Fish Fingers and Custard - A Doctor Who Fanzine - FFAC2

Everyone thinks that the Anniversary of Doctor Who is over...but it isn't! The 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who is just starting! To celebrate this, we're producing (what we hope!) will be our biggest and best Issue ever. As always, we need contributions from you. For this Issue we're looking for essays/reports on the 50th Anniversary, amazingly enough! We want to know what YOU did for the big day, what you thought, what you felt etc Whether you watched it at home, saw it at a cinema, went to a party...anything! Also, we're after your reviews of the actual episode (positive - or negative). If all of that doesn't take your fancy, you can write about what you think of 50 years of Doctor Who and what it means to you. Please e-mail us at fishcustardfanzine@googlemail.com with whatever you like! Please note that the deadline is 7th December Cheers!

" Susan and I are cut off from our own planet, without friends or protection. But one day we shall get back. Yes, one day. One day. " What can you say about a television programme that has kept generations of people happy for 50 years? It has - and will continue to - inspire and entertain many more in the next 50 years and for that reason alone, Doctor Who has proven to be the best television programme of all time. Let's raise a glass to everyone who has worked on the programme. Thank-you Doctor Who. The world would be an infinitely duller place without you. Have a great day, however you're celebrating!  We're looking for contributions for our next Issue, so if you fancy telling us about what you did today, how and where you watched the episode, what you did to celebrate the Anniversary, please e-mail us at fishcustardfanzine@googlemail.com (After today, obviously!)

The final day of our journey. Here are three stories from the three Doctors of the 2000’s. Expect scares, laughter and a bit of wood. The Unquiet Dead It’s arrived! Doctor Who has arrived! That was the thing most people took away in 2005 after The Unquiet Dead first aired.   Yes, Rose and The End of The World were okay, but this episode really forced Doctor Who, and what it was about, home to millions of new viewers.   I should know, I was one of them. It’s funny, whilst watching this again, I thought back to that first series and think about how average some of the episodes were.   I think if the same episodes were aired during Series 2 or 3 they wouldn’t have gone down as well, but despite that first series being chaotic from a production point of view, it was all new, so it’s still held in high esteem.   For me though, The Unquiet Dead , along with a few others from Series 1, will go down as a bone-fide ‘new series classic’.   The story ...

Today’s Randomiser sees us do things a little bit different. But don’t fret – both of these stories are CANON. Remember that.                            Time and The Rani The one story that you don’t want to pull out of your 10 year-old Quality Street lid, and it’s probably this   Time and The Rani .   It makes Terror of The Vervoids look like an episode of Poriot. . I don’t like bitching about episodes, as plenty of people worked very hard just to bring these to our screens, but after watching this, I wondered why they bothered. It’s 1987 and Colin Baker had been sacked. Not by the producer or anyone who had anything to do with the making of the show, but the head of Programming at the BBC.   Not just that – but the budget continued to be whittled away by the powers-that-be.   Whilst watching this, I kept wondering; W...

On day three of our pissing over the legacy of Doctor Who by writing quick, random and let’s face it, poor reviews, we’re covering stories from two Doctors who never changed their trousers. The Five Doctors No, I haven’t cheated. The fact that my random drawing system produced the 20 th Anniversary story is purely coincidental. I wanted Caves of Androzani . I’ve seen this story a few times and I must admit, I enjoy it more with each watch.   There’s (obviously) references flying all over the place, some hammy (but great) acting and of course – there’s Five Doctors.   Well, technically only 3 of the actors returned – William Hartnell sadly passed away 8 years previously, so the role of the First Doctor was played by Richard Hurndall. Tom Baker declined to return, so clips from the unused Shada were used in this.  Hartnell does appear at the start though - the marvellous clip of him saying goodbye to Susan in The Dalek Invasion of Earth is used as the pre...

On Day Two of our random journey through 50 years and 11 Doctors, we have a couple of episodes that are historically important because of two very different reasons. One introduces a major villain, a new companion and a recurring character, or ‘semi-companion’ if you will. The other never got broadcast, well, it was never actually made. Terror of The Autons The opening story of Season 8 proved to be significantly important for a number of reasons – it introduced the characters of The Master, played by Roger Delgardo, as The Doctor’s best enemy, and Jo Grant (Katy Manning) as The Doctor’s best friend.  Richard Franklin also made his bow as Captain Yates, as the producers decided to lock the revolving Captain door that had existing during the previous year.   More common soldiers were used as monster fodder instead. The Doctor has a new assistant. But that’s not all – there’s a robbery in the UNIT vaults and a mysterious man, with a beard, is going around hypnotisin...

To celebrate 50 years of Doctor Who stories, we decided to do something that is perhaps a tad ambitious for our lazy selves – watching and reviewing two Doctor Who stories a day (one per Doctor) up until the 23 rd November.  Somehow, we hope these quick observations and thoughts will make a little bit of sense and get you (and us!) in the mood in time for the big day! We’ve used our hi-tec ‘randomiser’ (a lid of a Quality Street tub and pieces of paper, with numbers corresponding to episodes, written on them) and drew one out for each Doctor. So we have our 11 random stories to watch in 5 days (yes, we know that on one day, we’ll need to watch 3!) question is, what are they? Well here are our first two: The Aztecs Piece of paper No6 meant that I drew out ‘ The Aztecs ’. A story which saw The Doctor hitting on women, long before the modern day series, Barbara becoming a god, Ian having (what seemed like) drunken fights and Susan just shouting at people. It’s gre...