This Is Yesterday

If you’re supposed to be the superior race of the universe, why don’t you try climbing after us? – The Fourth Doctor

There was always going to have to be at least one Doctor Who story for this blog and if there was only going to be one it would have to be Remembrance Of The Daleks. It’s actually a complete coincidence I’ve got the time to write this at the

time of the show’s 60th anniversary, but it feels right because this story was Doctor Who’s proper 25th anniversary story in heart and soul (those who wish to argue the case for Silver Nemesis… are welcome to).

It’s not only my first memory of Doctor Who but my first proper TV memory. I was 5 when the first episode was broadcast and my Mum sat me down to watch it – I don’t think she regrets it, despite the obsession it sparked to this day. I’ve never asked her outright mind you. I can vaguely remember being disconcerted by the episode but enjoying it but what I really remember is the cliffhanger. I’d never seen a Dalek before, or properly experienced a cliffhanger, and the sight of one slowly chasing Sylvester McCoy up a flight of stairs shouting “Exterminate!” properly had me captivated. 

And for a few weeks while that story was aired we were probably the last kids until Russell T Davies came along in 2005 who played Daleks in the playground. And I remember being at the top of our stairs and being not actually scared, but just a little bit anxious, because what if a Dalek did come up when you weren’t expecting it? I mean, you never knew now…

I have patchier memories, though maybe more influential ones of watching other stories of the rest of the show before the BBC1 controllers finally managed to kill it a year later, just as the show was starting to find a new voice again. But I didn’t know that then – all I wanted to know is “Mum, will there be more Daleks on TV?” So, bless her, she bought on video the ‘Dalek Invasion Of Earth’ with the original Doctor, William Hartnell. And despite the slower pace, and the black and white, I loved that too – I didn’t understand why the flying saucers made Mum and Dad laugh though. That first feeling of getting defensive about Doctor Who’s special effects at the tender age of what must have been about 7 or 8….

And then it grew from there, with Doctor Who being one of my two very unfashionable fandoms growing up (the other being The Beatles until they finally became socially acceptable again at some point in my mid-teens). Realising there was more to Doctor Who than the Daleks. Finding out about all the different Doctors. Seeing Tom Baker’s Doctor for the first time. And then when getting Remembrance on video watching it again. And again…

It was released in a tin box for the show’s 30th Anniversary (along with The Chase – definitely the B-side offering) so that’s two milestones it covered (sorry Silver Nemesis, but no).

I remember getting that for Christmas. Remembrance sets itself at the time of Doctor Who’s first broadcast so we see early 60s Britain – money isn’t decimalised and more disturbingly it’s still normal to have ‘No Coloureds’ signs in B&B windows. Two sets of Daleks are fighting over a McGuffin, but the point is their problem with each other is their racial purity. Human neo-Nazis are all too happy to help.

This sounds like it could be horrendously preachy, but the story uses this backdrop to tell a story which goes in several different directions and doesn’t have any long ideological speeches. It’s essentially an action adventure with some great character scenes. The Daleks were always Doctor Who’s Nazi surrogates, so putting them with some human right-wingers is a neat touch, and Ace smashing up a Dalek with a baseball bat is legendary. The Doctor manipulates both groups of Daleks to destruction, and it ends with a funeral. And The Doctor in all this is very mysterious.

I sometimes wonder – what if it hadn’t been this Doctor Who story my 5 year old self saw but something else? Would I have become a 5 year old fan from seeing any of the others that year? None captured my imagination so vividly, although I have memories of seeing every story apart from ‘Silver Nemesis’ even now.

Fast-forward a few decades and into my son’s life… a few years ago he sneaked downstairs when he was about 4 or 5 and found me watching… You guessed it – ‘The Invasion’ Part 4, the 2nd Doctor Cybermen story. And despite it being black and white, he knew there was some sort of mystery that was going on, the sort of thing that doesn’t usually happen in children’s TV. So he stayed up and watched some 60s Cybermen, and he loved it.

And so when he asked if there was any more Doctor Who to watch the next night, we watched ‘Remembrance Of The Daleks’ and it had just the same effect – maybe more so – as it did on me at his age. It’s definitely something about Daleks wobbling down familiar places like streets and schools. In the age of streaming he can watch it again and again without even having to rewind the tape. 

And of course there’s been new Doctor Who for him to watch at the same time – we’ve just watched the 60th anniversary specials – so he has the best of both worlds and I couldn’t be happier for him. What a great time to be a young fan, lucky sod.