Toby Hadoke

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1722591.html

This is a book about watching the whole of Doctor Who in sequence, so of course it appealed to me. It is structured as correspondence between Robert Shearman, author of the Christopher Ecclestone episode Dalek, and Toby Hadoke, author of Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf and moderator of numerous recent DVD commentaries, spaced over the course of 2009, with the intention being to start on 1 January with An Unearthly Child and finish with The End of Time show more part 1 on 31 December. This first volume covers the 1960s, ie the entire Hartnell and Troughton period plus the two Peter Cushing films, at a rate of (usually) two episodes a day.

During a week when my ability to concentrate on long texts was not of its usual quality, the structure of this book was absolutely perfect for me, with each individual episode getting about a page of discussion. It helps of course that it's less than a year since I finished rewatching this period of the show myself, so it was all pretty fresh for me. (I just hope they don't publish the other two volumes before I've finished my own rewatch - spoilers!) Shearman writes of "that aghast expression that a classic Doctor Who fan affects when he knows that something on screen is rubbish, and he's painfully aware that all the non-fans watching with are about to glance over, in unison, to see if he's noticed how terible it is." But you can feel in safe company here. Both Shearman and Hadoke are deep deep fans of the show and email each other with tidbits of information for the reader which I am sure were known to both of them. Both are witty and amusing writers; Hadoke occasionally deteriorates into awful puns, but makes up for this by contributing his knowledge of stagecraft and the stage.

Their mission is to try and say something positive about each episode, and they generally succeed (with understandable lapses for The Sensorites and The Dominators). Sometimes I wished they had found a little more charity for, for instance, the mid-parts of The Daleks' Master Plan. Sometimes their enthusiasm surprised me - Hadoke's love for the second Cushing film, for instance. But I also cheered when our tastes coincided, for instance with the wonderful Power of the Daleks. And anyway, these things are personal and not objective; Hadoke explains in detail the very specific reasons why Fury From the Deep is a special story for him which he can never evaluate neutrally.

I'm within a few months of finishing my own Doctor Who rewatch (suggested to me in 2008 by Paul Cornell, but started only in September 2009) but I think this books will be very much enjoyed even by those who feel that it's a step too far to do it themselves. You can easily dip in and check out particular stories that may interest you, and the writing is generally chatty and lucid. Very strongly recommended to the thinking Old Who fan. show less

I was vaguely aware that comedian Toby Hadoke has a one-man stage show about being a Doctor Who fan, and got hold of the CD in the expectation of some wry nostalgic giggles but not much more.

I got a great deal more. The CD adaptation includes various other actors (including Louise Jameson as Hadoke's mother and Colin Baker as himself), adding to the power of the script, which is a wonderful meditation on growing up as an outsider and then coming to terms with fatherhood, with Doctor Who as a show more backdrop. (Basically everything that Nick Davies' Dalek I Loved You was trying to be, and much else besides.)

I was glad that I listened to this on one of the rare days when I had driven to work. I could not stop crying at the end, and that is better done in the privacy of one's own car rather than in a commuter train. It is brilliant. show less

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2910769.html

This is the much-delayed second volume of commentary between Shearman and Hadoke; I read and enjoyed the first back in 2011, and look forward now to the third when it comes out. It's now several years since I completed my own rewatch of Old Who, so this was a nice return to that exercise for me, especially since (like the authors) this is the period of the show that I remember most vividly from my own childhood. And there was one surprise - I had show more forgotten Tom Baker's appearance in character on Animal Magic, which I think I must have missed when it was shown in 1979.

The two don't deviate much from the received wisdom (or my own views) of the high and low points of the show - in particular, the later parts of both Season Nine and Season Fifteen, where they struggle in their mission to say only nice things about each episode. In fact, they are much harsher on The Claws of Axos than I would be. But it's interesting to consider that one of my recurrent complaints about New Who - that the punch of the season finale has often been pulled - was often just as true of Old Who during the Pertwee and Baker years.

The write-ups of each episode, presented as correspondence between Rob Shearman and Toby Hadoke, are very specifically tied to May-August 2009, a period when both writers went on various travels and Hadoke embarked on what turned out to be a short-lived marriage; but the seven-year gap has meant some occasionally poignant endnotes noting the subsequent passing of key figures in the making of the programme (notably Barry Letts). show less

A nostalgic, funny and touching memoir of growing up geek and the influence of The Doctor on one man's life. Toby Hadoke's wry delivery and spot-on guest spots by Colin Baker, Louise Jameson and others make this adaptation of his one-man show a delight.