Reversing the Polarity of the BlogSphere!

Fanzines Reviewing Fanzines - RTP! #29

2011-10-24T11:21:00.001+13:00

Issue #29 of RTP! is reviewed in the most recent issue of Panic Moon. Click here to purchase a copy today!

Sixteen Candles

2011-07-08T10:59:00.005+12:00

Issue 16 helped to mark the 40th anniversary of the series Doctor Who by presenting a celebratory comic in Japanese - a decision made by writer/editor Alexander Ballingall for the sheer hell of it. As a concession to those not able to read Japanese script, a translation was provided.

Editorial:

Fandom in the year of the big Four-O

Most of you will be up with the play by now. Doctor Who is on the way back to our screens in a new series. What does this mean for fandom? Can fandom survive the series becoming a popular, talked about public item once more?

I am reminded of the fandom of The X Files where, once the series became of hot item at the conclusion of the second season (1995), there was suddenly a lot of grumbling from those fans who had been loyal viewers from the start about these newbies who were lowering the whole tone of being an X Files fan.

The reason I point this out is because, even without a new series to talk about yet, the older hands on the Outpost Gallifrey message boards are already attacking (a pre-emptive strike if you will) the idiot 'flash-in-the-pan' fans who are lowering the tone of being a Doctor Who fan with their posts on BBCi.

Will new fans with a genuine interest in the show be put off by such an aggressive attitude from the already established fanbase, who have built for themselves a cosy 'us and them' attitude with reference to the series and the public at large.

Love them or hate them the series will always have its professional fans and its uberfans, but in the last fourteen years the general fanbase has shrunk (the Christchurch chapter itself has gone from meetings involving forty-to-sixty people every two months in 1989/90 to eight-to-ten people every three months this year).

It can be argued that fandom desperately needs an injection of new fans into its aging demographic, ones who will carry the torch, so-to-speak, for the series once we, the older fans, are all too senile to appreciate it any more. And while a new series will create such loyal fans who will eventually take our places, there is another group of new fans coming.

On top of all this, can the old guard handle people who will only be fans (ephemeral fans) as long as the series remains popular and who will move on once it drops out of public view again? To again use The X Files example, many fans (cult fans) of the first two seasons moved on to new ground once the show became a popular hit with the general public, unable to remain a fan now that the show was no longer 'something special' for a small, select group of TV watchers. Both of these groups, the cult fans and the ephemeral fans, will help to initially swell the fanbase of Doctor Who, but once the series becomes a hit (and lets face it, it may not) the cult fans will move on and once some other show becomes a hit the ephemeral fans too will move on to pastures greener.

Can fandom, once the increase and then decrease in fans following a new series occurs, and again made up of only loyal fans (that includes those created via the new series), remain a single entity?

Already fandom has split along the lines of those who follow the EDAs/Big Finish audios, and those who don't. Can fandom handle another split like that of Star Trek where fandom has split into 'New Trek' (those who dislike the original series for being too quaint and for having dated SFX) and 'Old Trek' (those who still like the original series)? Would Doctor Who fandom split into newcomers who only watch the new stuff (the older stuff we like being too 'crap') and us, the older fans who retain an appreciation for the older material? Which would DWM place an emphasis on? Which group would the BBC focus more attention on in terms of marketing the series?

But for now at least, us fans can kick back an enjoy both the anniversary that is upon us but also the knowledge that some people somewhere are trying to make a reality the prospect of a new series on our TV sets in 2005.
- Alexander Ballingall

Star Wars - Episode VII: Guff

Published: November 2003
A Doctor Who Fanzine launched by Matt Kamstra & Wade Campbell in October 1997
Editor: Alexander Ballingall
RTP! Logo Design: Peter & Bridget Adamson
Front Cover: Garry Jackson
Back Cover: David Ronayne
Internal Artwork: Peter Adamson, Alexander Ballingall, Gary Jackson, David Ronayne
Letters: Peter Adamson, Jamas Enright, James Gould, Matt Kamstra, Thad Richards [AKA Jamas Enright], Sal Yardley [AKA David Ronayne]
Page Count: 52
Print Run: 25

Price: NZ$3.50

~Contents~

[01] COVER
[02] CONTENTS
[03] The FIRST LAW of TIME
[04] The TARDIS Manual [Contact/Submission Information]
[05] The BOOTCUPBOARD [Letters]
[09] ARTICLE: Fanboy Confidential - Throwing Everything into the Mix
[16] Comic Translation
[19] COMIC: "Tomodachi"
[35] FICTION: "The Masters of Luxor" [part 2 of 6]
[48] ARTICLE: The Doctor's Cat
[49] Herr Josheff Z's - Ze Shell-out Tour
[50] REVIEW: Seeing the Unknown
[52] COVER

Flashback - The Last of the Golden Summer (RTP! #10)

2011-07-07T18:39:00.003+12:00

My primary memory of working on issue #10 is sitting out on the large concrete deck of the flat Matt shared with three of his friends. Ensconced in a crummy deck chair I experimented with laying out the first page of the Aquaman comic and ended up in a chat with Shinobu, the Japanese girlfriend of one of Matt's flatmates. I'm happy to blame the poorly drawn attempt at a manga-style character (on the first page of the comic) on her, but that wouldn't be fair. I'd already started drawing it that way before she turned up and offered her polite comments on my lack of drawing ability.

This would have been late February 2000, as Matt started his third year at University, and I already knew I was headed to the UK in May. I had been at the flat that weekend trying to get the issue done and dusted for publication, something achieved as the issue was published the following month.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

2011-07-07T13:07:00.002+12:00

It finally happened. As of now issue #29 is in the postal system!

Not Quite Issue #29...

2010-12-10T10:20:00.002+13:00

No, not issue #29 yet! Although this is the other project that has been on the go for about a decade. The finish line is nearly in sight!

15

2010-11-06T09:17:00.005+13:00

Issue 15 was RTP! on something of a roll. Issue 14 was only just history and issue 16 would arrive only a couple of months later. 2003 was a year when I had a lot of free time between coming back from Japan and before starting my teacher training. Bob the Suicidal Dalek arrived and is probably the best of the three comic series I've inflicted on readers over the years. Former Doctor Who fanzine editor Jonathan Park got his say in the interview and Pulp Who came to a final end, the entire movie having been adapted in the process.

Editorial:

Milestones

"2003.
As the series celebrates another anniversary in November it seems like a good time to look back at the other milestones that the series has reached in its time:
1963.
BBC management try to can the series before it has even screened.
1969.
The series is kicked of UK television screens and is replaced with the American export Star Trek.
1970.
The BBC have another go at axing the series.
1972.
The BBC decide to start purging their archive of Doctor Who material (see also 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976 & 1977).
1981.
The BBC decide to play around with the scheduling of the series to see how much damage they can do. Sticking it in a time slot where people can actually find it just won't do.
1983.
Producer John Nathan-Turner asks to move onto a different programme and his request is denied (see also 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988 & 1989).
1985.
BBC 1 Controller Michael Grade decides to axe the series because he doesn't like science fiction (see also The Tripods).
1986.
In a huge vote of confidence by the BBC, the series is scheduled against Coronation Street and reduced to fourteen half-hour episodes a season.
1989.
The series is axed with a promise that it will be back in 1991 ... or maybe 1992. How about 1993? No? 1994 ...?
1996.
The BBC try and fob the series off on an unsuspecting US TV network. When this doesn't work they claim that the TV Movie was a failure, despite high audience figures, and don't make any more of the series.
2001.
An non-anniversary year, of all things, and the BBC refuse to doing anything about bringing the series back to screens around the world. The bastards!!"
- Alexander Ballingall

Schrödinger's Guff

Published: August 2003
A Doctor Who Fanzine launched by Matt Kamstra & Wade Campbell in October 1997
Editor: Alexander Ballingall
RTP! Logo Design: Peter & Bridget Adamson
Front Cover: Peter Adamson
Back Cover: Garry Jackson
Internal Artwork: Peter Adamson, Alexander Ballingall, Garry Jackson, David Ronayne
Letters: Peter Adamson, Jamas Enright, Jon Preddle, David Ronayne, Sal Yardley [AKA David Ronayne]
Page Count: 52
Print Run: 25
Price: NZ$3.50

~ Contents ~

[01] COVER
[02] CONTENTS
[03] The FIRST LAW of TIME
[04] The TARDIS Manual
[05] The BOOTCUPBOARD [Letters]
[09] COMIC: Pulp Who - "The Master and Saucer Smith's Wife" [part 3 of 3]
[17] ARTICLE: Doctor Who and the Cannibals
[21] /full page advert/
[22] ARTICLE: Cannibalism in Doctor Who
[23] FICTION: "The Masters of Luxor" [part 1 of 6]
[26] Doctor Joseff Zaroff's Ultimate Challenge
[27] FICTION: "The Blue Shift"
[28] INTERVIEW: The Right of Reply
[33] REVIEWS: James' Corner
[34] CARTOON: Bob the Suicidal Dalek - "Goes Online"
[36] Doctor Who Drunken Games
[37] ARTICLE: The Doctor on the Enterprise
[44] FICTION: "Return to the Horror"
[47] REVIEWS: A Big Finish
[49] 30 Second Theory
[52] COVER

One Year Later...

2010-10-27T22:10:00.001+13:00

Sounds like a zombie film, and RTP! looks a tad like a shuffling corpse. But it isn't dead yet!

Fanzines Reviewing Fanzines - RTP! #28

2009-10-15T18:30:00.003+13:00

RTP! #28 has been reviewed by Alistair Hughes over at ZeusBlog. Read it here.

Men at Work

2009-10-08T08:15:00.002+13:00

Progress, Sir! It's all in the name of progress!

Under Construction

2009-09-22T19:28:00.002+12:00

It's coming...

RTP! - The Little Fanzine that Could

2009-09-19T21:11:00.005+12:00

Coming up in the next issue of Reverse the Polarity!

RTP! #28 is a comic strip special as we look between the panels at the Doctor's illustrated adventures...

In this issue:

There's part two of The Tower of Angum by Alex Ballingall and Garry Jackson
Peter Adamson catches up with ex-Time/Space Visualiser comics artist Paul Potiki and talks cartoons, comic strips, animation and motion pictures.
We visit Weirdsville, UK - the fictional village of Stockbridge, mapping its layout and profiling the inhabitants of the comic strip Doctor's favourite home from home.
We talk to DWM comics writer Dan McDaid about the town of Stockbridge.
Subsidence is Golden! Erato tells another lost tale of Pex and Krang as the Tractators invade Paradise Towers.
RTP! talks to comics historian and NZ fan Paul Scoones about the early days of the Doctor in comics
Jamas Enright asks: Who'd have Sonic? and ponders unsung rivers...
David Ronayne pens part of a new work of fiction, Weapon of Choice
All this plus our regular Letters page, Fanboy Confidential, and an Editorial all nestled in an exclusive full-colour cover.

Reverse the Polarity! #28 - out now

Fiction - A Tale of a Second City

2009-06-09T20:00:00.003+12:00

"A Tale of a Second City"
by David Ronayne

He pushed his way through the queue rapidly growing by the counter and carefully carried the two trays to where the others were waiting. Despite Doris' protests he had been able to order using broken Russian and various esoteric hand signals, and was now carefully picking his way through the crowds that milled though the busy restaurant. The Doctor's new companion, what was it, Cwej, gleefully pounced on his meal, as Benton had done many years (was it really only a few weeks ago) before. Everything had changed, the world, his life, Benton (did he really buy a used car off that man), even the mad changes that affected the Doctor now seemed more frantic
and rushed. He was as he had last seen him, although the impish face and quiet Scottish voice seemed to have hardened and creased. He looked over as his old friend sat hunched over a thickshake, staring intently at the contents with a look of concern on his face. He had made a point not to ask him about Ace.

"I would have thought this place would have quietened down by now, it's been here long enough," he ventured, looking over the packed chairs and tables at the bustling throng outside. "Stalin, Mao, Ronald, people flock to each new thing. It'll be tri-VR next, either that or the panEuro league."

The little man looked up from his cup. "The more things change the more they stay the same Alistair."

"And despite our thankless efforts?"

"Of mice and men Brigadier," he paused briefly. "No offence intended."

"Sorry I can't agree with that." The old man lent forward in his chair, "You once told me one of the only constants in the universe was change. Ten years ago the idea of a plastic blow-up clown eyeing up the Kremlin would've been unthinkable. The wheel turns. Damn it Doctor, do you realise that I was at Kathy Jones' fifteenth birthday before we left on this trip!"

The Time Lord blinked back at him, surprised by his sudden outburst.

'There are wheels within wheels, basic patterns recur over and over again."

"But there has got to be more to it than that!" The old solider yelled surprising himself with his tone which caused many of the local Muscovites to tum. For a moment he was back in his old office staring down the latest lab requisition order. The black alien eyes stared back at him. He had never noticed how alien they had seemed before.

"There must be more to it than that, if not why do we bother? Why not just roll over and let the Autons and Cybermen take us. Things must get better, then we have something to work for." The Doctor stared back at him as his eyebrows creased. Briefly, just briefly, Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart saw a flash of recognition in the deep eyes, as his friend's used to look several lifetimes ago.

"I'm sorry Brigadier," he said rubbing his brow, "things have been a little hectic lately."

"How?"

"Well, I turned 975 yesterday," the Time Lord said matter-of-factly.

"Happy Birthday Doctor."

"Thank you, Brigadier."

McDonalds,
Moscow,
14 May 1996.

END

If - "Song of the Space Whale"

2009-04-12T19:19:00.002+12:00

Another instalment of "If" from Peter Adamson. This entry is posted to tie in with the announcement that Big Finish are adapting some tales from the abandoned Season 23. This "If" comes from the second series of "If" where, instead of examining what impact the story would have had on the series had it been made, it asks what medium would it be best adapted to today (in part already possibly answered by the Big Finish announcement!).

The Fifth Doctor adventure: The Song of the Space Whale/[The] Space-Whale

Writers: Pat Mills [and John Wagner]
Characters: Fourth Doctor/ Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Turlough / Sixth Doctor [and Peri?]
Episodes: Four (according to a 1980 scene breakdown)
Pitched: 1978 (to Anthony Read), 1980 (the Christopher Bidmead), thereafter to Eric saward
Scheduled: Season Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two (as story 6V)
Final Stage: Abandoned after negotiations between Mills and Saward broke down

Scenario: The TARDIS arrives aboard the Orkas, Multi-Global’s industrial whaling space ship, hunting a Ghaleen, the titular creature. Inside the Ghaleen the Doctor and Nyssa meet a community of humans, among them a recent arrival, the male Turlough. In an attempt to rescue the time-traveling creature’s slaughter they also discover the Ghaleen’s ancestral hunter, the humanoid Thuthon, Krakos. Fleeing time damage from the crippled creature, the Doctor aids in the overthrow of the ship’s corrupt captain and ultimately the Ghaleen’s survival and reunion with its pod. The colony leave the creature, and a restless Turlough asks to join the TARDIS crew.

‘Death is instant. Product loss minimal. Everything will be used’
‘-Everything but the song.’

The story ...

This is it - the mother lode of early '80s unmade-Whodom. A story so far reaching that it reverberated in succeeding years in multimedia, from a punningly-titled début from proto-Big Finishers AudioVisuals, to yet another of Mike Tucker's endless visual frippery, a TARDIS-Cam Easter egg for, of all things, the Talons of Weng-Chiang DVD. Even in more recent years DWM's eighth Doctor strip has given it a passing nod, in Scott Gray's Leviathan, set inside a giant snake-shaped organic space vessel. In the curious tale that rides this Whale, it would seem that of all the unmade stories, this has made it or at least inspired the most varied incarnations without ever fully being made.

It's a simple idea - a colony of Jonahs in a whale, in space, which is among a species being hunted to extinction by ruthless pirates. If any of this sounds ... I don't know, derivative and heavy-handed, then it may comes as no surprise to some readers that one of its creators was Pat Mills of UK comics fame. I don't mean to sound entirely disingenuous - on paper Space Whale is a gem of an idea - wonderful images that could have been at least as technically challenging as a Wembley-sized stadium filled with extras dressed as cats. It also boasted some intriguing characters and ideas, many of which reappear in Mills' non-Who work; Mills himself being something of a recycler.

This thing may well be though, that as much as it would have liked to have been one, Space Whale isn't really a Doctor Who story, and may not have originated as one either, given the enormous output of both Mills and John (Judge Dredd) Wagner in the late 1970s. The idea that Turlough may have originated from a community living inside a giant space creature just jars with what we know of his character - even if he had been planted there by the Black Guardian (oddly, putting him in an English public school enhances his alienness, although presumably this was deliberate).

The story itself is fine, if a little by-the-numbers. Mills is a great concepts man, capable of some stunning conceits (outside of 2000AD he is perhaps best known for ultra-violent anti-superhero series Marshal Law), but his plots don't always challenge the reader, and of the two, Wagner is very much the master story teller, actually getting better yet as the ages condemn. Perhaps the first sign that this Whale was to be harpooned was when Wagner went overboard and left the project. The rest can probably be summed up in shorthand thus: Mills, deadlines, Saward, the end. Mills himself has a reputation for being proprietary with his creations, and has clashed with editors, having been one himself. He is fiercely protective of his creations, reserving the right to combine their histories into a vague and vast Mills-verse (in 2000AD a wobbly line of continuity can be drawn from prehistoric dino-hunting ripper Flesh through twenty-seconds in the future urban warfare thriller Invasion 1999 (later Savage), through robot trouble-shooters Ro-Busters, through 'mek-nificent seven on Mars' ABC Warriors, through Judge Dredd, and more recently but probably not last, future Earth alien inquisition parable Nemesis the Warlock). One can only imagine a writer with this level of propriety clashing with the likes of Eric Saward and, God help him, JN-T
The conclusion was perhaps more inevitable than anyone imagined - Space-Whale would never work for television.

‘Look at it, Nyssa. A miracle of nature. It took the best brains on Gallifrey a millennium to develop time technology. The Ghaleen has succeeded on its own.’

As ... a comic strip?

So why not take it back to its roots as a comic strip? Let Mills develop it in the medium to which he clearly relates and work best in, edit the script of course, have a sure voice of Who-continuity nearby and assign an artist up to the challenge of realising Mill' vision. And staying faithful to the likenesses of Season Twenty's regulars, of course.

But there's a further tragedy that has yet to be revealed. This almost happened, although without the Who element. In the early 90s Mills in fact attempted to work up a Doctor-less version of the story and failed each time. Lack of interest from a fickle US market and the collapse of adult comic title Toxic! which began but never completed the story's last incarnation, saw the demise of the story's last incarnation, the oddly-titled space biker yarn Mutomaniac. This was to be illustrated by 2000AD (and DWM) alumnus Mike McMahon, but slow progress in this area (only 30 pages were completed for the comic’s limited run of seven issues) combined with a tight schedule meant a cancelled strip.

In an ideal world though, the comic strip is where Song of the Space Whale should be sung. Let Scott Gray rein its writer in, and Martin Geraghty (doing his best Dave Gibbons imitation) bring it to visual life. I'd buy it.

- Peter Adamson

References: Doctor Who Magazine

Phillip J Gray

2009-03-16T20:58:00.003+13:00

Phillip Gray was one of those canvassed for material when RTP! was first mooted, being a resident of Christchurch like the editors. Unlike most of those approached, Phillip didn't contribute anything to the first issue — nor any issue after that either. As a result the editors made numerous references to Phillip, culminating with the above picture in issue 5 illustrated by Garry Jackson to accompany Wade Campbell's opinion page.

Fanzines Reviewing Fanzines - RTP! #27 Part 2

2009-02-24T18:35:00.002+13:00

Thanks to Peter for pointing out another review of the most recent issue.

Fanzines Reviewing Fanzines - RTP! #27

2008-12-19T23:02:00.002+13:00

The latest issue of RTP! (#27) has been reviewed by Zeus Blog reviewer Alistair Hughes.

Take a look here to read.

If - "The Killer Cats of Gen-Singh"

2008-12-17T18:42:00.005+13:00

A continuing series in which Peter Adamson investigates some of the stories that never quite made it to the screen. This issue, the Fourth Doctor adventure, The Killer Cats of Gen-Singh ...

We don' t have a lot to go on regarding Cats, but perhaps what there does exist and is known to have happened around its first commission and eventual rejection will be enough. Perhaps. Let's go.

Cats was to have been the season closer of Season Fifteen after Graham Williams suggested a sequel by Robert Holmes to The Deadly Assassin. Holmes declined and Cats was its initial replacement. The season had already undergone some considerable change throughout its production, having suffered from the usual conflict of lofty ideas versus limited budget (perhaps to a more spectacular degree in stories such as The Invisible Enemy and Underworld, the latter having been "saved" though the use of extensive CSO, a factor which would be its critical downfall for many years). Already then, the seeds for Cats' early shelving were sown, a fact not helped by the now widely celebrated but infamous "Wembly Park Stadium" scene, reputed to have hosted up to 96,000 extras in full feline attire. But Cats might not have been entirely lost just through one scene, which could still have been realised alternatively with, say, forced perspective (see: The Twin Dilemma). The script must have had its problems. What were they? Unfortunately, these remain unknown.

Certainly some elements of Cats survived to be realised in its eventual replacement, and this should come as no surprise given the rushed schedule to complete the season line-up, along with the co-writing credit by the season's Script Editor. The Invasion of Time kept the Gallifreyan setting, and it might not be too much of a stretch to imagine the felines taking their place within this model. A Sontaran beach-head model at this stage sounds unlikely, but maybe their part was as the aggressor - an attempt by them made on the Capitol? Who can say?

But what of the Killer Cats themselves? All we have to go on is a set of costume designs by Dee Robson (showing male and female versions), and what costumes they looked to be! The Cats would have worn flowing robes according to the design sketches, which by Who terms usually spells two things: civilisation and nobility. Perhaps they were a race as old as the Time Lords themselves. Were they a civilised race betrayed by one of their number who was either ambitious or foolhardy? Perhaps they were the precursors to Invasion's "Outsiders" - the idea of Leela leaving the TARDIS for a life among the felines seems plausible. One thing is certain with Cats however; the series' vision of Gallifrey would have undergone yet another change with the introduction of this new native race.

In some way, with what we know of what followed in the series some of this might not have made a complete clash; we know from Mark of the Rani that cats exist on Gallifrey, and this idea was extended in the Missing Adventures (Goth Opera had the Doctor reminiscing over introducing cats into the planet's biosphere; Invasion of the Cat People linked the book's villains with the Cheetah People and the Killer Cats as relatives). Who knows what fan theories might have sprung up regarding the sixth Doctor's choice of moggy badges had Cats seen production? Far more significant though, would have been the change to Gallifrey within the series. Unless the appearance of the Cats comes as some sort of contrivance (they reappear after returning from a long journey, a la the Minyans of Underworld, or are "woken" from slumber. A catnap if you will) then we must assume that they have always been part of Gallifrey. The only alternative is the contrivance, and this might perhaps have saved the overpopulation problem of the story. Survivors of thought-dead races in Who usually number under ten - often under five (Zygons, Kraals).

