The 800 Day Project - Day 1 to Day 369 - One Year On

An Unearthly Child through to Death To The Daleks:

With apologies to Billy Joel's We Didn't Start The Fire  (and those not fond of a tortuous lyric)...

The Cave Of Skulls, Planet's dead, Beyond the Sun, Kublai Khan
Voord swimming, Aztecs killing, Exploit the Sense-Sphere
 Reign of Terror, Crew is shrinking, Daleks winning, Vicki's joining
 Rome is burning, Zarbi bumping, Saladin is here

Space Museum, Chase is on, Meddling Monk, Four Hundred Dawns
Bret Vyon, Roman goodbye, and the Masterplan is nigh
Bell of Doom, Steel Sky, Toymaker make Dodo scream
Johnny Ringo, Steven's staying, WOTAN in a high rise.

You can make up the chorus yourself......

Smallbeer and Gurney , Tenth Planet, Bragan and MacCrimmon's dirk...

That's quite enough of that. This is just getting silly. Get on with it!

Okay, okay - so it was a bad idea to start with.

The truth of the matter is, I just wanted to acknowledge that I made it this far. A whole year of watching Doctor Who one episode a day. No skipping. No audio only. Either official DVD's or reconstructions with the soundtrack and tele-snaps.

I even kept going during my two week holiday in Greece.

It's become part of my daily routine. Waking up in the morning and thinking "Today it's Fury from The Deep episode 5". More importantly, having made through a whole year, there is no way I am going to stop now. 369 days down, 431 to go.

I said in my last post about having the wholly unoriginal idea for this project that I am not going to comment on every story - and that's still true. The enthusiasm for having a regular blog wasn't there back in January 2014. I personally don't think I have enough original thoughts about each story to make interesting reading anyway. I've promised myself now that I will post something here at least once a week - but this blog isn't *just* about Doctor Who (well it won't be eventually).

Even so, I would be a poor fan indeed if I didn't at least offer up some (very) edited highlights / lowlights of the last year of watching:

Highlights:

Marco Polo - A story so good I ended up watching two different reconstructions (nothing in the rules about watching a story more than once!) As the first historical I can imagine it was comforting after the craziness of The Daleks and Edge of Destruction.

The Crusade - The masterful Julian Glover. The dialogue is just wonderful but then I'm a sucker for a bit of cod-Shakespeare.

Galaxy 4 - There's a bit of a theme here. Perhaps it's because I have never watched a lot of the recons before (well not fully). The design of the Rill is fantastic. The Face of Boe 40-odd years early.

Enemy Of The World - How could I bypass this? Troughton is just mesmerising. I was lucky enough to see this for the first time in a cinema in London with a Q&A afterwards. Poor Fariah...

Web Of Fear - Again I saw this first on a big screen. Not quite as good as it was in my head though. I particularly like Jack Woolgar as Staff Sgt. Arnold.

The Dominators - Just for Ronald Allen.

The War Games - Just riveting all the way through. By now I am really playing spot the recurring actor. Look - Bernard Horsfall ! Philip Madoc! Plus added David Troughton. Wonderful.

The Ambassadors of Death - Has the distinction of being the first Pertwee that I'd never seen before (there are others I'm ashamed to say).

Claws Of Axos - I just love this for some reason. Maybe it's Bernard Holley. Maybe it's the technicolour sets. Or maybe it's because I've written about it before here.

Day Of The Daleks - "No Complications"...

The Mutants - I've been to Chislehurst Caves you know ! A great monster and worth it for Rick James's acting alone. Another one I'd never seen before (I know shoot me now).

Carnival Of Monsters - Rightly hailed as a classic. The Drashigs. Vorgs hat. Shirna's outfit. The Five Faces Of Doctor Who. I felt warm and fuzzy all the way through. "Our purpose is to amuse, simply to amuse. Nothing serious, nothing political". Where have I seen that since?

The Time Warrior - Sarah Jane. 'Nuff said.

Lowlights:

The Dalek Masterplan - I'm sorry it's a great story, but even with the excellent recon I have, Feast Of Steven is almost unwatchable.

Well that was a short second list. I tried to pick other stories but found that there was something I liked in all of them.I actually quite enjoyed The Sensorites. Despite it's obvious flaws The Celestial Toymaker has Billy Bunter. The Krotons was the first Troughton I ever saw so has a special place in my heart. Colony in Space has the fabulous Bernard Kay (and what a loss that was recently).

I just can't bring myself to poor scorn on a whole story. Maybe I'm just a glass half-full kind of a guy. Or maybe I just enjoying this journey too damn much.

Onwards and upwards and all that positive stuff. Here's to the next 14 and a bit months.

