I'm now back in Canterbury where the train journey back wasn't too bad. I didn't take any books back with me but that's probably a good thing as my holdall is now full of DVDs, autobiographies, and VHS's of things that may come in handy for the dissertation.
They include the first edition of Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway back in 2002 when the shows selling point was the idea of winning the ads from commercial breaks, which came from Denise Harrop, a researcher at ITV.
Of course the show went onto to be popular for other features such as Little Ant & Dec who are probably about 15 or 16 years old now.
There's also stuff like the 2002 Pop Idol final again featuring the Geordie monkeys, and various documentaries related to entertainment and so on such as "The Real Tony Blackburn" and Channel 4's "Who Killed Saturday Night TV" which was interesting but not as good as it could have been.
Whilst I was going down on the escalator at Baker Street station I noticed an ad for the Mock The Week "Scenes We'd Like To See" book which contained a list of the worst Christmas presents, and I was rather disapointed that one of them was a "Doctor Who Sylvester McCoy Box Set".
Although I enjoy that sort of humour, I will not have any jokes made about Sylvester's reign as the Doctor, mainly because they're made by people who never bothered to watch the series during the time he appeared in it.
Fair enough he wasn't the best ever Doctor and his first series was a bit shoddy,
but he did start to develop with some superb stories in his second and third series.
In fact after I've bought the DVD of "Battlefield" I'll have all the stories from his third series on DVD although I'm hoping the BBC will release my favourite one "The Greatest Show In The Galaxy" set at the Psychic Circus and guest starring Ian Reddington who went onto become "Tricky Dicky" in Eastenders.
The Doctor Who Magazine in 1996 once did a feature of the 20 greatest moments from the original series although cliffhangers were omitted as a few months later they did a countdown of the 20 greatest cliffhangers.
One that certainly wasn't included was Episode 1 of Dragonfire from the end of McCoy's first series and was quite literally a cliffhanger and a poorly shot one at that, involving the Doctor dangling from the edge of a cliff holding onto his question mark shaped umbrella.
Some of my favourites included Davros in part 4 of "Genesis Of The Daleks" back in 1975 urging the Doctor played by Tom Baker to tell him why the Daleks would cause bother by yelling "You Will Tell Me!". And possibly my favourite from the McCoy era would be episode 3 of "The Curse Of Fenric" where Doctor Judson played by the late Dinsdale Landen emerges from an electric shock with glowing eyes and says the line
"We play the contest again. Time Lord".
And I've never found any of the scenes frightening at all.
Personally there's never been a bad actor who's taken on the role of the Doctor although my least favourite was Colin Baker, because of his character's moody and pompous persona, whilst when he's been interviewed on television or appeared at conventions he's been very genuine and enthusiastic about the series and was gutted when he got sacked towards the end of 1986.
The only story I've got with him is "Revelation Of The Daleks" from 1985 and the final one broadcast before the 18 month hiatus.
Whilst I'm back here I've taken the advantage of buying a few things from iTunes due to it being a bitch in halls, with purchases including Bennson's album (although I've heard quite a lot of the tracks already), and the latest one from German jazz instrumentalist Lars Bartkuhn which I've anticipated for quite a while.
It may become a featured album on my soul show if it meets expectations.
I don't know what I plan to do tonight, probably watching the Krypton Factor and listen to a few more albums that I haven't got round to listening to yet.
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