Problem solved? Maybe not. After all the supposition, the most famous aspect of Cats is that Wembly Stadium concept. As a season closer, a handful of monsters, grand, ancient and noble as they may be, makes less than impressive television. But then so did the Vardans apparently, which really just goes to show how much of a gamble the whole game becomes in the end.

- Peter Adamson

Now That's What I Call RTP! 27

2008-11-21T21:49:00.002+13:00

Packed with the summer's biggest hits and more. RTP! #27 is now available ...

F-f-f-f-f-fourteen

2008-10-21T20:34:00.004+13:00

Issue 14 was all about coming to ground after three years overseas. I returned to New Zealand in the May of 2003 and promptly a month later published issue 14 which I'd been working on since the previous November whilst still in Japan. The choice of cover paper was dictated by the idea that I wanted it to be full colour on the back and bleed to white on the front to help sell the Ice Warrior-in-a-snow storm idea of the cover art. Like most things to do with RTP! it didn't quite work!

Bob the Suicidal Dalek is advertised this issue having been doodled whilst at work in Japan the year before and would see print in the following issue. Meanwhile this would prove to be the final issue to which Jeff Stone would contribute. He did have a further Doctor Who Bullsh*t lined up for issue 15, but upon being asked by myself to alter some names in the story so as not to alienate my tiny readership Jeff refused to allow the story to be printed unless unchanged. Stalemate. And life went on and RTP! was published without his efforts.

And the editorial:

Forty Years Young ...

2003.
The series has almost reached 40 years of age and is now at a point we generally call middle-aged. Which leads me to ponder two questions: 1) has the series aged gracefully?; and 2) is the series experiencing a mid-life crisis?
Can a TV series age gracefully? I think a series can, but most never manage this feat from either being cut short by management focused solely on ratings and demographics, or limping past their used-by-date and dying a painful death long after their audience has switched channels to watch something new. Everybody has their own ideas as to when the later happens, hence the book and web site Jump The Shark. Take a visit to the web site and have a look at when people think the series 'jumped the shark'.
However this is an editorial and, more importantly, it is *my* editorial. So I can waffle on a bit now about *my* thoughts on these two important questions. Given that I haven't seen Doctor Who rushing out to buy a sports car, getting hair replacement therapy or trying to be trendy buy cashing in on the latest passing fad, I can only assume that it is *not* having a mid-life crisis. (It can be argued that Star Trek on the other hand is having a mid-life crisis, hence the alleged emphasis on tits and arse in Enterprise.)
Is Doctor Who aging gracefully? Some fans would point to the maturity of the now twelve year old range of original novels and that it feels secure enough to 'reboot' the series, such as with the events of The Ancestor Cell. Others still will gesticulate wildly toward the Big Finish audios and the way in which the last four Doctors are making use of the opportunity to flesh out their characters far beyond anything they achieved on the small screen. Again other fans will point to the DWM comic strip and the fact that it is happy to play with big stakes and take risks such as the Wormwood saga or more recently with Izzy's transformation.
I can't comment of any of these developments in the Doctor Who universe as I don't get DWM, the Big Finish audios or the BBC books. So I'll stick with the TV series. I feel that maybe the series had its mid-life crisis in the Eighties where it tried to re-invent itself several times from the basics of storytelling to the extras like theme arrangements. Because of that, I believe that the series is *now* the 'crotchety old man' of the sci-fi world and therefore holds the revered place of 'elder statesman' with Star Trek as the pretender to the throne. This is subject to change should the series return to TV screens.
As a result of this mid-life crisis in the Eighties, the various spin-offs and continuations of the series in other forms of media are much stronger than they would be if that crisis hadn't happened. It turned out to be a much needed wake-up call that allowed everybody (both the fans and the people producing the series) and to step back and see the larger picture, something that hasn't happened with the Star Trek franchise yet.
So, yes the series has managed to age gracefully and no it is not having a mid-life crisis, but is instead planning of what to do now that said crisis is over. Should it make a big comeback or slip quietly into retirement? Time will tell, it always does ..."
- Alexander Ballingall

Monty Python's Life of Guff:

Published: June 2003
A Doctor Who Fanzine launched by Matt Kamstra & Wade Campbell in October 1997
Editor: Alexander Ballingall
RTP! Logo Design: Peter & Bridget Adamson
Front Cover: David Ronayne
Back Cover: David Ronayne
Internal Artwork: Peter Adamson, Alexander Ballingall, David Ronayne
Letters: Peter Adamson, Alden Bates, E. Cartman [aka David Ronayne], Jamas Enright, David Ronayne, Jeff Stone, Sal Yardley [aka David Ronayne]
Page Count: 52
Print Run: 30
Price: NZ$3

~ Contents ~

[01] COVER
[02] CONTENTS
[03] The FIRST LAW of TIME
[04] The TARDIS Manual
[05] The BOOTCUPBOARD [Letters]
[09] Doctor Who Bullsh*t: Report from the Front!!!!
[12] COMIC: Pulp Who - The Master and Saucer Smith's Wife [part 2 of 3]
[18] ARTICLE: The Fractious Paradox
[30] ARTICLE: Genre Benders
[33] FICTION: A Taste for Killing
[34] INTERVIEW: All Kneel and Praise Her [Jamas Enright]
[41] REVIEWS: The First Fifty [EDAs and PDAs]
[45] REVIEW: The Scope [DVD Review]
[46] CARTOON: Aquaman - In 'Crackerjack - A tragedy in Two Pages'
[48] The New RTP! Logo
[50] Are You a Fanboy or a Mad Scientist?
[52] COVER

Baker's Dozen

2008-09-11T09:07:00.005+12:00

At the time issue 13 was published I was still based in Osaka, Japan and would remain there for about another six months. The issue marked the last of the old material that Matt Kamstra had been hoarding and final instalment of Jeff Stone's The Red Menace which took up at least a good third of the issue. In this sense the issue marked the end of an era, the closure of the Matt and Wade Campbell's tenure. In another sense the issue marked a new beginning with a revamp of the interior layout and the arrival a new logo.

Issue 13 also marked the start of the third and final batch of Pulp Who comics, covering the final storyline of the film Pulp Fiction and long-time non-contributor to RTP! Phillip Gray was interviewed.

Language problems meant that the entire issue was printed on paper the same weight as the selected cover card (something that had plagued the previous issue as well). This would be the last issue printed in Japan as by the time issue 14 surfaced I was back in Godzone.

And the editorial:

Reincarnation, Regeneration, Rebirth

No, you aren't hallucinating. Another issue of Reverse the Polarity! is currently sitting in your hands begging to be cuddled and taken home to be read. The fanzine has weathered a two year dry spell and after a rocky start back onto the road with issues 11 and 12, I think it is safe to say that RTP! will be around for some time to come. After all, it's all about reincarnation, regeneration and rebirth.
RTP! is the reincarnation of the ill-fated fanzine attempt known as The Scrolls of Rassilon which Matt Kamstra and Wade Campbell attempted to foist onto the world in early 1997. The Scrolls of Rassilon never saw the light of day but RTP! did. It's early days were an attempt to find its' feet and carve a place out for itself in the New Zealand fanzine landscape, rather than become a clone of Telos. And I think that that fear of becoming a Telos clone goes a long way to explaining the rather unbecoming attitude towards the aforementioned fanzine that featured in RTP!. One that cast a shadow over those first four issues as Matt and Wade grappled with this conundrum. In the middle of 1998 Wade bowed out and the fanzine underwent a regeneration.
September 1998 through to June 1999 (issues 5 through 8) saw RTP! flower into a zine in its' own right and shake off any doubts about being Telos by another name. Part of this may be the fact that I (as new coeditor at that point) had never read Telos and therefore couldn't care less if RTP! resembled it in any way, shape or form. Hell, they are both New Zealand fanzines about Doctor Who. It would be impossible for them to be completely dissimilar. As a result of this regeneration and flowering people began to subscribe to the fanzine. The readership by 1999 had become evenly split between those in Christchurch and those who lived in the rest of New Zealand. It even picked up an overseas reader.
The feedback received during this period was generally good and despite some small problems RTP! continued to grow. People took the time to contribute something special for each issue. However it seems it was all too good to last. There was six months between issues 8 and 9 and things began to take longer and longer to come together for each issue. Things came to a head when I left for England in May 2000 after issue 10 was published. At which point news about the next issue became hard to come by and, as you all know, it eventually appeared that RTP! had ceased to be altogether.
Thank goodness for rebirth. For here we are, the third issue after the break and still gathering steam. But change, a complete rebirth, was needed to keep the fanzine moving away from the rut it was in. Many of the changes made to RTP! last issue were rather small and cosmetic. A general tightening up of the layout that was established in issue 10. With this issue however, and the arrival of a new logo curtesy of Peter & Bridget Adamson, it seemed appropriate to completely revamp the image of the entire fanzine. I don't think there is really any better way of showing that Reverse the Polarity! is back in the running once more."
- Alexander Ballingall

The Dark Guff:

Published: November 2002
A Doctor Who Fanzine launched by Matt Kamstra & Wade Campbell in October 1997
Editor: Alexander Ballingall
RTP! Logo Design: Peter & Bridget Adamson
Front Cover: Peter Adamson
Back Cover: David Ronayne
Internal Artwork: Peter Adamson, Alexander Ballingall, David Ronayne
Letters: Peter Adamson, Alden Bates, Jamas Enright, Jon Preddle, Paul Scoones
Page Count: 52
Print Run: 30
Price: NZ$3

~ Contents ~

[01] COVER
[02] CONTENTS
[03] The FIRST LAW of TIME
[04] The TARDIS MANUAL
[05] The BOOTCUPBOARD [Letters]
[09] COMIC: Pulp Who - The Master and Saucer Smith's Wife [part 1 of 3]
[18] FICTION: The Red Menace [part 8 of 8]
[36] INTERVIEW: The Importance of Being Phillip [Phillip J Gray]
[42] REVIEWS: The Virgin Publications [Reviews of NAs & MAs]
[46] Doctor Who Bullsh*t: The New & Improved Doctor Who Drinking Game
[48] REVIEW: The Scope [DVD review]
[49] Final Exam
[50] 30 Second Theory
[51] Poetry
[52] COVER

The Third Logo

2008-08-29T17:12:00.004+12:00

The third logo for the fanzine was the first one to be devised by the husband and wife team of Peter and Bridget Adamson. Like the original logo, the second logo had been plagued by publishing issues and never really appeared at it’s best, thus a far simpler logo design was needed. I have a feeling that this logo change was precipitated by Peter who was perhaps itching to have a go. As Peter explained in his article about the fanzine’s fourth logo in issue 14, the third logo was based on the old Ready to Roll television series (the NZ equivalent of Top of the Pops, but without the live performances) logo.

The logo lasted only four issues (9~12) before giving way to the current logo, but as this run spanned the infamous ‘hiatus’ it was actually around for three years (2000~2002).

Wade at Work

2008-08-01T22:41:00.004+12:00

Wade Campbell hard at work on Issue 3 (the second-to-last issue with him credited as an Editor).

Come in Number Twelve, Your Time is Up!

2008-07-03T20:49:00.007+12:00

Matt Kamstra had stepped down as Editor of RTP! with the completion of issue 11 in April 2002. Only a month later both Matt and I were winging our way to Osaka, Japan where we both planned on staying for at least six months. For a fanzine that had only just managed to haul itself out of a two year hiatus this could have proved to be a huge complication. Luckily I was taking my then year old G4 Titanium PowerBook with me on the trip and would be able to edit the fanzine with it. Whatever role Matt might have taken in a sort of advisory capacity as I edited RTP! in Japan while have to remain unknown. After only a month there, Matt elected to return to New Zealand while I stuck it out for what eventually would be almost a year.

Issue 12 was very much an attempt at clearing the decks of older material, hence much of the issue was illustrated by odd pictures from Peter Adamson that didn't match the written material, especially in the case of the interview with Jeff Stone. This also explains why this final installment of "The Scope" (Jeff's reviews column) covered books from some time back. Also featuring was my latest attempt at a comic, this time in a vaguely manga style, entitled The Construct that the Doctor Built. This was a re-working of an idea I'd intially had back in 1998 as an anniversary story before replacing it with the Christmas-set Myhrr. The issue also marked the final appearance of Graham Muir's comic creations, Saucer and Birdy seeing off the Daleks.

And my first editorial as a solo editor:

So here we are again.
Another issue that combines all the subtlety of a sledgehammer with the wit of a drunken conversation.
In the four and a bit years that RTP! has traversed the line between bad and extremely bad taste, in the search for that something extra to give our readers, we have brought you the highs of the “Update” column, where we have revealed to the world the reality that is Matt’s inability to spell check. And we have brought you the lows of straight out plagiarism and wholesale theft of other peoples’ good ideas in the form of Pulp Who and others.
What does this say about RTP!? I like to think of RTP! as an expression of our enjoyment of that little known sci-fi series Doctor Who. So what if the effects were dodgy, the acting painfully awful and the scripting something left to be desired. The contents of RTP! have always struck me as a fresh and playful exploration of our continuing fascination with the series, one that doesn’t shy away from the series faults and instead builds them up as further reasons to enjoy the programme.
And the survival of RTP! is a testament to that enjoyment. The fanzine has embraced some of the most outlandish aspects of the series and the surrounding wasteland that is the public arena. We haven’t shied away from interpreting and expanding upon such elements as absurd villains and monsters, the never ending mill of fan rumour, public perception of the series and its fans, as well as the existence of this very fanzine itself. We have gloried in beating the series to death in all its forms because we know that as long as we continue to enjoy the series it will survive all that we can throw at it.
It is now the second half of 2002 and in less than eighteen months the series celebrates its 40th anniversary. As per usual rumours abound about the series making a comeback. It is also RTP!’s 5th anniversary in October and it has made a comeback. What does this mean? Well, it proves once and for all that Matt Kamstra, even if he is a very, very lazy bastard, can make good on his promises better than the Beeb. Make of that what you will ...

- Alexander Ballingall
Looking forward to beating his head against a brick wall ...

Being Guff Malkovich:

Published: September 2002
Editor: Alexander Ballingall
RTP! Logo Design: Peter & Bridget Adamson
Front Cover: Graham Muir
Back Cover: Peter Adamson
Internal Artwork: Peter Adamson, Alexander Ballingall
Letters: Peter Adamson, Alden Bates, Jamas Enright, David Ronayne, Jeff Stone
Page Count: 52
Print Run: 30
Price: NZ$3

~ Contents ~

[01] COVER
[02] CONTENTS
[03] EDITORIAL
[04] UPDATE
[05] The BOOTCUPBOARD [Letters]
[08] Newspaper clippings
[09] REVIEWS: The Scope [Reviews of PDAs & EDAs]
[15] COMIC: The Construct that the Doctor Built
[29] A Very Cabbage Retrospective
[31] CARTOON: I was a Doctor Who Vegetable!
[32] INTERVIEW: Modern Art [Jeff Stone]
[38] A Minute in the Life of rec.arts.drwho
[39] Doctor Who Bullsh*t: Series Revival Rumour Generator
[42] CARTOON: Saucer + Birdy—In 'The Power of a Dalek or Two'
[44] FICTION: The Red Menace [part 7 of 8]
[52] COVER

Interview - Shades of Gray (Part Four of Four)

2008-06-24T17:07:00.002+12:00

EARLY DAYS IN NEW ZEALAND

(David Ronayne) How did you get involved with the show?
(Scott Gray) My earliest memory of watching any TV is the cliffhanger of part one of The Tenth Planet. The one where the guy gets clubbed to the ground by these big figures. He tries to shoot them but it doesn't work, and then the camera pans up and you see the Cybermen. I remember that so clearly, it just scared the hell out of me.

I've always loved the Cybermen. They are my favourite baddies from the TV show. They haven't always been used terribly well. They've had good stories and bad stories, but I still think they looked pretty nifty in that first episode.

(DR) You worked on Razor. What was that?
Razor was put out by Cornelius Stone, who designed it, edited it and published it. It was mostly written by him, too. It was basically a big fanzine. I used to draw some of the stories. When I look back at them now they are really embarrassing. It taught me a lot about what to do and what not to do, in terms of constructing a story. Cornelius sent me the first TSV, that's when I discovered Who fandom. I started sending in bits of artwork, because I was really liking the Sylvester McCoy stuff more than I had liked anything since the early Tom Baker days. There seemed to be a proper vision of how the show should be working. It was also very comic-booky. I wasn't surprised to learn that Andrew Cartmel was a comics fan. Sophie and Sylvester translated really well into the comic strip. Fast-paced stuff, lots of action.

(DR) Most people remember you, before DWM for your TSV covers (21-27), and The Dreaming Book. Do you still draw much?
I haven't drawn very much at all. I've done a few covers recently for the superhero reprints I edit. It was part of the agreement when I came on to do these titles, but as it turned out I haven't really done that many. Generally I try to avoid doing that as the artists on my books are much better than me and it seems kind of corrupt to commission myself to do them.

(Darrell Patterson) Why did you come to London?
To do comics. John Freeman bought a story off me. I did two stories for TSV and had sent them both to John. I received a reply after the first one, The Resurrection Test. It was a brilliant letter, really detailed about what I had done right and wrong. He seemed genuinely interested, and told me to send something else. I did the second one, The Dreaming Book, and he wrote back and said although he wasn't terribly keen on the art, I should send a script in on spec. So I sent him Memorial (DWM #191) and he bought it. I just couldn't believe it. At that point I decided to go to London and try and get more work. The comics industry was doing really well and there were lots of opportunities to do stuff for about a year. After that everything seemed to collapse.

(DP) How did you become assistant editor for Doctor Who Magazine?
I was just coming in to the office on a regular basis when I was writing scripts. If the artwork changed some aspect of the story I had to do on the spot rewrites and edits. Characters' expressions or emphasis may change, so you have to adjust the dialogue to suit. By this stage Gary Russell had taken over. He is a wonderful guy and I got on really well with him. He seemed to think I understood the strip, understood Who, and could spell, so maybe I could work on the magazine. When he was promoted to oversee a whole load of magazines he just offered me the job. Then, around ten months later, we had this major implosion. We were taken over by another branch of Marvel called Panini and they axed everything except DWM. It was such a terrible day. It had been a really great time. It was a shame it had to end.

(DP) What is it like working with Lee Sullivan?
Lee is great to work with. In Land Of The Blind I had a street scene set in a spaceport and just asked for 'lots of different aliens', just to see what he would come up with. When it came back, all the aliens were out of the Doctor Who Annuals. He had the Fishmen of Kandalinga, and all these other aliens just wandering around. He's a huge sci-fi fan at all levels. He worked on the Tek War comic, and got to know William Shatner pretty well. It's surreal, I know someone who has had dinner with Captain Kirk.

(DR) You used to be Warwick, why did you become Scott Gray?
The only reason I changed it was that no one could understand it through the accent. When I was on the phone I would say: 'Hi, it's Warwick Gray here from Marvel Comics ... ' Then I would have to stop and explain my name was Warwick ... W-a-r-w-i-c-k ... It was a terrible way to introduce myself. Eventually I went into Gary Russell's office and said, 'This is driving me crazy! I've got to change my name.' I was expecting him to say no, but he is an insanely nice man. He said, 'We'll do it in stages. First you will be Warwick Gray, then you will be W. Scott Gray, then Scott Gray.' So that's how it came about. I don't know where Scott came from. I was delirious with flu on the weekend when I made this decision. So now fifty percent of the people I know call me Warwick and the other fifty percent call me Scott.

THE TV MOVIE

(DP) Have you ever had Paul McGann or his agent react to any of this?
Paul McGann is just brilliant about this stuff. With all the other Doctors, apart from Tom I think, we have to pay them or their estates to use their likenesses, but Paul McGann doesn't even ask for money. I don't know if he has even read them. Doctor Who was just a gig for a few weeks and then he was on to the next thing, and I suspect it doesn't weigh much on his mind. The only time I bumped into him was at BAFTA after the screening and everyone was just milling about. It was surreal, because I just went to the loo, and the door opened and Paul McGann came out. Doctor Who goes to the john. He just smiled and went 'Hi.'

(DR) So, what was it like at BAFTA?
That was such a brilliant night. It was so great seeing it on a big screen, and everyone was there. There was also a big batch of fans who had won the competition, so we saw it with all the bigwigs and again with all the fans. It got such a great reaction. People were laughing and cheering. There was a really great bit at the end, where the Doctor is finally in control, and he's got Grace and Chang Lee in the TARDIS. He smiles at them and starts fiddling round with the machine and suddenly everything stops dead. There's this pause, and this guy behind me started whispering, 'Do it, do it!' And sure enough he just bangs the console and everything starts again. It just seemed so right. The bit where they're in the ambulance and the Master corrects Grace's grammar. I think Eric Roberts came up with that. It certainly wasn't in the script. When I heard he was going to be the Master, I thought it'd be great. He just looks the part, as scary as hell.

A lot of people watched the TV movie with their arms folded, saying, 'Convince me this is Doctor Who, convince me this is the show I love.' And that's probably the wrong attitude to take. I really enjoyed it.

THE US TV SERIES

(DR) Do you think that would work in an American 45 minute Star Trek format?
Star Trek is about dialogue and characters interacting. In a weird sort of way it's not terribly visual. I can't imagine Doctor Who like that.

(DR) Do you think they will bring it back?
Maybe with computer generated imagery. If things get cheaper to create. I kept thinking if it came back as a series you couldn't have that many men in rubber suits. There would have to be a lot of CGI aliens, and virtual sets. I want to have that feel in the strip. The Pariah couldn't be a woman in a costume, she looks totally alien. Stark in The Fallen, if he was done on TV, would clearly have to be a CGI monster. We want to up the special effects content of the comic and do some stuff that is new and strange.

TV isn't big on serials now, or cliffhangers. If you take away the cliffhangers, is it still Doctor Who? Will it still be perceived as Doctor Who if they land for fifty minutes and have quick adventures? It wouldn't feel quite right to me.

FUTURE PROJECTS

(DP) How far ahead do you plan?
Probably not as far as I should. I've got the next one forming in my head now. Alan's got a book to do on Sherlock Holmes, so I'll be writing the strip full time for now. I think the phrase I used was, 'You will have to prise it from my cold, dead fingers.' I would like a decent run on the strip, and I love working with Martin. He is just an ego-free zone. I feel privileged to have the chance to write this stuff, because comics and Doctor Who are two things I really love.

(DR) Do you ever see yourself losing interest?
Yeah, I think getting Whoed out' is a very real possibility. You tend to use up ideas at a very alarming rate. Any writer who comes into it may have four or five good ideas, but after a while you have to go, 'Okay, have I got another really good idea for Doctor Who?' I've done thirteen Doctor Who stories in the last seven years for Marvel. Of course, I started off with Sylvester and Ace, and now there is McGann and Izzy, so it does feel like a different strip now.

(DR) Any non-Who related projects?
I'm working on something with Roger Langridge at the moment. It will be done the same way as Tintin and Asterix; kids will be able to buy it and enjoy it, but adults can read it too.

It's about a young boy who lives on an island in the South Pacific and has adventures. The first one is all about an artifact that falls out of the sky and starts altering things on the island. Various parties become very interested in getting hold of it. It should be fun.

