hell to push her into killing a taunting, poisonous Silurian. It felt wrong and out of place having such a nasty, unforgiving story amidst the child-like, joyful Series 5. Why not adapt Big Finish’s Bloodtide instead, which would have been good-natured and accessible? It’s one time I seriously questioned Moffat’s judgement for commissioning something by Chibnall. I actually think Torchwood could have been an outstanding series on the strength of Ghost Machine, Small Worlds, They Keep Killing Suzie and Out of Time, if it weren’t for the drag factor of Chibnall’s stories.

I mostly enjoyed The Big Bang, but it’s ending depended on Amy’s childhood memories and abandonment issues, which perhaps should have gotten more intimate focus early on. As such the ending where she remembers the Doctor back into existence, didn’t work for me.

Maybe it could’ve worked better if the crack appeared and spewed the TARDIS out. But it felt unearned, the mood leaping from despair to frivolity too soon in a disconnecting way. It’s one moment where if you don’t share in the party mood then you feel left out, and I certainly felt left out.

And then there was A Christmas Carol. The main problem being its awkward pastiche of the Dickens’ original. Doctor Who always homaged other fiction (Moffat often homages Sapphire & Steel and Moondial), but usually producing something unique in the process. Brain of Morbius’ Frankenstein homage still said something new about the curse of immortality creating an arrested culture stuck in the dark ages of xenophobia and witch hunts. A Christmas Carol says nothing that wasn’t

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 already said in the original version, or its many adaptations.

It also played against Mofatt’s writing strengths. Moffat specialises in the twisty, mysterious and unpredictable, and the childlike world of spontanaeity and swirling strands of thought. But here Moffat restricted himself to a familiar, simplistic, traditional story that didn’t allow him much narrative leyway. Any unpredictability and divergence were merely cosmetic, frustratingly tantalising teases in a story that could only develop and end one way.

Moffat deals best with enigmatic, original characters, not carbon copies of well-known fictional figures. Kazran is blatantly supposed to be Ebeneezer Scrooge and to have lived a parallel life to him, growing a hardened heart through years of neglect. The Doctor rewriting someone’s character and personal history was risky dramatic grounds, but at least it paved the way for The Girl Who Waited.

But then Kazran inexplicably goes from refusing to save Amy’s starship when it costs him nothing, to going along with it when it means sacrificing Abigail. Abigail’s sacrifice felt fundamentally wrong and unnecessary, and gratuitously self-serving. Why didn’t the Doctor ever notice her chamber’s descending dial? If her gift of song came from existing in the stillpoint of cryostasis, why not revive someone else from cryostasis to sing so noone has to die?

It ended on a strangely half-hearted, upbeat note, despite Abigail being doomed, and left me feeling indifferent. There I can see the naysayers’ argument that a frustrating lack of emotional clarity might see the show lose its popularity.

Then came Series 6. And from the beginning it was clear this season was a different beast entirely from almost anything prior, except for mid-80’s nightmarish stories like Revelation of the Daleks, Mindwarp and the fan-made Audio Visuals. From the moment Amy watches one of the Silents casually murder a naive woman in the bathroom, it was clear the show had taken a darker, more shocking direction. Infact it was said that if Series 5 had been a dream-like fairytale, then this dream was turning into a nightmare.

Even reality seemed to be on the blink. In the opening of Day of the Moon we got a sense of sudden time dilation, and going ever deeper into a bewildering spiralling descent, as Amy, Rory and River ended up all in body bags, only to come alive again when quite literally subjected to the Shroedinger’s Cat experiment, (much like the question of whether Amy’s womb bore a child or not). All consistent with the dream logic that Moffat had first experimented with in Forest of the Dead.

The Doctor’s Wife was consistent with this dream logic through Idris’ random turns of thought and our heroes finding their worst fears coming true. A wave of nightmarish images hit us and burned themselves in our minds’ eyes. It was truly haunting. The cabinet of screaming distress boxes of deceased Time Lords. Amy being lost in the TARDIS and confronting messages of hatred written in blood, which could have been copied from fan posts on Gallifrey Base. Indeed Amy seemed to be tortured far more this season than I was ever comfortable with, and as for how distraught A Good Man Goes To War left her…well let’s just say the Doctor would be wise not to mention ‘jelly babies’ for a while.

The show was entering Heart of Darkness territory. The Almost People exasperated a mood of uncertainty where suddenly nothing and no-one could be trusted. The Amy we thought we knew and trusted, was revealed as a changeling all along. And then we got one of the most sinister moments in the show where the Doctor orders Rory to step away from her and then destroys her with a sonic blast. Even the benign Doctor could suddenly become coldbloodied in a split second.

I was okay with the Seventh Doctor destroying Skaro, since the Time Lords had predicted the Daleks might one day wipe out all other life in the universe if they weren’t stopped. Likewise his ruthlessly dispatching the Silents seemed necessitated since the Vampires of Venice described their world being lost to the Silents and therefore so would Earth be if the Doctor hadn’t acted. But his splurging of Amy’s ganger struck a wrong, uncomfortable note and whilst many have argued that her consciousness was transferred back to the original Amy and that it wasn’t murder, it’s still a deeply sinister moment.

However at the same time that shock ending did actually keep me hanging until next week’s

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 episode. Suddenly nothing was certain and anything could happen. In this nightmarish universe even the Doctor wasn’t necessarily a reassuring presence anymore. Furthermore since the next episode was about the Doctor being an all-feared, ‘ruthlessly scrupled’ figure, making him the subject of the nightmare in that closing sequence actually complimented that wonderfully.

Making the Doctor suddenly become an untrustworthy darker figure so soon after David Tennant’s pious do-gooder incarnation was tricky, but Moffat pulled it off perfectly with just the words “Good men don’t need rules, now is not the day to find out why I have so many”. Suddenly it was clear that even after 45 years, we still didn’t really know him or what he was capable of.

From a writer who once gave us Blink and Silence In The Library, that had celebrated what an exhilarating time it is to be young, and planning for the happy life ahead, it was surprising to see the show suddenly get so serious and bleak. Even The Beast Below and A Christmas Carol had reflected a mood that maybe our future wouldn’t be so bright or wonderful. But I felt this new vision for the show would connect sharply with people’s uncertainty of our modern times in this recession, and that it’s shocking moments would be unforgettable for decades to come.

Sure Curse of the Black Spot was a damp squid, The Almost People was a mess and copped-out of its moral issues, and maybe A Good Man Goes To War was abrupt and cluttered and would’ve been better as a more spacious, grounded two-parter. Yet somehow this season already felt more than the sum of its parts.

