This piece was written in 2017 for the volume 'You On Target' celebrating the Doctor Who Novels published by Target from the 1970's... a child/teenagers only way of recapturing old Doctor Who Stories before the advent of VHS, DVD and the Internet...
It was published in 2020 and is available from ...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B084DG77M7/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=you+on+target&qid=1580640568&sr=8-2
The Space Pirates
Preface
Irlam Train Station, 13th November 2013 around 4.55pm
The wind is blowing so hard that the trees on the opposite side of the station, the line that heads towards Liverpool are almost bent in two; the rain lashes downward and then horizontally.
I am protected to a degree by my Jack Wolfskin coat, although I have to keep adjusting my laptop bag as it annoying my slips down from my right shoulder as I try to read the Kindle held in my right hand …
I’m approaching 44th birthday and I’m reading ‘Doctor Who and The Space Pirates’ by Terrence Dicks
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I was first attracted to Doctor Who in 1975 although not allowed to watch it until 1977
I fell in love with the show in 1979, discovering Target novelisations and Doctor Who Weekly
I became obsessed in 1981 when I got the ‘Doctor Who’ programme guide and the whole ‘history’ of the show began to reveal itself to me
I vividly remember watching the first episode of Castrovalva in January 1982 on my Dad’s black and white portable… actually, that pretty much sums up most of the Peter Davison era… more often than not it would have been in the ‘dining room’, after tea… other than ‘The Five Doctors’ which I was allowed to watch on the colour TV in the living room
By 1984 I had an almost complete set of the Target Books; I’d joined DWAS and had even been to a ‘local group’ meeting in Redditch. I can’t remember the actual address but my Dad drove me there in his Robin Reliant… the person holding the meeting had a full size ‘Earthshock’ Cyberman costume and an Ice Warrior too… at some point in the meeting, to everyone’s amusement, the Ice Warriors head fell off as I watched an episode of ‘Inferno’ intently and cracked me on the back of my own… it hurt
By 1987 I was planning my first holiday without my parents. This would have been just before Sylvester McCoy had made his debut. I’d become to be a little disillusioned by the show and I needed money, with a little reluctance, I sorted through my Doctor Who Collection, and with my friend, Paul took my collection to Paramount Book Exchange on Withy Grove in Manchester. Paul was one of my first friends to learn to drive and get a car and was also going on the holiday so was willing to sacrifice his Saturday morning in order for me to raise ‘spending money’ for our trip to Newquay
I think I got £60 for my almost complete set of Target Books and 100 plus issues of Doctor Who Magazine from the near legendary and infamous one armed owner of the shop…
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Christmas 2011 my wife buys me a Kindle…
The first thing I do is do a search online and acquire copies of every Doctor Who Target Novel, every New Adventure and Missing Adventure published to that date. They’re loaded onto my Kindle, the idea being that when I’m travelling for work I have something to read
My love for show the show had been rekindled (no pun intended) over the intervening years as I started to collect the episodes released by the BBC (either originals or copies of the same) but for some reason I didn’t go back to collect physical copies of the Target Books
Unfortunately from January to March 2012 there is a ‘travel ban’ so I spend 3 months working from home…
By April 2012 I’ve managed to get a few quid from claiming PPI from my bank… enough to buy iPads for my wife and I… my Kindle is tidied away, and disappears into a drawer
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September 2013 I start a new job.
For the first few months I have to travel to either Irlam or Birchwood (the latter being a stop further then the former) as I need to get up to speed with what’s what and who’s who. Almost as if by magic, the day before I am due to start, whilst sorting out suit, shirt, tie etc. I find my Kindle…
I haven’t ‘commuted’ for work for many years, and although my journey is only going to be 15-20 mins I decided that I need something to distract me from the packed train and people pushing and shoving, plus, apparently the service is notoriously unreliable so there is likely to be waiting on platforms as trains are cancelled or delayed…
And that’s when my love of Doctor Who novelisation came back… over the following 2 months I read all of the ‘missing adventures’ … those that I’d not seen, from ‘The Myth Makers’ to ‘The Smugglers’ via ‘The Massacre’ and ‘The Highlanders’ to ‘The Space Pirates’ via ‘The Macra Terror’
Reading those novels again on the journeys to and from work, some for the first time, took me back to the long winter evenings of my early teens where they offered an escape into a magical world of ‘new’ Doctor Who adventures
And so then there I am, November 2013… a couple of weeks from my birthday and the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who and I finish reading the ‘last’ missing adventure
I hadn’t been looking forward to reading ‘The Space Pirates’ – it’s a story which is often derided, possibly due to the lack of photos and only 1 episode existing.
For heaven’s sake it doesn’t even get a re-appraisal in the ‘Hating To Love’ book… it’s really hated that much!
But I enjoyed it, maybe because Terence Dicks is just a master craftsman, maybe because he focussed on the actual story and characters rather than having to explain in detail the long scenes involving space craft from the televised story
I may not feel the same way about the televised story if the missing episodes appeared, but the book reminded me of why I fell in love with the programme so many years ago…
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Epilogue
Summer 2016
After a change in personal circumstances I found myself ‘reconnecting’ again with my past. Hunting down things which I’d sold or let go over the many years to pay bills and make ends meet. Speaking to a few people whose relationships and marriages had broken down I believe this is the period known as ‘finding yourself’
I struck lucky and managed to buy an entire ‘Classic Era’ DVD collection for a reasonable price… I’d sold my collection a couple of years earlier but I soon found myself sorting my newly purchased DVD collection into transmission order, revisiting the sleeves and then putting them on the shelf… it gave me a warm glow…
But something was missing … there was a space on the shelves which had been filled with DVD’s which I’d sold but wasn’t going to replace;
I casually flick through eBay, Amazon and eventually Shada on ‘Gallifrey Base’ … looking for something but not knowing what
And then I see it… ‘Complete Set of Target Novels for Sale’…
Again, a reasonable price… messages are exchanged and less than 3 days later I find myself sorting through my newly purchased ‘Target Book’ collection into transmission order, revisiting the gorgeous invocative sleeves - some I’ve not seen in close detail for almost 30 years
It takes me a few hours to work through them and organise them onto shelves.
When the job is finally done I sat back and marvel at my collection.
Now it feels complete
Reaching out I pulled ‘The Space Pirates’ from between ‘The Seeds of Death’ and ‘The War Games’
Sitting back I opened it and began to read … ‘Beacon Alpha One hung silently in the blackness of space, its complex shape recalling the technology of distant Earth’…
THE END
Iain Key 2017
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