Back to the future: Tides of Time 28, October 2002

Although some articles from Tides of Time 28 have appeared on the site already, I thought it was time to extend the PDF archive further, and so here is the entire issue. It was the last to be edited by Matthew Peacock, and has some claim to be his magnum opus as editor. Behind the knife-wielding image of Ray Winstone as Will Scarlet from Robin of Sherwood, several articles express Mat’s own clear views on issues from the success or otherwise of the 1996 TV movie, the meaning of The Prisoner, and a world-weariness towards Doctor Who as a niche product perpetuated in novels and audio plays but not as mass-market television. Balancing these, Mat published several enthusiastic and inspired stories featuring characters and concepts from the BBC Doctor Who novels and Big Finish CDs (downloads were some years away) and entirely new characters, largely provided by Alex Cameron and William Ramsden.

This was the end of an era for Tides in more ways than just a change of editor. This was the last issue to date published at A4 size, and the last to be financed separately from the membership fee. When Tides returned it would be smaller, and contrary to Mat’s expectations that he would be succeeded by an undergraduate or at least someone close to undergraduate age, in the hands of someone who had been in the Oxford Doctor Who Society even longer than Mat.

Most importantly, though, the age of Doctor Who as a minority product, caught between nostalgia for childhood television and experimental adult fiction lines, was coming to an end. As Mat’s final article noted, there were strange noises from the BBC which could actually mean Doctor Who would return to mainstream television, and by the time Tides resurfaced in 2004, production was getting underway at BBC Wales. For October 2002, though, it was fitting that the magazine ended with pictures of Paul Cornell, Caroline Symcox, Terrance Dicks, and a miniature steam train.

The PDF is made from domestic scans of the original issue, made up of colour pages from Mat’s inkjet and photocopied black and white pages from inkjet masters. The size of the file might mean it is easier to download it than open it directly into a browser.

The Tides of Time issue 35

• Louise in Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD is Rose’s niece!
• Davros the deconstructivist!
• A dozen Nick Briggses!
• “As slow and uneventful as your average first Doctor serial” – but which computer game is this, and has Peppa Pig anything to do with it?
• Make sure hist’ry marches on/For Rassilon, Rassilon, Rassilon!

All this and more can be found in the latest issue of The Tides of Time, now online.

The Tides of Time issue 35 was published in September 2011. It was cover dated Summer 2011. It was edited by Adam Povey.

This issue can be downloaded as a PDF.

Contents

• The Silent Pulpit. Editorial by Adam Povey
• Silence in the Library. Adam Kendrick reviews Shadows of the Vashta Nerada and Evacuation Earth.
• “You can believe this subject is a part of the Doctor Who universe. But we don’t.”
  Sara James explores the possibility that Journey’s End gave fandom a way to canonise the Peter Cushing films.
• Season Seventeen – Douglas Adams and Doctor Who’s Lost Renaissance of 1979. The tale of Douglas Adams’ s tenure as script editor by Matthew Kilburn.
• Season Five – A Survival Guide. Jonathan Nash bullet points how to survive the first year of Moffat’s tenure.
• Moffat’s Revolution. Thoughts on the impact of the current Chief Whovian from Sara James.
• The Gallifrey Rag. Lyrics by Thomas Keyton.
• Burnt Orange. The good in Gridlock as seen by Matthew Kilburn.
• Experiences: The Cardiff Exhibit and the Doctor Who Experience. Adam Povey recalls the Society trip to Cardiff and the new Doctor Who Experience.

Front cover design by Matthew Kilburn, with apologies to Smash Hits, c.1988

Format: A4 folded to A5, lasercopied, 40pp

Mining the archives

Another trawl through the box file has produced another selection of fiction and non-fiction from the Tides of Time archive, in this case from issues 1, 15 and 20. All the material in this release was published in the 1990s and reflects the opinions of the authors as they then held them. Please allow for the quality of the original photocopied pages and the limitations of domestic scanning equipment.

Fiction

• Grief Encounters: Sunrise. John Wilson’s tale sees the fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan return to a fabled age of peace and prosperity, to fulfil a promise to an old friend of the Doctor.
• Thieves Like Us. Another John Wilson story finds Barbara Chesterton dealing with a difficult character.
• Chesterton’s Return. Ian goes home, by Brenda Foulkes