And I wanted to see where all this would go.

So we waited three months, whilst a redundant, padded, charmless fourth season of Torchwood filled the gap.

Then finally Let’s Kill Hitler was shown. And afterwards I was utterly devastated.

I could live with Mels’ history with Amy and Rory being suddenly ret-conned out of the blue. It’s the kind of false memories business that’s in keeping with the season’s dream logic. But following up the harrowing previous story, with such a frivolous, shallow romp in

the most gratuitously tasteless possible setting.

It just felt heartless.

All the emotional impact of the previous story seemingly got chucked in the bin for the sake of throwing a party, or doing a Lady Gaga video. It was a sickening display of the production team just burning money.

Something died in me that day. I felt suddenly utterly disconnected from the season, and particularly from Amy and Rory who seemed to quickly forget they even have a lost daughter afterwards.

Many fans had been decrying Series 6 as too complicated for casual viewers and that kids who couldn’t make sense of it would give up and lose interest. As someone who was thoroughly hooked and thrilled by 2001: A Space Odyssey at nine years old, I think kids deserve more credit. I felt I understood instinctively the method in Moffat’s madness (or rather high functioning sociopathy). But Let’s Kill Hitler dumbfounded me. The plot and overstory made logical sense, but I couldn’t believe it had so squandered and erased all that emotional build-up.

The truth is that both RTD and Moffat shared a characteristic as fanboys, and that was a tendency to be utterly flippant in their approach to writing the show. Indeed your preference for either head writer swings on whether you prefer how RTD overcompensates for his flippancy by doing all the emotional scenes, or you prefer Moffat because he doesn’t. And whilst I’m usually in the latter camp, the fact is Let’s Kill Hitler was too flippant by half for me.

Gareth Roberts had written the strongest, most hard-hitting Sarah Jane Adventures episodes.

But Closing Time was awful. The Cybermen felt like extras in their own story, and the final resolution was an insult to them, then cheapened the horror of Cyber-conversion. The Doctor and Craig had worked wonderfully together in The Lodger, elevating an otherwise fluffy throwaway into something outstanding.

But Closing Time felt like a clunky, aimless, failed attempt to capture lightning in a bottle twice.

Series 6 started with an exhilarating sense of new foes and ideas and unfamiliar, uncertain territory, but eventually started relying on what had worked before, in diminishing returns.

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 Finally, The Wedding of River Song was very much a mixed bag. Some wonderful setpieces, like the Live Chess tournament, and very poignant moments like the Doctor hearing of the Brigadier’s passing (superlatively performed by Matt Smith), and his line “remember the best, my companions have always been the best of me”.

But ultimately the entire paradox segment of the story could’ve been cut out without affecting the resolution one bit. And why was Churchill even in it only to disappear halfway through? What was the point? Had the paradox been the key to the Doctor cheating death, it would have worked. Had the Doctor not already known he’d survive, then River’s urging him that he was too beloved to face his execution (presumably out of guilt for his ruthless deeds of late) would have been actually cathartic. But overall the story lacked catharsis, and felt like a cheat.

The problems this season seemingly stemmed from Moffat trying to in one go reveal the truth of River Song, and give more emotional resonance to Amy and Rory by making them her parents. But it didn’t fit. I don’t get any sense of a mother-daughter bond between Amy and River. River Song worked far better when she was just a savvy human from the future who’d had a

relationship with a future Doctor. The mystery made her enigmatic and cool, but Series 6 completely demystified her, explaining things about her we didn’t need to know. Sure there was an intrigue in seeing sporadic, haunting bits of her troubled childhood, but then her character completely overpowered Let’s Kill Hitler and turned it into the River Song show, and suddenly her arc became empty and obnoxious.

The best character work on Amy and Rory was done in The Girl Who Waited- a beautifully written, heartbreaking story, which alone should have silenced the naysayers. All Amy and Rory had needed for that season was that one story.

Everything else that season which focused on them was needless, and pulled them the opposite way emotionally.

But since Series 6 was still capable of brilliant standalones like The Girl Who Waited and The Doctor’s Wife, maybe it was only the arc that overall let it down. Maybe Series 6 was just a failed experiment. So it’s reassuring that Moffat has said any arc business has now been put to bed permanently, and so maybe Series 7 will give us more beautiful standalones like The Girl Who Waited.

Perhaps that’s a reason to keep hoping.  THOMAS COOKSON

Is Christmas such a drag?

Then join some like-minded souls for a live watching of the classic Doctor Who adventure Time and The Rani. The legendary story will form the basis of the 2011 Fish Custard Christmas Party on Wednesday 21st December. All you’ll need is alcohol, internet access and to have no taste whatsoever. You don’t even need to wear clothes or talk to anybody. It’ll just be like a school disco. Stay tuned to our various sites for details and the hashtag #welovetherani Merry Christmas!

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8

Confidential, Cut Down When I was a kid, Doctor Who, made me want to see behind the scenes. Seeing behind the scenes made me never want to leave, and one day, incredibly, got me the job of a lifetime. It did the same for Russell and David. And Mark, and Gareth, and Neil, and Paul, and Toby, and Other Toby, and Chris, and Tom and Tom, and Marcus and Piers and many more than I can count (probably seven or eight) and it's going to keep doing that for as long as it is allowed Steven Moffat, Doctor Who Magazine 440, October 2011 I've praised Doctor Who and the BBC for bringing us such an informative behind-the-scenes look at our favourite show, in the form of Doctor Who Confidential.

Educational for adults and children alike, it was the perfect companion for a show that has single-handily revived big budget family drama in the UK. After watching an episode of Confidential, with its detailed look at how an episode was made, how certain effects were done etc - how many people would learn off that? How many children would say how 'cool' it is, and then be inspired to be an actor/director/effects maker etc, after watching it?

But now its been axed.

Anyone who knows me will know how much I utterly despise reality shows that involve singing. You've got corporations and networks spending millions, so that greedy record companies can leech off some kid for a year, before they move on to someone else to carry on their vampiric tendencies. It doesn't inspire anybody, only brainwashing millions and producing some utterly shit music in the process. I understand that people enjoy that sort of stuff, but why does it have to have such a massive impact on other programming, and indeed, our lives? It’s wrong, tasteless and shouldn’t happen. But it does.

Where am I going with this? Read on...

