COUNTING WHOZZZZZZZ

Whenever I can’t sleep, I don’t spend any time counting sheep. My granddad once told me I should try to picture a blank blackboard but that’s never really worked for me in much the same way as those relaxation tapes that tell you to let various parts of your body relax have never really worked for me either, because I can never make that mental leap towards total detachment or successfully picture a mountain stream on a summer’s day, a meadow or a stream. The most thinking about a stream ever does is make me want to go to the loo again.

Some people choose to play mind games. Six degrees of separation or suchlike, connecting one random movie to another by means of actors common to both, but I find that this sort of thing only really boots the brain up into action and is just as likely to find me getting up to search the Internet Movie Database to solve the problem instead of letting me drift off into a trouble free sleep.

What I sometimes do to try to focus the brain is to attempt to list all the classic Doctor Who stories in order of broadcast because it’s quite possibly the only information hardwired enough into my brain enough for me to approach it like a mantra, dating as it partially does back to that much treasured “Radio Times Tenth Anniversary Special” printed when I was nine that still sits on a shelf between those photographic plates and held in place by that Acco Fastener passing through those sacrilegious holes I punched through my copy. Some people can list all the US Presidents, or the British Prime Ministers or all the State Capitals… well, with me it’s this, okay? It might be a bit sad, it might be a bit obscure, but you can only work with what you’ve got, can’t you…?

Sometimes the order gets a little vague, but there are 29 Hartnells to begin with, followed by 21 Troughtons, 24 Pertwees and 41 or 42 Bakers depending on how you feel about “Shada”… If I’m still awake after that there are 20 Davisons, an indeterminate number of (Colin) Bakers that is either 8 or 11 depending upon how you decide the “Trial” should divide, and a dozen McCoys to round it all off.

After that, there’s the McGann movie and you get into the tricky world of Eccles, David and Matt which is probably hard-wired into minds a lot younger than mine, but hasn’t quite sunk in to my aged synapses. Mind you, at least these newcomers don’t have all the ambiguity about titles that those of us in the sadder, older generations had. Those stories having individual episode titles and their use in that very special magazine I mentioned put an awful lot of worms into an awful lot of cans for future generations to pointlessly debate.

The story titles I use are the ones I use, and I’ll cut them down anyway in my own mental shorthand when I’m trying to list them as I’m failing to doze off. Hey! It’s my head, I can do what I like, but, believe it or not, such things can still provoke furious debate amongst the more vocal parts of the fan community (you know - the ones who sound like they hate everything to do with this mad TV programme they claim to like…). My favourite fandom story is still the one about the fan who tried to sue BBC Video for false advertising because they had edited out a few seconds of the black screen during some fades to black and yet were advertising the tapes as being “complete and unedited” and, despite not one frame of the actual images or dialogue being lost, he felt this was an outrage…

Okay, here we go… Hartnell starts off easy enough with “Unearthly”, “Daleks” and “Edge of Destruction”. There’s a lot of 1960s “Who” missing from the film archives, so the general air of unfamiliarity of some of them means that I really have to think hard to get the correct transmission order, but the first year or so is vivid enough in my head. It might be all those plotlines linking into the next story from the days when the series was still an unfolding adventure, or just because a lot of it is fortunately still around, or even maybe just because the swinging pendulum between stories set in the “future” and the “past” helps to make the pattern easier to recall, but putting year one into the correct order is easy. “Marco”, “Marinus”, “Aztecs”, “Sensorites”, “French Revolution”, with “Planet of Giants” and “Dalek Invasion” kicking off year two.

Once grand-daughter Susan’s gone and run off with her resistance fighter boyfriend, she’s replaced by Vicki, the space girl from the future, who turns up in “The Rescue” before there’s a run of  “Romans”, “Web Planet”, “Crusade”, and “Museum” up to “The Chase” where Ian and Barbara return to 1960’s London at last. Peter Purves becomes a companion called Steven Taylor for “Meddler” and “Galaxy Four”… and that’s season two over and done. Year three starts with a sequence of “M”s that gives future girl Vicki a life in the ancient past – “Mission”. “Myth”, “Masterplan”, and “Massacre” which brings in Dodo, followed by a tricky little sequence which goes “Ark”, “Toymaker”, “Gunfighters”, “Savages” and “War Machines” which introduces the fab and groovy pair that are Ben and Polly. “Savages” is the tricksy one as it’s almost so obscure that I nearly always forget it, although it does see the mighty Purves depart just a few weeks ahead of the soon-to-be-extinct Dodo.

William Hartnell bows out with “Smugglers” and “Tenth” at the start of year four, with Patrick Troughton taking on the mantle for “Power” and “Highlanders” where Frazer Hines as Jamie joins up to jostle for screen time with Ben and Polly. Then there’s a run which I can never seem to get right in my head unless I really think hard about it, which goes “Underwater”, “Moonbase”, “Macra” and “Faceless”, probably.

