The Wall of Lies

Number 154 Newsletter established 1991, club formed June first 1980 The newsletter of the South Australian Fan Club Inc., also known as SFSA

Final FINAL Adelaide, May--June 2015 WEATHER: Counter Earth Free Here’s to Doctor Who repeats! by staff writers

ABC alone has 3¾ hours of Who repeats per week.

From first broadcast gap in 1965, the ABCs commitment to Doctor Who has resulted in greater total hours of Who in Australia than any other country. In the 1960s 124 repeats (over 50 hours) of Who screened in South Australia with only eight episodes (three hours and twenty minutes) on BBC.

Doctor Who logo ©2015 BBC. The 2010 documentary Cheques, Lies and Videotape put a price on the value of Australian O u N t copies of repeats; with one fan saying she’d No ow have given her “right arm” to have seen one of ! the frequent The Green Death broadcasts.

K-9 continues his adventures in print by staff writers K-9 book crowd fund successful.

As reported in The Wall of Lies 153 (March-April 2015), the pro- ducers of K-9 are bringing out a book devoted to the mechanical 50th Programme dog. The Essential Book of K-9 was the subject of a crowd fund- ing project run through Indiegogo.com, starting 17 January 2015 and ending 23 March. This campaign acted as a pre-order serv- O u N t ice for the book at a bargain price including postage and packing. No ow ! The crowd fund was considered successful, with £2,968 raised out of a £5,000 goal over 65 days. Producer Paul Tams has per- K-9 series two is to be produced in Australia. sonally thanked this club for our aid in the project.

Paul said, “The book is due for release at end of July, just over halfway through the production on it and it's looking very stylish.” He continued “Thanks for your help. We got just over half our target which helped pay towards printing costs, so I had to aban- don paying out for two classic comic strip artists, we do have one on board and a well known Doctor Who illustrator doing some images too.”

The Essential Book of K-9 is to be available from July 2015. SFSA magazine # 31 q Continued Page 2

Dead media Archive, page 3. dies again, page 2. K-9 continues his adventures in print

q from Page 1

The BBC premiere of Doctor Who series nine is set for “Autumn 2015”, with the ABC unwilling to confirm broadcast. The first two episodes are titled The Magician's Apprentice and The Witch's Familiar. Episodes five and six are (co-written by Mummy on the Orient Express/ writer ) and The Woman Who Lived. The BBC said it was releasing select episodes on file share network Bit Torrent from 3 April. Episodes of the new series with new introduc- tions are available for paid download. The 61st British Academy Television Awards were held on 10 May, with Doctor Who not nominat- ed in any category. Instead, BAFTA held a special screening of in New York on 14 May, to celebrate ten years of the new series. The last image received from MESSENGER, (UTC) UKTV has the new series from 6.20 Sundays. The broadcaster has 11:07:31, 30 April 2015. Source: NASA. rights to series one to seven of the new series, following The Name of on 21 June they return to series one with Rose on Sunday Sky Watch 28 June. Syfy plays season seventeen of the old series and series one of the new series daily, and series two of Torchwood on Sundays. MESSENGER to the gods

Preservation Issues MESSENGER was deliberately run into Mercury on 30 April 2015. The MErcury Surface, Space Loose Cannon rolls off deck ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging satellite by staff writers used the last of its fuel to send it into the planet, Contacts LOOSE CANNON’S WEB DOMAIN where it would have left a crater in the order of 16 www.recons.com expires 23 July meters in diameter. The probe was launched on 3 Martin Dunne (Editor): 2015. The VHS only reconstruction August 2004, and is the second launch to Mercury, [email protected] group’s last release The Space following Mariner 10 in 1973. Pirates was in December 2007, Among MESSENGER’s discoveries are water in other fans Change of Identity and Postal address: the form of up to a trillion tones of ice at the poles, Joint Venture both ceased by 2002. that the planet has shrunk by at least seven kilome- PO Box 870 Recons are combinations of tres in diameter, and that volatile chemicals on the North Adelaide Doctor Who missing episode surface have been deposited by asteroids and SA 5006 Australia soundtracks and static images. comets. The Mariner 10 find of a magnetic field com- Loose Cannon was founded when parable to Earth’s was confirmed, and so Mercury’s Rick Brindle animated The Macra Email list subscription: iron core must be at least partly liquid. Terror in 1997. All then-missing 109 The confirmation of Mercury’s large iron core has [email protected] episodes were reconstructed, some led to a new model. It was thought Mercury started up to three times as more images as a larger planet which lost mass in a collision. The Twitter: were found. Thirteen episodes have new theory is that the protoplanetary nebula was so been recovered since release, SA Dr Who Fan Club hot that only iron could form within a certain distance. @SADWFCinc including the complete story The Enemy of the World. As the gas giants formed beyond a water line where The Wall of Lies Brindell announced on Facebook, ice was plentiful, Mercury formed within an iron line. @WallofLies “We let the web site go down, no During November 2010, MESSENGER captured a more dubbing ... All good things ... mosaic of images of the Solar System. All the planets The Hourly Telepress and all that.” Contributor Stuart bar Uranus and Neptune were clearly visible, and the @HourlyTelepress Palmer said numbers of copies composite was published by NASA on 18 February supplied on VHS were incalculable, 2011. It was intended to be a to Voyager Facebook groups: let alone ones now on file sharing 1’s “family portrait”. This column has been covering the project since South Australian Doctor Who sites. “I don't imagine numbers launch (The Wall of Lies 90, September-October Fan Club Inc. and SFSA. would have been recorded in any way, shape or form.” 2004), and it feels as if we have lost an old friend.

