Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Meet the Authors: Tom Dickinson

I can't remember the first time I watched Doctor Who. It's been a constant part of my life since birth. I do have early memories, such as the third episode of Logopoils, not to mention the death of Adric in Earthshock, and I will always remember how as a child I... I...

...I can't do this. I can't lie like this.

Fine, the truth. My first episode of Doctor Who was Rose. That's right, Rose. See, as an American I was only ever dimly aware of Doctor Who during much of my childhood. And I wasn't alive when Peter Davison was the Doctor. When I was born, Sylvester McCoy was the Doctor. Not that I, or anyone around me, knew or cared about Doctor Who. Americans in general are only dimly aware of Doctor Who if at all. There are Who fans, and yes, it's contagious, but it isn't widespread and it certainly wasn't then.

The seeds of my Doctor Who fandom were planted when I read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at age 12. I became a great fan of Douglas Adams and it was through that fandom that I first heard of Doctor Who, but for one reason or another I never bothered to check it out. With the return of the series I heard an increasing level of buzz. I looked into the series and found out about it, and so I decided it was worth my time and got some episodes in 2007.

So, yes, my first episode was Rose. I can see you pointing and laughing at the new-series fan. Does it redeem me slightly that my second episode was An Unearthly Child? So I have never been strictly a new-series fan. And despite the short term of my fandom, I've made up for it in enthusiasm, and although I'm possibly the least expert person writing for this blog, apparently it's been decided that I'm capable of banging out a good review now and then.

When I'm not pretending to be a lifelong Doctor Who fan and writing reviews to that end, I can be found desperately trying to pass exams and doing other things that university students do. I live and study in Rhode Island, which used to be pretty British, though we were the first Americans to declare independence (nothing personal).

Anyhow, it's an honor and a privilege. Sorry, "honour."

Meet The Authors: Frank Collins

Evenin'.

Thanks to the august individuals at BTS for allowing me to come out to play and a warm welcome to my new, fellow collaborators and you lot who can be bothered to read my ramblings.

Gawd, where to start? I'm as old, in fact slightly older, than the programme itself. By the time you've reached my age I'm afraid the most exciting thing you can look forward to is a pair of slippers and a mug of Horlicks whilst tightly screwing up your eyes in an attempt to force mental pictures of Fury From The Deep to the front of your mind. Depressing, but Fury From The Deep is still a cracker even if I'm not. However I find the mantle of old age does allow you to waft reasonably unmolested through the 'Cursed Earth' of The Doctor Who Forum as it gets its knickers in a twist about the wrong size TARDIS windows.

I've written a number of articles on design for various publications (my background, y'see) and, cross fingers, will have some Doctor Who stuff published shortly in DWAS' Celestial Toyroom. You may often find me posting regularly on The Doctor Who Form too. Well, it passes the time. I've been running my own blog Cathode Ray Tube since late last year and you'll find me droning on and on about shows like Ashes To Ashes, Battlestar Galactica and Torchwood, as well as Doctor Who - old and new - and films, plays, books, music. Everything from KPM library music to Goldfrapp, Hammer Horror to Dennis Potter. I love British television and cinema, especially the so called Golden Age of the 1960s and 1970s. If I do go off on a tangent about Powell & Pressburger, The Power Game or Big Breadwinner Hog just stroke my arm and go 'there, there, there!' whilst attempting a Frankie Howerd impression.

I do drink to excess on occasions and the gin bottle is never far from my side.  It's my age y'know.

Meet the authors: Paul Kirkley

My life as a Hopeless Ming Mong recently came full circle* when, during the New Who team’s Five Doctors commentary, “Clever” Phil Collinson admitted he had once been for a ride in Bessie around the car park of the Cross Gates Arndale Centre. Because it was buying the Radio Times 20th Anniversary Special in the week of The Five Doctors that marked my ascension from casual viewer who didn’t know his Aridius from his elbow to fully-paid up footsoldier of the TARDIS army.

(To give you an idea of how much of a transition this was, I will admit to you here that, like many an impressionable young spod at the dawn of the 1980s, I forsook the dense explorations of Tachyonics and Charged Vacuum Embointments of Sir Tom's final season entirely for the flashy disco sci-fi of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century; a mere four years later, I was the sort of Who Fan who would happily re-read every issue of Celestial Toyroom 10 times, even though it was mostly just full of people I’d never heard of writing stuff like “Hi, not much to report from the Reference Department this month, I'm afraid”. All or nothing – that’s me).

