Over 2 CDs, former TARDIS traveler Elisabeth Sladen introduces a number of Doctor Who-related clips from the BBC Radio archives, ranging from interviews with actors and other creative personnel, to comedy sketches riffing on the reluctant jewel in the BBC’s crown, to an hour-long documentary tracing the origins and mythology of the show, as narrated by Nicholas “The Brigadier” Courtney.
LogBook review by Earl Green
Review: An interesting approach to exploiting the BBC’s vast wealth of archive material, Doctor Who At The BBC is an extensive sampling of archived radio interAviews, sketch comedy and other material. Heavily focused on the eras of Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker and Peter Davison (toward the end of the last CD, presenter Elisabeth Sladen even cops to the fact that there’s very little in the way of Hartnell or Troughton era material on the collection), it’s a fascinating series of “press clippings” in auditory form, and a chance to glimpse how Doctor Who was promoted in years past.
Things kick off with an hour-long 1993 documentary program narrated by Nicholas Courtney, peppered liberally with dialogue taken from every era of the show up to that point. In an hour, this piece does a nice job of scratching the surface of the show’s behind-the-scenes history as well as its fictional mythology, though in places it disappoints by either glossing over important events or by outright dissembling (i.e. Colin Baker “suddenly left” his role…though the program neglects to mention that the sixth Doctor was essentially fired by the BBC). Interestingly, rather than doing what one would expect it to do and wading langorously through the Tom Baker years, this documentary is weighted heavily toward the eras of the first three Doctors, with copious interview clips featuring Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts. Baker’s reign is covered somewhat quickly, and then Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy’s tenures in the TARDIS are given little more than a cursory mention and one short interview clip per actor. It almost seems to imply, listening to this otherwise wonderfully executed documentary, that the BBC’s stance during Doctor Who’s 30th anniversary was that they wished the show had ended as the 1970s did.
One area where I feel compelled to, if not cry foul, then at least to let the buyer beware, is that there is previously released material on Doctor Who At The BBC. A radio program featuring telephone interviews with Douglas Adams and Tom Baker previously appeared on the 3-CD tribute compilation Douglas Adams At The BBC, and truthfully, I felt that the segments from the educational Tom Baker-era audio play Exploration Earth: The Time Machine and the 1993 Pertwee radio drama The Paradise Of Death were filler material; both are already available on CD from the BBC’s radio collection. Interestingly, the segment from the recent radio play Blue Veils and Golden Sands, a dramatized biography of original Doctor Who theme music arranger Delia Derbyshire, becomes redundant in hindsight with the release of that production in its entirety on the upcoming fourth volume of Doctor Who At The BBC this fall.
But on the much more worthwhile side are such things as a comedy sketch in which Jon Pertwee sends up his Doctor by auditioning a potential new companion. Other highlights include Peter Davison admitting to being most impressed with a young fan’s home-made fifth Doctor costume at the 1983 Longleat exhibition, Terry Nation talking about the origins of the Daleks and the impact they’ve had on his life, and Mary Tamm’s public unveiling as “the new Doctor Who girl” (back when that job description was right up there with being the new James Bond girl). It’s nifty time capsule stuff, even if it is ’70s and early ’80s-centric.
Obviously, this is really a collection for the dedicated Who fan; Elisabeth Sladen’s introductions are nice, though they’re hardly designed to bring the uninitiated up to speed. It’s a fascinating archive nonetheless.