Back in ‘the classic era’ fans, for whom the common–occasionally truthful–complaint about Doctor Who was how cheap it was, and the sting of that affront, led to what-iffing about what Doctor Who would look like with ‘real’ time and, more importantly, money put into it.

We got, or we thought we had got, our answer in 2005 when nu-Who began.  Nu-Who certainly looked the part, and we all know it was a runaway, and long-lasting, success.  It was only later, perhaps much later, that RTD and/or Steven Moffat fessed up that nu-Who had been moderately, or modestly, budgeted.  But the ‘real’ money, in the form of a mouse, was yet to come.

But it also wasn’t the first time ‘real’ money was thrown into Doctor Who.

The bridge between the classic and new eras landed on May 14, 1996 when Fox made a one-off TV movie which the Tour lovingly calls ‘the TVM’ of The Enemy Within.  SO much has been written about the genesis and evolution of the TVM into something which could even tie into the classic era that we’ll leave that to your dogged determination.

But more about the money.  So much of it, especially the TARDIS,, was up on screen that it added an all-new gloss and offered a glimpse of what Doctor Who could be, or could have been.  The failure of the TVM, owing to the fact that it didn’t get a series pickup, wasn’t down to a lack of money or effort, and especially not Paul McGann. It’s just that Doctor Who was still too foreign a concept for mass adoption by American audiences in 1996.  Even as a one-off it was a welcome change in perspective from the cloistered existence of 1963-89, but a disquieting one as well.

It could be argued, and with good reason, that the trams-Atlantic partnership led to a production that lacked that certain British-ness which was all part of what made Doctor Who what it was.  Money can’t solve that problem, but it is a symptom, and a lesson to be learned.  30 years ago.  Too bad it wasn’t when the mouse came-a-calling.

Or just because, as these things go.

Just as Doctor Who fans across the years make a claim for ‘their era’ of Doctor Who and ‘their’ Doctor, so it is with another immortal character who has been portrayed and reinvented many, many times down through the years, Sherlock Holmes.

During this otherwise fallow period the Tour Brain Trust has been going through the immaculately produced Granada series of Sherlock Holmes true-to-period adaptations from the 1980s which starred Jeremy Brett, whom the Tour claims as ‘our’ Holmes.  In the Series 3 story ‘The Musgrave Ritual’ who should show up but none other than Ian Marter, good ol’ Harry Sullivan as Inspector Fereday.  It was a small scene insofar as the police presence in the story was almost purely perfunctory, still it was nice to see Marter again.

At a time in Classic Who where companions stayed for multiple seasons, and, yes we know that Marter was technically a companion for more than one season [a further digression–Terror of the Zygons was supposed to be a Season 12 story and in The Android Invasion, even as Harry Sullivan, he was just a guest actor like any other UNIT member], Marter is a little too easy to overlook.

Add to that it’s worth remembering that by some definition a ‘safety’ companion, cast even before Tom Baker was cast in the event the fourth Doctor was older so that Marter handle more of the physical action which in turn meant Marter was a one and done essentially.

Marter’s appearance in ‘The Musgrave Ritual’ was his last acting credit.  The episode aired in 1986, and he died later that year aged 42.  Too damn young.

One of the down sides to a long-running Doctor Who website, in a period where events have once again ventured into an era of uncertainty, is that the impelling force of the new, however distant they sometimes were, often ebbs away.  As of this writing, the Tour is sitting on a decent number of classic series to do re-cap in all of their HD goodness, but is lacking the time, and as important, the inspiration to get the Tour to an evermore ‘complete’ state.

And then two episodes of The Daleks Master Plan were recovered, and even better given the release of so much of the classic canon worldwide, immediately available for Tour inclusion.  Huzzah!  Motivation, of a fashion, restored.

Except that it also presents an odd problem, one that perhaps only (literally only) matters to the Tour Honchos.  Episodes 2, 5, and 10, which have been around for a while and have been released in glorious standard definition whereas foundling episodes 1 and 3 have been distributed in HD.  As the Tour strives for presenting Doctor Who in the best possible quality, what then to do?

The previous screencaps for The Daleks Master Plan, given that they represented only 25% of a epic story, and that they were done in 2010, were (past tense intended) a real mixed bag,  Now it’s time for a more modern gloss…

In ever-glorious SD, just as it was made over 12 weeks in 1965 and 1966.