The BBC have axed or cut budgets on a shedload of programmes and made many people jobless. Be it drama, comedy or educational. Yet they still feel fit to pay an INITIAL £22,000,000 on reality show 'The Voice'. To me, it just smacks of desperation, so they can compete in a 'my singing contest is better than your singing contest' dick-measuring competition with ITV. I'm sorry, I thought the BBC was above all that. Always at the forefront, always producing new and exciting things. That's what Confidential was. It may have tired in recent years, but all that needed was a simple refreshing of the show, not

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 axing it. Where will children look for inspiration now? Will their dream job be that of filling out an application form, so they'll be sold out by a nasty record company? You just have to look around, hear people speak, to see how much television affects people these days.

This isn't even an argument about the demise of Confidential anymore, it's about the state of media today. Programming and jobs are being cut right across the board because money is tight, so how on earth the BBC can justify paying obscene amounts of licence-payers money on tacky copycat shows, as well as the wages of untalented employees, is beyond me. This is NOT what the people want, what we want is for the BBC to carry on being exciting, original and inspiring. Buying a Dutch-made singing contest made big in America, isn't exciting, original or inspiring. It's shit. A big white, doggy piece at that. And it’s being rubbed in our faces. Cutting the budgets of successful radio shows that cost a few hundred quid a month and making behind-the-scenes people redundant, so they can afford a multi-million quid ‘talent contest’. Yeah, makes sense to me too…

This isn’t just about The Voice though – BBC Three have axed a few decent programmes that offered something and renewed some which, quite frankly, don’t deserve it. It’s personal preference, I know, but the BBC are in real danger of snuffing out genuine talent, in favour of mediocrity and foreign imports - which they’ll blame on the budget cuts like everything else. The only reason why Steven Moffat isn’t hobnobbing in Hollywood is because the BBC offered him the chance to make his own programmes – will we lose people of his ilk because there won’t be enough opportunities to go around?

However, this may not be the end of DWC - you'll just have to put your hand in your pocket (again) to pick it up on a DVD boxset. How many 7 year-olds can afford to do that? I can't even afford to do that!

Some likeminded fans have set up a campaign to save Confidential (http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/savedwc), whilst it’s probably in vain, it’s important to show to the BBC that they can’t do what they want and people should just accept it. The petition has gained 55,500 signatures and the team behind it is currently waiting for a reply from the BBC. A group of podcasters have even got together to record a Christmas song ‘Lets Save Confidential’, which could be construed as a spoof of Doctor in Distress…thankfully, it’s a little bit better! You can find it at http://www.netconjurer.co.uk/confidential/index.html You’ve got to ask yourself though, would these fans be as creative if it wasn’t for Doctor Who? I know what the answer is.

Sadly the next generation have had some of that inspiration taken away from them.

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8

The (Not So) Great Who Robbery I don’t mean to keep on moaning about things, I’m actually quite an easy-going gentleman. (Well, after about six pints or so!) But as I write this the BBC (or BBC Worldwide) have dropped their second bollock by announcing an official convention, with Matt Smith and Steven Moffat. Great news! Well, not really. To get into the convention, you have to part with £99 which doesn’t include autographs (£20/25 per signature, depending on whichever person you want to sign) and photographs at the same price. (For our international readers that’s $158USD, just for the entry ticket for one day of events!)

I’m not for one minute saying that you shouldn’t go, as that’s up to you, but surely you can see that this is just a blatant rip-off?

Using Doctor Who as a tool to rake in money in the most obscene way possible – by ripping off the very people who love it.

And I’ve not even mentioned the best bit yet – Children aren’t really welcome...

You heard me right, Children & Families - the very people the show is made for, are NOT advised to attend. What does the convention have? Lap Dancers with Cybermen masks on? I’m sorry, I just don’t understand. Doctor Who is supposed to be for EVERYONE, not just those adults fortunate enough to have bags of money at their disposal. Of course the FAQ’s section of the site gives some half-arsed excuses such as ‘it’ll spoil the magic’. Or perhaps the opportunity to fleece adults with cash on the hip, is far too good to turn down?

It’s interesting to note that the last official convention (in Longleat in 1983) was affordable for all (the equivalent of around a tenner today) and children were permitted. Would it not be better to charge a reasonable price? It’s not as if they’ll be making any losses and the promotion it would give Doctor Who, as a franchise (I do despise that word) would mean that it’ll be received warmly and lauded by the public for giving them the opportunity to meet the stars from their favourite telly show. Instead, all they’re doing is alienating people and it really doesn’t help when they’re flogging tickets 6 weeks before Christmas either…

All of this has made me wonder why Doctor Who has become this cash cow that it doesn’t have to be. Success is a great thing, but it shouldn’t come to the extent that it alienates its loyal fans, the very people who keep it going. I’m not going to the official convention because I can’t afford it. Does that make me less of a fan? Am I missing out? Am I bollocks! I just hope that one day the BBC will think ‘Are we damaging our reputation by rolling out these events and charging prices which the normal working person can’t really afford?’ But they won’t, as they’ve got money to make. Expect another record year for the profits of BBC Worldwide in 2012 (and they’ll still be cutting budgets and sacking people!)

Sadly, fans will still pay it, as they are caught up in the corporate machine that tells them YOU’RE MISSING OUT if you don’t go. You don’t know you’re doing it, but you do. It’s

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 like when you walk into a supermarket for some milk and come out with more items than you intended. It’s automatically there, ingrained in peoples minds “Oooh I’ll never get to see these people again”, you’ll think. You will. It’s called waiting. Maybe if people said NO on principle, the BBC might change their minds? But as I said, people will always pay it, desperate to see people they see on television. It’ll sell out and the organisers will think its okay to continue to fleece Doctor Who fans, as ‘they’ll snap anything up’. Is there anyone that doesn’t think that’s not quite right? People will probably point out the exhibitions, the various demonstrations and Q&A’s make up for the price. Is that really worth £99 though?

You could go to the Doctor Who Experience in London for a lot less. And we had Confidential for many years before the short-sighted decision to axe it. And at least kids could watch and learn from it. But did it spoil the magic for them, I wonder?

Sometimes Moffat must do his nut in, due to the antics of the utter buffoons he has to work for. In the last 12 months, we’ve had the new controller of BBC One throwing his weight around and commenting on when and how the next series will be broadcast, only for Moffat to dispute that. Do I think Moffat approves of this money-making exercise? From what I know of him, no he probably doesn’t. Do I think he has a choice? No, he probably doesn’t.

