ILLUSTRATION BYMARTIN GERAGHTY
What? What?! WHAT?!? Hello, faithful reader. Here I am, settle down, quiet at the back, and let me tell you exactly how DWM itself created this new era of Doctor Who. Because it’s nice to look back now, and wonder how it all began (again), as I sit here with ten scripts in front of me (four Specials and six episodes of the New Series, so far, with Episode Seven blinking away on the screen, first line: INT. COFFEE BAR, USA – DAY, 1947, and to continue an old tradition, I can tell you that Special One contains these three words: westerly, pelican, dreams). But it’s funny how, only a year into pre-production, the principal players have all already got slightly different memories of how this happened. I’ve learnt, over the years, that when the Official History of Doctor Who says that in 1973 Barry Letts said X, Y and Z, it was probably no such thing. That event was just chiselled into anecdote 25 years later. Reader, is anything ever true?