━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━

Looking at Master Plan (both the ‘old’ episodes and the ‘new’ly recovered taken in context) there are a few points of note:

• It’s so, so easy to forget given the pure distance of time what steel Hartnell projects as the Doctor.
• Nick Courtney as the point of view character in the first, newly recovered, episode ‘The Nightmare Begins’,  after the usual skepticism, very quickly gets thrown into the TARDIS crew.  With that kind of rapport it’s easy to see why he would later become a fixture within the program.
• Katarina was just too passive a character to last long in the program.
• At 12 parts and with crushing deadlines–even with Nation and Spooner trading off scripts–the inclusion of the Meddling Monk, as delightful as he was in The Time Meddler, smacked a little of desperation to keep the plot moving (creaking) along.
• It’s such a pity more missing episodes haven’tseen the light of day.  Can you imagine how fascinating it would be to finally see, in full, The Power of the Daleks or The Evil of the Daleks.

New-ish caps for The Daleks Master Plan are now online.

Who would’ve thought that the first ‘new’ Who (in the most generous sense of the word) in 2026 would be a William Hartnell story, or at least a (small) part of one.

For the first time since episodes of The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear were recovered in 2013, two episodes (episodes 1 & 2) of The Daleks Master Plan have been returned to the archives.  The Daleks Master Plan was the apotheosis of Dalek-mania–all wrapped up in a 12-part epic tale which bridged 1965 to 1966 alternately written by Dennis Spooner and Terry Nation.  The recovery now means 5 out 12 episodes exist.  A great average in baseball, but rather abysmal in any other context.

Two Down.  Ninety-five (the number of episodes still extant) to go.

That Patrick Troughton sure does get around.  It might seem as though we here at the Tour are purposefully, perhaps even obsessively, hunting him down (and out), but it really is pure serendipity on our part.  Still with a CV as long as his, ‘collisions’ such as these were inevitable.

Actually what drew the Tour to the 1958 ITC production of ‘The Invisible Man,’ along with an ongoing fascination with that fare, was Deborah Watling, all of 10 years old, as the niece of the titular character.  Given how much work as Troughton was doing during these years there was, that word inevitability again, even in a limited 2×13 series, a chance for a rare pre-Who crossover between Doctor and companion.

Sadly this only happened in the credits for episode 13 of Series 1, ‘Strange Partner’. Watling had her scene at the beginning of the story while Troughton, playing a sickly, suspicious, half-owner of diamond mine, appeared in the latter half.

A near-miss, but still a miss for Miss Watling.

… as it turns out.

There is a working theory that the Tour glommed onto years ago, admittedly a complete fiction but it goes something like this:

There are only about 35 actors total working in English television at any point in time.  They all have their own shows and then spend the rest of their working life appearing on shows for the other 34.  In other words, British TV all-too-often, from the cozy murder-mysteries to the prestige dramas, feels comfy and reassuringly small.  Kinda like Doctor Who in the classic era as it happens.

So when not one but three faces familiar to Doctor Who, and from the same story no less, pop up in one of those cozy murder-mysteries it was bound to catch the attention of the Tour.  In an episode 4 of ‘Midsomer Murders’ titled ‘The Flying Club’ from 2014, amongst the cast were June Whitfield, Jacqueline King (Donna’s mom), and Bernard Cribbins, (Wilfred Mott–Donna’s grandad) all of whom appeared in The End of Time Pt I (and Pt II).  In the story the characters played by WInfield and Cribbins, both of whom have CVs longer than many arms, were in direct opposition to each other while King’s character as the mother to one of the regular, although peripheral, cast members, was somewhat off to the side.  Doubtless a more thorough search will provide more shared credits, especially between Whitfield and Cribbins.  Still it’s quite a constellation.

We look forward to finding more before The End of Our Future.

It has been far too long, nearly seven months we reckon, since the Tour’s last foray into the ramshackle realm of finding Doctor Who people in the most unexpected of places.

‘The Persuaders!’ was a British action comedy television series starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore, produced by ITC Entertainment, and initially broadcast on ITV and ABC in 1971.  It was high profile and expensive given the names involved, and is perhaps most notable as being Moore’s last of five TV series before Bond-dom beckoned.

So finding Roger Delgado in the next-to-last episode ‘To the Death, Baby’ was not all that much of a surprise.  The series was so well-funded that many recognizable British character actors of note at the time were around, even it was for only a scene or two.

