Newspaper History

The second week of the Easter holiday was a busy, emotional time for my family. When my father-in-law died 2½ years ago, Alison and her brother decided to keep his house (where they had grown up, and where my family lived for a year before moving to Sheffield). We set it up as a holiday cottage so we could still go down and stay occasionally; and it worked for a while, but we were all too far away to make a proper go of it. In the end, we decided to rent it out to someone we knew who wanted to live in Chew Magna. As a result of this we needed to clear it out properly. We combined the clearance with a final family holiday there; the fact that it coincided with two birthdays (and almost a third) was a bonus.

The reason I'm bringing this up is that we found some old newspapers in the garage. Some very old newspapers. To be precise, two dated 21st July 1969 - and one from 23rd November, 1963.

Wow. These are covering the two events that are, to me, the iconic moments of the 1960s: the assassination of JFK and the first Moon landing. There's much more to the decade than that, of course - some movements have changed the face of society - but if I were to pick the two minutes that had the biggest impact I would choose these. What's more, it's fascinating looking at how reporting, advertising and cartoons have changed, or in some cases stayed the same.

Of course, as a Doctor Who fan, these have another significance as well - particularly in this anniversary year. The two dates nicely bracket the black and white era of the show (tightly at the beginning, and with one month clearance at the end). The world of news began in horror, and ended with optimism as our horizons expanded; while the show started out as "a mild curiosity in the junkyard", and ended with the Doctor falling to Earth, exiled "on one primitive planet, in one century in time."

In honour of the occasion I finally got around to reading Who Killed Kennedy, which I had downloaded (legally) from the New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club quite a long time ago; and, spookily, I had just finished Apollo 23. (The book I'd brought with me for holiday reading was Seeing I, whose relevance to this article escapes me.)

It's funny. I was dreading the thought of continuing my marathon into the Troughton era, because of the vast swaths of missing episodes (I have some trouble with both narrated soundtracks and recons). This discovery makes me want to see out the black and white period, which is much more of a distinct entity than the Hartnell era on its own. And I have a plan to make it easier if I get bogged down: a second marathon, interleaved as necessary.

I didn't want to do another marathon chronologically by Doctor, since in theory this one will eventually do all that; nor a history-based one, like deltaandthebannermen's A History of the Universe, because I like more variety of setting. Then I realised that I have almost all of the first 60 Big Finish releases (there's three I sold and will have to buy again, but that's doable). So, since audio is my favourite medium, and I won't get to Doctors 5-8 for many years, why not do a Big Finish marathon? Most main range stories will give me five reviews, and I might slot in the occasional short story featuring an audio TARDIS team as well. That might keep me sane while my main marathon is crawling through seasons 3-5.

I might well change my mind in the couple of years it'll take me to get there, but I would now be surprised if this marathon doesn't continue past The Tenth Planet...

Next Time:
Remember Susan's Tale? A story which was in one sense complete, but also only half of an adventure? Stick around for the beginning of the other half, in Ian's Tale...