The Grand Tour

My best friend Graeme recently wrote an excellent blog entry on the DWIN site where he talked about the fan tradition of doing "The Pilgrimage," in this particular case, watching Doctor Who from the beginning. His own viewing comprised the entirety of the Tom Baker era. He admitted to a certain amount of laziness, only tackling that era. If he's lazy, I'm certainly being unimaginative by following the same route (I just don't own enough first, second or third Doctor stories to make starting at those point feasible).

But it also makes a lot of sense, since Robot did mark the formal beginning of continuous Doctor Who viewing for me. It was 1983, and everyone was crazy for Duran Duran, rugby pants and Return of the Jedi. I was starting grade nine (which would prove to be the most difficult year of my adolescence). A quick perusal of the TV guide revealed such eagerly awaited treasures as a rerun of The Incredible Hulk, the return of Knight Rider and a quirky little British show called Doctor Who. I'd always been intrigued with what little I'd seen of it in the past (the second Peter Cushing movie, episode 2 of The Hand of Fear, and the entirety of Colony in Space and The Three Doctors).

The following is an excerpt from an Enlightenment article I wrote about 10 years ago: "I'm still haunted by the memory of setting the Betamax machine to tape Robot back in 1983. It was 11:30 PM on a Sunday and I wasn't allowed to stay up [the channel was actually KVOS 12 a great quirky little independent station out of Bellingham, Washington--they used to show fantastic marathons of old 60s and 70s TV shows every year during the labour day weekend]. Excitedly I popped in the tape, hit the button and scurried off to my bunk bed.

"The next day I raced home from school, anticipating my prize. Dad greeted me on the front steps, his hands covered in transmission grease.

"'What the hell was that you taped last night,' he cracked, brushing his greasy forefinger against his chin."

But I didn't care, I loved Robot. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. The quirky colourful characters, the almost stage-like presentation, and Tom Baker's outrageous Doctor.

Twenty-seven years have passed since the first time I watched it. I'm now allowed to stay up, but of course DVD affords me the opportunity to start the story whenever I want. So I sat down with an Argentinian Malbec [Misterio] and let my imagination travel down that spooky diamond tunnel once again.

And so begins my own pilgrimage, which I'm calling my "Grand Tour"

Tom Baker still enthralls me like he did when I was 13. Nothing he does in the episode feels unwarranted or over the top even though viewers probably thought so at the time (I remember annoying my sister by endlessly exclaiming, "Exactly, Brigadier, exactly" over and over again). I guess it's because he seems so authentic. He is the Doctor, he's not just playing him [I feel the same way when I watch Matt Smith, the latest incarnation]. I still enjoy Patricia Maynard as Miss Winters--you just know she probably ties up Jellicoe up in a closet and whacks his bottom like Cloris Leachman did to Harvey Korman in High Anxiety. And the design of the robot is still rather cool--from the shoulders up anyway. Sarah Jane is at the funny stage of the character's development where she's halfway between her sensible mannish attire and scripted feminism to her cute and more iconically remembered persona.

Thank God I no longer have to get on a full school bus with only seats at the back with the bullies!

My original viewing date: September 9th, 1983

Music: "Talking in Your Sleep" by the Romantics. Classmates told me endlessly that I looked like the lead singer, and being an insecure 14 year I protested and wished it wasn't so.