Non-fiction

• An Anomaly within an Inconsistency. The Doctor Who Society 1989. Jonathan Bryden recounted the Oxford (University) Doctor Who Society’s first year in The Tides of Time 1 (1990)
• You Never Dream In Colour. Corinne Berg considers some issues raised by The Happiness Patrol. From Tides of Time issue 15 (1994)
• From Skonnos to Perivale Revisited. Matthew Kilburn had looked back on how Doctor Who had fared in the 1980s in Tides of Time issue 1 in 1990 and in this article from Tides of Time issue 15 (1994) he returned to the subject nearly five years later to see what could be learned from his changed perspective.
• The Doctor’s Darker Side. Taking evidence from adventures in television and book forms, Al Harrison examines how the Doctor could become or produce the Valeyard. Published in Tides of Time issue 20 (1997), but of possible interest to those entertained by the potential in the Dream Lord of ‘Amy’s Choice’ (2010)

Humour

• The Scum. Lots of in-jokes from the OUDWS in the early 1990s, but also a Monsters v. Companions football match, and the legendary agony column of Aunty Ainley. Warning: some jokes might be considered in poor taste. From Tides of Time issue 15 (1994)

Thanks to Wild Republic for the image of their Cuddlekins panda!

Tides of Time 35 publication news

The Tides of Time issue 35 has been printed, and I hope to have it available in PDF form on this website in a few weeks, once editor Adam Povey is happy that it has served its purpose as an enticement to new student members in Freshers’ Week, along with the Doctor Who cocktails of course. In the meantime, another preview, as I’ve extracted the City of Death section of my review of the 1979/80 season, if to console myself for my cancelled Paris holiday. Enjoy:

Et in Arcadia ego: City of Death

Shada: the Chadwick question

In issue 439 of Doctor Who Magazine, cover dated 19 October 2011, writer Gareth Roberts – currently working on the novelization of  Shada – comments that he has never seen anyone explain why Owen Chadwick is listed by the Doctor among the great scholars of Cambridge University. I was going to have a stab at doing so in Tides of Time 35 – though I had no idea about Parson’s Court and the Keightley Laboratory. For more of Gareth’s insight into Douglas Adams’s writing practices and sense of humour, buy DWM – but here is an extract from my article on the 1979/80 season of Doctor Who, of which Shada, if completed, would have formed part…

The only living Cambridge scholar named by the Doctor while he punts Romana along the Cam is Owen Chadwick, historian of religion, whose most celebrated book at the time of Shada‘s location filming concerned the rise of secularism in nineteenth-century England. This might be appropriate given that first Salyavin and now Skagra sought powers which would end even the illusion of free will. On the other hand Romana’s ‘Who?’ suggests that this might simply be a Cantabrigian in-joke; Chadwick was vice-chancellor of the university when Adams began his undergraduate studies in Cambridge, and gained a reputation for conservatism and defending the integrity of the dons at the expense of the students. Chronotis, with his wish to have the conversation of students banned, is in part a personification of the way early 1970s undergraduates regarded Chadwick. Chronotis’s public persona is a charade; as one gains experience, one realises that all projections of authority are such.

More relevant is what Shada would have established about Doctor Who‘s concept of natural law. The first part of the story concerns the quest of the villain, Skagra, to locate and possess The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey. This book defies spectrographic analysis; it is a book but it is not a book, and time runs backwards over it. Douglas Adams’s script could be satirising natural law theory while at the same time placing it at the heart of how Doctor Who views the universe. From Shada we learn that Time Lord judges ‘but administer’; convicted criminals are sentenced ‘by the power of the law’. This could be interpreted as another case of Time Lord sententiousness masking their inefficiency; but the contrasting fates of the greatest Time Lord criminal of all, Salyavin, and the man who seeks to eclipse him, Skagra, suggest that the Time Lord invocation is to be taken seriously as a statement of how the Time Lord view of the universe works. This is consistent with the Time Lords’  policy of non-intervention. Some moral claims are shown to be true. Salyavin’s genuine repentance and wish to renounce the use of his powers leads him to escape – be set free – from the Time Lord prison on Shada and retire to Cambridge in the guise of Chronotis. Skagra ends up a prisoner of himself. This is a suitable punishment for a man who does not want to control the universe, but to become it.

For more, see The Tides of Time issue 35, coming soon. EDIT: now available to download.

Activity, lack of

I apologise for the absence of new material on this website recently. I have been busy with other projects, which include chapters for various books.

A new issue of Tides is in active preparation, though it is taking longer than hoped thanks to the other commitments of all involved. More news when I have it.

Time Unincorporated 3

The third, latest and apparently last in Mad Norwegian Press’s series of books anthologizing Doctor Who fan writing, Time Unincorporated, has recently been published. Editors Robert Smith? and Graeme Burk have included two articles related to The Tides of Time. One is ‘Little Boys, Young Farmers and Gays’ by Dewi Evans, originally published in Tides 31 in November 2005, but not available on this website. The other, more tangentially, is ‘Visionary’ by Anthony Wilson. The article is first published in Time Unincorporated 3, but Anthony was one of the most prolific contributors to The Tides of Time during the 1990s.

