Terror of the Autons

 

“I am usually referred to as The Master”. With just eight words a new classic tv villain made his debut appearance fifty years ago yet nobody could know just how defining a performance Roger Delgado would give and how enduring the character would become. The Master has re-appeared in many guises over the subsequent half century yet the benchmarks are all laid out from the start. Generously afforded the role of (increasingly un-surprising) enemy in each of 1971’s stories enabled both character and actor to develop a popularity to rival that of the Doctor. Yet there was nothing complicated about The Master really. Clad in black and sporting a Mephistophelian trimmed beard the only way he could look more evil would be to sprout a couple of horns. In another actor’s hands it could have been unimpressive but gifted a role he was totally suited to Roger Delgado makes it his own, so much so that every Master since has used it as a template either to copy or develop. As an example of how in thrall the Eighties version of Doctor Who was to its past when they recast the part they made the actor look as similar as possible to Delgado. Nowadays writers like to pry into the psyche of the main characters but this version of the series never went too deep. They didn’t need to. The Doctor versus The Master is clear good versus evil and kids at that time were happy with such escapist adventure.

 

Chris Achilleos

 

Growing up in the Seventies we only got to see each episode of Doctor Who once (or maybe twice if it was repeated) so the Target novelisations were our equivalent of how you can now watch any existing episode whenever you want. Crucial to those books were the covers especially the earlier ones which were the work of Chris Achilleos who sadly died this week. His artwork created a heightened, stylised version of Doctor Who with a grander and more exciting visual aesthetic than the reality of the series. Yet he was also able to home in on the elements that made each story tick. Finding a new book and a new cover was like discovering new treasure and those covers somehow became synonymous with the stories they depicted.

 

Fan Scene CT 1980 Oct- Dec

 

October

“The latest Doctor Who news supplied by the production office and society members” it says under an Update headline. I wonder if there was some issue with news in CT or perhaps the notoriously finnicky JNT just wanted credit. Anyway, the subsequent story does have a whiff of press release about it with the plucked from thin air suggestion that the new season “looks like being the biggest success for some time”. “The brilliant, imaginative Leisure Hive,” it continues and later on we’re told “we are being treated to one of Emrys James’ performances.” Why you can almost hear John Nathan Turner’s voice! Romana is going – “but K9 will go on.”  You can buy the theme music too with a b side called `Astronauts` though it’ll never match the legendary b side `Reg`.  Chris Dunk rather cheekily prints a picture of a press review of `Leisure Hive` underneath all this sunny promotional banter and its not a favourable one referring to “very cheap camera effects” and concluding “no-one seems to have any faith in this geriatric juvenilia”. Hardly “brilliant, imaginative.” Other news includes a Madame Tussaud’s display and a Doctor Who war game called `The Key of Kronos` in which players take on the character of one of the Doctors to search for a key that is in six segments. Sounds familiar. It doesn’t say if they have to dangle from the ceiling dressed as Kronos though.