How long will it be before he gets sick of it all and goes elsewhere to develop programmes? The man turned his back on Jackson, Spielberg and 3 Tin-Tin films, believe me, money isn’t his motivation. What is his motivation is the chance to develop his own programmes. But would he want to work with people who obviously don’t have a clue and go over his head to dirty the reputation of a show he has helped to rebuild? No, he wouldn’t. And where would that leave Doctor Who in the end?

I’m in a mind to say: shove your convention up your arse BBC Worldwide, I’d much prefer to hand over cash for a proper fan convention, people who actually CARE about the show and its fans.

(But I won’t!)  DANIEL GEE

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8

Doctor Who and the Six Stages of Grief You know you’re in trouble when they change the actor playing the Doctor and you are swept away on a stormy emotional sea for the next twelve months. That is what happened to me, though it took a very dull management workshop on change for me to realize it.

(You have to pity a team led by someone who relates all management advice to her Doctor Who experiences, but that’s another issue entirely.)

Remember back. Christmas 2009 and New Year 2010. To the excess of food, booze and pointless gifts, add a double episode. Not just any double episode. We know this is the end of the Tenth Doctor. We know ‘he’ will knock three times. We know the Time Lords are back.

I started 2010 quivering with anticipation. I was genuinely tense and almost physically shaking as ‘The End of Time’ part two began. I feel far less foolish about this than perhaps I should, since my better half goes through a similar experience every time Newcastle United play.

And then it happened, as I knew it would. An explosion of golden light, some painful facial contortions and the freshly hatched Eleventh Doctor appeared on our screens. He did a creditable job with very little dialogue to work with - just a catalogue of body parts (legs, arms, fingers, eyes, nose, chin), a moment to bemoan the lack of ginger hair and the sudden realization of imminent danger. Then the credits rolled and I was left… …angry.

I was ambushed by anxiety, fear, a moment of denial and then, yes, anger.

Let’s take a moment to consult Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s classic ‘change curve’. Originally conceived as a way to map the path through grief, it is now used to help managers understand how people deal with large-scale change.

Step one: Shock Step Two: Denial Step Three: Anger Check. Check. Check. At this rate, I’ll be well on my to stability by about January 5th.

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 No such luck. I had three months to wait before I could spend any time with Eleven (Matt was just too informal, Smith had too many echoes of John Smith – both suggested acceptance that I just didn’t feel. Eleven he stayed for quite some time.)

I didn’t get on with series five. I loved elements of it. I was able to dissect episodes and offer critical analysis with the best of the Ming Mongs. But I couldn’t embrace the Doctor. I secretly loathed his funny, alienesque bone structure. I brooded resentfully on his elbow patches. I sorrowfully recalled the Tennant years. And I bloody hated bow ties.

Bastard. I was now deeply and fully immersed in Stage Four: Depression In October 2010, I left the UK to spend six months in South East Asia. In January 2011, while in Vietnam, I was desperate enough buy series five on iTunes. It took seven hours to download each episode, but I was recovering from some spectacular food poisoning and I NEEDED SOME WHO! So began my journey of recovery. Through Vietnam and into Cambodia, I re-watched and re-digested the beginning of the Smith years. After so many months in the wilderness, I rediscovered my funny, sad, angry and, yes, glorious Doctor. I was successfully coming through Stage Five: Acceptance So where am I now? I can safely say I am in the final stage with a vengeance.

Wobbly with excitement as ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’ burst back into my living room; writing for fanzines; persuading my infinitely generous husband to come to Gallifrey 2012 with me. Yes, I am finally back on the road to normality with Stage Six: Reintegration And I can finally say it. Matt Smith, you are one of the great Doctors. I bloody love you.  CHLOE HARDY

You can follow Chloe on Twitter @vauxhallwoman and if you’re into your travelling Chloe also writes a fine blog at http://hardcowtravels.com Check it out!

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8

We Are Da Management

Now we all think we can write a series of Doctor Who. But what would happen if the bigwigs down in Cardiff actually listened to us fans? We’ve enlisted the help of those people who used to do surveys for Family Fortunes and they’ve been everywhere on the worldwide web (as well as in some ‘dirty and seedy establishments’ – McDonalds) and asked fans what they would like to see in their dream series’.

Here are the findings: Episode 1 – The Return of John Smith Written By Steven Moffat Another tedious episode where The Doctor has got to use the name ‘John Smith’ at least 617 times in a 45-minute episode, just to give a ‘nod’ to the Classic Series. Which is strange, as The Doctor didn’t actually use the name John Smith all that much in the Classic Series anyway.

Episode 2 – The Rani Returns Written By Russell T. Davies st The Rani (still played by Kate O’Mara) crash lands on Earth in the 21 Century, after she was shot down by Sgt. Benton, who has chucked in selling used cars and has somehow rejoined the army at the age of 65. The Rani hits her head on the console and regenerates into some soap vixen. Let’s say Louisa Lytton (who apart from showing her acting qualities in the glorious American Pie: The Book of Love, also shares a name with a Classic Doctor Who villain. See – it’s written in the stars! That’s if she isn’t opening a branch of Kwik Fit, the day filming starts, of course)

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 Episode 3 – The Face of The Rani Written By Russell T. Davies Part 2 of this classic chronicle, as The Rani blows up The Doctor and his TARDIS and it’s up to Benton to clean up after them. Although The Doctor tricks The Rani and it’s her TARDIS that she blows up. Which leaves a nasty taste in her mouth. The Doctor manages to wriggle away from her clutches at exactly the right time, before he explodes right before her watching face. It’s gripping stuff. Or so The Rani thinks.

Episode 4 – Blood of a Cheerleader Written by Joss Whedon The internet literally goes into meltdown as Joss Whedon (writer of Buffy, don’t you know!) writes a Doctor Who episode. Writing the rest of the episode summary is pointless, as fans would be gushing over it anyway, so it doesn’t matter how terrible it is.

Episode 5 – Love and War Written by Paul Cornell and Steven Moffat Another adaptation if a Paul Cornell New Adventures novel, which is boycotted by the same smelly, 40-something who got angry and boycotted Human Nature/Family of Blood.

This novel would have seen the introduction of Bernice Summerfield, so the Moff replaces her with Jenny (The Doctor’s Daughter) and ruins the episode.

Episode 6 – The Greatest Sherlock In The Galaxy Written by Steven Moffat This episode sees Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman guest star as their characters from Sherlock as they investigate a mysterious theft in old London town. Somebody has half inched a batch of oyster cards from a newspaper kiosk (the owner of which is played

by Dick Van Dyke) - only a trail of slime, a ransom note made with letters from the Radio Times and left-over cider are the clues. This is the Doctor-lite episode of the series, as he is stuck on the Northern Line. Expect thrills, laughs and tedious clichés in this thriller!

