Fan Scene Tardis77 Issues 7 & 8

Issue 7: This issue sees another re-organisation due to the difficulties of combining CT and Tardis as one publication. From 1978 CT will be a separate monthly newsletter. It doesn’t say how regularly Tardis will come out but anyway this would be the format that the DWAS would use from here on and may well still be using today if they still publish zines? Membership fees of £1.50 per year (yikes!) will pay for this. Debate Corner is a feature that seems to come and go but this issue is still rattling on about whether the Meddling Monk is The Master. NO, HE WASN’T!!! Delightfully on the letters page the idea of female Time Lords is discussed by someone. Of course in 2018 it is interesting that the letter does not seem to suggest that male Time Lords could regenerate into female ones but perhaps a young S. Moffatt was reading this issue? I should mention The Song of Taliesyn a comic strip which is well drawn but seems nothing like a Doctor Who story at all. I wonder how many people read it back then? 

There’s a membership application form in this issue for those who want to part with their pennies for the new look DWAS. The CT section is on a DIY tip this time round so you can learn how to make a Cyberman toy figure (that fan from last issue will be in raptures!) and also you can buy cassette covers for your illegal recordings of the show! Did nobody read Gordon’s legal notice last issue! This section also sometimes includes familiar names just starting out on their fan journey and this issue has an ad for The Surbiton Doctor Who Society Fanzine edited by none other than David Howe.

An indication of the growing popularity of fanzines comes with the increasing size of the Fanzines in Focus review section which includes the first issue of Gallifrey which would become the first big non DWAS Doctor Who fanzine over the next few years.

Issue 8:The publication dates of this year’s issues are so strung out that you forget there was a new series showing by the time you get to issue 8 hence a `Sunmakers` cover. Inside the editorial says the zine will appear every 2 months in 1978, clearly a more realistic schedule. There’s bits of news in this issue- with news due to disappear into CT from next year- including new season stuff telling us about `The Underworld` set on a distant asteroid followed by `Invasion of Time` by Richard Thomas. News too of the film `Doctor Who and the Scratchman` which goes into production at Xmas with some filming at the BBC. Vincent Price is playing the Scratchman and there will be a new companion played by Twiggy. Did they just make up the news in those days? There’s also a raffle you can enter for only 20p with the chance of winning some impressive props that were used in filming  including a Mutt mask, a giant maggot, a giant spider, a stun gun, a ray gun, an Auton finger and ,erm, some rope from `The Silurians`. 

A new season means grumpy Jan, the DWAS President whom you’ll recall demolished `The Deadly Assassin` back in 1976 and here passes comment on the first batch of stories. He finds the season “strange”, seemed to like `Horror of Fang Rock` and to some extent `The Invisible Enemy` but says there were “a number of errors and blunders” in the latter. Having said he liked `Fang Rock` two sentences later in Trumpstep fashion he’s saying part 1 was “so slow” and the CSO “hopeless”. He’s only seen part 1of `Image of the Fendahl` and that seems better though I bet by part 3 he was hating the Fendahleen!

Amongst the features this issue are a look at incidental music in the series, an aspect rarely discussed in print back then, Jan’s somewhat superfluous `translations` of the President’s Scrolls (what was he saying about things being too slow?), how to make the rest of that Cyberman doll (people had to wait months to finish it!),  a Debate Corner on the different Tardis console rooms and a piece about the forthcoming amateur film `Ocean in the Sky`. I never saw it but those who did suggest they would rather have not. Leo Adams plays the Doctor and had been in the profession for thirty years apparently. I wonder if he put this on his cv.

John Peel was fandom’s other coruscating executioner of new stories and he is given `The Invisible Enemy` to review. It’s below and suffice to say it makes even grumpy Jan’s demolition job of `Deadly Assassin` look tame! A suitable way to end 1977's DWAS fanzine.