Here we are sitting on the eve of another season, one which promises thrills and scares and views of the Western scrub brush, pirates, and probably an unpublished surprise or two. The publicity build-up has been considerable, perhaps even massive, and by extension says that Doctor Who is in the best shape it has ever been.
But it hasn’t always been that way. And here at the THT we know because we’ve been through it all. Through the 18-month hiatus in 1985-86. Endured the wilderness years between 1989-2005. The Tour began in 1997 in part as a response to this. But the passing Elisabeth Sladen this week puts both past and present into sharp relief. The Tour’s Doctor Who journey began back in spring of 1981, watching on a Madison PBS station with The Ark in Space. You never forget your first WHO it’s often been said and, as Steven Moffat himself recently attested, “It’s an immaculate script, I think.”
Indeed it was.
It began there. We rode the WHO boom of the mid-to-late eighties, wrote articles, edited newsletters, supervised video programming, even made videos of our own. Now sitting astride something of a colossus of a website we are so thankful for the journey. We presume you are too.