Episode 7 - The Sum of The Cybermen Written by Eric Saward & Christopher H Bidmead The Cybermen return and this time they seek out The Doctor who is the only one who can reprogram them to calculate a mysterious sum, which was given to them by a unknown Timelord. What that sum is, you’ll never find out as you’ll be switching over to watch the omnibus repeat of Hollyoaks, which will be far more entertaining.

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 Episode 8 – The Dalek Invasion of Mars Written by Mark Gatiss Yes, it’s Daleks vs. Ice Warriors, what more do you want? Well an explanation for people who don’t know who are what the Ice Warriors are for a start. But you’re not getting one.

Episode 9 – The Cold War Written by Mark Gatiss Part 2, as The Doctor finally does something and makes the chief Ice Warrior his dinner and raconteurs him with tales about peace and Rose Tyler. Expect more explosions and dialogue that delves into a 50 year-old back-story that doesn’t actually physically exist anywhere anymore.

Episode 10 – The Deadly Sea Written by Steven Moffat Yet another Silurian story that copies from the original, as The Doctor tires – but fails – to persuade humans and Silurians to get along. Throw in some lessons about evolution, some cracks about humans/apes, a few anti-war messages and poorly CGI-ed tongue attacks and sexual references that will make all the virgins giggle. You know the rest.

Episode 11 – Amy Noble Written by The Doctor Who Fan Fiction Community What will prove to be THE best episode of Doctor Who ever (well, until next week anyway) - get your tissues out, as we learn that former companions Amy Pond and Donna Noble may share something more than red hair. Ever wondered where Amy gets her fiery temper? Where were Amy’s parents during The Eleventh Hour? Why do you think Amy gave birth to a Time Baby? Better get that second box of tissues for an emotional ride that will drain you of all your tears.

Episode 12 – Omega’s Stratagem Written by Steven Moffat Yes, the secret villain all along is someone who only appeared in two Doctor Who stories in it’s 50 year-run and someone who 75% of Doctor Who fans know nothing about. He was the one who sent The Rani’s TARDIS off course, he was one who told The Cybermen about ‘the sum’ and he was the one who invented Sarah Palin. Yes, the man IS a monster but this Doctor Who - it’s all about monsters!

Episode 13 – The End Written by Steven Moffat and Russell T. Davies And it is the end. The end of everything. Doctor Who is cancelled as ratings fall to just 200 people. Funnily enough, the same 200 people who got together to plan this series. Oh and Rose Tyler pops up at the end to just remind us what an epic character she was.

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8

Doctor Who Down Under: Armageddon 2011 Well what can I say? Armageddon was fantastic! It was held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre on the Banks of the Yarra River in Melbourne Australia, a wonderful venue, with ease of access by public transport and car. It was within walking distance from my Accommodation at the YHA Central Hostel, literally straight across the river, less than 1 minutes’ walk - and with Crown Casino right next door - it was perfect for after convention drinks! But more on that later lets get down to telling you about the Convention.

I don’t know what Conventions are like overseas, but in Australia we call them ‘Pop Culture Expo’s’, as they’re made up of a variety of fandoms, not just Television, but Anime, film, Video games, comics and cartoons. But all the regulars call them ‘Cons’ for short. As a member of the Doctor Who Club of Australia (DWCA), our conventions are called just that, conventions! But we do have a special name for them, which is ‘Whovention”, Clever huh?

So due to my contacts, I got in early and for free (yippee!) and helped ‘bump in’ on Friday afternoon, despite getting caught up in the Occupy Melbourne protest’s in Swanton Street, I must admit that was fun! So even though I had been up since 4am, drove over an hour to get my flights from Port Macquarie to Melbourne, caught 2 flights, and drove from Armidale to Kempsey the day before, I was still full of energy!

After I helped the DWCA set up and did a catch up with friends, I decided to explore Melbourne. If you’ve never been to this city before, please do as it’s easy to get around, public transport in the form of trams, buses and trains are plentiful and the people are really friendly. Melbourne is the cultural centre of Australia - it reminds people a lot of Europe and the UK due to it’s architecture and weather. So pack an umbrella - in Melbourne it can be 4 seasons in one day, as I found out!

So on Saturday morning I got up 7.30am, even though I woke up at something like 5am th due to sheer excitement, and got ready for my day of Cosplaying. I went as a Femme 10 Doctor, complete with Converses’, Sonic Screwdriver, brown suede long coat and Pinstripes. I wore my hair in Pigtales, as this worked better with my look, and went to meet th my fellow convention buddy, Martin from Canberra, who went as an excellent 8 Doctor!

We walked across the bridge to Armageddon together, arm-in-arm. Just then, it started to sprinkle with rain and we went straight to the head of the already long line (which went out to the street!) and entered the con.

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 The layout for Armageddon was that there was an exhibitors hall, with a space put aside for Autographs and Photos, with a Main Stage upstairs for panels, shows and Cosplaying, nd as well as a 2 stage next to the Exhibitors hall for more panels. There is a huge hallway outside the doors and the convention centre then backs onto the banks of the Yarra River.

Once we got in, the first thing I did was to catch up with my old friend, Comic Book Artist Stewart McKenny from Brisbane, he was a guest and was selling his amazing Doctor Who prints, as well as his other prints that he’s done for DC Comics and his work on the Star Wars: The Clone Wars comics. We had a great chat with him and his partner Wendy.

Stewart is a massive Doctor Who fan and we let him jump into our photoshoots, due to his awesome artwork! So after that, Martin and I ran over and lined up for Autograph tokens and I was one of the first people in line, thank god I did, because of the layout - the line for Autograph tokens was nearly a 3 hour wait! I got Autograph and Photo tokens for Louise Jameson (Leela, companion to the 4th Doctor) and I was in fangirl heaven! We then went and walked around and looked at all the stalls before heading over to meet Mark and Morgan Sheppard, I also introduced myself to Louise on behalf of the DWCA as she was going to be in Sydney after Armageddon for an event for the club. Louise was lovely, very sweet and answered my questions about her time on the show, as there weren’t very many people waiting to see her.

She told me that the leather leotard she wore was a bit tight in the crotch, Tom Baker was very difficult to work with, I quote “He just didn’t want me there.

So he was horrible because he could be.” Louise was only in the show for 9 months. She said that she loved working on The Talons of Weng Chiang, as it was such a well-written story.

And Underworld was great fun too.

