About my
Doctor Who
Collection
I suppose my collection of Doctor Who things would have begun in about 1983 when I was a regular viewer of the series. At around this time, I received the first-ever BBC video Doctor Who release, "Revenge of the Cybermen". At the time, videos were selling for about £25.00 each!! Also, I was the proud owner of a TARDIS tent. I loved playing in this both indoors and outdoors, although I was always a bit disappointed that it was the same size inside as outside. I had a few of the Doctor Who novelisations, including Terrance Dicks' Dalek Omnibus and the silver cover edition of The Five Doctors.
For many years, I had the 1984 repeat of "The Five Doctors" on video. I think this is superior to the 90 minute version because it is in the format for which Doctor Who was made, ie. an episodic serial with cliffhangers.
It was not until 1992 when UK Gold began transmitting that my video collection began to take off. A friend with satellite television agreed to record the episodes and we alternated stories until he ran out of videotapes and I got most of the rest after that. We maintained a joint archive for many years but he emigrated to America in 2001 and some of his part of the archive was lost. With grateful thanks to E-Bay, I have been able to fill in the gaps. Having done so, I am now gradually replacing my home video recordings with official BBC video releases. The only significant gaps in my collection now are the stories of season 24 which were omitted by UK Gold on their first broadcast. As this season is widely regarded as one of the most appallingly awful collections of Dr. Who episodes ever shown, I am in no hurry to put them in my archive.
I have a collection of Dr. Who novelisations and reference books. I now have a full set of the Doctor Handbooks and Jean-Marc Lofficier's reference trilogy. I refer to these books on a daily basis. I have also got a full set of the Script Books issued in the early 1990s.
Currently, I have over 160 Doctor Who videotapes, including over 75 home recordings and about 90 BBC releases. I have practically all the first three Doctors' releases and I am about half-way through collecting all the Tom Baker ones.
I also have an extensive collection of the BBC audio releases. I have on cassette the four Troughton stories released around the time of the 30th anniversary and have collected almost all of the more recent compact disc releases, and I tend to buy new ones as soon as they are released.
I have various other Doctor Who odds and ends lying about, including four bottles of TARDIS bubble bath, a TARDIS money box, several model Daleks and a model Davros, as well as a Super 8 film print of episode 4 of "The Tenth Planet" (only kidding!!!!). Sadly, the TARDIS tent is long gone!
I don't make a special effort to go autograph hunting but over the last twelve years I have collected autographs from Jon Pertwee, Colin Baker, Peter Davison, Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen, Caroline John, Richard Franklin, Michael Jayston, Cy Town, Bernard Horsfall, Gabriel Woolf and David Maloney. I am delighted to say that I have been privileged to meet all of these illustrious Dr. Who luminaries, with the exception of Peter Davison and Tom Baker.