2002: A Time and Space Odyssey

As 2002 dawns, it has been over five and a half years since the Doctor Who television movie starring Paul McGann - intended as a backdoor pilot for a full series - was aired. That full series was never picked up owing to disappointing ratings in the US, and it seems like the show may have missed its chance for its big comeback.

But fans aren't catered to too badly. There are not one but two monthly ranges of novels - one chronicling the continuing adventures of the Eighth Doctor after he departed San Francisco, and another featuring the previously unchronicled adventures of his seven predecessors. Big Finish Productions were producing fully-dramatised audio stories featuring four of the five surviving Doctors and their companions, and their second series of adventures starring McGann were about to kick off. And there's still a monthly magazine, which in January 2002, kicked off the new year with an extensive article asking 50 big questions about the show's future, answered by people in the know. 17 years on, how on the nose did it turn out to be?

Barking Up the Wrong Bush

19 April 1987: The first-ever appearance of The Simpsons on television, in a short in The Tracey Ullman Show, "Good Night".
8 November 1988: George H.W. Bush defeats Michael Dukakis in that year's Presidential election.
20 January 1989: Bush is inaugurated as the 41st President of the United States.
14 May 1989: The last-ever Tracey Ullman Simpsons short, "TV Simpsons", is aired.
17 December 1989: The first ever full-length episode of the half-hour Simpsons series, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", is broadcast.

You Can Be the Stainless Steel Rat

This is a curious little gamebook. A one-off title by the character's creator, Harry Harrison, You Can Be the Stainless Steel Rat is absolutely impossible to lose. All the paths eventually lead to the same victory, although it is possible to get stuck going round in circles. There's also no real inventory management, no statistics, and no dice (although tossing a coin to make a decision occasionally comes into play), making the whole thing comparable to an entry in the Choose Your Own Adventure series. One wonders whether or not Mr Harrison truly grasped the concept behind an adventure gamebook (he never wrote another interactive book again); at any rate, calling this 'interactive' or a 'role-playing game' (the latter term is used on the American cover) seems to have a bit of nerve. Also, the title is a complete misnomer, as you do not play as the Stainless Steel Rat, but rather a new recruit to the Special Corps, with the SSR serving as the book's narrator.

Small Beginnings

A question nobody ever asks me is, "Mr. Wickham, you've listened to a hell of a lot of Doctor Who plays by Big Finish Productions, where do you think I should start?" I find the company's own list of recommendations quite baffling in several places, so I thought I would make my own, providing examples for each Doctor. (Most of these items are usually put on sale at least once a year, so keep an eye out.)

Broken Gamebooks #12: Legend of Zagor

Pointless fact: The main part of the cover illustration was done by one artist, and the four portraits of the heroes by another.

There are three major things to cover here. I'll get the easy one out of the way first - if you have a Puffin edition of this book, then section 120 directs you to 233, when it should be 223. (An earlier version of this article had the latter two sections the wrong way round -- see comments for more) This particular error was fixed for the Wizard reprint in 2004.

"In Some Ways, You and I Are Very Different Edits"

It is often the case that there will not be one definitive version of a television show. The episode might change between broadcasts; maybe there was a complaint about the content, leading the powers to be to edit out the offending material, or even change it completely. This is obviously more common in animated shows where it's easier to change the content, and The Simpsons is an obvious example.

The DVD Companion at The Simpsons Archive is a good, uh, companion for this sort of thing. But here's the interesting thing, and the point of this article: in the UK, America's favourite family is broadcast on two different channels. Sky 1 has been the digital broadcaster since 1990, whilst the terrestrial channel of choice was the BBC from 1997 until 2004, and then Channel 4 from 2004 to the present day. And sometimes, when there are two different versions of an episode, the digital and terrestrial broadcaster will be given different copies!

Here's a list of all the known cases of that happening.

Techno Twins

Not really enough has been written about Techno Games, a Robot Wars spin-off - effectively the Robotic Olympics - which ran for four series on BBC Two between 2000 and 2003. It was stripped across weekdays, which helped with the comparisons to the Humanoid Olympics rather better than if it had been weekly (as did the commentary from Olympic commentator Barry Davies), and a lot of the events were broadcast live, which was quite brave given all the things that could possibly go wrong (especially in the Swimming event!) It's probably fair to say it's not as fondly remembered as RW, but if you're not sure if you remember it or not, then see if Skeletron or Scuttle jog your memory.

Doctor Who and the Lost 1986

In February 1985, BBC One controller Michael Grade made the decision to put Doctor Who on hiatus. Initially thought to be an attempt to kill the show off for good, public outcry later forced him to reduce it to a delay of 18 months - rather than debut at the beginning of the year, as the show had been doing since Peter Davison became the Doctor, it would start in September. More drastic was the cut in runtime - the delayed season would run for just 14 25-minute episodes.

The 1985 season had seen a shift to 45-minute episodes (the show had previously been running twice-weekly on weeknights, and this year had also seen a return to the traditional Saturday nights), which the originally planned 1986 run would have retained. So late in the day was the postponement that pre-production had already begun, and it was roughly known what the lineup of the season would be, and work was well underway. With the hiatus and abbreviation of the season, the decision was made to throw out all work that had been done on the 1986 serials in favour of one over-arcing story, The Trial of a Time Lord. Here, then, is what Season 23 looked like in a parallel universe where the powers that be were slightly more favourable to the show...