After Ben and Polly are history, we’ve got screaming Victoria on board for a set of stories that gets muddled in the middle because of all the ones set in snowy wastelands. “Evil”, “Tomb”, “Abominable”, “Ice”, “Enemy”, “Web” and ”Fury”. Wendy Padbury’s Zoe is then aboard for another run that’s awkward to get in the right order but which goes “Wheel”, “Dominators”, “Mind” and… er… well I know it finishes with “Seeds”, “Space Pirates” and “War Games”, but is “Invasion” before “Krotons” or after? Some day I’ll try and work out an easy way to remember that…

Still awake?

Into the Jon Pertwee years then, and it’s really a doddle from now on right through to the Colin Baker years where there’s a tricky memory lapse as to whether “Two” is before or after “Mark”. There are four with Liz Shaw, “Spearhead”, “Silurians”, “Ambassadors”, “Inferno”… then Jo Grant tags along for “Terror”, “Mind”, “Axos”, “Colony”, “Daemons”… “Day”, “Curse”, “Sea Devils”, “Mutants”, “Monster”… “Three”, “Carnival”, “Frontier”, another “Planet” (of “The Daleks”) and “Green”. This is starting to gain the air of abstract, freeform poetry. Sarah Jane arrives in “Warrior”, there’s another “Invasion” (of “Dinosaurs”), “Death”, “Monster”, “Spiders”… Now it’s the mighty Tom with “Robot”, “Ark”, “Experiment”, “Genesis” and “Revenge”… “Zygons”, another “Planet” this time “of Evil”, “Pyramids”, an “Invasion” of the “Android” persuasion which finally sees off Harry (and his duffel coat) first seen in “Robot”, “Brain” and more “Seeds” of “Doom” not “Death”… (It’s got a rhythm and sinister beauty all of its own, this stuff, don’t you think...?).

“Masque” and “Hand” see off Sarah Jane (for a while), an “Assassin” is faced alone, then we meet Leela for “Face”, “Robots” and “Talons” are followed by “Horror”, “Invisible” (introducing K9), “Image”, “Sun Makers”, “Underworld” and another “Invasion”, this time “of Time”… sees Leela left on Gallifrey. Then there’s the whole “Key to Time” saga with Romana 0.1; “Ribos”, “Pirate”, “Stones”, “Androids”, “Kroll” and “Armageddon” followed swiftly by a switch to Romana 0.2 for “Destiny”, “City”, “Creature”, “Nightmare” and “Horns” and you can decide whether or not to include “Shada” here before the final run for Uncle Tom which goes “Leisure”, “Meglos”, “Circle”, “State”, “Warriors’ Gate”, “Traken” and “Logopolis” which see Romana and K9 disappear and first Adric, then Nyssa and finally Tegan all arrive to clog up the works.

The lids are finally starting to flicker now as Peter Davison takes over with “Castrovalva”, “Four”, “Kinda”, “Visitation”, and “Orchid”. “Earthshock” sees Adric finally going splat before a “Flight” comes along… “Arc”, “Snakedance”, “Mawdryn”, and “Terminus” finish off Nyssa but introduce Turlough, “Enlightenment”, “King’s” and “Five”… “Warriors”, “Awakening”, “Frontios”, and a “Resurrection” sees off Tegan to a happier place, “Planet” (of “Fire”) and “Caves” bring Peri aboard but send Peter Davison on to pastures new.

Uncle Colin’s in charge now for a brief run including “Twin”, “Attack”, “Varos”, “Mark”, “Two” (if that’s the way around they go), “Timelash” and “Revelation”. The long, long “Trial” is next, although that could also be thought of as being “Mysterious”, “Mindwarp”, another “Terror” and “Ultimate”. Those stories swap the teenage boy fan’s favourite pin-up Peri for Bonnie Langford, before Sylvester McCoy nicks Colin’s keys for his dozen stories which go “Time”, “Paradise”, “Delta”, “Dragonfire” (where Bonnie runs off with a bit of space rough and slightly hip street kid Ace takes over), “Remembrance”, “Happiness”, “Silver”, “Greatest”, “Battlefield”, “Ghost”, “Fenric” and “Survival” and finishes off twenty six years in barely seven paragraphs although I’m hopefully fast asleep before I reach that point or else I’ll be wrestling with the whole new set of memory problems that the new show brought with it, not least the fact that I sometimes forget about some of the episodes completely.

Well, that worked, didn’t it? If I’m not asleep yet, I’m sure anyone reading this strange insight into the whirring cogs of my mind now is. I still don’t really know how my head got so full of this stuff, but it does, at the very least prove that, sometimes, having a mind full of useless information really does have its uses, however obscure those actual uses might be.

Incidentally, if you want a rather fabulous “non-fan” take on watching old “Doctor Who” right from the beginning of the black and white days, this http://bit.ly/jtGCvn is rather fabulous if you like that sort of thing, and this “alternative history” http://bit.ly/rdC1Vi is just hysterical (if you prefer that sort of thing instead…).

Sleep well.