(DR) What really stands out for you most in the job?
At the last Panopticon we had a nine-year-old boy come up with his maths text book. He had drawn a complete Doctor Who story in it, which instantly brought back memories of doing the same thing. It was the Doctor and Izzy fighting the Daleks, and the Threshold appeared. It got me so chuffed, actually sparking this kid's imagination. We were encouraging him, telling him it was brilliant, to keep doing it, and thinking fifteen years from now he'll be actually writing the strip or drawing it, which would be kind of cool. These things do happen.

I always try to think of children when I'm writing the strip. You have to get the young readers excited, kids who have never had to deal with a cliffhanger because they're too young to remember the series on TV. And it's so great getting letters back from the young readers going, 'I'm dying to know what happens next.' That's Doctor Who.

Interview - Shades of Gray (Part Three of Four)

2008-06-08T15:59:00.008+12:00

(David Ronayne) How did it feel to kill off Ace?
(Scott) Ground Zero was the first story that really clicked for me. I had a very strong idea of what the story was about. It's funny, because the initial idea was that this would be the beginning of the McCoy period again. Then news filtered in about the TV movie and it ended up as Sylvester's final story. As Ace wasn't in the TV movie, Gary [Gillatt] wanted her written out. Originally I planned that only Ace's spirit would die, but her body would be OK and the Doctor would hold on to it so we could bring her back later. When I mentioned it to Gary he said, 'That's Abslom Daak, and his girlfriend stuck in the tube. The Doctor would always be trying to find a way to cure Ace and bring her back. He couldn't go off on adventures and forget about her, that would be really callous.' He was right, and it was at that point I realised she had to die. It's not like I got the knife and fork out and thought, 'Right, let's get her!' Ace was my favourite companion, I didn't want to see her dead.

It was quite an emotional moment for me in a bizarre way. If you psyche yourself into writing this stuff, the characters become very real to you. When I finally met Sophie Aldred, we sat down in a pub and Gary introduced me by saying; 'This is the bloke that killed you.' She thought it was great, which was a relief. I still believe it was a brilliant way to go out. Dying by her own hand to save the Doctor in a big explosion. It just seemed so fitting for the character.

Martin did it brilliantly with lots of silent panels and the broken umbrella in the background. We stripped the Doctor of everything. He loses Ace, he loses his symbol, the umbrella with the question mark, and the TARDIS gets totalled. By the end of the story he is left with nothing. This great chess player ends up as a pawn in a game the Threshold have been playing with the Lobri.

At the last Panopticon there was an interview with Chris Boucher and Terrance Dicks on stage. I was in the audience with Martin, and Terrance said, 'I can't imagine a Doctor Who story where the villains win.' Martin and I just looked at each other. That wasn't actually the intent, but we ended up doing it.

(Darrell Patterson) You have several upbeat stories as well, like By Hook Or By Crook, and Happy Deathday. Was it difficult to write the anniversary story?
It was fun. You've got everyone kicking back and relaxing for eight pages. Initially I thought that the Doctors would have to have eight separate scenes. Then it occurred to me you can have four scenes and they can just bounce off each other. You've got to have Hartnell and McGann together, and Colin and Patrick Troughton paired again. Then you've got Tom and Sylvester having this surreal conversation about allergies.

(DR) Very Eddie Izzard.
Yeah. Gary is a huge Eddie Izzard fan, so am I, and Roger Langridge is too. That's why jam features in By Hook Or By Crook, because "jam" is just an Eddie Izzard word.

(DR) Do you think he will make a cameo appearance?
I hope so. We're continually casting real people in the strip. Everyone kept asking who the Beige Guardian was based on, and all I had to say was, 'Do you watch Frasier?' and everyone suddenly slaps their foreheads. 'Oh yes! It's Niles!' Wouldn't you just love to see David Hyde Pierce as a Doctor Who villain?

(DR) What's it like working with Roger Langridge?
He's a writer's dream. Roger is a writer himself and really understands that aspect of producing a comic. He's one of the most talented comic artists to ever come out of New Zealand. In a fairer world, where the comics industry was doing really well, we wouldn't get him in a million years! He'd be busy doing graphic novels for huge amounts of money. He added in his own little jokes as well, like the penultimate panel, with all those little games cartridges. I suggested a few of those and Roger did the rest. "Measles to the Daleks" and "The Chalk Pit of Slough", that's all Roger. He actually contributed my favourite line in the whole thing, which was, 'The colour blue started to smell of Swiss cheese.' Cheese again, another good Eddie Izzard word.

In Happy Deathday there is a line; 'I could do that, I just don't want to: That comes from a New Zealand sci-fi fan, James Benson. We'd watch a guy on TV doing a triple somersault, and James would go, 'I can do that, I just don't want to.' Hi, James, if you're out there!

(DR) I liked the bit with the Preacher in The Fallen. 'Pride will be your downfall.'
All the Doctors have this arrogant streak in them. McGann has this marvelously arrogant line when he's riding on the motorbike with Grace. 'The universe is tied together with such a fragile thread of coincidences that it's a terrible danger for anyone to play with it, UNLESS like me, you are a Timelord: That is the crux of The Fallen. The Doctor realises he is no wiser than anyone else in terms of playing with peoples' lives.

Pride comes before a fall, and the Doctor has fallen from Grace ... [Moans from all.] That's really bad, isn't it? I remember someone came up with an alternative title for the TV movie; "Grace: 1999". And then I realised this one is "2001: A Grace Odyssey". [Anguished groans.] I don't think puns work that well in comics. That's why we have the Wildean Wit Enforcer in Happy Deathday. Anyone who makes a pun gets killed instantly.

(DP) Why did you choose Brixton as a location for The Fallen?
I live nearby. It's the first time I've written a story around a real location. Just using things I've noted while wandering around over the past seven years, and thought, 'That's an interesting point – one day I'll do something with that.' The River Effra outlet really is underneath the M16 building for example.

(DR) You do lots of genre shifting and changing your formats.
In Fluid Links, Matthew Jones said Doctor Who's main strength is not travelling from setting to setting but from genre to genre. If you want to do a western, you can do a western, or an Agatha Christie murder mystery, or a gothic horror story, or anything you want. In the TV show they looked to films. They would do The Thing, and have them trapped in an arctic place with a creature going around killing them all. Then they would go on to Frankenstein. I'm beginning to understand that with the comic strip, it's not a good idea to keep looking to film for key genres. I should really be looking at comic genres and what works really well in comics.

(DR) What would you regard as your comic influences. What impressed you and got you into comics?
I remember collecting The Mighty World of Marvel, published by Marvel UK. A nice symmetry there, really. It would reprint The Fantastic Four by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and Spider-Man by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. I just remember being hit by so many brilliant concepts. They really excited my imagination. Looking at them now they are still classic comics. Jack Kirby was a big influence. He produced a colossal amount of very powerful material. His sense of design is unparalleled. It was all huge and epic and amazing to look at. There is a lot of Kirby in the strip, particularly Wormwood with the Ziggurat. I just asked Martin to do something that looked like Kirby had designed it, and he did, and it looked fantastic. Huge black and white interlocking parts hanging in space. Kirby could always do size really well. In a tiny medium he could always do these massive images.

Alan Moore was another huge influence. Things like Swamp Thing and V for Vendetta. I would just sit there and actually read the comic out loud because I wanted to hear the dialogue. I would do this on my own, I should point out. His stories would start in one direction, move off into something else and then end on the same point you began with. I deliberately did that in Ground Zero. It starts with the Doctor and the door closing on him, and you're thinking Ace is narrating this part of the story, saying goodbye to him, and then at the end of the story you get those same three panels and you realise it's Susan, not Ace.

V for Vendetta is a work of sheer genius. We never really find out who V is. It's like the Doctor, we are never supposed to know who he really is, because if he's only one person then he suddenly becomes so much smaller than what he could be. Everyone has their own little theory about who the Doctor is, and without specifying anyone of them, he can be everyone in that sense.

I can clearly see a connection between V and Evey and the Doctor and Ace, the mysterious figure and his protege.

Interview - Shades of Gray (Part Two of Four)

2008-05-25T20:24:00.006+12:00

FEY (cont.)

(Darrell Patterson) Are we going to see any more of her?
(Scott) I hope so. Events were going so fast the characters didn't really have a chance to interact. I've got one or two ideas about what's going to happen. It's going to be a rocky marriage, Fey and Shayde. It seems very idyllic and noble to begin with but things are going to go a little bit wrong for them. Eventually we'll come back to them, but not for a while.

THE THRESHOLD

(DP) Was the Threshold saga intentional from the start?
No. When Gary [Gillatt] and I took over the magazine, the strip had been doing multiple Doctor stories. They didn't link together in any way. They were just these little stories stuck between giant slabs of continuity, and nothing important could ever happen in them. We decided to bring Sylvester and Ace back, but before we did that we thought it might be fun to try and find a way of linking the multi-Doctor stories together. So we had Peter Davison, Hartnell, and Tom. We decided to have this mysterious force watching them, planning something. They would be seeing these Doctors out of chronological order. For them it would be a young blond guy, and then this old guy a few decades later.

In the end we decided it would be creepier if we had someone stalking the companions, as they're far more vulnerable than the Doctor. We'd have them meeting this mysterious off-panel voice, then cut away, and when we'd cut back nothing would seem to have happened.

We were planting the seed that something wasn't quite right. To give you an idea of how little attention the comic strip was getting at that point, maybe three people actually commented on these weird-shaped word balloons creeping into the story.

The original plan for the Threshold was that they were going to be the Doctor's equivalent to SPECTRE, the James Bond baddies. They turned out a little bit differently in the movies, but in the original books SPECTRE is this mysterious mercenary organisation people could hire. They weren't out to take over the world. If you knew who to contact you could hire SPECTRE to kill people, or steal stuff.

I thought it would be fun to expand that into an interstellar, inter-dimensional group. The Doctor has always fought individuals like the Master, or alien races. He had never really fought an organisation before. I couldn't think of a case where the Doctor had fought a team of agents who could be anyone, anywhere.

(David Ronayne) Very much like the Illuminati, or a secret brotherhood?
The Threshold are the original conspiracy, really. They have fingers in every pie and are everywhere. You can never tell who is going to suddenly smile and crackle into Letratone. The monsters are interchangeable in Doctor Who. They just represent the unknown, and generally the unknown is scary and dramatic. The best ones represent some part of the darker side of humanity. The Daleks are the ultimate xenophobes. They're driven by fear. They're frightened of every other race in the universe, and that fear translates into hatred. The Sontarans are basically the love of war that humans clearly have. And you've got the Cybermen who are essentially the callous side of humanity who don't give a damn about anyone else. They have blocked off emotion and are just machines crushing people. The monsters that keep coming back are the ones people can relate to in some way.

So, the Threshold basically represent human greed. 'We want to own it all, take it all, grab it all, whatever we see, wewantit.' In Logopolis, the Master announces to the universe, 'You will bow down before me and obey me forever, and I will be your king.' The Threshold don't do that, they just take out a TV advert across the universe instead. 'We're here to help you.'

We are a business, we are offering a service and you have got to take it. Where do you want to go today?'. I was flabbergasted by all those Microsoft ads that were comparing Bill Gates to Thomas Edison. Bill Gates has just tried to force every other competitor off the market and own absolutely everything. The Threshold were eliminating all other forms of transport, and saying, 'It's just us, you've got nowhere else to go, but for a modest fee we're here to help you.' Which is essentially what Bill Gates is trying to do. That was my inspiration for White in Wormwood. When I was putting all this together I was quite pleased when I realised that the teleportation devices they used in Ground Zero were called Windows. It was just too perfect.

The only thing linking the Threshold together is that they're all total bastards, and that is why they lose. There's a great quote, I think it's in L'il Abner; 'Good beats Evil, coz it's nicer.' The heroes all stand together, and make sacrifices for each other. Fey sacrifices her individuality to save Shayde, which in turn saves the Doctor, which in turn saves the day. The Threshold, on the other hand, are just at each others throats completely. White betrays Chastity, the Pariah betrays the Threshold, White betrays the Pariah. They are baddies, they are not very nice, and ultimately they don't cooperate. When I first came up with them, Gary Gillatt said the Threshold could be an eternal menace for the Doctor. We would never really find out where they come from, or what they're about. The Doctor would be always trying to get to the heart of the mystery, but never quite manage to do it. Then Gary turned round and said we should find out a bit more about these guys now, so I had to sit down and work it all out. No Cartmel masterplan here, I'm afraid. It was very organic, very natural, which is probably the best way for these stories to come together. It was Gary having ideas, and Alan coming in and doing stuff which I could react to. It was fun.

(DR) It does seem very planned, and it meshes together nicely ...
It does, doesn't it? Looking back it seems like we had the whole thing worked out from the start.

In Fire and Brimstone you've got the Time Lord box. What's inside? Ahh, big secrets, big secrets. I confess we didn't have any idea what was in that box. It took me months to go over all the different possibilities of what could be inside that box before I could come up with something that would actually fit into Wormwood.

I'm quite happy with Wormwood. I was worried it wasn't going to have a decent payoff, but I reread it the other day and it makes more sense the second time around. There is nothing harder to write than the ending. The solution can't be something that's pulled out of a hat. There has to be a set-up earlier on, there has to be some clues as to how the Doctor will win. It also has to be reasonably original. That's tough, particularly when you already have a hundred and sixty stories on TV, and god knows how many novels and comic stories. It's a challenge, and we never approach it in a casual way. We're all very committed to doing the strip properly.

(DP) So are you going to bring any more characters back? You have brought back a few already ...
Yeah, from the Steve Parkhouse period, mainly because we're all fans of it. It's the best single run of the Doctor Who strip ever. Gary was quite clear when we were going to Gallifrey that it would be The Tides of Time Gallifrey rather than anything we've seen from the television series, and Martin specifically drew it to look like the Dave Gibbons version. The strip should have its own identity. However, you can get into a trap where you think, "Who shall we bring back this week?" (Points to Part One of The Fallen) Case in point!

(DR) Do you have any rules for writing your stories?
Keep the readers guessing, and give them a reason to buy the next issue. Give them a really good cliff-hanger that will raise a lot of questions.

(DR) What about the full page cliff-hangers?
I don't know if that had been done before we took it over. I'm pretty sure Land of the Blind was the first one. It's not so unexpected these days as we have done a few of them now. It's not going to be every single time. If it was it would be very predictable and a bit silly. When you have a shot like that, [Scott holds up penultimate page of part one of The Fallen] you get used to seeing these small, narrow pictures, all exactly the same size. You don't think about how big the panel is, you're centered on the scene, so once you turn the page a full-page shot looks enormous. It gives you a sudden jolt.

(DR) Like the cliffhangers in the series.
Yeah. I remember Alan wrote an article in which he said the best cliffhangers not only end at a life-threatening moment, but move the story in a new direction. In The Curse of Fenric when Dinsdale gets up and says, 'We play the contest again, TIMELORD.' All of a sudden a little piece of new information is given. We always try to do that.

(DP) Like the regeneration that wasn't ...
Imagine if you were watching The Twin Dilemma, and at the end of episode three, Peter Davison returned. What a trick! I didn't want the ninth Doctor to be terribly sympathetic. I wanted everyone to feel the way Izzy was feeling. She was very alienated and upset by this. 'What is this? Who is this guy? He's not my Doctor.'

(DR) While the visual aspect of the Ninth Doctor was already established, where did you get his personality from?
To be perfectly honest he was based on Colin Baker. I think Colin probably would have been a really good Doctor with a different approach. He is quite a clever, witty man in person, but making him instantly unlikable didn't work. He tries to strangle Peri, preens himself in a mirror, none of this is the Doctor. I felt really alienated as a fan when watching that. That's the approach I wanted to take with this guy, coming in and going, 'Look at me. Aren't I stylish and wonderful?'

It had to be like the first episode of a new Doctor story. You had to spend a bit of time in the TARDIS examining him and his companions' reaction to him. We just ticked all the boxes. He gets Izzy's name wrong, you get all the old clothes thrown out, that kind of thing. Just all these little nods to the past so people would think this was the first story of a new Doctor. It had to be convincing, so we put all that in there.

THE PARIAH

(DR) There was no problem with getting Nick Briggs' likeness?
No. Gary went out to a car park and got lots of photos of Nick grimacing for Martin. Martin now has more reference photos of Nick than he does of Paul McGann. He was going, 'Are you sure we can't keep this bloke?' He's actually very good in the audios. Bill Baggs has got him in for the new pseudo-Doctor Who thing. He's called the Wanderer.

(DP) And now there's Grace?
We kept that one close to the chest. It had to be a surprise. Dave Owen thought it was another incarnation of the Doctor floating around in the helicopter in Part One.

(DP) Oh yeah, I thought it was the Doctor too.
Oh, excellent! One of the duties of any writer is to make the reader think the story is going in one direction when it's really going in another. That's the whole crux of Wormwood. You can sit there and think this is the first adventure of the ninth Doctor, and then go back and reread it and it's a different story.

You couldn't do that in a TV show. You can't assume people will be able to go back and look at it again. And what producer in his right mind would get rid of Paul McGann for four episodes? The fake regeneration could only really have been done in a comic. You couldn't do it in a novel because they announce these things months in advance, and I there would be no visual element to it, anyway. But in the strip it worked perfectly. If something can only be done in one particular medium, it's probably a good idea for that medium.

The Daleks, as popular as they are, don't look very good in comics. They're designed for TV. The great thing about them is the way they move and the way they sound, neither of which translates at all into comics or books. The Cybermen are the same. You can't show any facial expression or body language, and this is vital in a comic strip.

I'm quite keen on getting new monsters in the strip, like the Pariah, and Stark in The Fallen. I liked the Pariah. She was fun. Miranda Richardson would do the voice in the TV show. I was imagining her character from The Crying Game when I wrote it. Such an incredible bitch, absolutely reveling in her evil. The villains should really enjoy their evil. It should be their prime motivation.

(DP) Now the Threshold saga is over is it likely to be published in one volume?
There has been talk about it. It would be very big. Two hundred and eighty pages all together. It would be consistent in its appearance because Martin has drawn all the Threshold stories.

We are incredibly lucky to have Martin. He loves doing it, and is a huge Doctor Who fan. He works a day job in an advertising company doing storyboards, and then he goes home at night and draws the strip. He does two pages a week, which is pretty heavy going considering he does them in the small hours of the morning. It's just astonishing that it comes out looking as beautiful as it does. He takes great effort, care and love. He wants everything to look right. We're also very lucky to have Robin Smith inking it.

(DP) It has been a huge project.
There are probably a lot people scratching their heads, wondering what all those references to previous stories were about. Apart from the reference to Ace right at the end, I cut out all the references to Ground Zero when I got to Wormwood, because I thought it was a bit far back. But it was one of the first things that came to mind, having Ace's baseball bat delivering the final blow. She had to be acknowledged in some way. Poetic justice. I'm a big fan of poetic justice.

I was just so glad that Wormwood had a happy ending. We hadn't had a happy ending for so long. The stories just tended to blend together from crisis to crisis. They just sail off into the universe with the Doctor talking about going off to get something to eat.

(DR) So a few more happy endings from now on, just to get the average up?
Well, I'm looking forward to seeing what you think of the end to The Fallen. The strip was a very cozy thing for a long time. People had clearly stopped reading it, because nothing major ever happened. Ace dying was the key moment when we slammed everyone in the face and said, 'From now on, all bets are off. Forget about continuity, forget about anything else, anything can happen.' So when the Doctor seemed to regenerate, people believed it. If Ace hadn't died in Ground Zero people might have been a bit more suspicious, but after that, we could do anything.

Interview - Shades of Gray (Part One of Four)

2008-05-18T20:53:00.006+12:00

SCOTT GRAY
Interviewed by Darrell Patterson & David Ronayne (in 1999)

Over the past few years something very strange has happened to the travels of the Doctor. His adventures have fragmented and have split across a series of canons as fan authors have had the opportunity to create new adventures. Few, however, have had the ability or freedom to reach, and surprise such a large audience as Scott Gray. An expatriate New Zealander, and previous regular contributor to TSV, his tenure as writer of the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip has been marked with controversy. New villains have come into play, companions have died and the Doctor was briefly 'regenerated. Darrell Patterson (DP) and David Ronayne (DR) track him down at the Fitzroy Tavern in London, and pester the life out of the poor man:

(DR) So what actually is your job?
(Scott) You mean in terms of DWM? I really don't have much to do with the mag at all. It's Gary [Gillatt], Alan [Barnes] and Peri [Godbold] doing the magazine. I'm just connected with the strip. I write parts of it, and am the 'hands on' editor. I go over the layout and pencil roughs with Martin [Geraghty] and Elitta [Fell] as well. I take a photocopy of the pencils and indicate where all the balloons are supposed to go, and where the text can be broken up and laid out. It takes a surprisingly long time, but I'm a bit picky about things. When people say, 'Oh, I'm a bit of a perfectionist', they generally don't see it as a flaw. It clearly is, because it drives everyone else around you completely insane. I get quite possessive about the strip which is a bad thing to do, because it is a team effort. There are a lot of people involved.

(DP) So how much input does everyone have in developing characters?
A lot. We sit down and talk about it, particularly regarding Izzy and Fey. Alan formulated both of them, so he will say, 'No, Izzy wouldn't say this. Fey wouldn't do that.' And we sometimes end up arguing and tussling. [Laughs] Funny thing is, we don't argue about what the Doctor would do. We are more or less in agreement about him. I think it's important not to overwrite the Doctor. If anything I'm guilty of underwriting him.

THE DOCTOR

'Dashing' seems to be the best word to describe him. Mister Darcy. You could see him in a sword fight, swinging off a balcony on a rope. He's kind of a template you fix your own ideas about what the Doctor is to. We have seen so little of him. He's a bit manic in the TV movie because he's just regenerated, so you get the feeling he's only just come right in the last fifteen minutes of the show. He struck me as a pretty cool character. He's essentially an English gentleman. A romantic figure from the past, one that would appeal to American women. Always making this last minute dash to freedom, battling the villains on the balustrade and making this constant sacrifice.

(DR) Funny you should mention sacrifice. You have put him through the wringer a lot. Lots of the cliffhangers have the Doctor plunging a syringe into his hearts or being exterminated by Daleks.
It's not something we consciously set out to do, but it seems right for the character. There isn't much point in the Doctor saving the day by simply pushing a button and reversing the polarity of the neutron flow. If the guy is going to be the hero, he has to do heroic things, and there is nothing more heroic than putting yourself on the line to save other people. That for me is the whole gist of the Doctor. There is some pretty obvious Christ imagery in the movie and Alan had great fun in the end of The Final Chapter with what appears to be the Doctor saving Gallifrey in the crucifix position. It seems very right for him.

You've got to give the impression that the Doctor is a kid at some level. It's too easy to simply have Izzy as the young, bubbly, youthful figure, and the Doctor going, 'Oh, Izzy! I can't believe you are being so childish.' You want to remind people that the Doctor is just as innocent in his own way as Izzy is, sometimes even more so. There is a great line in Nightmare Of Eden where someone says to Tom [Baker], 'Who are you working for?' 'I'm not working for anyone - I'm just having fun.' Which is him to a tee. We're trying to get back to that. We don't want the Doctor to have any great plan. He's wandering about and seeing what's happening.