I said hello to Sylvester McCoy as well, I had already met him in June at our Whovention event as he was our guest and he took great fun in telling me to be quiet, wanting to talk on the phone with my mum, when she rang and was taken back when I presented him with a crocheted plushie version of himself that I made for him. He was great, telling me that I didn’t make a wally of myself last time and that he enjoyed himself immensely! I then started talking to Mark and Morgan Sheppard who were seated beside Louise, and Mark proceeded to tell me that he was booked to host the Doctor Who Symphony Spectacular in Melbourne, in February, but he only got the contract that morning. So I was getting the inside scoop! He also told me that Canton was one of the Doctor’s friends, and that Canton must have more adventures with the Doctor due to him being invited to Lake Silencio for the Doctor’s death. So I asked him if he was going back to Doctor Who and he said “Well of course, Canton has to have those adventures doesn’t he?” I asked him why did his dad play his older self, Mark told me, “When Steven (Moffat) told me about Canton and his older self turning up at the death of the Doctor and they wanted to pack heaps of makeup on me and make me look about 70, I said you don’t need to do that, I’ll just ask my dad to play my older self, as we had done that before as he asked me to be his younger self, so he owed me one.” Mark and Morgan were both lovely, they said that Matt Smith

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 was just “Crazy” Arthur Darvill was, and I quote Morgan Sheppard “Amazing, such a talented actor, he’s better than Matt and will go a long way” And that Alex Kingston is a real class act and so much fun, and Karen Gillian is a real sweetheart. They both loved working on Doctor Who and I even convinced Morgan Sheppard to come to a Convention for the DWCA, scoring his email address, and he got mine! I was a very happy fangirl that day!

Next Martin and I went wandering and we met other Doctor Who cosplayers, Lots of Fourth Doctors, Tenth and Eleven’s, there was also a Five, Six and my friend was Amy from The Beast Below Episode. There was also 2 full life-sized Daleks, a Cyberman and my friend Kalinda was a Dalek girl! We even had a girl dressed as a K9!

We had a short Photoshoot at 1pm then went to see Rob Lloyd’s Show ‘Who me’ which is his one man show about his obsession with Doctor Who, which he discovered whilst at University, studying Drama and Teaching. He’s from a country town called Dubbo so I know full well how he felt being so isolated as a Whovian, as I live in Armidale myself, which is also a country town. His show was hilarious, insightful and well done - he puts himself ‘on trial’ to see Lisa and Rob whether Doctor Who improved or ruined his life. He realized that Doctor Who has helped him through some of the worst times in his life and helped him to meet his future wife. If you ever get to see this show, it’s a must as a Whovian. I found I learnt a lot about myself as a fan, as Rob hit’s the nail on the head when it comes to explaining this obsession that we have with this great show.

We then went and watched the Kamehamana contest, which is an imitation of the way they fight on Dragonball Z. It was hilarious and a lot of fun, a kid who was about 8 years old won it, against full grown adults (including Batman!) We then watched the Cosplay Parade and it was amazing watching all the great Cosplays. Doctor Who was featured, but it was more Star Wars and Batman, as well as Anime, computer games and steampunk. There was a version of Mario and Luigi as princesses (like Princess Peach) and when they were asked why they dressed up as Mario and Luigi princesses, instead of Peach, they said, and I quote, “Because they’re Sluts!” The whole place just went into hysterics. It was priceless!

We then ended the day across the road at the Casino, had drink with Stewart McKenny and a night at the Burlesque, run by Gotham Fatale. Nerdy geeky burlesque is awesome!!

They want me to do a Doctor Who Burlesque in the future, I so want to be Tegan for that!

Day 2 started early again and Martin and I went as Capt Jack - my Femme Jack was very popular! I brought a replica toy machine gun on the day to complete the Cosplay, as my Indiana Jones one was crap! It was hot and sunny - and in 3 kilo RAF Great Coat in 27 degree celicus heat, with about 6 hours sleep (which meant that I was running on Adrenaline!) it was no surprise that I was tuckered out by the end of the day!

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 Martin and I found a Ten Femme Doctor and we went around Cosplaying again. After this shoot, which went on for an hour, we were all pretty hot and sweaty (thanks to the midday sun!), so we had a break for lunch, before going to the Sylvester McCoy panel, which was great! Sylvester even let me ask a question this time around as I was all hurt when he didn’t let me last time! I asked Sylvester if he had seen the Pandorica Open’s speech on Youtube that was supposed to be him - it turns out it was! He did it at DragonCon this year and was annoyed that they put it on the net - the people that did it, just shoved it in his face and asked him to read it, he had no idea that it was Matt Smith’s speech. My friend Martin and I told him it was fantastic and better than Matt’s, he pretended that he didn’t hear us and ran over with the mic and we yelled into it, “yours is better!”

Sylvester doesn’t stay still when he does panels - he walks around, darting here and there, Answering questions, making jokes and telling stories, he just loves it, If you’ve never been to his panels - go! Even if you’ve never seen his episodes, he’s such good value, and loves th the new Who too! He wants the 50 Anniversary to have as many past doctors and companions to come back in Cameo roles as possible - like spot-the-Retro-Who! He loves Matt Smith and is jealous of David Tennant cracking onto Georgia Moffat - he’s known Georgia since she was a little girl and says that she’s a delightful person and has grown into a lovely young woman, and is happy that’s she’s happy. And he couldn’t speak about his work with Peter Jackson on The Hobbit - he kept shutting himself up by (This is a pic of Sylvester with my friend Mim as Ace, he was so covering his mouth and excited that there was a Ace, so he invited her up on the stage!) mumbling behind it, to everyone’s laughter.

Next we went to the Louise Jamison Panel, it was lovely and she was very honest about her time on the show - Tom Baker was impossible to work with, refusing to follow scripts and being downright awful. She stood up to him once and wished she did it more often as he was nice to her the next day. Louise loves Big Finish’s Gallifrey series as this has allowed her to explore Leela more - she wanted her character to be able to show her intelligence. ‘Uneducated but intelligent’ is how she described Leela, and the Gallifrey series shows precisely that, she thinks it’s beautiful and loves doing it. She talked about her work on Doc Martin and said that Martin Clunes was wonderful to work with and playing his wicked mother in law was a hoot! Louise loved working on Eastenders as well, but her treatment and subsequent contract termination was awful - she was treated like a number and it was shocking. But she bonded with her ‘family’ on Eastenders, like it was her own, as she once ran around the studio showing people her character’s Daughter’s O level results, with great excitement! With Louise being a single mum with 2 sons at home to support, she could relate very well to her on-screen character. Louise also likes

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 Sylvester’s idea about the 50th anniversary, but she wants Leela to return with a ‘football team of children’ behind her, when she meets The Doctor again!