But I digress. The point is I bought that Radio Times special from McColls newsagents in the Cross Gates Arndale Centre (that’s in Leeds 15, for any Sat Nav-equipped fans thinking of embarking on a Collinson Pilgrimage), and it was this low-rent shopping Valhalla that went on to feed my Who addiction for the best part of a decade – snapping up Uncle Terrance’s Target novelisations (a word I’m convinced doesn’t exist outside fandom, incidentally) from Stringers the Bookseller and, at the height of my madness, even paying £25 for a Day of the Daleks VHS from Woolworths.

So here I am, 25 years down the line, having stuck with Who through thick and thin (or Colin and Sylvester, as I like to call them) without any practical hope of a cure on the horizon. But it’s fine, it’s cool, because us Croggy boys have made good: Phil Collinson went on to produce Doctor Who, and I went on to become one of the Tachyon TV team. So who’s the real clever one, huh Phil?

In real life, I’m a newspaper features editor – so if these blogs are total shit, I really have no excuse – and you might recognise my name from SFX Magazine (but only if you’re the sort of person who cares about who wrote stuff… oh, what am I saying, you’re Who fans!). I now live in the frankly lovely city of Cambridge where my frankly lovely wife Rachel is due to give birth to our first child in two months’ time. Which is beautiful and life-changing and exciting and all that but (and I know you’re way ahead of me here) yes, it does look set to coincide with the season four finale. But that’s okay: I’ve told Rachel I can video it and watch it later (the birth, that is – I got burned once by the Buck Rogers thing, and I won't be making that mistake again).

*This is ironic as, of course, I totally missed Full Circle.

Meet the authors: Iain Hepburn

My earliest Doctor Who memory was something that, for many years, I never even realised was Doctor Who - specifically, it was the scene from The Five Doctors of the faux Hartnell and Susan wandering the corridors being pursued by a Dalek.

After that, it took me several years to finally get into the show.  My best pal at primary school was ultimately responsible - Remembrance of the Daleks, episode 1.  With my usual sense of timing, the show was dead a year later...

And since then it's always been at the periphery of my life.  I spent a glorious nine months at SFX before literally killing their website.  I wrote a BBV audio when I was between jobs - it's remarkable how unemployment focuses the mind and gets you to finish a script you've put off for so long.  And I'm in Death Comes To Time.  Seriously.  The bit where Sophie bursts into the tavern of whimpering villagers in episode five?  I'm a whimpering villager.  Dan offered me a larger part, but the Glasgow accent might have sounded a bit odd as an alien guard...

And having been a long time reader of Tachyon TV, and the Behind the Sofa blog, it's genuinely an honour and privilege to take up squatting rights and showcase my inept grasp of the English language.  Being Scots and a journalist, writing decent English isn't something that's had to figure large in my life before now, allegedly...

Outside of the Doctor Who bubble I enjoy watching real and fake fighting, a rubbish football team, Tina Fey in anything and two fat Glaswegians reviewing video games on the internet.  I also host a Scottish football podcast and have my own rambling blog on non-Dr Who matters.

Meet the Authors: Sean Alexander

Hello, and despite rumours to the contrary I did not play Varsh in Full Circle all those years ago. Nope, the closest I ever came was having a dreadful Adric-style bowlan haircut until I was about 16.

First memories? Well, falling off a bunk-bed aged about 4 comes close (oh, you mean Who ones). Oh well, the cliff-hanger to Pyramids of Mars 2, sat on my mother’s lap as the mummies closed in. Every time I think of it I can still remember the smell of her perfume.

When not pretending that I could do this sort of thing for a living you might find me selling credit cards and patronising pensioners in your local Post Office. I’m the nerdy one who tries to shoe-horn in at least one Doctor Who quote during a transaction every day.

I first came across this site back in the heady days of late 2003, when a certain Lorraine Heggessy got our hearts beating again with THAT announcement of a certain show coming back. Mr Perryman’s tales of Who-love, itinerant farmers and unsuccessful BT connections first got me on board. And I’ve been hooked since.