IZZY

(DP) Is Izzy based on anyone in particular?
Izzy was originally based on several people. Particularly Louise Weiner, the singer from Sleeper. Easy on the eye, and she looks the part. Her and Dianne from Trainspotting were the initial inspirations. Someone skinny and hip in look and attitude. A bit of a Britpop girl. If you look at Endgame she starts out looking very different. She looked like she worked out, and we were saying to Martin that she's got to be skinnier, more this kind of waif type. So if you look at Endgame now, over the course of those four issues she goes on this crash diet, so she has the right physique by the end of part four. At the beginning of part one she wasn't quite there. You see her bursting through a window with a laser gun and it's a kind of 'Ace' thing to do. It's how Izzy would imagine herself to be rather than how she really is. In hindsight, it's not quite right for her as an introduction. She's more the kind of person who would try that and end up bashing her head against the window.

(DP) Izzy seems like one of us.
That's always the role of the companion. You're not really supposed to identify with the Doctor, but you are supposed to identify with the companion. When the show has been less interesting to me, it's generally when the companions have been a bit odd, like Nyssa or Adric. They seem completely removed from your own experiences. You can't relate to them. You can't relate to the Doctor either. You can't get terribly involved. With Ace you could, she seemed much more down to Earth. It just seems sensible to have an Earth companion from a contemporary setting.

Izzy is a Doctor Who fan, or at least would be if there was a series in the Doctor Who universe. She'd be the biggest fan ever. She'd be Jackie Jenkins. The fun thing is that lzzy makes all these cultural references that all the readers instantly understand, and the Doctor doesn't get any of it. This notion that we know more about something than the Doctor does is quite enjoyable. He's kind of blind to the popular culture of the latter half of the twentieth century. It's not something he's paid much attention to.

There was a key moment when I understood the relationship between them. In By Hook Or By Crook Izzy's baiting the Doctor and they argue. 'Who got captured by the Threshold?' 'Yeah? Who got exterminated by the Daleks?' You realise he's just as much a kid as she is, and suddenly, Izzy comes across as the slightly more mature one in a weird way. Then a couple of pages later she's in prison with him. They both blunder into situations. They just think, 'Oh, I know what to do - don't worry.' They just go with whatever comes into their heads. So she just runs off and leaves him there and comes back with the sonic screwdriver baked in a cake. That's her brilliant idea!

(DR) In Endgame she says, 'I'm Izzy Nobody'. I thought her past may turn up again, but it hasn't.
'Izzy Somebody from Stockbridge' is sort of her official name. She's had several foster parents and has never really had a sense of stability. You don't get companions with lots of family ties, it's basically one of the rules. In the beginning the companions were adults. You never stopped to wonder if Ian's mother was worried about him. After that they tended to be orphans, or the family were just never mentioned. Jo, Sarah, Tegan - do we know about their relatives? Tegan had an aunt, but she didn't last long, did she?

(DR) There seems to be no playing games with Izzy.
No, that's been done. The Doctor can still be quite sly. Wormwood points that out better than anything else. But he doesn't play games with Izzy. When it comes to his friends he's not going to dick about with them.

FEY

(DP) So who is the visual reference for Fey?
No one really. The trick with Fey is that she wasn't meant to be a companion. She was originally fated to die at the end of Tooth And Claw. Alan just really liked her and said it would be helpful having her around, simply to have two people carrying the Doctor to the TARDIS. Fey can handle tough situations. She's a female version of the Doctor. She's been to all of these places around the world, had all these adventures, and she also name-drops lots of people. All traits of the Doctor. When he meets her for the first time he thinks, 'Hey, you're really cool!' simply because she reminds him of him.

Alan said he'd kill her off at the end of The Final Chapter. But when we got to the end, he came back and said it would deflect attention from the regeneration. So then Gary suggested Fey could be a Threshold agent ...

No! [Waves hands in the air in mock horror] That went against everything I had planned about the Threshold not being able to travel in time. We eventually got round that by having them simply plant a bug inside her. She is the perfect spy; someone who doesn't realise they are a spy. It's quite humiliating for her, because she's meant to be this cool secret agent, and the Threshold are laughing at her in the background. Once I got that in mind it all seemed to click into place. Then she became a really important figure in the overall plot.

(DR) She seemed to work really well.
Yeah, but as Alan said, it is very difficult to have two companions in an eight page comic strip. I'm very conscious of the amount of space we've got in each chapter. You have got to have a substantial amount happening. It's very easy to not write enough, or do the opposite and cram too much in. Then Martin doesn't have enough space. It can be tricky.

When I wrote Wormwood we agreed I had to get rid of Fey. I had considered killing her off at the end of part one. I thought that would be a really dramatic way of starting the story, with the Threshold saying, 'We're not playing around anymore, guys.' Then the idea of having her merge with Shayde came along and I thought that would be more fun. I liked her. Now she's too powerful to be a companion, and the Doctor wouldn't be terribly keen on having someone running around with a gun. Fey was essentially the Ian Chesterton/Jamie figure. McGann isn't going to anger easily and get into fights, but she could just beat people up. It just seemed fun to make that character a woman for a change.

RTP! #27 Status Report

2008-05-04T17:19:00.002+12:00

Work on issue 27 of RTP! is already underway with the following being prepped for inclusion in the issue (due around June '08 hopefully):

"The Tower of Angum" Part Two - The second part of the Tenth Doctor/Rose comic strip illustrated by Garry Jackson
"The Life and Times of the 3rd Warlord on the Left" - The comic adventures of Frank the Warlord continue in Part Two
30 Second Theory - Looks at Mr Bannakaffalatta from Voyage Of The Damned
"Cyberman the Kroton" - More comic mayhem from the pen of Erato
"One Flew Over the Hen's Nest" Part Four - The fourth and final part of Alexander Ballingall's investigation into the history of Graham Muir's comic creations
The answers to last issues cryptic crossword
An interview with someone
And more!

Fanzines Reviewing Fanzines - RTP! #26

2008-05-02T07:43:00.001+12:00

Zeus Plug has taken the time to review the most recent issue. Read Alistair Hughes thoughts here.

Fanzines Reviewing Fanzines - TSV #75

2008-04-30T11:29:00.008+12:00

Another review of TSV from the pages of RTP!:

TSV #75 (December 2007)

Seventy-five issue, twenty years, and a full-colour, wrap-around cover to boot. TSV clocks in for issue 75 with three main articles: a review of Series Three, a look back at the PDAs of the Fourth and Fifth Doctors, and a dig into the broadcast of Doctor Who in Singapore. Beyond this the issue is dotted with some smaller items, yet nothing from all of this leapt out as an immediate must read.
The best part of the issue was the follow up to the ‘Drabble Who’ challenge with some amusing entries and Amy Mebberson’s art additions to the fanzine. I feel that TSV still needs more art to help break up the pages of text that can sometimes be a little daunting to look at. Jon Preddle’s ‘Singapore Who’ took a little getting into, but proved interesting in the end. Will there be follow ups or are there no other screening histories that Preddle has access to?
The rest of the issue was something I came back to a little while later, Chris Skerrow’s review of the PDAs of interest to me primarily because I’ve only ever read about a half dozen of them. Unfortunately as a result of this lack or merchandise, Edwin Patterson’s guide to purchasing the stuff was of little interest, but I presume it to be a fairly accurate and comprehensive guide to spending your hard earned dosh.
I’m still not sure what I’m waiting for in TSV, but I keep feeling like some ‘zing’ is needed.

— Alexander Ballingall

Read other reviews of the same issue here and here.

Legs Eleven

2008-04-22T21:25:00.006+12:00

Dated April 2001, issue 11 surfaced in the April of 2002, a mere month after I'd returned to NZ from my two year OE in the UK. I have a vivid memory of using my sister's account at the University of Canterbury to get the master copy printed out as for some reason I was unable to do so at home. Much of the material in the issue was quite old, such as my Terror Of The Zygons video review which I'd written before my departure to the UK two years earlier! It was an exercise in getting the issue printed rather than worrying about anything else. Looking at the content now I can tell that at least a third of the issue was done before my May 2000 departure. I think that at the time it was finally printed both Matt and I were glad to see the back of the issue, more so for Matt as it meant that he could officially give up his post as Co-Editor (unofficially having given up a good year or two earlier) and not have to worry about putting together an issue in the future — issue 11 must have hung over him like the sword of Damocles! As a result of those two years of chaos and uncertainty, Matt paid for the issue out of his own pocket allowing subscribers to get that issue for free.

And the eyebrow raising editorial (dating from around April 2001), Matt's last one for the fanzine?:

It's official, Matt Kamstra is the laziest bastard in New Zealand Doctor Who Fandom!

In really old, not so ground-breaking news, Matt Kamstra has been named 'Laziest Dutch Prick in Fandom' in a recent DWB-S poll amongst spaced out garden gnomes (too many shrooms CAN be a bad thing). Not having compiled an issue since Alexander 'most of us just call him Joe' Ballingall left for foreign shores, most of us now believe that RTP! is dead, to be no more, just another failed New Zealand Doctor Who fanzine. But alas! Joe has succeeded in giving Matt an electronic kick up the arse and once again jump-starting the subversive Doctor Who subculture known as Reverse the Polarity! and it's adopted step-sister newsletter Neutron Flow (formerly known as Critical Mass).

Why this magnificent and award-winning magazine suddenly disappeared a little over one year ago is still somewhat of a mystery to contemporary history scholars and even Matt Kamstra himself. However, its sudden re-emergence has come as a shock to many, even causing the death of an elderly man in Waiwhakamukau. In an unofficial release to the DWB-S press on Friday night Mr. Kamstra had this to say about the matter: "impissedsofuckoffnleavemealoneyacommiebastard". Moreover, his publicist had this translation to offer: "Due to a heavy professional schedule and intense media pressure, my work has been seriously impaired. I do not wish to speak any further on the matter. Now f**k off."

Most importantly however, this reporter has discovered that RTP! is here to stay, and will in fact soon be published in Ware, Hertfordshire, England, and then in Kyoto, Japan, when Alexander 'Is my name actually Joe or Alex' Ballingall and Matt 'I'm surprised I can find anything in this joint' Kamstra move to the Orient to pursue careers in Asian boy bands! Sensational but true! More details are coming to light as we go to press, but by next issue we should have some early photographs and possibly a working title for the project. All this and a four page lift-out poster section!

In similarly ridiculous breaking news, Reverse the Polarity!'s website is soon to be upgraded after a two year hiatus. Tentatively renamed 'Saucer Smith's Psychedelic Magical Mystery Bus Trip' the site will feature a web-shop for subversive instruments and home made whiskey, reviews and articles from all three 'Saucer Smith' publications, and an extensive collection of amateur and professional porn courtesy of Paul 'sifty f**k' Maloney and his lovely ladies.

- Matt Kamstra

The Guff Revolutions:

Published: April 2002
Editor: Matt Kamstra, Alexander Ballingall
RTP! Logo Design: Peter & Bridget Adamson
Front Cover: Peter Adamson
Back Cover: Garry Jackson
Internal Artwork: Peter Adamson, Garry Jackson, Matt Kamstra
Letters: Peter Adamson, Jeff Stone
Page Count: 52
Print Run: 30
Price: NZ$3

~ Contents ~

[01] COVER
[02] CONTENTS
[03] EDITORIAL
[04] UPDATE
[05] The BOOTCUPBOARD [Letters]
[06] K'umface' / The Twelve Pages of Karkus
[07] Doctor Who Bullsh*t: Prime Re-Run Surprise Shocker!
[09] REVIEWS: The Scope [Reviews of PDAs]
[10] REVIEWS [Attack of the Cybermen]
[12] OPINION: Doctor Who Goes Digital
[13] An Alt. Future for RTP!
[16] CARTOON: Saucer + Birdy—Meet the DJ from Hell!
[18] INTERVIEW: Confessions of a Melophile [Alden Bates]
[22] The Cabbage Criterion
[25] OPINION: Your Two Cents Worth ...
[26] The Sexual Misadventures of Doctor Who - The middle Davison TARDIS crew
[27] COMIC: Pulp Who—The Gold Star [part 4 of 4]
[37] REVIEWS: Armageddon '02 conventions in Auckland & Wellington
[38] Doctor Who Bullsh*t: JFK Plot Update ... Again!
[40] REVIEW [Terror of the Zygons]
[42] FICTION: Alternate Realities [part 1 of ?]
[44] FICTION: The Red Menace [part 6 of 8]
[48] ARTICLE: The NZ Connection
[49] CARTOON
[50] OPINION: Thoughts from the Kitchen
[52] COVER

Flashback - Grey Days (RTP! #9)

2008-04-14T18:47:00.005+12:00

Issue 9 was compiled by Matt Kamstra while I was away on holiday (hence the page numbers went missing and were only penned in at the last minute before printing), although most of the material had been assembled prior to my absence. The highlight of the issue was the interview with Ashburton fan Graham Muir, conducted by myself (with the aid of a tape recorder) in Matt's pad in Christchurch one sunny Saturday in late 1999. It was an amusing chat, something hopefully reflected in the interview.

Pulp Who continued, Peter Adamson's art and layout skills consistently putting my own to shame! Due to a lack of art from regular artist Garry Jackson (for reasons I don't recall), much of the issue was illustrated by myself with various silly little bits like the Valeyard doing a Homer Simpson-style dance on the grave of the Sixth Doctor. I also managed to waste three whole pages with various numbers based on the results of the DWM 1998 survey which had sampled a large number of fans for a comprehensive snapshot of fan opinion on all the stories of the series. It was fun to write at the time, but I've no idea if people fun it fun to read!

Finally, a spaced-out Erato strip and some dodgy pics by Jon Preddle helped round out what eventually turned out to be a very skitzo issue. If this was a result of the seven month delay (issue 9 should have surfaced in September 1999, not January 2000) I've no idea. Nor do I recall really why there was such a long gap either. But it was becoming apparent by this time that Matt was beginning to drag his heels with the fanzine and lose interest. Changes would soon be around the corner (hiatus not withstanding!).

If - "The Brain Dead"

2008-04-07T16:35:00.004+12:00

The third of Peter Adamson's articles on the impact some unmade Who might have had, if they had been made ...

The Brain Dead
by Brian Hayles

Prior to The Curse Of Peladon, Brian Hayles submitted a story outline for a third Ice Warrior story, yet again set on Earth, but this time in a contemporary setting.

Briefly, The Brain Dead involved an attempted invasion of Earth by the Martians using Earth's "comsats" (communication satellites) and the Warriors' own weapon, the' Z beam' - a super high concentration of energy which could freeze targets to absolute zero at pin-point accuracy. There was more - the Ice Warriors eventually make their base on Earth (probably Britain - don't get too excited) in a disused frozen foods factory. It's beginning to sound like the plot for Batman Forever already. UNIT are involved of course - this being a first contact scenario for the Brigadier re: the real inhabitants of Mars; though the Brig initially believes the culprits to be the very Earthly separatist group, The Isolationists. Things become even more sinister with the appearance of the victims of the Martians' meddling - the Brain Dead - zombified humans who makeup most of the invading vanguard. finally, the Doctor comes to everyone's rescue with the revelation that all the frozen assets of the Ice Warriors (the Brain Dead included) can be easily dispatched with an ultra high electrical current. Simple really.

If all of this sounds a bit confusing and complicated, tht'f1 bear in mind that this is the most complete story synopsis available, and to be sure it's not much of a story at face value . Presumably the reason behind its rejection, much to the improvement of the far superior Peladon story.

As for its inclusion in Season 9 however, The Brain Dead wouldn't have looked out of place alongside say, The Time Monster. The inclusion of UNIT would have been entirely feasible, as would the production-friendly Earth setting. There is even some topical elements with the Isolationists, an environmental pressure group foreshadowing Jo's future in The Green Death. It would have been interesting to see how Brian Hayles wrote for the UNIT regulars, and given that at that stage the previous Ice Warrior story had been The Seeds Of Death, the concept of aggressive Martians would not have seemed out of place (unlike their later slated appearance in Mission To Magnus). So wemight be able to conceive of an imaginary production of Brain Dead with the usual regulars Lennie Mayne directing, Ian Scoones supplying the satellite models, and perhaps even Alan Bennion would have reprised his lee Lord role as Kulvis, commander of the Martian force.

In the end it is probably for the better that The Brain Dead was overlooked, for its replacement with The Curse Of Peladon was a boon fur the Pertwee Era in two ways: first and foremost Peladon was the first adventure set in outer space for the ninth season (and only the second in Pertwee's tenure at that stage), and secondly it introduced the first instance of an established 'monster' race having a significant and interesting change in philosophy and becoming an ally of good (or, ' doing a Klingon' as it would churlishly be known in later years). The Brain Dead offered none of these novel elements unfortunately, and perhaps it is for the reason that it played too closely to the already dated Earthbound formula of season seven that it was scuppered.

- Peter Adamson

Fiction - The Scorpion's Tale

2008-03-20T16:54:00.002+13:00

"The Scorpion's Tale"
by David Ronayne

Imagine a swirling mass of stars, spinning clusters and constellations circling endlessly around a glowing centre. Move closer and you can see countless numbers of worlds swinging through elliptical orbits around certain gifted suns. Closer ...

To one particular world, not particularly inspiring, but special because of it's history and placement in the grander schemes of other things. Below you the world slowly turns. The cusp of dawn moving over of it's dry central continents. Closer ...

On the banks of the Serengetti a little man sits cross-legged at the waters edge. By his side sits a dog eared book. It is unopened, it does not need to be. With his eyes closed the man can read all the words and see all the scenes just as clearly as he can visualise the ripples of sunlight on the water, the flights of countless butterflies and their descendants, and the tiny disturbance in the sand to his far right. Move closer ...

It is a scorpion. Imagine ... The scorpion scuttled across the river bank slightly more agitated than usual. (Which, as anyone who knows scorpions well readily tell you, is already a fair bit). Looking around he saw a giraffe drinking from the river, so he rushed over and made this frantic plea.

"Oh help me please, I need to get over to the other side of the river for my granny's birthday party, with tea and scones and lashings of ginger beer, and you art' so big and strong and tall and brave, and, oh help, oh bother ..."

But the giraffe had heard stories of scorpions and their dangerous stings (and even worse punctuation) and she ran away, ignoring his request, as fast as her long legs would carry her. (Giraffes were always prone to idle gossip.) The scorpion got more worried, worried and annoyed, until he saw a big elephant (and if you are a scorpion elephants are really big) walking along the river bank, so he rushed over and frantically made his plea.

"Oh please, oh help, I'm late for my granny's birthday party and there will be cake and fizzy drink and bowls of ice cream with cherries on top, and you are so big and strong, could you please help me get across?"

But elephants never forget, (although in all honesty, they don't really have that much to remember. They're not into foreign languages or high density particle physics, such things are best left to camels, cats, dolphins, and other creatures of a more academic nature. By contrast elephants lead a fairly sedate life.) and the elephant could remember tales of treachery, danger, and other scorpions, and the great beast sank back in fear before beating a hasty retreat back into the undergrowth.

The scorpion got more agitated, agitated and annoyed, until, out of the river a hippopotamus appeared, curious to see what the elephant was making all the fuss about. Frantically the scorpion waved it pincers in the air and shouted, "Oh please, oh help, I'm late for my granny's birthday party, and there is going to be cream buns and infeasible amounts of rice pudding, and you are so big and strong, please carry me across the river!"

Now hippos are very stoic creatures, not prone to take risks or putting themselves into danger, but they do have one weakness, a tiny vice that made the hippo stop and think. "Cream Buns?" It said slowly, in the paced and cautious tones that hippos, hostage negotiators, and elder statesmen adopt at times of indecision, rolling the word around in it's mouth, savouring it as if it were the real thing.

"Oh yes," said the scorpion, "and I'm sure if you helped me get there Granny would let you have some ... and some rice pudding too." He addcd for good measure.

The hippo thought for a moment before a look of cautious concern crossed it's face.

"But you're a scorpion," he said. "How do I know you won't sting me as we cross the river?"

The scorpion seemed shocked by the accusation, but pointed out that scorpions couldn't swim and that such an action would leave him to drown in the fast flowing river.

Then followed a brief discussion about mass/weight ratios (or lack thereof), of instectoid exoskeletons, and the sad state of the education system in not providing sufficient water bound physical education training. Finally the scorpion clinched the deal by pointing out some of the cream buns had a jam filling. So the hippo let the scorpion climb onto it's back and started to wade across the river. The scorpion, for it's part tried hard to resist temptation, holding it's breath, crossing its pincers and pinching itself, but to no avail. As they reached the deepest, swiftest part of the river the scorpion scuttled forward and plunged it's sting into the soft flabby part at the back of the hippos neck. The hippo screamed ...

The little man awoke with a start. It had been a long time since he had allowed himself to dream so far. He shook himself off, picked up the book and the curiously shaped umbrella by his side, and rushed back to the blue box waiting quietly nearby, disturbed by what he had seen.

Imagine if you will, a small man in a linen suit sitting alone in an impossibly large control room, his head buried in his hands while in his minds eye the planets fall out of their perfect orbits and crash chaotically into each other. Seven were engulfed by huge fireballs as the suns exploded, as if squeezed by some unknown hand, while deep below the scorpion looked on sadly as the glazed expression on the hippo's face sank beneath the waters for the final time. The pained eyes, both accusing and imploring, stared up as if to simply ask "Why, now we are both doomed?"

"Because I am a scorpion," said the scorpion.

END

Colour Version of Cover to Forthcoming Issue 26

2008-03-14T15:50:00.002+13:00

The Second Logo

2008-03-14T15:33:00.001+13:00

The appearance of the second logo for the fanzine came less than a year after the fanzine itself had launched, prompted by a small drawing I had done for Matt Kamstra. I had been unhappy with the essentially cluttered and unreadable logo that had first been used, and used my then new clout as Assistant Editor to persuade Wade Campbell Matt to have it changed. Like the logo before it, the second logo was realized by Jamie Campbell on his home computer and turned out ultimately to be just as cluttered and unreadable as the logo it replaced.

Compilations

2008-02-19T16:04:00.004+13:00

Coming Soon!

Once the final part of the TARDIS Tales article appears in RTP! (coming in issue 27 some time in 2008), we will be publishing a new compilation of all of Graham Muir's cartoons from TSV, Telos, Telos Unearthed, RTP! and other odds and ends. Which should be good since the last compilation was done back in May 1993, meaning that it will be the fifteenth anniversary of that compilation this year! This new compilation will hopefully be presented in the A4 format and feature not only every published comic of Graham's and the full TARDIS Tales articles, but possibly some new material as well. We'll see ...

Meanwhile, the above art is Graham's cover for issue 1 (October 1997).

