FEATURE BY ALAN BARNES
Fifty years ago, Doctor Who ended. And then it began.
A chapter closed on 26 February 1966, with an episode entitled, not inappropriately, Bell of Doom. It ended after astronaut Steven Taylor stormed out of the TARDIS, appalled by the wandering Doctor’s seeming indifference to the awful Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day – in which Anne Chaplet, a jeune fille of their mutual acquaintance, was presumed to have met a grisly fate. It ended with the time-and-space-travelling Doctor at last alone in his ship – quite possibly for the first time since he’d departed his home planet in the company of his granddaughter Susan.