Has it really been 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.
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.’ and ‘U”.
Q might be one of the least used letters in the alphabet, but looking at the list, it certainly has an impressive set of stories attached to it. In fact, by the reckoning of the Tour, there’s only one outright dud, in the list, and it should much of a guess as to which one that is.
Still, on the quality scale, and this now includes the most recent Christmas Special, there are a few stand-outs from the list. The Web of Fear, Frontier in Space, Tooth and Claw, Flesh and Stone, and The Haunting of Villa Diodati are at least well-above average. Ghost Light and In the Forest of the Night were in some ways interesting experiments in form–perhaps over function. Also the Tour has remarked–more times than it should really–about what a soft spot we have for Planet of Fire.
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Quite the quizzical quest. Worth the wait wouldn’t Q agree?