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Happy Birthday, Doctor Who! This former Doctor Who Magazine editor salutes you

By John Freeman on November 23, 2023 • ( 1 )

Happy Birthday, Doctor Who! Congratulations on sixty glorious years of television, a show spawning spin-offs galore, including Doctor Who Magazine, my entry point into the world of professional publishing I’m still part of today. I owe you, and many others (thanked here, a couple of years back), big time.

Enjoy the Doctor Who celebrations this week, readers. We’ve got The Daleks, in colour, to enjoy on BBC4 tonight, an anniversary special, the first of three, on Saturday, Doctor Who Magazine continues apace, Big Finish are producing wonderful audio adventures, and new spin-off shows are rumoured. Who would have thought we would ever have this much Who to enjoy?

*John Freeman in the Doctor Who Magazine office in early 1989. Photo ©️ Jon Preddle*

When the photograph above was taken, little did we know then that the show was about to enter “The Wilderness Years”. A time when there was no new Doctor Who on TV. No, it’s true!

Talking of this photograph of my younger self at my desk in Arundel House, London, while editor of Doctor Who Magazine… here’s a true and silly story. If you look closely, you might see folders marked The Power of the Daleks and The Evil of the Daleks on the shelf (Buy the Reeltime Pictures DWM Box Set and make producer Keith Barnfather happy, they might be spotted there, too, and you get artist Lee Sullivan as a bonus).

Doctor Who Magazine Issue 148, cover dated May 1989, led with the return of Anthony Ainley as the Master in Survival – what eventually became his last appearance in the original series. We didn’t know then that this story would mark the end of the now labelled “Classic” Doctor Who, because the BBC never admitted it during my editorship — *Doctor Who Magazine Issue 148, cover dated May 1989, led with the return of Anthony Ainley as the Master in* Survival. The photo used was one of very few we found that had never previously been used in the Magazine. We didn’t know then that Survival would mark the end of the now labelled “Classic” Doctor Who, because the BBC never admitted it during my editorship

Other office japes of the time included considering running a story about “Doctor Who” being re-made in China, or Japan, in an April issue. If I recall correctly, the late, great Tony Luke (who I definitely recall pitching a strip idea about the TARDIS trapped in a Sargasso Sea of spaceships, but it never flew, sadly) was up for helping with that prank.

Those binders were, I confess, created before the documentary was recorded, during production on Doctor Who Magazine 148, where you will, by the way, spot actor John Levene pretending to be a typist. My younger self thought it was enormously funny to suggest I was sitting on the episodes of these much-treasured stories. What japes, eh?

Needless to say, in a pre social media, “study everything minutely until you destroy your feelings for the show you profess to love it” age, no-one noticed.

Instead, we got blokes pretending they’d recorded a new series in Surrey and teased with artwork for re-designed Cybermen and other monsters for a new series to be directed and produced by Graeme Harper.

On the plus side, the latter did mean I got to meet, just once, the marvellous Brian Blessed. Magical!

Photo © Jon Preddle – he had his shots before entering that mucky pit!

Enjoy!

• Read Doctor Who – Terror from the Deep from the start

Doctor Who – Terror from the Deep: Episode 1

• Read the background to creating Terror from the Deep here

• On Facebook? Join the Doctor Who Comics and Art: A Voyage group

I blathered about my time as editor of Doctor Who Magazine in this video, recorded at The Capitol IV four years ago

Coming Next Year – 60 Years of Doctor Who in Comics!

Via Phil Shrimpton, of the eBay auction house Phil-Comics, and a last image from Titan Comics teasing Things to Come, here’s a selection of Doctor Who material in British comic / annual publications. Various licenses were obtained by comic publishers resulting in a comic strip appearing in TV Comic for many years (starting late 1964), only interrupted by a couple of years in the early 1970s when it appeared in Countdown / TV Action. “The Daleks” comic strip appeared in TV Century 21 in the 1960s and there were several Doctor Who annuals from the mid 1960s onwards. Doctor Who Weekly launched in 1979, later becoming a monthly magazine, with various summer and winter special spin-offs.

John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.