We then continued to walk around and look at stuff, crammed in some more cosplaying, as we watched the Trans-Tasman Cosplay Cup final, (it’s between Australia and New Zealand and this was to decide who was to go to New Zealand to represent Australia) They were a team of girls that did a Tron/Xena Warrior princess mash-up that won. So their Xena cosplayer went. I met more people and I made so many friends that day and keep in contact with them through Facebook, What can I say? Armageddon was fantastic, a great convention with great guests and great cosplayers. We left about 7pm and went back to real life. If only Australia had as many conventions as the States - we could cosplay more often, not just every 6 or 12 months! Alas, this Whovian will just have to keep saving so she can travel over to your side of the world dear reader and see what you do over there!

If you’re ever in Australia for a Convention, try and find me, I would love to meet you and chat, laugh and cosplay together! Thanks for reading guys.

 LISA CARROLL You can follow Lisa on Twitter and Livejournal @sunflashnurse as well as on Facebook at Sunflashnurse Creations Do YOU live in a part of the world that isn’t too well known for its Doctor Who fandom? We’re looking for any fans who live in Europe, Asia or South America (we know you DO watch!) to tell us their stories of how they found Doctor Who and what state the show is in, wherever they live! E-mail us at fishcustardfanzine@googlemail.com Cheers!

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8

Dress Karen Gillan Karen has been a naughty girl. She’s only gone out without any clothes on. Now considering the potential for her to be nabbed by some weirdo (with body odour issues, rubbish trainers and a blue box emblazoned upon his chest) is quite high, can YOU help by picking out the right clothes for her, before she is forever locked up in the shed of said werido’s parents?

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8

The Other Season 12

Before I begin I have to say that this article is the very definition of 'pointlessly speculative'. I don't claim to have insider knowledge nor do I have official BBC paperwork hidden in my drawers that gives me special insight. I'm just making this shit up as I go along. A bit like Steven Moffat!

What I have wondering about is some of the great 'what ifs' of Dr.Who history, and my favourite 'what if' is 'what if Pertwee had stayed on after season 11?'. Yes, that old chestnut (Old chestnuts, get your old chestnuts!). We all know that with Barry Letts leaving, Katy Manning already gone and the UNIT formula waning now that it was getting harder to justify the TARDIS-up'd Doctor hanging about on Earth, Pertwee felt it was time to end. One story I've heard has it that, half-playfully, Pertwee said he would stay on if they raised his wages. What if this were true, and what if the boss at the Beeb (or whoever) wanted Pertwee to stay so much that he prised open the BBC wallet and threw some more cash at the Mighty Nosed One? What, then, would season 12 have been like.....?.....?? ((....cue misty wobbly camera haze as we imagine what if.....))

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The first thing to say is that the first and final stories would probably not change all that much. 'Robot' and 'Revenge of the Cybermen' are pretty much basic, traditional bog-standard Dr.Who, which is no bad thing. Ness, writing in DWM, said that 'Robot' was the televisual equivalent of TV Comic repeating a Pertwee strip with Tom Baker drawn on top, so Pertwee would get the chance to drive Bessie around one more time with no ill effects. Terrance Dicks would need to pad out the story by a few minutes to gloss over the 'choosing what to wear' scene in Part One, and the bit where The Doctor takes to the stage and performs some buffoonery would probably end up being replaced by some Venusian Karate. Hai!! Other than that, the story itself would basically be the same. Ditto 'Revenge', which would finally tick that '3rd Dr vs. Cybermen' box legitimately and give Pertwee one last chance to do some champion gurning as the Cyberleader gives him a Sea Devilstyle neck rub in Part Three. No, not the shoulders!!!

The real question is how much the intervening three stories would differ from their Tom counterparts. The other two might be traditional stories, rescued from the script bin or dashed off by Terrance as a going-away present, but the middle three are Hinchcliffe and Holmes setting out their stall, a trio of body terror-tastic tales. How would the Pertwee Doctor, or indeed Pertwee the actor, fit in with these?

The straight answer is, not well.

Take ‘Ark in Space’. We’ve had icky gooey alien monsters before, and the Pertwee era had no end of biologicallybased horrors menacing our heroes, from deadly gween goo and giant maggots, to primordial slime (also gween) that turned people into ape-men.

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 But what the Pertwee era never had was icky insectoid creatures actually planting their young inside the bodies of humans, waiting for them to gestate, and then transform these hapless humans into giant spider-things from the inside. You can see, even at this basic level, that the series has jumped out of the pram somewhat. The Doctor’s role in proceedings takes a different centre with Tom Baker – surrounded by all this monsterly goings-on, Tom, as an otherworldly slightly above it all bohemian (before the term became the cliché we now see it as), can navigate us through it because he isn’t looking at it from the point of view of nasty monsters who the goodies have to fight off. This Doctor is an alien looking at an alien race which is doing something icky to another alien race, and not out of evil (like Daleks, Ogrons, gween maggots or Ice Warriors) but out of a biologically hard-wired survival instinct. In one of the best of many genius scenes in ‘Ark’, the Doctor clamps himself into a mind-reading device, not for the standard reasons we see such devices in Who, but so that he can show us the Wirrn’s POV. The Pertwee Doctor was often above it all, but more in a gentleman at his private club kind of way. After five years of him being the cuddly father figure there is no way he could have been slotted into the ‘Ark’ scripts as we know it without it feeling downright weird. Tom, as the boggly eyed arty weirdo, can allow his character to both invade (stride in and take centre stage) and be invaded (when he undergoes mental torture or mindscans in his stories, you get the distinct sense he is being mentally assaulted on every level, and his pained expressions make us wince with the realism of it all). Pertwee’s Doctor occasionally got a bit upset when having to grapple with beaurocracy but he displayed nowhere near this level of emotional and physical vulnerability.

Remember how Pertwee hated the poster from ‘Colony in Space’ which

showed him expressing fear at the IMC robot!