Aside from getting me into Pink Floyd and gin, Neil’s also been kind enough to let me contribute to the odd Tachyon TV podcast - anyone who’s heard my Eccleston impression has no doubt re-evaluated the talent of Mike Yarwood as a result.

If you want to remind yourself of just how embarrassingly gushing I can be about a certain TV programme when it’s deserved, my BTS Volume 1 posts can be found here.

Meet the Authors: Damon Querry

It was episode 4 of Planet of the Daleks. I was a little under 2 years of age. And that was kind of that. In the early 80's my Dad turned my bedroom door into a Davison style TARDIS complete with painted cricket stumps and a box above the door with the illuminated words Police Box. And, along the way, I even invented a new test for concussion that involved the Target novelisation of Carnival of Monsters.

Thirty years plus later, via some decidedly dodgy jokes submitted to Tachyon TV, I found myself involved in a little Doctor Who blog called Behind the Sofa. Which turned into something that wasn't really quite so little. Because of my web leanings I took temporary custody of the baby at the start of last year - changing skins on an almost hourly basis (the Peri one is still talked about to this day) - and then nearly finishing everyone off with three long hours of televised moth porn.

I'm frequently to be found in the bar at conventions - having never attended a panel session since 2003 (or at least that's how if feels). Should anyone spot me at a future event, please don't hesitate in introducing yourself, taking pity on me and buying me a drink. Please, for the love of god, buy me a drink.

And whilst you're waiting to buy me that drink, why not take a quick spin through my random jottings from Volume 1 of Behind the Sofa. Chin chin.

Meet the Authors: Stuart Ian Burns

The first thing you need to know about me is that I’m easily pleased.  Waive something colourful and shiny or even your hand in front in my face and you’re sure to get a giggle.  That’s photographic evidence to the right, the baby version of me and my Nin in our old back yard.  I’d call it a skill and it’s been a blessing across the years as it’s also meant that something has to be really, really dull for me to be bored.  Despite being an only child, I’ve always managed to find something to keep myself occupied.  I tend to be able to talk to anyone about anything and always seem to know the right questions to ask to perpetuate the conversation, perhaps because I also seem to intensely interested in everything (see my own blog).  Except country and western music.  And football.  When I’m at home, Radio Four argues against the silences and I can’t leave the house without a book.

Paradoxically, despite enjoying the simple things, I love Shakespeare -- because of the language, the poetry, the theatrical history.  There’s nothing more exciting than watching an actor achieving perfection as one his characters.  That’s probably why some of the best productions I’ve seen have been with college kids or amateurs, were passion hasn’t yet given way to the employment motive. My favourite play is Measure for Measure because it’s a bit of a rough diamond but I’m devoted to Hamlet – of all of His plays it’s the most flexible, potentially telling a different story with the same words depending on whether the director and actor playing him decide whether the dane is mad or just faking it (as so many men do).

I also like film.  A bit.  Actually, I worked in call centres for five years in order to save enough money to return to university and study the subject postgraduately.  When I began my course and had to describe the kinds of films I like, I said I could forgive anything if its visually interesting which I think was just a more complex way of capturing what’s happening in the above photo.  Being as I am then, easily pleased, work which some reject out of hand I’ll cherish and champion and something has to be truly awful and perhaps star the likes of Adam Sandler or Martin Lawrence or directed by Uwe Boll for me to be unimpressed.  My favourite film is usually When Harry Met Sally.  It’s perfectly structured and funnier than ever, particularly since I’m the same age as the characters now.

But I’m here to write about Doctor Who. As with everyone else on this fair-isle I watched Doctor Who as a child, beginning somewhere with Tom Baker and watching right through to McCoy’s desolate walk into the distance.  I became interested again after a visit to the old exhibition in Llangollen and but my fan gene was really roasted when the series returned, at least for me, in Storm Warning, Paul McGann’s first audio adventure in early 2001.  That did everything I’d want a Doctor Who story to do – witty, exciting, historical in a way, had a lovely companion in Charley and an incarnation of the timelord I wouldn’t mind sharing a cup of earl grey with should he stop off my way.