Fanzines Reviewing Fanzines - TSV #54

2008-02-11T17:25:00.002+13:00

TSV #54 (March 1998)

Ahhh, the bonus copy. A bloody good interview with David J. Howe is the highlight that immediately springs to mind. "Confessions of a Melaphile", while well written and interesting, failed to win me over to the 'Mel' side, entirely because of my own stubborness! "By Any Other Name" — I was NOT going to read this (over 25 pages) just to flesh out the review ‚ I'm sure it's very good, but I'm also sure my extremely short attention span wouldn't have handled it either! In my opinion "The Karkus" in this issue was nowhere near as good as the previous, but "Whispers" by far makes up for it. A bit too much story potential for its actual size, it possibly could have done with a few more pages and being split into two parts. As a final point, "Why Paul McGann is the Best Doctor" is inspiring, enough so to make me write my own version on a difference line from David Lawrence's, and Wade Campbell's "Eight Doctor's New Home". Come on down TSV #55 ...

- Matt Kamstra

Fiction - A Sense of Irony

2008-02-09T19:53:00.000+13:00

"A Sense of Irony"
by David Ronayne

'A quick trip into the future' he said. It was certainly the oddest birthday Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge Stewart had ever had, except possibly for that time when he was twelve, and he thought he had seen a ghost. Thoughtfully he sucked on his drink — if you could call it that, and stared over to where a couple of tourists were sharing a joke, or at least the Swiss and Canadian girls were, while their male companion jotted something frantically down in his notebook. It was all most peculiar, although things had been very odd recently. Captain Yates and Jo were still flying a kite in the nearby square, Benton was wolfishly attacking his third 'meal', and the Doctor ... The Brigadier turned back to see his old friend smiling benignly at him. The Doctor had changed in the passed few months since he had regained control of his TARDIS. During his increasingly infrequent return visits his temper had mellowed considerably, and the Brigadier had found that during his absences he missed their arguments.

"So Brigadier, what do you think?"

"I think Benton's request to try the kebab place next door may have been a good idea." He replied dryly, thankful he had been able to discourage the idea of party hats after the Doctor had told the staff at the counter it was his birthday in perfect Mandarin.

"Now Alistair, I thought this would appeal to your sense of irony." He gestured dramatically around the room. "These people have managed to do what the CIA, UNIT, MIS have wanted to do for years, they even have a place like this in central Moscow."

The Brigadier looked confused, and the Timelord's face softened.

"Look, all I wanted to show you is that things change, and that everything you do, every threat we face, as thankless as our job seems, things will improve in the end."

The Brigadier looked suspiciously down at the Styrofoam box in front of him. "I don't know about improve Doctor, at the moment I'd rather be facing an Auton or a Cyberman. Are you sure we can have a kebab?" After the briefest of pauses they both laughed.

"Happy Birthday Brigadier."

"Thank You Doctor."

McDonalds, Beijing, 30 April 1996

END.

Fanzines Reviewing Fanzines - RTP! #25

2008-01-07T17:08:00.000+13:00

Zeus Plug has taken the time to review the most recent issue. Read Alistair Hughes thoughts here.

RTP! #26 Status Report

2008-01-05T08:18:00.000+13:00

Once more unto the update ...

Issue 26 is coming along nicely. My main request for material at the moment takes two forms: letters and smaller/shorter bits to fit between bigger items.

Meanwhile, people can look forward to the following in the issue:

"The Tower of Angum" Part One - A new comic strip, illustrated by Garry Jackson
"Pex" - A new Pex cartoon from Erato
Fanboy Confidential: Early Days - Peter Adamson brings us a new installment of the irregular series investigating fandom in all its strange wonder.
"Cyberman the Kroton" - The new cartoon from Erato
Series 3/Sarah Jane Adeventures/Christmas '07 Special/Time Crash/TSV reviews
"The Karkus" - A new Karkus cartoon from Erato
Cryptic Crossword
30 Second Query
"The 3rd Warlord from the Left" - The new cartoon from Alex Ballingall
Morgan and the Land of Fiction - An interview with NZ fan Morgan Davie

Fiction - The Wheel Turns

2007-12-21T21:27:00.000+13:00

"The Wheel Turns"
by David Ronayne

NOTE: The characters and events of the Chung Kuo Universe are copyright Dave Wingrove and New English Library books. They are used here with the utmost respect. (Except for the bit with the horse in Book 1 — very nasty Mr Wingrove, very nasty indeed.)

Bremen, City Europe, The Middle Kingdom, July 2207.

The man in black stood amongst the smoke and the smell of death. The 'uppers' remained in ruins, the vents sealed and still the fires had raged. He had read all the reports and seen all the files, but he had known he would have to experience the event first hand to be sure, to see the full consequences of his actions, and to strengthen his resolve to complete his plans. It would be a very dangerous undertaking and if his nerve ever weakened ...

Someone started calling for acetylene torches and ice-cutters to try to cut their way into the sealed lower levels of the stack, there may still be survivors down there ... He sat down and wept — they still had no idea who or what they were dealing with. Forces he had set into motion long ago, blinded by the righteous belief that he was improving things, running the tracks of history onto new and alien futures. Here it was comparatively settled, Draconia and Skaro had ceased to exist, at least Earth was still here, just with a different name. It was all number Seven's fault, the gaudy Welsh one, with the suspect ties and ridiculous waistcoat. If only someone had kept the meddlesome fool in check before he had wrecked havoc over the timelines, if only someone had told him, if only ... The man shook his head sadly knowing that he wouldn't have listened, locked in a cosmic crusade with a temporal mandate from heaven. And as a result fifteen thousand people died today.

"No, it was all our own fault, we all brought these futures on ourselves," he muttered quietly to himself. He felt a consoling hand on his shoulder and turned to see Tolenen, the ageing Marshal of the Tang's forces looking down, smiling weakly at him. The man in black flinched back. He had read the other's reports and journals and knew the general had mistaken the middle aged HungMao in the fine black tunic and pau for an off duty officer who had rushed back to the base at the alarm.

"There was nothing any of us could have done. Kuan Yin help us."

The man-in-black's wild laughter startled the elder. Then followed a torrent of facts and accusations. Tolenen was a good man and didn't deserve this, apart from breaking almost every law of time, the resulting conflicts of interest would cause the old man considerable strain. But his hearts had almost broken at the sights around him, and his anger and rage, more at himself than anything else, needed to be vented. Anyway had not such interference caused the problem, and if his plan succeeded this world was lost. And someone had to know the full extent of his folly.

He told the old man everything, past, present, and future. Wan wu, all things of heaven and earth. His involvement with the formation of the Cities and The Seven, the birth of the Ping Tau, and of Devore's treachery, the secrets of the Shepherd family and the upcoming assassinations. The Clay, the shell, and the Wiring Project, the developing situation in America and the things that could be found there.

He swore at the deaths on Mars, the destruction of the palaces, Lienmann in the Undercity, everything and more. Marshal Tolenen turned away unheeding, the conversation written off in his personal journal as the shacked ravings of a man who had seen to much at Bremen. There would be many of them. When the revelations came to light futile searches would bemade for the mysterious hei nan jell, the man in black, but he would be long gone by that stage.

He watched the old man leave. He knew he was preparing to meet Li Shai Tung within the hour. The man in black stood. His course was clear. He would have to sell and rebuy half his souls, and make pacts with various devils, but he was sure. It would be the ultimate treason in the eyes of his people and the greatest feat of temporal meddling ever performed. He would rewrite his own history, forcing himself into a different regenerative cycle, and hopefully set the past right. He may not even survive the process, but what was one life to save the countless world from the follies of his youth. Someone started screaming as the lower levels were uncovered, and as he turned to leave the Valeyard knew what he must do.

END.

10 Years Redux

2007-12-17T11:50:00.000+13:00

ZeusBlog have got in on the celebration, with a post about RTP!
Go and read it here:

10x10

Plus, Alden Bates gives a mini-review of issue 25 on his own blog here.

Intergalactic Man of Mystery

2007-12-13T15:54:00.001+13:00

Fanzines Reviewing Fanzines - RTP! #5

2007-12-06T19:12:00.001+13:00

Another review of the fanzine from the pages of TSV, this time from issue 55 (October 1998):

RTP! #5

Wade Campbell bows out and coeditor Matt Kamstra ably takes the helm, aided by Alex Ballingall. Alex's epic Pulp Who comic strip reaches its wordy conclusion this issue. This Doctor Who-Pulp Fiction fusion strip has been a staple ingredient of RTP! for the last year and I hope Alex follows up this remarkable achievement with another comic strip adventure, original or not.

Peter Adamson interviews fellow NZ artist Alistair Hughes. Fan interviews such as this are a great way to get to know the person behind the work, and Hughes is a particularly interesting interview subject, having made the enviable leap to professional Doctor Who commissions in the UK, as well as contributing to fanzines in that country.

TSV's Karkus makes an appearance in RTP! - this guy sure gets around!

Graham Muir takes a fresh look at a much-maligned story - The Space Museum - and concludes that, yes, it really is as turgid as everyone says it is.

Peter Adamson continues his regular column examining the implications for the show if certain well-known unused stories had been made. This is a great concept for a series of articles - he's previously examined Donald Cotton's The Herdsmen of Venus, and this issue takes a look at the third Yeti story, raising some important questions about its place in series continuity.

Oh, and I'm envious that RTP! though of doing a South Park-Doctor Who crossover first - dammit!

Be Warned!

2007-11-30T16:17:00.000+13:00

Issue 25 Update!

2007-11-28T07:52:00.001+13:00

Issue 25 is complete and will be published/posted in the next week so most people should get it in the post by the start of December. What can you look forward to in the issue?

Part 3 of "One Flew Over the Hen's Nest" - A look at TARDIS Tales from 1991 to 1997
Interview with Kelly Buchanan about Faction Paradox and other things
The Fifth and Final part of Peter Adamson's "Cydonia" comic
A cartoon from new contributor John Moffat
and more!

Flashback - An Inky Nightmare (RTP! #8)

2007-11-07T16:29:00.000+13:00

Primary images that remain of issue 8?

The first is Garry Jackson, Matt Kamstra, and myself sitting on the floor at a Christchurch Chapter meeting, frantically stapling together copies of the issue so that those attending could leave with one. It had arrived part way through the occasion and we quickly discovered a problem with the printing - namely that the ink hadn't worked correctly for the cover and tended to come off on one's hands while you were reading. Which left readers with ink stained hands. The quality of the printing on the other pages wasn't particularly good either.

A second memory is that of writing the Editorial at Matt's place and using a book from Matt's bookshelf about various unusual words, which resulted in the Editorial being my usual nonsense. My back cover art meanwhile was a tribute to Nightmare Of Eden which I don't consider as bad as some people feel it is. I actually like the design of the Mandrels, even if they were not perhaps filmed or lit in a flattering manner.

Finally, issue 8 featured the return of Pulp Who, this time from the pen of Peter Adamson. This idea of a continuation had been discussed as early as issue 5 and the conclusion of my own contribution. So I wasn't surprised by it's appearance, but was more than a little flattered that Peter thought my idea was worth inflicting the task of drawing four new installments on himself.

If - "The Laird of McCrimmon"

2007-10-24T17:20:00.000+13:00

The second of Peter Adamson's articles on the impact some unmade Who might have had, if they had been made ...

The Laird Of McCrimmon
by Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln

Perhaps the most surprising last story for any Doctor in the series after the regenerative The Tenth Planet must be the last story of the Patrick Troughton era, The War Games. Here was a story at the outset aiming to tie up the loose threads of the current series, namely the futures of the Doctor and his two young companions, while providing a new twist to the character of the Doctor himself, at the same time tentatively addressing the possible cancellation of the series. Had Doctor Who not been renewed for 1970, then viewers could be assured that The War Games, an epic ten parter in which it is revealed that not only is the Doctor one of a race of omnipotent beings called Time Lords, but that he is a fugitive from their world whose time has run out, would satisfy at least some of the questions asked since the show's very first episode. Perhaps it would even ask a few more, encouraging a new following into the Seventies.
The War Games was really a story of closure then; the Doctor puts things right by listing his past victories and achievements, he is reunited with his people who promptly put him on trial (though he is spared the same punishment meted upon the War Chief), and Jamie and Zoe are returned to their original places in time with only their first meetings with the Doctor left in their memories. With such a neat ending to the series then, it comes as something of a surprise that The War Games was a replacement for Season Six's potential finale The Laird Of McCrimmon, a story which perhaps sought to close as many books as its successor did, but with more focus on the Doctor's foes and companions than the Time Lord himself.
What ought to be mentioned here is that Laird is not an unused story because of a script editing decision, but because its writers chose to withdraw it having felt significant chagrin at the BBC's ill-consulted treatment of their previous creations, the Quarks. Their withdrawal from the series was a significant blow in that the incumbent story would have been a third outing for their more famous creations, the Yeti and the Great Intelligence. More significant was the fact that this story was the third in a potential Yeti trilogy, aimed not only at resolving the dilemma of the Intelligence's continued freedom at the end of The Web Of Fear, but in effect returning Jamie, at that stage the Doctor's longest serving companion, to his proper home in Eightenth Century Scotland. Had Laird seen production then there may have been no mention of Time Lords, and in fact no writing out of Zoe (the drafts still refer to the other companion as 'Victoria') who would surely have departed at an earlier stage. The Two Doctors apologists would have had nothing to try to explain away.
Laird then was also a continuation of the story first set up in Season Five's The Abominable Snowmen, although there would be some notable absences in the established supporting cast. Victoria had left shortly before the previous season's end to be replaced by Zoe, and as the new story was set in the past, a reunion with Professor Travers from the other stories would have been unlikely (although at this stage this was meant to be addressed by the Travers' appearance with Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart in The Invasion. In fact, having the story set in the past would suggest a couple of interesting facts about the nature of the Intelligence: not only is it capable of travelling backwards in time (as in the story it is possessing the Laird, Sir James McCrimmon, kinsman of Jamie), but it would also be capable of being in two places at once - in theory, during the Eighteenth Century it is still located in the mind of Padmasambhava in Tibet! Had these issues been addressed in the story, then Laird would have shown the Doctor's enemy to be at its strongest yet; a fitting third encounter and final story for the series. Incidentally, the possibility that this would be a 'prequel' story is discounted by the Intelligence's interest in using Jamie (whom it knows from their two previous encounters) to replace the exhausted Laird as its new host.
Without question, this would have been a fine story for Jamie to leave to Doctor as the new Laird. What is intriguing is the coincidence it sets up with another similar story-arc later in the series' history; that of Ace and Fenric. Again, it is not certain as to whether this motivation was within the Intelligence's realm (nor that of the writers!), but it could be interpreted that Jamies' original arrival in the TARDIS in The Highlanders prefigures Ace's arrival in Dragonfire, with both the Intelligence and Fenric introducing the Doctor to a potential companion to the same ends. Perhaps like Ace, Jamie was to have been the Intelligence's pawn, a device with which to extract revenge upon the Doctor for a past unmentioned humiliation?
So strong is the idea, and so concentrated on one companion, that it is not surprising the story was reconsidered for Season Seven (some advance publicity by chance finding its way in Jon Pertwee's casting photocall, hamming it up with a Yeti). This never came to pass of course, and probably for the better given the 'new broom' that the third Doctor's debut season turned out to be. In the end there does survive a companion-heavy third Yeti story, boasting not only Victoria as the agent for the Intelligence, but also Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT, and Professor Travers as the surviving host of the Doctor's enemy. Marc Platt's Doctor-less Downtime succeeds in resolving the gap that the missing third Yeti story left, but for the same reasons above proves to show the Intelligence in a somewhat weakened state. As it stands, it is potentially the best replacement for The Laird Of McCrimmon, and precludes any possibility of a remount of the story for a future series, which is unfortunate given Paul McGann's noted media infatuation with the Yeti.

Fanzines Reviewing Fanzines - TSV #53

2007-10-22T10:07:00.000+13:00

Another review of TSV from the pages of RTP!:

TSV #53

Two issues for the price of well, two really, but it was good to get a double dosing at once. [TSV #54 was published at the same time as #53.] A great review for Reverse the Polarity! issue 2, considering we disliked it as much as issue 1! I can't wait for the reviews of #3 and #4. Moving on though, comprehensive coverage of Who classic The Leisure Hive went down well, but, although interesting, the long winded "A Question of Answers" didn't bode so well for me. Congratulations to Alden Bates and Peter Adamson for "Dominion" and the best characterization of Mel Bush ever! No evil fanboy fantasies here. 'That crazy twin from New Zealand', Edwin Patterson, provides a really interesting account of 'Panopticon '97' which really makes me want to go to a British con. I shall have to settle for 'Conquest 2' however. Even if Tom Baker seems to be the ONLY interesting guest of note, it should be worth going to.

- Matt Kamstra

10 Years

2007-10-09T20:40:00.000+13:00

Yes, ten years ago this month the very first issue of RTP! was published by Matt Kamstra and Wade Campbell.

The fanzine was born in the aftermath of the 1996 TV movie and has managed to survive to reach today. Much has changed in those ten years, with the series returning to television (along with requisite spin-offs), the rise and fall of the EDAs and PDAs, the rise and plateau of the Big Finish audio adventures, and the rejuvenation of both DWM and the comic strip it contains. We've gained two new Doctors in that time and TSV has changed editor once. In 1997 the series was still confined to video tape releases and the idea of individual documentaries on stories a pipe dream.

Despite all those changes the fanzine has bumbled along at a rough average of two issues a year and a readership of about twenty. How long will the fanzine continue for? No idea ...

Interview - Fanboy Mastermind (Part Two of Two)

2007-09-28T17:22:00.000+12:00

(Matt) How does NZ fandom compare on the world scene? Are we really very different from, say, British fans? And how come?
(Jon) I think the main difference between us and UK fans is that they get a more stable and regular diet of Who—eg. repeats on satellite TV, the books are readily available and they get to attend at least two conventions a year where they can meet stars from the show. They are rather spoiled because of this.

It is relatively easy to travel around the UK because they have such a splendid train system. This enables fans from all over the country to amass at these conventions. In New Zealand we don not have the same ability to get around the country to attend any sort of organized event, and as a result they don't get organized! Only local events seem to keep the interest alive.

We have been very privileged to get to see people like Tom Baker only because of circumstances rather than by design. Sadly, Baker has had to pull out of attending the 'Conquest II' convention in Auckland next year.

That's a great shame. And a blow for NZ fandom no doubt. Do you think the series itself will ever come back as new, or even repeats to New Zealand (as TVNZ no longer holds the rights)?
Ooo, tough question. If the show comes back to NZ screens it will probably be as an early weekend morning filler. I'd be very surprised to see it in prime time. Of course, the new Prime station or Sky's TV channel could be the new home for Who in NZ.

Will the show come back? It's possible, but I doubt it will happen before the turn of the century. Personally, I'd prefer to see a series of irregular TV movies (four a year?) rather than a twenty-two episode series. The idea of several two hour movies is more appealing as it gives scope for bigger and more epic stories.

If the show was to return full time, chances are it will adopt the now familiar concept of a story arc. There are very few SF TV shows nowadays that don't have some form of story arc in them (it's a very Nineties concept!). Doctor Who has previously used umbrella themes (Key to Time, E-Space) so the concept is not new.

What did you think of the telemovie and the new DWM regeneration?
From a production point of view the movie couldn't be faulted. It was a beautifully crafted piece of film with great direction from Geoffrey Sax. Sadly, the script didn't live up to expectations (but it was a darn sight better than some of the earlier scripts as seen in The Nth Doctor book). I've seen the film five times now and I still can't work out what's going on in the last few acts!

As for the DWM regeneration, I kinda expected it had to be a hoax. It's very healthy, I think, to give fandom a kick in the pants like this from time to time!

How about the BBC Books? As products of the BBC are the new books canon, and what do you think of them?
Technically, the books are a product of BBC Worldwide Ltd., which is a merchandising wing of the BBC, whereas the programme was made by BBC Drama, so there's no real reason why the two should even be considered part of the same continuity! But then of course the 1996 TV movie was co-produced with BBC Worldwide, so bang goes that line of thinking!

The subject of canonicity is one I prefer not to get too involved in, having already had my fingers badly burnt saying they aren't canon in the rec.arts.dr.who newsgroup!

Besides, it's all very good and fine to think about and then decide what is and what isn't canon, but unless you actually do something constructive with it, there isn't really much point in choosing, is there!

But, no, I only consider the TV episodes to be canon. That is not to say, however, that I don't enjoy other aspects of Doctor Who, such as the books and the comics. I read the books for enjoyment, not because I need a new fix of Doctor Who adventures; I don't need the books to be canon. I only get the books for my ever-growing Doctor Who collection. And with two new books a month, the pile of unread novels just grows and grows!

I've read only fourteen of the BBC books so far (a mix of both Eighth and past Doctors); some I've liked, some I've hated. I don't like Paul Leonard or John Peel's work, for instance, but I love Lance Parkin and Justin Richards' stuff. And before you ask, I have no intention to write one! While I do have some ideas, I don't have the time or the ability to write a novel.

You stole the questions right out of my mouth! Apart from Who, what else do you do outside of fandom?
I work for the National Bank; have been employed with them for fourteen years (although some times it feels like forever!). In terms of non-work interests, obviously there is my Doctor Who connections, but I should point out that I am a fan of general SF. I belong to a local SF club here in Hamilton. I love all SF films and TV. I don't get to read as much as I'd like to. (Probably 'cos I have far too many Doctor Who books still to read!)

I also collect merchandise. I have zillons of videos, plus books and magazines about movies and SF shows. In my overall collection I have novels, scripts, annuals, activity books, view-master slides, non-fiction reference books, film posters, lobby cards—I could go on but I don't want to bore you! I have a few rare items. My oldest Doctor Who collectible is the 1964 Radio Times with Marco Polo on the cover. But the oldest book in my non-Who collection is dated 1899. It'll be 100 next year!

What are your other science fiction interests? Why do you place Doctor Who at the top?
I think this was answered in the last question. My interests cover most media SF: Babylon 5, The X Files, Blakes 7, Thunderbirds, etc. And yes, I'll admit to watching and liking Star Trek! I'm looking forward to the new film, due either Boxing Day, or Easter next year—I'm not sure which. I am also very much looking forward to the new Star Wars films. There is just so much new SF on TV that it almost gets impossible to keep up with it all and still have time to sleep!

As for placing Who at the top, I think it's because it has such a rich continuity that is both complex and simple at the same time, and that makes it so much fun. Other long running series like Star Trek also have continuity structure but with Trek it is all spelled out for the viewer. Who still has a lot that is still a mystery. But now I find that I enjoy the behind-the-scenes analysis more than I do watching the show.

Why did you fold SF On Screen?
There are two reasons. Firstly, the idea of SF On Screen was that it was intended to act as an introduction to the TV shows and movies that were due to appear on NZ TV. The episode lists are a combination of stuff I get off the internet ad from the various SF magazines that I subscribe to, so I was pretty much up to date. But trying to predict what new shows TVNZ and TV3/4 were going to screen in the new year proved a nightmare. Neither broadcaster was prepared to divulge advanced screening information, so SF On Screen was either too early with info (Space Precinct has still not been shown in NZ!), or too late (Dark Skies screened before I had covered it). I simply got frustrated with this.

Secondly, for the past two years I've been working on a rather complex Doctor Who-related project which has taken up a lot of my spare time. I had to simply make a decision not to continue with the newsletter. It is possible—just possible mind!—that I will resurrect the newsletter some time in the future. We'll see.