This is a publication of SFSA: the South Australian Doctor Who Fan Club Inc., a non profit organisation. No attempt has been made to supersede the copyright of any holders of trademark or copyrighted 16/5, 20/6, 18/7, 15/8 images, text, or information. $5.00 $4.00 Whilst every care has been taken to ensure that the contents of the newsletter is accurate at the time of printing, SFSA cannot accept any liability for inaccura- cies that may appear. Meeting details are subject to change at short notice.

2 www.sfsa.org.au May-June 2015 Printed by the Federal Printing House Club Membership As recently as the 14th of March The Wall of Lies had Annual membership rates are $20. been assured that they were This entitles you to one year’s subscription Transmission schedule still waiting for “viewing to the club’s publications: bimonthly The May-June 2015 tapes”, and the only ABC Wall of Lies and SFSA magazine, and the Doctor Who Monday to Friday 19.30 Doctor Who themed yearbook Chameleon employees who had seen the ABC2 Factor. Also included are discounted entry new series had downloaded fees to SFSA meetings, and discounts at the leaked episode off the ~ Gridlock 11/5 various stores around Adelaide. Internet. ... The BBC has ~ in Manhattan 12/5 confirmed that ABC's agent ~ Evolution of 13/5 Discounts attended the BBC TV ~ The Lazarus Experiment 14/5 Pulp Fiction Showcase purchasing forum ~ 42 15/5 10% off comics and graphic novels in Brighton from February 27th. ~ Human Nature 18/5 Events ~ The Family of Blood 19/5 Fans were surprised when a ~ 20/5 In March we enjoyed Small World. TV commercial featuring a ~ 21/5 In April we played Sushi Go!. premiered on Sunday, ~ The Sound of Drums 22/5 April 3rd. Set in a call centre May 2 Pub meeting 17.00 this also starred the robot ~ Last of the Time Lords 25/5 Venue: Mawson Lakes Hotel from the 1960s television ~ Voyage of the Damned 26/5 series Lost In Space, and ~ Partners in Crime 27/5 May 16 General meeting 15.00 "Robot John" from the Soviet ~ The Fires Of Pompeii 28/5 Venue: Adelaide High School film Planeta Bur (Planet of ~ Planet of the Ood 29/5 Storms, 1962). June 6 Pub meeting 17.00 ~ The Sontaran Stratagem 1/6 Venue: Buckingham Arms ~ The Poison Sky 2/6 The bank revealed the BBC ~ The Doctor's Daughter 3/6 were “difficult” to negotiate June 20 Annual general meeting 15.00 with, that there are two ver- ~ The Unicorn and the Wasp 4/6 Venue: Adelaide High School ~ 5/6 sions of the advert (30 and 45 seconds) and the licence only ~ 8/6 Archive covers Australia and the call ~ Midnight 9/6 centre service. ~ Turn Left 10/6 The Wall of Lies 94, ~ The Stolen Earth 11/6 [The BBC fell out with Terry ~ Journey's End 12/6 May-June 2005 Nation’s estate in 2003, with a new agreement allowing the ~ The Next Doctor 15/6 THEFT, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE Daleks to be used from 2005 ~ Planet of the Dead 16/6 onwards. Star Wars: Revenge ~ The Waters of Mars 17/6 of the Sith was released in ~ The End of Time part 1 18/6 Australia on 27 May 2005.] ~ The End of Time part 2 19/6