And remember Harry is here too. Two upper-class male figures with silly sideburns and flared suit trousers would just look silly…

‘The Sontaran Experiment’ feels at first like a little two-parter that Pertwee could easily have done, necessitating perhaps Harry doing all the jumping-around Dartmoor cliffs that Pertwee, with his back, would be unable to do. But… again, there is an uneasy harshness of tone which rubs up wrongly against the cosy paternal Pertwee Doctor. The realism of the starved and tortured Galsec men, the sheer brutality of Styre’s inventive tortures… this isn’t a situation the Pertwee Doc could solve with a swish of his cape and an anecdote about Old Boney. The pleasing symmetry of having Pertwee again encounter the Sontarans would have been the only ‘obvious’ aspect of this story. No, the Pertwee Doc would again be out of his depth. Paul Cornell once defended the McCoy Doctor as saying that here, with a Doctor of such complexity and ambiguity, was a Doctor who you could see in Auschwitz, an environment you wouldn’t put the Pertwee Doctor into. Of course that was somewhat overstating things (and DWM got letters saying why the hell would you write a Dr Who story set in Auschwitz!!) but the point stands. There are situations that the Pertwee Doctor is used to and can handle. Brutal and violent body horror are not amongst them. And that’s precisely the direction Hinchcliffe and Holmes, seeing the audience demographic was now getting wider and older, wanted to head in.

But… the biggie is ‘Genesis’.

To put it frankly, the Pertwee Doctor in ‘Genesis’ as it stands would look ridiculous and bring the whole thing crashing down. (this is assuming, of

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Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8 course, that our strange and speculative universe had everything else identical apart from the leading man!)

Partly for the reasons described above – the Doctor in ‘Genesis’ is asked to be battered and tortured and throttled and generally maltreated in a way that the Pertwee Doctor wouldn’t be able to stand nor, probably, the actor. The drama of the story comes from the way in which we are thrown totally into the violence and grubbiness of the Thousand Year War – this is not a standard TV ‘grittiness’ of, say, having the guerrillas in ‘Day of the Daleks’ wear combat fatigues, or the colonists in ‘Colony in Space’ looking a little bit unkempt, this is full-on lumpy dirty bedraggled mutated club-footed tired tensed bunker-dwelling backstabbing irradiated and gassed horror, proper nightmare World War ‘chic’. But note also the way in which the Tom Doctor relates the horror going on around him.

To the Thal who describes the weeding out of inferiors, he says, quietly, “That’s a very harsh policy.” In his conversations with Davros he takes him on as an equal, engaging in thought experiments with the man. The Pertwee Doctor was famously fond of laying out his thoughts at tedious length in the form of little moral lessons. How inappropriate would that be here? Very! In ‘Planet’ he could give “a little lecture on courage”, but to flag up the problems on Skaro, problems which are readily and horribly apparent, would smack of insensitivity… to say the least! A moralistic Doctor is not needed here, but neither is a pure ‘man of action’ – what is needed is a Doctor who takes the lead, accepting the situation as a nightmare but showing the possible ways out through example, through intellect, through bravery.

His two big speeches in the story don’t moralise, and that’s important. He doesn’t lecture to Davros, who is way too gone by now, he just gets Davros to reveal (yes, he WOULD do it!!) just how

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mad he is. And the famous “Do I have the right speech?” speech… to say this is miles away from the simplistic lessons of ‘Planet’ et al is to understate it. It isn’t tacked on. For all its conciseness it gets to the point and presents it as a moral problem, a debate, with his own companion taking the opposing view.

The Pertwee Doctor tells people what to think. The Tom Doctor takes that they think as a given and engages with them on that level. We’re not in ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’ country anymore…

To wrap up then, it’s pretty obvious that there is no way on Earth that a Pertweestarring Season 12 could have turned out with the full-on Hinchcliffe and Holmes horror. Even HInchcliffe, as keen as he evidently was to stamp his own signature on the programme, would have hesitated to unleash his vision on the public whilst the cuddly old Pertwee was still at the helm of the Tardis. With Pertwee in Season 12 Holmes would have had no option but to suck in his breath and reign in his wilder ideas until the programme underwent a change of leading man. ‘Genesis’ would have had to undergo an aesthetic revamp, playing down the Nazi parallels and simplifying, perhaps, the moral issues. ‘Ark in Space’ would need to make the Wirrn more obviously and simplistically baddies, and without any of the unnerving (or unNerva-ing!) bodyphobic overtones. And ‘Sontaran Experiment’ would have consisted of 90% Terry Walsh or Ian Marter leaping about some rocks.

So let’s be thankful that BBC bigwigs, if the story is true, did turn down Pertwee’s price-hike request. Because with a new man in the title role, Season 12 was given the excuse it needed to let its ideas go wild… and the programme would never be quite the same again.  DAVID MacGOWAN David MacGowan runs the fine paper fanzine ‘Rassilon’s Rod’. You can check out his fine rod on Facebook, search for Rassilon’s Rod

Fish Fingers and Custard Issue 8

Two Hearted Timelords circulatory system, but for another purpose altogether?

What if it was there to count time?

The second heart exists to function as a type of metronome, ticking off regular intervals of time – a type of universal clock to help a Timelord navigate through all the “timey wimey” bits by creating a constant to relate it to (something akin to the GPS signal system, only on a much bigger scale).

For all the years I’ve been watching Doctor Who, I’ve never even batted an eyelid at the notion that Timelords have two hearts.

Why shouldn’t they? They’re aliens, and aliens could have three arms, two heads and monstrously huge egos – and it wouldn’t matter, because they’re aliens.

It seems, however, that my screenings of Doctor Who in China have prompted some of my students to really think about it.

Recently I was having lunch in the Uni canteen, when I was approached by a pair of my post-grad MD students, who wanted to tell me about this new idea they’d just had.

I carefully explained to them that I’m not a doctor, so telling me about research theories in medicine was likely to make me sit very still, and my eyes would probably glaze over.

“Oh, no, nothing like that”, came the reply, “this is about Doctor Who’s hearts.”

Their theory ran like this: What if the second heart wasn’t there just to help push blood around the

This time function is also part of the regenerative system, firing in response to the extended stopping of the primary heart. This would account for why the duplicate Doctor living with Rose would age and be unable to regenerate….

Of course, this also gives rise to speculation about how many hearts Melody Pond has.

This dual circulatory system would also push a greater volume of oxygenated blood into the brain, allowing a faster rate of thought, and to the muscles, giving a Timelord greater strength and stamina than a comparable human.

They attributed the evolution of such a fantastic organ to the mutagenic properties of the raw Vortex energy on early pioneers of time travel.

Now, these two students are both qualified cardiologists, and as such know an awful lot more about, well, just about everything than I do.

And even if they’re wildly clutching at theoretical straws, I have to give them top marks for imagination!  STUART BEATON

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HOW MUCH?