Sorry, but its probably time we called it a day. That deadline is getting close! Last question—What is your most embarrasing moment (that you're willing to share!)?
One that springs to mind is when I phoned a friend to wish them a Happy Birthday only to discover that not only was I month late, but I had also phoned the wrong person ...! I guess you had to be there.

Interview - Fanboy Mastermind (Part One of Two)

2007-09-12T20:38:00.001+12:00

JON PREDDLE
Interviewed by Matt Kamstra (in 1998)

(Matt) Let's start from the beginning. What were your first memories of Doctor Who?
(Jon) I was born in August 1964. My first memory of Doctor Who comes four years later and is the scene from Planet Of Giants in which two figures (the Doctor and Susan) climb down a plug-hole and water pours past them. My only other memory of William Hartnell's Doctor is his regeneration at the end of The Tenth Planet. Curiously, despite their later impact on me, I have no recollections whatsoever of the Cybermen!

Patrick Troughton had more of an impact on me because I was older by the time his stories aired in New Zealand. I do have very vivid recollections of seeing The Moonbase, The Macra Terror, The Evil Of The Daleks, The Tomb Of The Cybermen, The Web Of Fear, and The Wheel In Space. If you chart out when the stories screened—as recorded in Paul Scoones' Listener guidebooks [now online here]—you can see that these Troughton stories aired around June through October 1969, 1970, and 1971. We didn't own a television set, we only rented one during the winter months, which explains the 'gaps' in my viewings.

And yes, I can honestly say—although it's an embarrassing cliche to admit to—I did watch the show from behind the sofa, or through a crack in the door! I can remember being scared to go to sleep one night, an eye on the open bedroom doorway, afraid that a Cybermen would come in and take me out of my bed (obviously after watching The Moonbase), and then almost having a fit when a dark silhouette suddenly appeared in the doorway—my father coming to bid me a good night!

So when was it that you first realised that Doctor Who was more than just a casual fancy?
There are two significant dates: one is 1979, the other 1984 ...

I had watched the programme on and off during the Pertwee years and the early Tom Baker seasons (we had bought our first colour TV during that period), but due to the show always screening on Saturday afternoons I missed a lot of episodes. I can say however that I did see at least one full episode of every story that screened between 1975 and 1979.

1979 could be considered the turning point as it was when I first started reading the Target novelisations. To cut a long story short I started collecting the books when I managed to buy about ten of the books very cheaply in a book exchange. New paperbacks were considered expensive back then at $1.25 (rather cheap by today's standards!) because I got only $2 a week pocket money! But from that point on I made it a goal to collect all the books as there were only about forty at that time.

I had no idea of the story order for the books, but in 1982 I got a copy of Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke's book The Making of Doctor Who which contained an episode guide up to The Hand Of Fear. Soon I was able to recite the broadcast story order off by heart—the first real sign of being a true fan! I also started to subscribe to Doctor Who Monthly around that time. So Who was becoming a hobby ...

In 1982 we got our first video recorder and I was able to tape Part Four of Logopolis a week later, which I played and played and played to the point where I could literally recite it all word for word. And then in 1983 I started taping the Peter Davison episodes.

As I stated earlier, 1984 was another significant year. It was when I met a fellow fan who had obtained 'bootleg' tapes of old Hartnell, Troughton, and Pertwee stories from another fan in Australia. You can imagine my reaction! After much pleading (!), she kindly made copies for me. From that point on I became a Doctor Who video junkie. And that would be when Doctor Who became more than just a casual fancy—I was now a FAN, in capital letters.

And, alas, now a super fan! You must have a favourite moment in fandom/as a fan? Would I be right or wrong in guessing your appearance on Mastermind?
Actually you're wrong! Mastermind would have been my favourite prior to 1990, but subsequent events superceded that experience.

I have three really favourite moments as a fan, and all of them took place in England! The first was in 1990 when I appeared on the fan quiz slot during the BSB Doctor Who weekend. I got to talk with many of the stars from the show during the set-ups. I'm still 'recognised' by British fans for that brief TV appearance.

Another favourite moment as a fan would have to be attending the 30th Anniversary 'Panopticon' convention in London since it was the fandom event of 1993. The five surviving Doctors were there (I even got to share a dressing room with Jon Pertwee!) as well as many of the companions. It was also a chance to rub shoulders, if you like, with some of the 'new' Who writers such as Gary Russell, Paul Cornell, Kate Orman, and Gareth Roberts, as well as a chance to meet up again with some ex-pat Kiwis like Warwick "Scott" Gray, and Alistair Hughes, who were there also.

The third moment was another convention, 'Space Mountain', which was also in 1993. Again, it was an opportunity to meet fans, and stars, and production personnel from the series.

As for Mastermind, that was ten years ago, and I see it now as having been a challenge from a personal level rather than as something I did as a fan. It's something which I'm a bit embarrassed to talk about now, especially with non-fans. It was still fun to do though.

But if I had to single out one of the above as my favourite, favourite moment, it would have to be 'Panopticon '93'. That was simply awesome!

Yes, well, not much has been written about either of your television experiences. Perhaps you could fill us in a bit?
I applied for Mastermind in January 1988 and was subsequently called up for an audition. A few weeks later I received a letter stating I had been selected for the series—incidentally the programme's thirteenth season (but I'm not superstitious!). I had about two months before recording to brush up on my general knowledge. I knew from studying previous series of Mastermind that they have a mix of recent current events, sports, history, pop culture, and music questions.

They record three editions of the programme at a a time. I was in Heat Seven, which was the second of three editions being recorded that day. They record the show from start to finish, with only two brief pauses between rounds. After the first round (the specialist topics) I was in the lead. After the second round (general knowledge) I was tied with one of the other contestants, but I answered one more question. If it had resulted in a tie, I think I would have still won on the basis that whoever had the least number of 'passed' questions wins.

I was more nervous watching the televised programme than making it. I hadn't told many people, only family and friends. I was a bit scared to show up at work the next day—I was hoping that no one had seen it. Unfortunately one of them had, and he'd told the others!

The semi-final was recorded a few weeks later. Unfortunately due to nerves, I stuffed up the first question which lost me valuable time. I came last! Judith Medlicott—who is a lecturer I believe at Dunedin University—was the winner that year. She got a 100% score.

As for the BSB appearance, I was on holiday in England for three months during late 1990. One of the satellite TV stations, BSB (now defunct), was running a forty-eight hour screening of Doctor Who episodes one weekend in September. They sent a film crew along to the Fitzroy Tavern, a pub in central London at which fans gather once a month, to film 'fans in action'. I was there and when they heard I was visiting from New Zealand they asked if I would appear in the fan quiz in order to give it an international flavour. Naturally I said 'yes'. I was picked up by taxi very early one Saturday morning and taken to the studios. During the day various Doctor Who people came and went to film interviews and links for the weekend. It was very long and tiring—but exciting day. I got to meet and get autographs of many of the actors from all eras of the show.

You mention Mastermind as something you did on a personal basis. How do you see your Mastermind appearance in light of your appearance on BSB?
While Mastermind was a 'serious' experience, the BSB quiz was nothing more than a bit of fun, something which only fans would even see or appreciate. I remember reading a review of the weekend in a UK fanzine which said the people in the quiz were a bunch of 'bores' (my fellow quiz members were John Nathan-Turner, and UK superfans Andrew Beech, and Jean Riddler. The questions had been set by David J. Howe.). Only two of the UK magazines that covered reviews of the weekend even mentioned the quiz, and one of them spelt my name wrong!

David Ronayne asked me to ask you if you ever got your prize from BSB?
No, I didn't! The swines. It was to have been a jersey knitted using one of the pictures from the Doctor Who knitting book. I chose a black jersey with a Dalek. Sadly BSB were subsequently bought out by Sky to become BSkyB, so obviously my prize wasn't seen as an important part of the merger! I did get paid for my appearance though.

TO BE CONTINUED

Flashback - A Blur of Orange (RTP! #7)

2007-09-10T14:25:00.000+12:00

Videos, Videos, Videos

By issue 7 Matt Kamstra's contact with Village Roadshow (distributors of the BBC Video releases in Australia/NZ from 1996 onwards) had developed to the point where we were receiving free copies of the current releases to review. This had begun with The Happiness Patrol (reviewed in issue 5), blooming to four video reviews this issue. Although it must be pointed out here that the review of The Ice Warriors release was based on my copy of the UK release. Rather amusingly I think Timelash came out better in my reviews than Horror of Fang Rock did.

I remember being quite pleased at how issue 7 turned out, feeling that the fanzine was really beginning to hit it's stride. The issue also featured our first, and to date only, survey of our readership. I'm of the mind to believe that if we had another survey today it would garner much the same result. I also recall Matt and I wasting much time coming up with silly things to take photos of which would accompany Jeff Stone's "A Day in the Life of RTP!" article ...

Curio

2007-09-06T16:53:00.001+12:00

Exit, Stage Left

2007-08-30T17:36:00.000+12:00

And so Wade left ...

Between issues 4 and 5 Wade Campbell (co-founder of RTP!) chose to bow out as co-editor of the fanzine, Alexander Ballingall taking his place after stepping up from Assistant Editor. The cause of Wade's decision to leave the fanzine remains unexplained to this day, with the most notable effect of Wade walking away being a discontinuation of material appearing in the fanzine from the pen of Wade.

Even with Wade leaving, this left the editorship of the fanzine split between two and the new arrangement had the added issue of geography since Alexander didn't (and currently still doesn't) live in the same city as co-editor Matt Kamstra. This would continue to give the fanzine a slightly skitzo feel in terms of style and content for each issue (many readers noting that the fanzine has become easily more consistent and streamlined since it has been run by only one editor).

Wade wasn't the only editor to leave and we'll look at Matt's later ...

Inflatable Who Fan

2007-08-24T19:30:00.001+12:00

Flashback - Day Old Christmas Pudding (RTP! #6)

2007-08-20T17:27:00.000+12:00

My primary memories with respect to issue 6 revolve around the comic Myrrh, much of which was written on holiday in Wanganui where I was visiting some family. I have a feeling that Matt Kamstra had more to do with putting together the issue that I did, most of it probably happening during the time I was away in the North Island. This might explain why Part One of Jeff Stone's The Red Menace fanfic is missing the end of the installment. I don't know who is to blame for the picture of Ace on the back cover, but I think the burden of guilt falls on Garry Jackson and Matt. Meanwhile Graham Muir reviewed The Feast of Steven (The Daleks' Master Plan Episode 7), which in retrospect was Graham already becoming bored with the repetitive nature of the Birdy comics. He'd only do one further adventure (in issue 7) with Birdy flying solo, Saucer returning with the comic in issue 11.

Issue 6 was another of those 'gear change' issues that happen every now and then, as after this point I would have more input into each issue than I had had for issues 4 through 6.

The Christchurch Chapter

2007-08-17T09:25:00.001+12:00

The above illustration from Garry Jackson (published in RTP! #2, December 1997) depicts the recently reborn Christchurch Chapter as it was at that point in time. Starting clockwise from the top right are; Garry Jackson (at that point living in Queenstown and thus not-quite-yet a member of the Chapter, although within a year or so he would be), Alexander Ballingall (current editor of RTP!), Jonathan Park (editor of the defunct Telos fanzine and co-editor of the fanzine/blog Zeus Plug/Zeus Blog), Hayden Edwards, James Gibbons, Wade Campbell (co-founder of RTP!), Matt Kamstra (co-founder of RTP!), Philip J Gray, and Graham Muir (creator of the TARDIS Tales).

The start of the newly regenerated Chapter is described here, the local Chapter seemingly dying away around 1993/94 and the mini-con CyberCon. Thus the new Chapter officially turned ten last year in May! Since then people have come and gone, the Chapter remaining roughly at the same number of people this entire decade of time (hovering as it does at meetings between six to fifteen people attending). And the format had remained equally the same as well, following the usual pattern of:

Junk food & carbonated drinks
DVDs are put on that nobody watches (unless there is something to laugh at!)
Long and loud conversations about anything and everything
An outing to a local shopping mall

In the end the meetings of the Christchurch Chapter are more a social occasion than anything else, although the advent of the new series has meant that things may change a little due to the arrival of new, younger fans (the average of the Chapter today, excluding new, younger fans fans is around 27 years of age) who are more interested in simply watching the new episodes than gas-bagging.

If - "The Herdsmen of Venus"

2007-08-15T19:59:00.000+12:00

The first of Peter Adamson's articles on the impact some unmade Who might have had, if they had been made ...

The Herdsmen Of Venus
by Donald Cotton

Donald Cotton's last submission before leaving Doctor Who was Season Six's The Herdsmen Of Venus, sometimes referred to by him as The Herdsmen Of Aquarius. It is the former title which appeals more at the moment, for reasons which will be explained later. All that is known for the time being is that the story was based around the revelation that the famous Loch Ness Monster was one of many 'cattle' of Venusian farmers. Sound familiar at all?
Cotton's input into the series is generally recognised as being on the more humorous side - The Myth Makers has its moments, but these days is nearly known entirely for its overambitious episode title "Is There A Doctor In The Horse?. He was also responsible for The Gunfighters, a comedy which has only recently been defended by some in the fan community after decades of scorn. Against these stories then, "Herdsmen" must be a significant departure. There is possible humour in the revelatory aspect of the monster, but more significant is the possibility Spooner intended the story to be set in space. 'Space' in the Hartnell Era of course means 'the future'; rocket ships and British astronauts. This is just conjecture of course, the Loch Ness Monster's first recorded sighting took place somewhere around the Eighth century AD, so it's possible the story might well have been a third historical for Spooner. Returning to trends of the Hartnell Era however, pseudo-historical adventures with any aliens short of the Doctor, Susan and the Meddling Monk running around simply aren't a feature. The educational bent of the series may have been thrown out of the window by Terry Nation's monster creations, but even by Season Six the idea of a Davisonesque 'aliens in the olde days' romp seems a bit at odds.
The monster-as-cattle idea of course finally found its place in Robert Banks Stewart's Terror Of The Zygons (working title The Secret Of Loch Ness), though it was Robert Holmes who suggested the idea of fitting a story around Nessie in the first place. The rest is history, and it's intriguing that in the realised story the 'cattle' metaphor is worked as far as the purpose of the Skarasen's lactic secretions—'milk' for the Zygons. We can't of course assume that Cotton's story would have taken the same form; being a writer versed more in comedy the Herdsmen themselves could have been most un-Zygon in motivation. The whole concept, an escaped space cow let loose in a (Mediaeval?) Scottish loch could quite well have been the set up for a wonderfully mad cap Hartnell story. Admittedly already the scope is very large setting-wise. Much of Zygon's Highland action was cut to save on location shooting, and perhaps it was for similar over-ambitious writing that Gerry Davis rejected Herdsmen. The mind rebels against any envisaged 1966 BBC attempt at reproducing a working Nessie model. The Skarasen is not remembered fondly, and equally the glove puppets of Who's other Loch Ness story, Timelash.
And so to Venus, for surely if there's anything a Who fan loves as much as yet another version of the 'invaders from Mars' story, it's a mention of Venus. Paul Leonard's Missing Adventure notwithstanding, Venus is never seen in the series, though it is mentioned a fair bit. Indeed, previously the first Doctor and Susan list it as one of their visits made before picking up Ian and Barbara; and of course the third Doctor's more memorable anecdotes included, variously, Venusian Aikido (he is the only biped to have mastered it - another challenge for the BBC costume department?), lullabies, Shanghorns, perigosto sticks, and hopscotch. Interestingly, of those elements only the multi-limbed natives and the hopscotch made it into Leonard's book, though in the series Susan's memories (The Sensorites) also include seas of iron, the element which according to Leonard, was fatal to a Venusian. Tellingly, Leonard has the Venusians being extinct by the Twentieth century, their world finally resembling the hellish planet of boiling acid we know it to be in 'real life'; if Spooner's story was to have been set in the future, then we might have expected an updated version of the model of civilisations hidden under thick Venusian cloud, as in Edgar Rice Burrough's Venus books.
Had the story been made as The Herdsmen Of Aquarius, then naturally we'd have less call for inspection. Like many unmade stories, Herdsmen's exclusion inadvertently allowed Zygon's creation, and as the 'class of 4G' showed in a recent DWM article, the latter story continues to have significant appeal - there's even been a prequel written for BBC Books. No other unmade story comes to mind for whose exclusion would have had effects so far reaching as spanning three seasons. Of course, it's entirely possible that had Herdsmen seen production we might still remember an unchanged Zygons today; it's entirely in the nature of Doctor Who to repeat ideas, reinterpret them and stuff up continuity, and in fact it's what much of the series is all about. To this mind, might I add that even in 1998 we really could do with more space cows?

- Peter Adamson

Fanzines Reviewing Fanzines - TSV #52

2007-08-12T11:30:00.000+12:00

Another review of TSV from the pages of RTP!:

I like it. TSV #52 is a vast improvement on past issues which I might have been a bit derogatory towards. Paul's editorial is very similar to one of our own articles, some some interesting comparisons can be drawn between the two. The Gary Gillatt interview revealed some interesting facts about the nature of the DWM editor and his 'story' contrasts with Gary Russell's from the previous issue nicely. How young is he again?

All 132 changes to The Five Doctors are listed! And at alst the comic strip has a plot, although some of the ideas are a tad unoriginal—eg. 'and much, much more'. "Galaxy Who" was kind of pointless, but so is our fanzine, so we can't talk! "Doctor's Dilemma" returns with the new "Rantings from the Padded Cell" and Bob Beechey couldn't convince me that "Patrick Troughton is the Doctor". Sorry ...

- Wade Campbell

Pulp Who - The T-shirt

2007-08-05T18:17:00.001+12:00

The above picture comes from issue 3 (March 1998) and helps to illustrate this post. Which is about a one-off T-shirt. Wade Campbell came to me around mid-1998 (his first year at university) and wanted a T-shirt based on Pulp Who. The result was a white t-shirt with a picture of the Master on the front pointing his TCE and exclaiming that he was 'The Time F**king Master!' Unfortunately the passage of time has meant that the t-shirt has long since fallen apart and the master copy of my illustration has gone missing. Still, for a brief while, Pulp Who was more than a cheap rip-off of a film, but also a t-shirt!

RTP! #25 Status Report No. 2

2007-08-04T10:56:00.000+12:00

Things are moving along slowly for the next issue. Of the material promised in the previous status report, the TARDIS Tales article is ready to go and a couple of letters for the letters page have been submitted. Peter Adamson assures me that Cydonia is still on track despite Real Life™ issues. The interview is in the drafting stages as I've seen an early draft, so that looks on target to appear as well.

Just a reminder for people that the deadline for issue 25 was August 1st and those with bit & pieces they'd like to submit should do so ASAP.

10

2007-07-31T20:48:00.003+12:00

And so the last gasp before the 'hiatus' was upon us. Published in March 2000, a mere two months before I departed NZ for the shores of England (the spiritual home of Doctor Who), issue 10 was another riotous explosion of material, hastily assembled by trained monkeys wrapped in a choice of five different coloured covers (cream, yellow, green, blue, & red). At this stage I guess the cracks may have begun to show with Matt, much of the issue being put together by myself rather than evenly shared as in the past. But I was quietly confident that issue 11 would see print around June/July 2000. More fool me. And the editorials:

Yes, it's me again! I bet you weren't expecting such a quick follow up after the gap between issues 8 and 9! I've just now recovered from RTP!'s 'realizing that we stapled it up wrong' party, and I'm busily preparing for our 'it's only two weeks away till the next issue's finished' party. Considering that next week is also the 'celebrating the three week anniversary of the founding of our evil media empire' party as well, expect drunken reviews and slagging interviews this issue. Oh, and it's our tenth issue anniversary to ...
We've decided to let things go and slip back an issue in our schedule. Due mainly to my immense slackness, and the increasing workload I seem to have put upon my back (I know that final straw is coming!), things have got a bit behind here at Sauceron Towers. But hopefully, fingers crossed, we're back on track for four issues this year, finishing with issues eleven and twelve. We've also got our very first special coming up in the next few months before Joe departs for his small island. It's The TARDIS Tales Collection parts one and two. If there is enough demand, we might even start printing Pulp Who way off down the track!
So, it's been ten issue huh? I remember way back when Wade and I had the idea to attempt this adventure. I was born out of a general science fiction newsletter I wanted to do with some friends in Fourth Form, but we didn't actually get around to doing anything until '97 when Wade and I thought to revive it. It's been three years, sometimes very long ones, but three very long enjoyable ones. it's been fun to write and communicate with everyone, and meet a lot of new friends along the way. I suppose that's one of the best things about having done RTP! That and all the parties we have to celebrate pointless benchmarks in our publishing schedule. Which reminds me, tonight is the 'we may have had to kill Matt to do it, but we've actually finished the issue' party. But I can't talk too soon, we haven't go there yet. I better go and get some supplies. (Returns from fridge). It's OK, we seem to have 49 vessels* left over from last night's party! Anyone fancy a Speights?

- Matt Kamstra

* We would like to remind younger readers that the editors do not condone excessive drunkenness, nor use of illegal substances. We do however, have plenty to spare.

Jonathan Park, esq (I've just finished reading Tom Jones (no, not the singer ..., so sue me) wrote in Telos #15, dated April 1997:

'15 issues isn't that bad. Telos is the longest running non-NZDWFC fanzine in New Zealand and I doubt that record will be passed in the near future.'

Well it's almost three years later and this is that all important issue 10. Only five more to go and we will have caught up with Jonathan! This may seem like a pretty pathetic goal, but they help us (Matt & myself) have something to work towards. Like with issue 16 we will have passed Jonathan (unless you count Telos Unearthed, in which case we pass him with issue 17). See how it enables us to just keep on going?
Onto other matters. From this issue onwards we now have an RTP! design book so that hopefully all the pages in one issue will be formatted the same instead of Matt using one technique and myself another. This also includes another rearrangement of the cover layout (our fifth). This was the cover format issue 9 was supposed to use, but Matt decided to print issue 9 the week I was on holiday, so my instructions on the cover layout were lost in the wash somewhere along the line.*
Hopefully included with this issue is a copy of our newsletter Critical Mass, which is supposed to cover TV science fiction and fantasy as well as filling the gap left by SF On Screen. If however it totally sux arse—tell us and we'll use Chinese bamboo torture to put it out of its' misery!
Other things have come to my attention lately is the new two volume TARDIS Tales Collection. This is slowly coming together (I'm such a slacker!) and should, finger crossed, be ready for publication by the end of the year - if not sooner.
One final note.
Please, pretty please, give us some fu*kkin' feedback so that RTP! can continue to inform and entertain you like it has done for the past ten issues—under the duress of a loaded shotgun.

- Alexander Ballingall

* Along with the idea that the next meeting of the Christchurch chapter was supposed to occur after I got back from holiday, not on the same weekend I flew back into Christchurch! Where did I put my Enya CDs ...