Delgado was no different in that regard. in an episode whose plot involved cons within cons, Delgado was but another of the cons, running a crooked high stakes card game with counterfeit cash. It was just a single scene with Moore, and Delgado never peers out from behind dark glasses, but it’s still a Master-ly performance, and more importantly, from a Doctor Who point of view, is perhaps the last thing Delgado made before Series 8 of Doctor Who came beckoning for him …

.., in every single story.

In a holiday season without Doctor Who, it’s worth remembering that there is a hidden Christmas Special, it happened 54 years ago today.

On December 28, 1971 there was a holiday omnibus repeat of The Dæmons.   That sure sounds like a Christmas Special to us here at THT Worldwide.  In terms of pure feel, The Dæmons is much more of a Halloween story (even though the story itself takes place in April) but the joy of it all is watching the pure esprit de corps of the cast moving through the story. The stakes here are every bit as high as during any of the ‘modern’ Christmas specials, but this is a team effort, and not just the Doctor up against a series of explosions.

Of course there were other, more practical considerations at work as well.  Pertwee’s third season, Season 9 started just four days later with Day of the Daleks, so the repeat had the useful effect of reminding the public that a new Doctor Who was just around the corner.

In fact, all of Pertwee’s seasons began around the start of the year and in 1972 it just happened to start on the 1st day of the new year–a bit of a contrast to the trend set for Jodie Whittaker to have her holiday specials air on that date, including Eve of the Daleks.

Chap with wings, FIVE GOLDEN RINGS …

The TARDIS whirled on it’s way again. The Doctor listened to Sara and Steven as they recovered from their recent exertions. Sara asked, “Whatever was that place?”

“I’ve no idea,” Steven replied, “Let’s hope we never land there again.” He heard a tinkling sound and looked up to see the Doctor carrying a silver tray with three crystal wine glasses, brimful. “we so rarely get a chance to celebrate,” remarked the Doctor at their unspoken questions.

“Celebrate?” the mystified Steven asked.

“Don’t you remember? In the Police Station – it was Christmas.”

“So it was,” smiled Steven, taking the proffered glass.

“Here’s a toast. A Happy Christmas to all of us,” said the Doctor, bending a benign smile on his young companions. Then he raised his glass high, saluting a host of Absent Friends and turned away.

“And incidentally – a happy Christmas, to all of you at home.”

Some things just fall through the cracks, it must be admitted with a slight sense of shame.  Has it really been almost a year since our last foray into the (very, very) occasional series of posts examining the haphazard world of Doctor Who Production Coding?  Apparently so.

Y	The Celestial Toymaker
YY	The Space Pirates
YYY	The Monster of Peladon
4Y	Underworld
5Y	Kinda
6Y	Timelash
7Y	The Enemy Within
8Y	Love & Monsters
9Y	The Unicorn and the Wasp
10Y	The Big Bang
11Y	Cold War
12Y	The Girl Who Died
13Y	The Ghost Monument
14Y	Flux – Chapter 5: Survivors of the Flux
15Y	The Reality War

To re-cap the classic series used letter codes for each story which started with A (for An Unearthly Child) and ran to Ghost Light.  ‘I’ was never used, ‘O’ and ‘U’ sparingly, but as for the rest…

The Tour followed and even extended this into nu-Who all the way forward to Gatwa.  It’s also an incredibly handy way to sort stories.  Previous stops in this ramshackle series included stops at ‘B,’ ‘R,’ X,’ ‘L.’ ‘U” and ‘Q‘.

Y, being the penultimate letter of the regular alphabet, is all too easy to overlook, especially given its status as an emergency vowel, but that doesn’t mean the list of stories with Y in their Production Coding should likewise be overlooked,,,

Unless, of course, if you actually look at the list.  To our thinking there’s only one great story on the list, Kinda, but then there is also an oddball genre-stretcher in The Celestial Toymaker along with a ‘just-for-fun’ story in The Unicorn and the Wasp and a very-decent story in The Ghost Monument.

The rest however are, to be charitable, a really mixed bag.  There is no understating the overall importance that The Enemy Within holds in the overall history of Doctor Who as bridge between classic and nu-Who, but it was also an odd ad-mixture whose failure when, for the first and definitely not the last time, shows the peril of Doctor Who when it goes really big, as The Reality War also on this list, amply demonstrated earlier this year.

━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━○◦━○◦━

Will the Tour continue to dawdle in our meandering Production Coding quest?  Why not?