I gorged on the UK Gold repeats and novels and decided that actually it would be alright if the series never returned to television because there were so many other wonderful stories being written in other media, decades worth of tales to catch up with.  I still haven’t seen or heard them all.  That’s what I probably love most about the franchise – there’s so much of it, so my collector mentality is well served.  I even wrote a partial film adaptation at university about Lance Parkin’s novel The Dying Days, perhaps the greatest story of them all.  As with Shakespeare, I’m fascinated by the history of the production of the programme, what went wrong or right and the bruised egos, the rush to beat evening lights out, the drunken trips to Paris, the rewrites.  Doctor Who is never less than entertaining even when we’re laughing at rather than along with it.  When the programme’s good, it’s very, very good and when it’s bad it’s script edited by Eric Saward.

Then, against the odds, Doctor Who returned to television, and was fantastic.  I began writing for and from Behind The Sofa then and I’m still here.

Meet the Authors: Dave Sanders

Dave Sanders describes himself as a cross between Mark Ayres and a Primord. He collects vintage arcade boards, designs pinball games and inks webcomics. As the blog's token furry, he will be the first to point out the media stereotypes of the excesses of furry behaviour are categorically untrue, give or take around seventy percent. Nonetheless he is unmarried, as furrydom, Aspergers and Whovian loyalties conspire to make him a three-time loser.

Dave's television favourites spring mainly from the 1970s (Columbo, Quincy, Blakes 7), but he also sports a notable affection for old/weird 60s media from before he was born; notably The Beatles, Gerry Anderson (Supercar is his favourite), and vintage Hanna-Barbera circa 1968-69. He does a mean K-9 impression and his favourite Doctor is Patrick Troughton. Obsession, or disillusionment with the modern world? You decide.

He lives in Northern Ireland while his accent lives in Lime Grove.

Dave's Volume 1 reviews are catalogued here.

Meet the Authors: Neil Perryman

My earliest childhood memory is watching Doctor Who: Carnival of Monsters episode 3, 10th February, 1973. Not even four years old and already scared for life.

I started Behind the Sofa in February 2005, just before the new series launched. Back then I was full of optimism and pride. Since then I've flounced off the blog two or three times in fits of pique, leaving Damon holding the baby (which he brought up magnificently) but now I'm back and determined to mellow out a bit.

I've written a short story for Big Finish (funnily enough they don't keep pestering me for a follow-up) and an academic essay entitled 'Doctor Who and the Convergence of Media' was published in a journal this month. Just like the Big Finish book it wasn't available to buy in WH Smith.

I currently live in a barn and can play 'When We Were Young' on Guitar Hero without missing a note (on the Medium setting, no less) and I've been known to dream about CSS (the stylesheet language, not the Brazilian pop combo). I am currently obsessed with Marvel Comics continuity (I'm looking at you, Amazing Spider-Man!), the krautrock stylings of Tangerine Dream and Tesco's own-brand flapjacks.

I still believe that Sylvester McCoy is the second best Doctor ever.

You can read my Volume 1 reviews here

Meet the Authors: John Williams

I was swept off my feet by Doctor Who in 1974 when the BBC repeated The Sea Devils instead of showing the cricket, and aside from a trial separation (September 1987 - Tomb of the Cybermen VHS 1992) the relationship is bearing up.  I haven't read the novels or listened to the Big Finish stuff, but like most people my age regardless of how often I watch it I still see a lot of pre-1978 Who through the prism of Target novelisations.

Doctor Who isn't the be all and end all.  I'm interested in British theatre, particularly political drama of the 1960s and 1970s, and television drama in general.  My obsession with soaps just won't go away, and I watch a lot of US television drama as well as the British stuff.  Whenever I get the time I write for Screenonline.  In addition to the existing retrospectives on Trevor Griffiths and Euston Films I'm currently writing a series of articles on Emmerdale Farm, Crossroads (I even got a credit on the DVD release such is my obsession) and a history of British Soap Opera.  I also co-edit (with alpha editor Dave Rolinson) and contribute to a Play for Today site which will hopefully be expanding in 2008, and I'm a hard-nosed, evil moderator on the extremely informative Mausoleum Club Forum.

The rest of the time I try and think up sarcastic stuff for Tachyon TV and periodically meet up with Neil and Damon to shout at a microphone.  When I'm not doing that I play with the cats, slob with Shirley and read a lot of poetry.

My old Who reviews can be found on Behind the Sofa Volume 1.