The Madness of King Guff:

Published: March 2000
Volume 4 - Number 2
Editor: Matt Kamstra, Alexander Ballingall
RTP! Logo Design: Peter & Bridget Adamson
Front Cover: Alexander Ballingall
Back Cover: Garry Jackson
Internal Artwork: Peter Adamson, Alexander Ballingall, Brendon Bennetts, Garry Jackson, Matt Kamstra
Letters: Peter Adamson, Alden Bates, Jeff Stone
Page Count: 52
Print Run: 30
Price: NZ$3

~ Contents ~

[01] COVER
[02] CONTENTS
[03] EDITORIAL
[04] UPDATE
[05] The BOOTCUPBOARD [Letters]
[07] Doctor Who Bullsh*t: Story Shock Horror!
[09] REVIEWS: Unsung Classics of Doctor Who
[12] RTP! Retrospective
[15] CARTOON: Aquaman—In 'The Blue Peter Pilot Episode'
[18] Professor Splegg Strikes Back
[19] COMIC: Pulp Who—The Gold Star [part 3 of 4]
[27] REVIEWS: The Scope/James' Corner [Reviews of EDAs, PDAs, videos, and TSV]
[30] REVIEWS [Revelation of the Daleks and Planet of the Daleks]
[34] FICTION: The Red Menace [part 5 of 8]
[38] INTERVIEW: The Mars Bar [Peter Adamson]
[41] The Sexual Misadventures of Doctor Who - The early TARDIS crew
[42] OPINION: The Good, the Bad, and the Just Bloody Stupid Looking
[45] FICTION: Invitation
[46] FICTION: Wednesday
[47] /full page advert/
[48] CARTOON: Cyber Person
[50] ARTICLE: If - The Clockwise Cuckoos
[52] COVER

Flashback - The One with the Rubber Chicken on the Cover (RTP! #5)

2007-07-25T19:36:00.000+12:00

Issue 5 (September 1998) is where I became Co-Editor with Matt Kamstra after Wade Campbell had left the fanzine. At the time I was in my second year at university (and Matt his first) and had undertaken to develop a website for the fanzine since I was able to intuit HTML quicker than Matt could (plus he wasn't as inclined to pick it up). Like issue 4, much of my memories of this issue are based around a computer lab on campus (although a different lab this time). There we were able to include the first scanned artwork for the fanzine (Garry's pic of the Seventh Doctor and Fifi), something that wouldn't happen again for quite some time.

It was I who introduced the 'Desdemona' font for the article titles in an attempt to provide a uniform style for the fanzine and had argued for Peter Adamson's Ergon illustration to grace the front cover (it just seemed to work so well with the logo we were using at the time).

The issue certainly felt to me then as a huge step up from the first four issues, Matt and myself feeling quietly confident in the growing readership.

Words

2007-07-24T11:59:00.000+12:00

Some very nice comments from Paul Scoones (a long time editor of TSV) have been posted at his blog. Read them here.

A Cat has Nine Lives

2007-07-23T16:10:00.003+12:00

Issue 9. What can I say? This issue was the one I'd had the least to do with after coming on board as Assistant Editor with issue 4. So some bits I had a hand in setting out, others I didn't, and the issue was eventually published while I was on holiday. This is possibly why the page numbers were hastily penned in by hand at the last minute and the majority of contributions carried no 'credit' tag to let readers know who wrote what. A very bitsy issue, perhaps a result of the longer than usual gap. Issue 9 had been planned for September 1999, but surfaced in January 2000, and claimed to be issue 8 published in June 1999! This is what happens when I let go of the tiller for a short while! Chaos!:

Please feel free to shoot me if you feel so inclined! No, we haven't died (yet), but it has been a damn long time since the last issue! The reasons are too numerous and personal to go into, and besides, excuses suck donkey balls anyway. But we're here, and Joe's here, to 'Put me back on schedule'. But I don't appreciate that heavy breathing Joe ... STOP IT!
Well, it's January and once again Paul McGann has saved us from melting glass and tacky New Year's celebrations, or enough so that you can sit at home without water or power and still read this FAB mag. But of course, if Y2K wasn't just a hoax to get Bill Gates more money, then you won't be reading this anyway! Enough with the crap!
We here at RTP! Towers are delivering to you, the consumer, a special treat to mark the millennium. That's right we're bringing your three issues within the space of two and a half months! You heard right! No, Joe, it's not because I'm so slack that we need to do it to get 'back on schedule', we're just generous, that's all.
On the news front, we have some. Yep, that's right, we're not just full of hot air, there's some excrement content too. Announcing 'Saucer Smith Enterprises'. Graham Muir doesn't know it yet, but we've thieved his star of the show, Saucer Smith and named our Evil publishing conglomerate after him. Well, that's not entirely true, our pathetic group of small time fanzines are forming into one organization to make a few things a bit easier. And besides, our logo looks really cool, and we didn't have any real legitimate use for it. So, what does this mean for you, the subscriber you ask? Nothing, absolutely nothing.
Well no, I tell a small lie. With the addition of some pretty serious rendering hardware to our fleet by April (fingers crossed), the production standard of all the zines will jump. Our printer problem is still hanging over our heads, it seems that no one in Christchurch can offer a decent service for prices we won't laugh at. Unless you want to pay about $6 per issue. I'm sorry, but bear with us for a moment. We'll see it straight, even if it means printing in some small block of Shanghai using slave labor*. If anyone would like to submit to our evil empire, please let us know. We will enslave you promptly and inefficiently. Thank you.

- Matt Kamstra

* RTP! would like to say that we do not, in any way, condone sweat shops in Third World countries or anywhere else for that matter. It was just a joke. In bad taste. Well, kind of ...

Harry Potter and the Guff:

Published: January 2000
The Fanzine of the Christchurch Chapter of the NZDWFC
Editors: Alexander Ballingall, Matt Kamstra
RTP! Logo Design: Peter & Bridget Adamson
Front Cover: Peter Adamson
Back Cover: Peter Adamson
Internal Artwork: Alexander Ballingall, Garry Jackson, Matt Kamstra, Jon Preddle, David Ronayne
Letters: James Gould, David Ronayne, Jeff Stone, Tom Box [AKA Wade Campbell]
Page Count: 52
Print Run: 30
Price: NZ$3

~ Contents~

[01] COVER
[02] CONTENTS
[03] EDITORIAL
[04] UPDATE
[05] The BOOTCUPBOARD [Letters]
[07] Doctor Who Bullsh*t: New Movie Confirmed!
[09] REVIEW [Review of The Curse of Fatal Death]
[10] REVIEW [Review of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy]
[12] REVIEW [Review of Revenge of the Cybermen]
[14] REVIEW [BBC 2 Doctor Who Night 1999]
[14] REVIEW: James' Corner [Pilots of the Deep]
[15] INTERVIEW: The Tomorrow People [Graham Muir]
[19] COMIC: Pulp Who—The Gold Star [part 2 of 4]
[26] OPINION: Soap Box
[27] REVIEWS: The Scope [Reviews of EDAs]
[30] ARTICLE: The Sexual Misadventures of Doctor Who: Nyssa
[31] FICTION: A Doctor's Tale
[32] ARTICLE: Meaningless Statistics
[35] OPINION: Grand Speculations and Musings
[37] /full page advert/
[38] CARTOON: Spliff and Nutmeg's Short Trips
[40] ARTICLE: Kaled Nazism
[43] Professor Spleg's Fun and Sillines!
[44] FICTION: The Red Menace [part 4 of 8]
[47] CARTOON: Cyber Guy
[48] OPINION: I BBC Book
[50] ARTICLE: If - Space Sargasso
[52] COVER

Pieces of Eight

2007-07-17T11:11:00.002+12:00

Issue 8 saw the conclusion of the two-part interview with Warwick 'Scott' Gray and the first part of further Pulp Who (spearheaded by Peter Adamson), but much of the issue was taken up with reference to the 1996 US telemovie. In other words (and not planned this time) RTP! was presenting another themed issue. Meanwhile I inflicted another strange editorial on readers:

As I sit here and write this issues editorial I am looking at the cover of the video release for Nightmare of Eden (well actually I'm not, but I could remedy that by going over to my shelf ... hello, I'm back again. Now I am looking at the cover). It's the stuff that dreams are made of. I've been waiting for the release of this title for so long that despite having sung it's praises in the video review this issue I still find myself rabbiting on about it. I promise that I'll stop now and talk about something else, especially considering that you have all contracted drapetomania towards this particular title.
This issue sees the return of Pulp Who, this time by Peter Adamson as I have Potomania and am not in the mood to apply pen to paper. But as I am quite attached to this keyboard I'll keep typing till I've run out of things to say or, more than likely, run out of space. However I'm sure you'll all find Peter's contribution more than satisfactory (but if you find it better than my own I may be forced to kill the poor fellow) and a continuation of New Zealand Doctor Who cartoonists' obsession with the cartoons of fellow New Zealand Doctor Who cartoonists (that was a fun mouthful). I will return to drawing cartoons soon, as I have a big (well I think it's 'big' anyway) Sixth Doctor comic strip that I am drawing up at the moment—the delaying of this strip allows me to work on it more leisurely and therefore I do not have to panic about deadlines, something which Pulp Who was notorious at passing, usually by a couple of weeks. I also promise that they won't be more than eight pages in length each issue!
Also this issue we have an eclectic collection of reviews celebrating the 1996 TV movie which is now three years old. One could summarize all these reviews in one word: Floccinaucinihilipilification. However that could be a little too hard on something that has led to a regeneration (ooh, I like that word) of Doctor Who, as the years leading up to the TV movie saw the Virgin New Adventures beginning to become tired and interest in the show waning. Matt pointed to some of the fruits of this regeneration in his editorial last issue and I feel that the existence of this fanzine itself shows that interest in Doctor Who hasn't gone the way of all flesh (either that or we're all really, really, really diehard fans. I personally prefer option number one). After all the buzz of the Comic Relief sketch things have gone quiet once more, although it was quite nice to learn that the Doctor Who sketch was the highest rating part of the Comic Relief screenings. There is yet again little news that could give any hope for a new series, a new missing episode hasn't turned up for at least five months now, and the BBC are slowing down their video releases. But despite this, interest in the show has really yet to drop to the level of The Prisoner and in fact it has been said that the show's popularity it at its highest since 1989! Why is this?
Well I could spend the rest of the editorial debating this question, but then I have run out of space once again. So I'll leave you hanging, like a good cliffhanger should, till next time ...

- Alexander Ballingall

There is Something About Guff:

Published: June 1999
The Fanzine of the Christchurch Chapter of the NZDWFC
Editors: Alexander Ballingall, Matt Kamstra
RTP! Logo Design: Jamie Campbell/Alexander Ballingall
Front Cover: Garry Jackson
Back Cover: Alexander Ballingall
Internal Artwork: Peter Adamson, Martin Geraghty, Garry Jackson, Matt Kamstra
Letters: Peter Adamson, Alden Bates, Jon Preddle, Jeff Stone
Page Count: 52
Print Run: 30
Price: NZ$3

~ Contents~

[01] COVER
[02] CONTENTS
[03] EDITORIAL
[04] UPDATE
[05] The BOOTCUPBOARD [Letters]
[07] FICTION: The Wheel Turns
[08] REVIEW [Review of The Ark]
[10] REVIEW [Review of The Keys of Marinus]
[12] REVIEW [Review of Nightmare of Eden]
[14] REVIEW: Comic Relief?! [The Curse of Fatal Death]
[16] REVIEW: TV Movie Memories ... [Doctor Who]
[21] CARTOON: Cyber Guy
[24] INTERVIEW: Shades of Gray [part 2 of 2: Warwick 'Scott' Gray]
[27] REVIEWS: Stoatworld [Reviews of EDAs, PDAs]
[33] COMIC: Pulp Who—The Gold Star [part 1 of 4]
[41] Doctor Who Bullsh*t: DW Movie Confirmed ... Honest!!!!
[42] ARTICLE: The Sexual Misadventures of Doctor Who: Doctor Who
[44] Doctor Who Bullsh*t: Missing Episode Conspiracy
[46] /full page advert/
[47] FICTION: The Red Menace [part 3 of 8]
[50] ARTICLE: If - The Enemy Within
[51] FICTION: A Tale of Comings and Goings
[52] COVER

A Bit of Ego Stroking

2007-07-16T16:42:00.000+12:00

Yup, photos. These graced the pages of issue 2 as what Matt Kamstra would later describe in issue 3 as 'filler', and come from a Christchurch Chapter meeting (described here). One of the last at Hayden Edward's place. The top photo is a young me (ten years ago now!), the copy of issue 1 in my hands open to my review of The Five Doctors Special Edition. The photo below it is of Graham Muir (with half of Phillip J Gray off to the left), posing with his cover art for that first issue.

Just though I'd post these so that people could see them in all their colour glory.

Pointless

2007-07-14T21:58:00.001+12:00

The contents page illustration had begun as a space-filler with issue 3. Matt Kamstra supplied the above for issue 4 (Matt's fascination with Japan can be noted in the way he signed his artwork).

The Seventh Seal

2007-07-12T10:23:00.001+12:00

Welcome to issue 7. 1999 started out well with this issue, but, as subscribers from that year will remember, things didn't remain that way for very long with the fanzine stumbling about halfway through the year. The big feature for the issue was the NZ fan interview, this time being with DWM comic editor Warwick 'Scott' Gray. This interview blindsided me as I had had simply no idea that it was coming and all thanks has to go to David Ronayne for seeing the possiblity through to fruition. It was a very welcome addition to the fanzine. Not quite so welcome perhaps was the blatant page filler that was 'The Sexual Misadventures of Doctor Who', a lame last gasp event that somehow staggered on for several more issues. And below is a typical Matt editorial in which he reaches beyond himself with dreams of a publishing empire:

G'day and welcome to the first issue of 1999—we've got a few gems for you to start the year off with. An interview with DWM comic editor Scott Gray, detailing that infamous 'Threshold' decision, and we also have Birdy gracing our pages again. But unfortunately CyberGuy won't be able to join us this issue, but he'll be back in June! we also catch up on some of the latest and greatest video releases of recent months—kind regards to Carmel Bennett at Roadshow for all your help there! Next issue will be busy with reviews also, with a new title almost monthly recently—that's a lot to catch up on! At this time I'd also like to say congratulations to James Gould who won last issues' "Candid Caption"—your prize is on its way!
Plenty has been happening in Who lately. Well, plenty being a relative term - a lot more than usual has been happening lately. Sustained, yet unfortunately unfounded movie rumors, an announcement on new BBC sanctioned audio dramas, and most recently, only a little of a week ago in fact, the Doctor Who Comic Relief sketch with Rowan Atkinson. We'll be going into more detail next issue with a review and a few other bits and pieces. In other words things are looking up for the Doctor and his companions. Does this mean we will see a return to the small screen? Sadly I doubt it. I think many people share this opinion, but in reality is this dismal view merely because of the lack of BBC commitment in the past? Are we all just imagining that the Beeb couldn't possibly bring back the show? Well maybe. The prospect of Doctor Who audio dramas with original scripts and acted out by real series actors is for certain a very promising one. But what will it mean for us in New Zealand? Will mainstream booksellers and music stores be willing to carry this product, or will we be trapped in the position we are currently in, whereby it is only the few who are diehard fans (ie. you and I) that are willing to order these books through Whitcoulls, the Internet or other overseas book retailers. I seriously hope not. Judging by recent response of some independent bookstores around Christchurch, interest in the BBC novels is picking up. Scorpio regularly stocks new titles for a modest $16.95, and you can even pick up the odd copy at Whitcoulls or Dymocks (presumably nationwide). But does that really mean we are on the verge of these retailers taking notice of their small, yet dedicated market? With more and more new video releases, selling out quicker and quicker or so it seems, and a new range of BBC audio products, I seriously hope they will sit up and take notice. It wouldn't hurt for us to get together either and ask your local retailers to consider purchasing more of these lines. It we all did a little something, we could make a big difference. Sound lame-ass and cliche? Maybe it is. But we'll never find out unless we try.
Speaking of trying, Joe and I have had a crazy idea we want to try. We have been considering adding another string to our fanzine bow for a while now, and the idea of a general sci-fi telefantasy zine s forming in our minds. This will join a Manga/Hong Kong cinema zine, that I have recently undertaken editorship of, in a trio, collectively published. We would really like heaps of response on this. Due to our already extensive demands from university, work, other zines etc, we really need to know it's going to work before we take on anything more. We're hoping at least a few, if not all of you would like to write for us—the zine's focus is basically anything sci-fi/telefantasy, classic or recent, and basically anything about it. There will be huge scope for articles and so perhaps some fierce competition for space also. So hopefully this will up the quality hugely. So if you're at all interested, or know someone who is, give us a bell, we'd love to hear from you. Apart from that though, I can't think of anything much else to say this issue. You're back to Joe's sarcastic humor next time, and I'll see you again in September!"

- Matt Kamstra

Around the Guff in 80 Days:

Published: March 1999
The Fanzine of the Christchurch Chapter of the NZDWFC
Editors: Alexander Ballingall, Matt Kamstra
RTP! Logo Design: Jamie Campbell/Alexander Ballingall
Front Cover: Matt Kamstra
Back Cover: Garry Jackson
Internal Artwork: Martin Geraghty, Garry Jackson
Letters: Peter Adamson, Alden Bates, Garry Jackson, Jeff Stone, John Williams [AKA Matt Kamstra]
Page Count: 52
Print Run: 30
Price: NZ$3

~ Contents~

[01] COVER
[02] CONTENTS
[03] EDITORIAL
[04] UPDATE
[05] The BOOTCUPBOARD [Letters]
[07] Doctor Who Bullsh*t: DWB Returns!
[09] ARTICLE: Dimensionally Transcendental
[10] CARTOON: Birdy - In 'A Slightly Greem Death'
[12] REVIEW [Review of Timelash]
[14] REVIEW [Review of Horror of Fang Rock]
[16] REVIEW [Review of Planet of Fire]
[18] A Month in the Life of RTP!
[21] ARTICLE: Time Travel (And All that Jazz)
[23] FICTION: A Sense of Irony
[24] REVIEW [Review of The Ice Warriors Box Set]
[27] REVIEWS: The Scope [Reviews of EDAs, PDAs]
[30] FICTION: The Red Menace [part 2 of 8]
[33] INTERVIEW: Shades of Gray [part 1 of 2: Warwick 'Scott' Gray]
[41] ARTICLE: Paul McGann is the Doctor
[43] ARTICLE: The Sexual Misadventures of Doctor Who: Planet of Fire
[44] CARTOON: Teletubbies in the Death Zone
[46] ARTICLE: A Touch of Class
[48] 1998 Survey Results
[50] ARTICLE: If - The Killer Cats of Gen-Singh
[51] FICTION: A Tale of a Second City
[52] COVER

Oh My God! A South Park Crossover!

2007-07-09T19:42:00.001+12:00

Remember when South Park was the fresh new thing on the block? Twas a while ago now. Here's the two crossovers that RTP! produced, coming from issue 6 (January 1999) and issue 5 (September 1998) respectively. The first, by David Ronayne, was part of a short series of cartoons that included a crossover with The Fast Show, while the second is a rare artistic contribution from Matt Kamstra. Matt's piece was intended to be the first of a series of crossovers (I'd even thought of one myself involving some Daleks killing the crew of the Enterprise D (Next Generation)), but as with many of Matt's ideas it never came to fruition. Still, these two cartoons stand testament to the impact that South Park had managed at the time.

Questions Must Be Asked

2007-07-06T12:36:00.000+12:00

One feature of RTP! since its second year has been that of interviews with noteworthy NZ fans of the show. This is something that was seemingly began out of the blue with Peter Adamson's interview with Alistair Hughes, and not as something planned by either Matt Kamstra or Wade Campbell. Since that first interview, they have been a mainstay of the fanzine alongside serialized fiction and the comic. Here's who has been interviewed so far:

1998
#5 - A Brush with the Doctor ... [Alistair Hughes]
#6 - Fanboy Mastermind [Jon Preddle]

1999
#7 & 8 - Shades of Gray [Warwick 'Scott' Gray]

2000
#9 - The Tomorrow People [Graham Muir]
#10 - The Mars Bar [Peter Adamson]

2001/2
#11 - Confessions of a Melophile [Alden Bates]

2002
#12 - Modern Art [Jeff Stone]
#13 - The Importance of Being Phillip [Phillip J Gray]

2003
#14 - All Kneel and Praise Her [Jamas Enright]
#15 - The Right of Reply [Jonathan Park]

2004
#17 - Neil, Neil, Jonathan Peel [Neil Lambess]
#18 - The Life and Opinions of Paul Scoones [Paul Scoones]

2005
#19 - But it's not Really Science Fiction ... is It? [Adam McGechan]
#21 & 22 - Hand-operated Paper-type Fanzine [Matt Kamstra & Wade Campbell]

2006
#23 - The Other Dave (?) [David Lawrence]
#24 - NZ Fandom (Original Andy Pulzar Mix) [Andrew Poulsen]

Why not email myself and let me know of a future potential interviewee ...

Fanzines Reviewing Fanzines - TSV #51

2007-07-05T16:32:00.000+12:00

Another flashback to an old review:

TSV #51

TSV changes its fonts and layouts more times than Matt changes his underwear. I still believe that they haven't found the right balance. I noticed a lack of artwork in this issue. Is TSV going towards a text only basis? The comic strip is something that is usually looked ofrward to, but In Bloom didn't strike the right chord. The Karkus seems to have established itself as the cartoon regular of TSV now and should be so for quite some time.
Once again TSV have an interesting interview with a New Adventures author, being Gary Russell. The fiction count has increased and includes a nice wee Star Wars crossover story by Alistair Hughes. A large proportion of this issues pages is taken up by a tribute to Terry Nation, but I feel the overall make-up of issue 51 suffered as a result.
News is so comprehensive in TSV that we here at Reverse the Polarity! don't feel we need to include it, unless something groundbreaking occurs. An alright issue, but still doesn't come anywhere near issues 47 or 49.

- Wade Campbell

Not quite a brutal as the review of issue 50, but not hugely positive either. I am left wondering if, as newbies to the whole fanzine editing thing, Matt Kamstra and Wade Campbell could have possibly written a 'nice' review of TSV. It certainly seems like an extension of their grudge against Telos.

Interview - A Brush with the Doctor ...

2007-07-04T10:19:00.000+12:00

ALISTAIR HUGHES
Interviewed by Peter Adamson (in 1998)

Alistair Hughes scarcely needs any introduction in Doctor Who fandom; his highly distinctive watercolour and scratch-board compositions have appeared in such mainstream UK Who publications as the In-Vision series of Doctor Who production studies (for which he produced many covers and countless interior illustrations), The Frame, DWB (an imaginative concept illustration for the unmade story The Masters Of Luxor, David Howe's 1993 Thirtieth Anniversary Doctor Who calender (a dynamic interpretation of the summoning of Azal from The Dæmons and the DWM Yearbook from the same year (for Mark Gatiss' story Urrozidnee).

In slightly smaller circles he has contributed to Glasgow's Paisley Pattern and was a founding subscriber to the late Who View. But the publication with which he is now most popularly associated is TSV, for which he supplies commissioned cover art as well as interior illustrations, the odd review, and even some fan fiction.

When he isn't exercising his artistic brilliance in TSV, Alistair works as a designer in Wellington, and his non-Who work can be seen in such magazines as Next and the New Zealand Chartered Accountants Journal.