~ The Eleventh Hour 22/6 ~ The Beast Below 23/6 ~ 24/6 Fandom ~ 25/6 ~ 26/6 CONTINUUM 11: SOUTHERN SKIES ~ The Vampires of Venice 29/6 ~ Amy's Choice 30/6 ~ 1/7 Ether Conference Centre ~ 2/7 265-281 Little Bourke Street ~ 3/7 Melbourne

UKTV plays three episodes Sundays, 5 to 8 June 2015 repeating from Rose from 28 June. [email protected] Check local and daily program listings http://continuum.org.au/

The Wall of Lies 94, May 2005.

www.sfsa.org.au May-June 2015 3 Subscription due if Who?: a red dot appears The most hated man in Whodom! in this box By Stephen Lord Doctor Who fandom runs on a certain amount of invective. SFSA 18, June 2005. Perhaps this negativity goes back to the start; characters lying, threatening, attacking and even electrocuting each other! As the format settled down, this was channelled towards the villains. And we know who were the greatest ones, who saved the series, and who owned the public their first appearance? What else drives the fascination with the Daleks but hatred, of the unlike, of the small minded, of the bureaucratic, in short, of themselves?

When the term “morals crusader” is used it will telegraph “Mary Whitehouse” to the informed reader. But eight years before her campaign to ban Who, writer Kit Pedler appeared on the of BBC talk show Talkback, only to be confronted by Whitehouse backed by recently broadcast scenes of a bleeding Cyberman. The mild mannered sur- geon was unprepared for the vitriol, and the event was a victory for lame duck arguments and ethical rectitude.

In an 11 February 1977 article by Daily Express columnist Jean Rook, which asked the rhetorical question in a screaming headline “Who do you think you are, scaring my innocent child” the blame was placed on the program makers while Rook absolved herself on account of “cook- welcome. The discord was led by Who fanzine Doctor ing his fish fingers”. Fans respond badly to criticisms of Who Bulletin where editor Gary Levy (now Leigh) called their interests however it is not outsiders who have stirred for his dismissal. He was accused of spending too much the greatest negative attitudes in Who. time in America, of introducing unwelcome elements to help sell it in this vast uber-market, and as with Holmes In the mid-Eighties The Show found its most persistent and Grade his personal appearance was attacked. arch-nemesis. Michael Grade seemed the perfect villain; his father was Lew Grade, a commercial television licence As of the 30th of March 2005 both have been displaced. holder, Michael himself was headhunted from America The new target is Christopher Eccleston, the current and his style was most un-British, tending towards flam- Doctor. Flushed with success debut viewing figures of 10 boyant red braces and cigars. He was the primary force million, the BBC announced a second series. Panicked by behind Eastenders, thus the agent of commercialisation. the media, a second press release announced Eccleston’s departure including an invented quote that "he Grade was employed in September 1984 as Controller of hoped viewers continued to enjoy the series." This ruined BBC One. Six months later, following the conclusion of writer Russell T Davies’ plans for a surprise regeneration. Revelation of the Daleks, fans were alerted to the possible cancellation of Who. He was interviewed while on holiday The history of Doctor Who can of course be traced though and confirmed that changes were being made. Doctor other aspects -- truth, beauty. Hatred is simply the other Who returned 18 months after a lobbying campaign, side of the coin to love. How ridiculous is it for fans to hate which has never been proven to have aided anything but Eccleston for having his planned departure outed? As the fans’ natural bigotry. In December 1989 Who finished silly as Whitehouse calling The Show “... tea time brutality its 26th season, to really not return. While fandom has for tots”? Or symptomatic of something worse? Will always been quick blame it is simply not possible to credit Doctor Who be remembered with anger, or love? Grade with this -- he’d already left for Channel Four in 1988. Grade himself enjoys the notoriety as the man who The new version of The Show is dealing with hatred in a killed Doctor Who, recently claiming this to BBC News. way never before seen. In Aliens of London, assistant Rose accuses the Doctor of being “so gay”. As Davies The campaign to save Who was led by the programme’s explained, it is not possible to dismiss such bigotry from producer John Nathan Turner, who paradoxically an attractive character as it would be if a villain had becomes our next stop on this journey of infamy. First mouthed the prejudice. And there lies the rub -- if employed on The Show as a floor assistant on The Space Whitehouse and Rook were right about Doctor Who, could Pirates in 1969, by 1980 he took over as producer. By the something so mean attempt something so noble? late-Eighties fan consensus was that he’d overstayed his From SFSA 18, June 2005 (edited for publication). 4 www.sfsa.org.au May-June 2015