Oh and for anyone wondering why I marked 369 days rather than 365, that's because Day 370 is a very important one -  as we'll see in my next post...

The Idea...

So it's Christmas 2013. Amongst all the gifts of aftershave, books, socks and movies, I received this:

It's an important disc. Not only is it a fantastic story, but more personally, my Classic Doctor Who DVD collection is finally complete. All those years of purchases. Searching out the reconstructions for missing episodes and burning them to DVD. Printing my own covers so the spines all match (yes I know....). It was wonderful. As satisfying as having a complete collection of 2000 AD, or reading the final book in a much loved series.

(By the way, I am aware that The Moonbase and The Web of Fear were not officially released until 2014, but at the time I had a reconstruction of the first and a digital copy of the second. Let me have my moment).

So what now? Sure they all look great lined up on the shelves. I can dip in and out of eras and Doctors whenever I want. Great for rainy days and those early hours at weekends when the cats insist on getting me up to feed them. But surely this deserves something... more?

I know ! Why don't I watch all the serials in order from the beginning? An Unearthly Child all the way through to The TV Movie and even beyond. What an original idea - not.

"It won't work" the devil on my left shoulder starts up, "You tried that once before remember? You got as far as Edge of Destruction and gave up, or work got in the way, or you were on holiday or something. You can't keep the pace."

"This time it will be different" says the angel on my right shoulder.

"Nope, still don't think you can do it".

I'm all prepared to let the two of them bicker it out, when somewhere on the Interweb I spot a curious fact. "Time Of The Doctor", Matt Smith's last episode will be the 800th episode of Doctor Who.

Eight hundred. A nice big round number. It hangs there.

I've always had a thing about numbers and collections - sets of things: book trilogies, complete runs of comics, TV series box sets. To be honest my day job is really all about numbers.

That settles it. I'm doing it. Eight hundred episodes.

But how to keep the momentum? If I try and do a serial a day at weekends I'll soon run into the same problems as before - lack of time.

And then it hits me. The majority of Classic Who episodes are 25-30 minutes. Everyone can find 30 minutes in a day can't they? What about that time before work when I eat my breakfast and watch the news or surf the 'Net?

So - one episode a day maximum. Every day without fail. For 800 days. Don't even think about blogging it. Others like Wife In Space and No Complications have done it far better than me. Not to mention the number of books out there. It would just be covering old ground. Just watch the episodes. Enjoy them. Come on. I can do this!

To make it even more "numerical" I'll start on 1st January 2014. Perfect. I'm excited now. Even if no one else ever knows, even if it's not the most original idea in the world, this will mean something to me. I will know I did it. I will know I have watched every single one.

And thus The 800 Day Project was born.

Next time, I'll tell you how I got on during the first year...

A trip to the TARDIS

I'm still back in time. Don't worry we'll catch up to the present day eventually.

It's 2013. Nu-Who (actually I hate that name, let's never use it ever again). The New Series of Doctor Who has been on the air for 8 years. More importantly it's the 50th anniversary of the show. A time for celebration.

This is the year I went out. You know, outside. To events and stuff. Mixing with real people, other fans.

I'd already decided that I was going to try and do a lot of varied things for the 50th year. I'd been to comics-related events back in the 1980's but this was different. In the end I managed to get to seven events:

• The BFI screening and Q&A for the 10th Doctor
• The Oodcast live podcast - Doctor Who in improv, comedy and song (with added Dan Starkey).
• The cinema screening of "Day Of The Doctor" (of course)
• Toby Hadoke's performance of Moth's Ate My Doctor Who Scarf and My Stepson Stole My Sonic Screwdriver (with a star-studded audience of Who luminaries past)
• The Doctor Who - A Celebration event at Excel (Bernard Cribbins was fantastic!)
• The BFI screening and Q&A for the 11th Doctor

Oh and then there was the seventh outing. The jewel in the crown. A trip to the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff and a visit to the TARDIS set.

Yes, I was actually going to set foot in the TARDIS.

When we arrived, I met Matt Smith as The Doctor in the café area! Seriously I had to do a double-take, as the guy was THAT convincing. Not only did he have the "Snowmen"- onwards costume to perfection, but he had the haircut, the boots, the sonic - and even looked very like Matt. Some of the little ones were awe-struck and had their picture taken with him.

(Of course I now know that the gent in question is Matt Elliott. world-renowned Matt Smith lookalike and cosplayer.)

We did the walking tour, the set tour and then the Experience. The walking tour was good fun, if a bit "whistle-stop" as you do move quite quickly around the Bay area, but you do have time for photos. It was great to go inside the Millennium Centre.