(Peter) So tell me about your family. Any artists among them?
(Alistair) I'm adopted, so if it were a genetic thing, there's no evidence of it whatsoever in any other member of my family! Perhaps it's because this ability was unusual in my family that they were so encouraging when I showed some early interest in art.

So are you a Scottish Kiwi or a New Zealand Scot? There seems to be some confusion there ...
Yeah it's true there is a bit of confusion. I don't really know how to answer that one. When I returned to Scotland I naively expected to be welcomed with open arms, but soon found that it's the country you grow up in that moulds you rather than the place you were born ... although being born in Scotland is very important to me—in defining my sense of identity.

Were you allowed to watch Doctor Who as a child?
Practically encouraged! It was the classic BBC television programmer's image—Doctor Who was saturday night tea-time family viewing, and for me that meant the whole extended family—as we usually gathered at my grandparents' on the weekends. We'd all be crowded in front of the telly—real textbook British childhood stuff. So I've got very warm memories of being scared to death.

My earliest memory is of the Silurians, but (textbook stuff again!) I'll never forget my first impressions of Terror Of The Autons; that bloody troll doll and faceless policeman—it deserved to be raised in the Houses of Parliament ... terrifying stuff! I always believed it had been the Brigadier's face that was peeled away by the Doctor (of course, it was actually the Auton policeman - must be a uniform thing), and I remember thinking "God, if it can happen to him ..."

Every Who fan seems to have a defining Doctor for their generation. Yours would appear to be Jon Pertwee. Any thoughts on that?
Um ... I knew you were going to ask that question! I think regardless of the fact that it was Doctor Who, he was the earliest character who I wanted to be like and tried to identify with. I felt a connection and only later discovered that there were Doctors before him and others after him - but in this context it didn't matter, Pertwee was the only Doctor around on those scary Saturday tea-times.

Incidentally, I like to think it says at lot about Doctor Who fans that their hero is a cultured gentleman who uses his brains to confront oppression and evil, rather than someone who flies about with his underpants outside his suit, or blows things up with giant guns. I think that's a hopeful sign.

I bet your schoolbooks were covered in doodles ...
Yes, but doodling is one of the few things that I really feel retentive about. To me doodling is a lack of discipline, and you should be using that creative urge for something worthwhile. Even as a child there had to be a definite purpose for me, a brief, if you like. Or maybe I'm just unimaginative!

So what's your favourite monster to draw?
Oh, that would be the Sontarans.

Any more confessions?
First time I saw the Daleks (age 6—Day Of The Daleks) I was hideously disappointed. I couldn't believe it - they were as exciting as a talking fridge. I loved them by episode four, though! And I thought the Ogrons were homicidal old men—must have been the baldness!
Am I the only person who thinks Leela became less attractive when she changed the colour of her eyes? Or am I alone in preferring Romana 1 to Romana 2?

Then there's my belief that Logopolis utilises Christian themes as heavily as Planet Of The Spiders uses Buddhist ones ...

The TARDIS. It's a bugger to draw, as are Daleks. Easy to draw badly, hard to draw well. Agree?
Well, yes, but I'd say with the Daleks less so. The line that nimrod says in Ghost Light about 'a forest of straight lines' describes the appearance of the TARDIS pretty well, beloved as that police box is, but the Daleks have definite character!

Any trade secrets?
Only just get your composition sorted out before your reference material, rather than the other way around, a la Alistair Pearson (although he was under enormous pressure with his deadlines and did extremely well considering this). Good reference photographs should only be raw material to help create an illustration—not the sole reason or purpose for creating one!

Like a lot of artists (including Alistair Pearson) you like to use your vast collection of reference photos. Do you ever worry they'll run out?
Constantly. In fact it's the only reason I buy magazines! In Britain, magazines appear on the shelves the same week they are printed and they're more valid as a news source. But in New Zealand where we receive magazines months later—I buy and use them purely as photographic reference material.

Okay, so tell us about England. How hard is it to get noticed there?
I was living in Scotland of course. Very, very difficult. I had this huge flare of good luck at the start, because I was something new. But it was sustaining publishers' interest and proving myself deserving of it, that was the real challenge.

And of course, when you do land a commission from a client you have been courting for months, it's absolutely guaranteed that three other important jobs will arrive at the same time. I was fortunate to find a good deal of illustration work, not all of it Who-related, of course, and learned a lot about technique, and business in general.

At a Doctor Who convention the actor Julian Glover was speaking about acting, and he said something to the effect that of you have acting in your blood, you have no choice and have to live that life. But he felt sorry for anyone who did because it was such an enormously difficult way to earn a living. I found working as a freelance illustrator to very like that—when it's good (ie. when you have work) it's the most fun and rewarding thing you can ever do, but when it's bad it's truly horrible!

I'm happy to say that I did finally find myself in the equally difficult position of having too much work, but was able to give some of my clients to other illustrators whom I knew—I got a great bottle of whisky out of that!

What was your perception of British fans as opposed to New Zealand fans?
The Brits are far more irreverent. It's a kind of feeling where they hide their true enthusiasm behind a kind of skewed cynicism. At the conventions you'd have somebody dressed as the Doctor, coolly reluctant to talk about the very thing they were dressed up as—it was hilarious in a way. But I met a lot of really great people in UK fandom too. Very clever, very funny people.

Did you pick up any favourite fanzines?
I was involved in the local one called Paisley Pattern. It was incredibly irreverent ... maybe it was naivete, but I thought it was bordering on sacrilegious [against the programme]. I was quite shocked to read some of the things they said (particularly about 'Pertles' which was a 'mock affectionate nickname' for my favourite Doctor; it sounds quite amusing when said with a strong Glaswegian accent) ... but the emphasis was on comedy and fun throughout. Perhaps a backlash against the 'fanboy' image, an expression which was coined about this time.

You certainly did well while you were over there. A calender contribution, several In-Visions, DWM and DWB ...
I was lucky, and I certainly had a great time with it all. David Howe was very challenging and stimulating to work with on the calender—which will always be one of my favourite pieces. In-Vision was always more of a family atmosphere: Jeremy Bentham and especially Justin Richards became friends to me although we only ever spoke by phone (and Justin even mentioned me in his first New Adventure novel [Theatre Of War]—not many people know, or care about, that!) Their regular commissions really helped me develope my skills (and they still send me issues, bless 'em).

The real highlight was probably the Marvel Yearbook illustrations. It's not my best work, but I'd hounded Gary Russell for so long that gettin the commission was enormously satisfying! On the other hand I would have to say that DWB was the least pleasent experience, but that was due to an unrealistic deadline and my own inexperience in not saying so at the beginning.

So who's the guru in terms of Doctor Who artists—Chris Achilleos, Frank Bellamy or Phil Bevan?
Chris Achilleos was possibly the first artist who I learned the name of and looked for his work. But now I would probably say I admire something from them all, rather than any single artist: Phil Bevan for original composition and Alistair Pearson for technique, 'cause Chris Achilleos went on to do that horrible airbrushed stuff!

When Skilleter was good, he was very very good, but my favourite Target artist, and perhaps closest to my guru, was Jeff Cummins. His covers (The Face Of Evil, The Talons Of Weng-Chiang) are beautiful—moody and technically brilliant. I wish he'd done more!

Phil Bevan was of course renowned for going to extraordinary lengths to avoid copying established reference shots and stills, even coercing his friends into posing and taking main character likenesses from programmes outside Doctor Who. Is this sort of thing a concern of yours when so many photos and still are now availiable?
I think as far as likenesses are concerned you're on dangerous ground when you try and fool around with them in any way. You know yourself, if your illustration doesn't instantly resemble the person it's supposed to depict, you've failed as an illustrator in the most complete and basic way. But as far as the figure is concerned, absolutely anything goes - dress your friends and partner up, sketch your own reflection, use figures from completely different sources, take shots of the TV screen. Good figure drawing is important, but have fun!

There's also been a bit of a move into more stylised art, like Adrian Salmon's "Cybermen" strip in DWM ...
I think it's great. It's the backlash to the Alistair Pearson 'the likeness is the illustration' movement, I think. There should be more to Doctor Who art than just copying reference photos. Personally, I try to depict an atmospheric composition first and foremost, then choose the technique and reference material. If the composition suggests a stylised technique—all good and well. I love your line art, by the way ...

I've been asked to put this to you: What do you think the state of NZ Doctor Who fandom artwork is at the moment?
It just gets better and better. Kiwi fan artists are developing their own styles instead of just trying to be Andrew Skilleters or Alistair Pearsons, and the recent new emphasis on strips is great to see because this encourages a whole different way of looking at illustration. I think Paul's policy of encouraging artwork contributions which have a bearing on an upcoming issues articles, rather than just accepting yet another fan drawing of a Dalek or Tom Baker, has helped turn TSV into some more professional, which can give the glossy British magazines a run for their money.

You're a clever sod you know. You get to do video reviews and you've also written fiction ("A New Hope", TSV #51). Why don't we see more of your other talents?
Because I can't write. That fiction piece was something I did years ago and wanted to bring to light simply as an indulgence. I leave the writing to those whose talents obviously lie in that direction. Apart from writing there's really no other way I think I could contribute except for a comic strip, but I would have some very tough acts to follow. I love reviewing. It's basically talking about your favourite programme and forcing your own opinions on other people, but in text instead of speech. What's not to enjoy?

How about "Eckersley and the Badgermen" [Hughes' TSV #52 review of The Monster Of Peladon]?
I still enjoy writing about it! I guess I'm talking about enjoying the action of reviewing instead of the actual subject!

What's Paul Scoones like to work with? Any unreasonable demands? Death threats? Private commissions of Peri and Ace, something like that?
I think if there is anyone in New Zealand most suited to editing fandom, it's Paul Scoones. He's got extreme confidence in himself, but he extends that confidence to his contributors as well. I think that's the balance required. He's devastatingly honest but always in a constructive and positive way (is that a contradiction in terms?) He's also incredibly busy—how do you do it Paul?

We've all got our dream actor to play the Doctor. Who's yours?
Definitely Michael Palin. I think he's so suited to what the next Doctor should be, especially as he's older and crustier these days. As a cross between Phineas Fogg and a mature Indiana Jones he'd be perfect.

We're almost done. Doctor Who—where's it headed?
I'd really like to know if anyone finds this question easy to answer. I believe it should be British made, though not necessarily by the Beeb. Perhaps an independent company, which understand the importance of a solid story and somehow has the necessary budget without having to pander to overseas networks or audiences. I also think that Doctor Who should head backward. By this I mean that I don't think it can be a Nineties entity (I could be very inflammatory and say it wasn't an Eighties entity either).

A friend of mine once said that if he could make a Bond film he would set in the Sixties, because that's where James Bond belongs. To some degree I think Who worked best in the Sixties and Seventies, against that particular social background, and it if were made again it should have that same kind of sensibilty (although in a more enlightened way. Sexism, for example, existed far more blatantly back then, but it can still be depicted as wrong). This Who could be almost a period piece and not even try to be modern or updated (I don't try to write New Adventures, so I can say that), but obviously still make use of state of the art technology where the script required it.

I would like to see historicals (or at least quasi-historicals) and moody, witty drama, not Star Wars or The Terminator. Let's start again with early Sixties London and the junkyard—that's what I'd like to see, even if no-one else does! Having said all that, I thought Paul McGann was great!

If TSV were to end tomorrow ... DWM, RTP! and all that, could we expect you to cope? Would you fill your time finishing renovating the house, or would you just crack up?
TSV is definitely a valuable outlet—the house will always be there, but I'd like to flatter myself by believing that I do keep my leisure activities diverse enough to keep me on just the safe side of Fanboyism!

Could we expect you to draw other characters in Who's absence—perhaps the cast of Babylon 5?
I can't imagine myself sitting down and drawing anything else in the same way I do for TSV. I guess I'd just have to grow up and find some paying freelance work!

Of course you're not the only one to suffer for your art. How does your wife Rose cope with all this Doctor Who nonsense?
As other people apart from myself have said, she's a saint. I've been lucky throughout my life that others have not tried to change me, and Rose is notable in that way. On the other hand, I wouldn't expect her to share my fanaticism either, which makes it all the more satisfying when she does enjoy the odd scene or episode.

One of the hardest things to draw must be a pair of feet, could you draw us some?
Finally, the million dollar question. Alistair Hughes—is there anything you can't do?
Um ... sing? Cook. I thought I could do a Sean Connery impression until someone recorded it, and now I'll never do one again. I still have huge trouble with a roundhouse [karate] kick. And that tounge-curling thing—I can't do that. It's unnerving and absurdly flattering to be interviewed like this, but in the words of Wayne's World: "I'm not worthy!! I genuinely don't think I am any more talented than any other artists who grace the pages of TSV. I've just been fortunate to have professional experience, and I hope that these other artists continue to develop their own talent and find similar opportunities - good luck!

Flashback - Falling Through Space (RTP! #4)

2007-07-03T17:06:00.000+12:00

What I remember most about working on issue 4 was a wet day in May 1998, Matt Kamstra and I sitting together in the old, upstairs Apple computer lab that was part of the IT support building, working on the issue. The room was almost entirely glass at one end wall and had a expansive view of part of the campus, one which wasn't entirely unnoticed and provided inspiration as I typed away on my reviews of the E-Space trilogy and my first editorial.

Issue 4 saw the introduction of a new logo for the fanzine, one based on a sketch by myself that I had shown Matt. The change had arisen out of how unreadable the original logo had been. This was in essence the first of the changes that I would bring to the fanzine as, one could argue, I began my silent takeover! Not that a takeover had ever been planned, the position of Assistant Editor sneaking up on me.

Six of One, Half a Dozen of the Other

2007-07-02T15:36:00.001+12:00

Issue 6 was the first attempt at a 'themed' issue, with much Christmas larking about going on. For that reason it was something of a shame that printer problems led to the issue being delayed until January of the following year. And thus follows the editorial:

It is the December 1998 issue and, for reasons known only to Matt, it has a Christmas theme to it. But enough about me and recurring festive-type themes in cheap, pointless fanzines filled with some of the most spurious, ill thought out material ever. Onto other things of a more entertaining nature ...
By the time this issue is in your grubby little hands (or grubby little protuberances?) the series will have passed the 35th anniversary milestone. What does this mean for Doctor Who? Well firstly it serves to indicate how long it has been since the series was regularly in production (nine years) and secondly that the BBC cannot look a gift horse in the mouth when it provides so much money (The Ice Warriors video release).
But then am I being too cynical towards a company that makes so much money from something no longer in production? No way! Julian Vance may be gone but cynicism is alive and well in fandom!
Ahem! Onto other things ... You might have (or then again you might not have) noticed that things have been changed—again. With the loss of 'Wade's World' and 'Julian Vance Says ...' and coupled with the completion of the monstrous, page-devouring Pulp Who: The Doris Situation, Matt and myself have taken a little time to examine the content of previous issues in order to determine what we want in future issues. This freeing up of page space has allowed us to call upon the cream of New Zealand talent and provide more informative and entertaining stuff like 'James' Corner' and 'Update'.
But enough about me and this fanzine. Hang on, that's what I like talking about the most! Well then - more of me and this fanzine. In this case I am specifically concerned with the web page (http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Nebula6431) which people seem to visit but not provide any commentary on. A bit like this fanzine. Feedback is what we crave and what we're lacking at this moment. So to help stimulate some response from our readership (that's you) we've put together a survey which we'd like you to fill out and return.
With that off my chest I can now devote the rest of my editorial to one of my favorite subjects - myself. Why do I like Doctor Who? Well I've often had this question asked of me by various people over the ten or so years I've been a fan of the show and the most comprehensive answer to this that I have come up with is: 'Because I do.' It's simple, direct, and irritates the hell out of Trekkies and other non-fans who can't see past their own obsessions. So ends my editorial adventures of 1998.
And all this without mentioning talking tomatoes and their recurrence in TARDIS Tales! Roll on 1999!

- Alexander Ballingall

Hi there, and my most humble apologies. This issue was intended to be printed and in your hands as a sort of Xmas present, but unfortunately technical glitches and computer equipment failures have prevented this. Despite this I hope that you all had a great Xmas and, by the time you receive this issue, that you have recovered from your New Year's celebrations. With all luck issue seven should be out on time near the end of March, and I think we'll leave the idea of a dated theme well alone from now on! All in all, I hope you've had a good holiday period, and from all of us here at RTP! and especially Alex and myself, have a great 1999. (and if strange things start happening on New Year's Eve look out for plastic snakes and bizarre English fellows dressed in velvet).

- Matt Kamstra

20 000 Leagues Under the Guff:

Published: January 1999
The Fanzine of the Christchurch Chapter of the NZDWFC
Editors: Alexander Ballingall, Matt Kamstra
RTP! Logo Design: Jamie Campbell/Alexander Ballingall
Front Cover: Graham Muir
Back Cover: Garry Jackson
Internal Artwork: Peter Adamson, Garry Jackson, Matt Kamstra, Graham Muir
Letters: Peter Adamson, Alden Bates, Alistair Hughes, Garry Jackson, Jeff Stone
Page Count: 48
Print Run: 30
Price: NZ$2.50

~ Contents~

[01] COVER
[02] CONTENTS
[03] EDITORIAL
[04] UPDATE
[05] The BOOTCUPBOARD [Letters]
[07] REVIEW [Review of Battlefield]
[08] REVIEW [Review of The Feast of Steven]
[09] REVIEWS: James' Corner [The Plotters, The Invasion, and Invasion of the Cat People]
[10] CARTOON: Ergon - The Antimatterest Bird in the Universe!
[12] INTERVIEW: Fanboy Mastermind [Jon Preddle]
[17] ARTICLE: Rule Brittania?
[20] REVIEWS: The Scope [Reviews of EDAs, PDAs, TSV]
[23] CARTOON: Cyber Guy
[27] Candid Caption
[28] Doctor Who Bullsh*t: DWB Axed!
[29] CARTOON: 8 Doctirios
[30] FICTION: The Scorpion's Tale
[32] COMIC: Myrrh
[42] REVIEW [Review of 'Visions '98' convention]
[44] FICTION: The Red Menace [part 1 of 8]
[46] CARTOON: South Who
[47] ARTICLE: If - The Brain Dead
[48] COVER

Fanzines Reviewing Fanzines - Telos Unearthed

2007-06-30T19:18:00.000+12:00

Although Telos came to something of a messy end with issue 15, it got a far more fitting send off a year later with Telos Unearthed, a fanzine edited by Telos (and later RTP!) contributor Peter Adamson. RTP! reviewed the special issue back in issue 4:

Telos Unearthed is classy. From the side splittingly funny Saucer Smith to the creative Cydonia, there is something for everybody. However, I found the sum up of each issue the most satisfying, as there are few copies of each issue around. The majority is new material, but even the reprinted material has been turned upside down and reworked to give a better look.
The Radio Times comic commentary was most worthwhile as I knew of several people who would like to know more about these—and perhaps even see the damn strips as well. Most intriguing were the reader's memories, including Graham Muir's eulogy and Paul Scoones' frank thoughts. These are several things to which RTP! people would be familiar with, including work from Jeff Stone and illustrations by Sir David Ronayne.
Peter Adamson is to be congratulated for assembling most of the old cast of contributors which almost looks like an RTP! roll call. A fine one-off publication and a much better send off than issue 15 could ever have been. If RTP! ever gets to the end of its tenure, then you can be sure we'll be draggin' Peter out to do it, eh Peter?!
Was my 'reader's memory' really that bad, everybody?

- Wade Campbell

Wade's comment about the 'RTP! roll call' makes one wonder if RTP! would have existed had Telos not folded, or if they had co-existed side-by-side would they still have had the same contributors?

Hmmm, that's Interesting!

2007-06-28T09:26:00.001+12:00

Peter Adamson made his first contribution to the fanzine in 1998 with this little illustration. Matt Kamstra and Wade Campbell weren't too sure what to make of it, or do with it for that matter, and thus it got a page of it's own rather than accompanying a written article. The Editors asked for suggestions from readers as to what is going on in the picture and I'm not sure if they ever got any responses. If they did, I don't recall them being shared with myself. Still, perhaps now that is on the blogsphere where a greater number of people can see and appreciate it, someone might put forward a guess. Make of it what you will!

Fiction - Short and Sweet

2007-06-27T17:43:00.000+12:00

Not the first piece of fiction published by the fanzine (that honour goes to my work of fiction Fetch in issue 1), yet a short and simple way to start posting older fiction from the fanzine. The illustration that accompanies it doesn't really marry up well with the fiction, but is a rare piece from Matt Kamstra.

"Short and Sweet"
by David Ronayne

Dorothee glared at the old Time Lord over the monitor, this current body must be nine hundred if it's a day. She had pleaded with him, she had argued with him, she had even put on her universal translator and tried speaking in English (slang: variation45: British Isles circa 1980s CE), just in case she had missed some subtle nuance of the consonant heavy sentances of the local language. She had tried all these things on the Pydronian Keeper of the Record, but she had been unable to extract the Doctor's biodata and personal history from him.
The Keeper had been watching and recording the lives and histories of all the graduates of Gallifrey's most prosidious colleges for over two thousand years now and was one of the most knowledgeable and respected beings on the planet, he was also very deaf and quite absentminded. She had been curious when she had first heard of him, wondering if this was finally the way to learn the secrets of her erstwhile mentor.

The elder looked up with a start.

'Are you still here? Hmmm? Go away, I'm busy. What do you want?'

'The Doctor, I want all your data on the Doctor!'

The old Time Lord's brow furrowed. 'No, never heard of him, go away!'

The white head delved back to the screen, muttering to himself. She leant forward, forching herself into his view.

'The Doctor - class of '758 - Double Gamma pass.'

The old being frowned. 'A rather unfortunate year, Capitol or Country?'

Dorothee shrugged. 'I don't understand.'

The Keeper scowled, finally giving her his full attention. 'His family house and membership to the Academy - What was it?'

She thought back to the long shadowy corridors and empty cloisters of the almost deserted household she had seen six months ago.

'He lived in a house. A really big house in the country. It was called 'Lungbarrow'.'

'Never heard of it,' he snapped. 'Was his membership from the Capitol or the Country?'

The woman who was Dorothee remembered the rolling hills of southern Gallifrey, the vast chasm the twisted house fell into, and the girl who was once Ace screamed, 'THE DOCTOR WAS A COUNTRY MEMBER!!'

She watched the old man's face twist from shock, to horror, to sudden recognition, before she realised her translator was still on.

'Oh yes,' he said. 'I ... remember ... the Doctor.'

END.

The Original Logo

2007-06-25T17:15:00.001+12:00

Above is the original logo for the fanzine, one that graced just the first three issues. In the end it was quickly retired because I (by this stage acting as a soon-to-be Assistant Editor) had pointed out that it was practically unreadable when printed on the covers of the fanzine (especially issue 3!).

The logo was realised by Jamie Campbell (no relation to then Editor Wade Campbell) from ideas of Matt Kamstra's. I believe that the Daleks may have even been drawn by Matt himself.

It would be replaced in issue 4 with a new logo, once again realised by Jamie Campbell.