Friends of the Oxford Doctor Who Society contributing to the book include Cardiff-based media scholar Melissa Beattie and ‘Dalek’ scribe and writer of plays, short stories, scripts and criticism Robert Shearman.

The book is available from several online retailers, including The Book Depository; readers in the US are recommended to order from the publishers directly.

A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting.

The third Doctor, his adventures and the actor who played him were all rediscovered and raked over by fandom in the 1990s, and Tides of Time writers were not excepted. This release contains some of the responses the third Doctor received during the first twenty-eight issues of Tides of Time, from the serious to the flippant, to the bizarre.

Articles which were included in earlier releases are marked with an asterisk (*).

Reviews

• The Claws of Axos. A short review by Paul Dumont, first published in Tides 2 (1990)
• In Defence of The Claws of Axos. A longer, later review by Alastair Harrison, first published in Tides 21 (1998)
• Calling a Spade, a Spade. Why is The Daemons called The Daemons when there is only one Daemon in it? asks M. Khan. First published in Tides 27 (2001)

Overviews

• Unhand Me Madam! The Pertwee era considered by Mark Hanlon. First published in Tides 12 (1994)
• Pertwee’s European Adventure. The Peladon stories in their historical context, by M.J. Ritson. First published in Tides 12 (1994)
• This Blessed Plot. Alien invasions of Earth as alien invasions of England, examined by Matthew Peacock. First published in Tides 26 (2000)

Fiction

• Prey by John Wilson. From the Grief Encounters strand. Cliff Jones finds a mysterious spore… First published in Tides 14 (1994)
• Faux Pas, or One Man and his Root Vegetable, or But Mr Dicks, Potatoes Weren’t Invented Then by Ryan Hemage. A further Grief Encounter, explaining the presence of potatoes in The Time Warrior through one fan’s determination to preserve his pride… First published in Tides 16 (1995)
• Existence by Pierre Lefevre. Day of the Daleks has its consequences. First published in Tides 18 (1995)
• One More Time by Derek Haywood. The third Doctor has had a fatal encounter with a giant spider, but he is not ready to go gentle into that good night. First published in Tides 22 (1998)*
• Lawful Wedded Wife by Alice Dryden. Married life in the Amazon for Jo and Cliff Jones. First published in Tides 24 (1999)*

Directive

• Government Health Warning #35604 (Doctor Who): Very Important. Urgent health advice on recommended daily allowances for consumers of Jon Pertwee. As communicated to Matthew Peacock. First published in Tides 28 (2002)*

And finally…

• The Most Fell Beast of All. What happens when an editor asks an arachnophobe to review Planet of the Spiders, by Sarah Sturch. First published in Tides 3 (1990)

The Troglodyte: a 1998 fanzine

Download The Troglodyte, issue 1, Winter 1998/99

For a change, a Tides of Time spin-off. The Troglodyte was an attempt to crossover the writing of my university friends with a wider fandom appeal, shaped by my own preoccupations and a certain nostalgia for the Doctor Who fanzine as I first discovered it in the 1980s. This took much longer to do than I expected, and many of the images which I sourced were not equal to the tasks I intended for them. The first print run (much of which went on sale at Forbidden Planet in London) was very murky, too, and only the second, shorter run came from a modern copying machine. I’ve learned recently that the copy shop I used in New Cross had previously been a comic shop and publisher owned by Dez Skinn, founding editor of Doctor Who Weekly among many other distinctions. Small world and all…

I’ve not been able to recreate the ‘Kodak yellow’ (as Doctor Who Magazine described it) paper used for the cover, but the rest is reproduced as well as feasible from the master printouts. The file size is over 30Mb and so larger than normal, but any lower and the type definition would be unacceptable to me.  Doctor Who, Babylon 5, Tolkien, Manic Street Preachers, Sir Walter Scott, Pleasantville, Dar Williams, The X Files and more contend for space within.

Needless to say, I hope, all the addresses inside should be considered out of date, including the e-mails.

“I don’t work for anyone. I’m just having fun!”

Thanks to everyone who has been giving this site publicity in recent days. These particularly include free-roaming Doctor Who-led blog Life, Doctor Who and Combom; one of the core sites of Doctor Who fandom, The Doctor Who News Page; trailblazing e-zine The Terrible Zodin; and hardworking news blog TARDIS Newsroom.

Preparations are in hand for Tides 35. No promises as yet, but work is in progress on a look at Douglas Adams’s tenure as script editor of Doctor Who, and there might also be items about Ace, Gridlock and further developments on the computer games front.