The set tour was obviously the highlight. Especially as we were told they were only doing it for four weeks in 2013. We were taken down to the studio in a group of around fifteen and went into the set itself in smaller groups of between 3 to 6. While you wait you chat to the guide, do quiz questions, talk about favourite stories and companions, etc. There were only a couple of us who were into the Classic series as well as the new, so we chatted quite a bit to the guide. We waited until the end so we were the last group of three to go in - and there was no rush to move on.

The set was just incredible. It felt real and solid and once the doors were closed it was  all around me. Just amazingly well built and with such detail. Our guide took pictures of us in front of the console and was very chatty - he was also very very gracious and let us stay for what must have been 15 minutes or so to take more pictures and video... so long in fact that we almost missed the last entry of the day to the Experience section.

The Experience was good fun -  especially for the smaller fans, with some great effects. I won't say any more so as not to spoil the fun. Of course now it has regenerated into the Capaldi Experience (and a modified TARDIS set) in 2014, I have an excuse to go back...

The "museum" section was as you would expect - full of fantastic props and costumes and three more TARDIS consoles. Lots and lots and lots of photos.

I'm not going to post the photos (you all know what a Mandrill looks like), but I am going to finish with the video we took on the TARDIS set - partially so I have somewhere to preserve it and partly for anyone who's interested.

Two things to note: 1) My wife took the video (I was too busy having my picture taken) and 2) I put the music over the top to cover up the other voices). Enjoy !

Next time we edge closer to the present day, when a Christmas present prompts me to do something I'd never attempted before..

Waiting For Christopher / Behind The Sofa

Back in 2004, just as I was creating a non-existent blog, The BBC announced that they would be bringing back Doctor Who. Not only that but Russell T Davies of Queer as Folk fame would be writing it and Christopher Eccleston would be starring.

God that sounds so long ago now. The revived series has been back for 10 years? Really? I can't be that old surely?

Of course this announcement  was met with huge surprise and joy by fans. And one fan in particular decided to do something special...

I was already aware of Neil Perryman from the excellent and very funny Tachyon TV website and magazine. Now of course he is the internationally famous writer and best-selling author of Adventures With The Wife In Space. Back in 2004 he created "Waiting For Christopher" - a collaborative blog to celebrate his love for Doctor Who and to count down to the new series.

It was a truly excellent website and reignited my love for the series (which to be honest had waned quite a bit during the Wilderness Years after the show came off the air). Part of the blog was called "Stripped Down", where Neil, fellow writers and general fans could post episodic reviews and commentary on Classic Who serials.

So, a few weeks before the start of episode 1 of the new series, Stripped Down started its reviews with "Spearhead From Space" and finished the first batch with "The TV Movie" the night before "Rose" was to be transmitted.

It was a heady time to be a fan. Stripped Down was a brilliant excuse (as if we needed one) to indulge in all those old stories and share your thoughts and memories with fellow enthusiasts. It changed my world. Suddenly I remembered why I had loved Doctor Who all those years ago. I wanted to be part of this again - part of fandom.

Eventually we were no longer "Waiting For Christopher". He had arrived and was fantastic. Stripped Down continued to a second batch of stories, and this time I was not just commenting, I was writing!

Starting with "Dalek Invasion Of Earth", I offered up my pitiful excuses for reviews to the website and they actually published them. How I laboured over that first set of reviews. How terrible they read now. I couldn't keep up with the daily pace of the others so dropped away after four stories, but I kept coming back.

The website regenerated into Behind the Sofa. Same people, same ideas, new name. Volume 1 is here and Volume 2 is here. We moved onto reviewing the New Series and again I contributed a few paltry posts. My stuff certainly wasn't anything special but it made me feel part of 'something'. I needed that.

Anyway, if you really want to subject yourself to my inexperienced attempts at reviews, my clumsy humour and my way with a twisted metaphor, the Classic Series reviews I posted can be found here, here and here.

A couple of my New Series offerings (including why I think RTD can't do endings) are here and here.

I will be eternally grateful to Neil Perryman (follow him on Twitter at @wifeinspace). It's down to him that I found a new love for Doctor Who. I've re-embraced what it means to be a fan. Found new friends. Spent a huge amount of money rebuilding my book collection. Thanks Neil.

Next time we are going to jump forward a good few years to when the inner fan meets the outside world...

Ten Years Later

Oh. Well that went well didn't it? Not only did I not post anything beyond that initial clunky opening, I completely forgot this blog even existed.

Still, thanks to being re-inspired by a friend (thanks Al!) I'm back - and this time I'm going to really try and stick with it.

So, what's happened in the last 10+ years? Births, marriages, deaths, moving house, the introduction of Blu-ray, the iPhone, DC's New  52, the meteoric rise of Facebook and Twitter, the list goes on. Plus of course the triumphant return of my favourite TV show, Doctor Who. Which leads into what I *actually* did next...