Show Notes for Episode 8 - Doctor in Distress
Aug 27, 2020
We talked about a lot of things in this episode, and relied on a bunch of contemporary sources (mostly books written in the late Eighties and early-to mid-Nineties) to try to get a sense of what was actually happening during the 18-month hiatus. We found the following books to be fairly good, reliable resources, and we've also been using them a bit for our other episodes:
The Doctor Who Handbook: The Sixth Doctor
Both are fairly solid reads, in addition to covering a lot of interesting topics from the Colin Baker era. And you can usually find good second-hand copies fairly cheap on either Amazon or eBay.
Totally Tasteless: The Life of John Nathan-Turner also has some great source information for what was going on during the 18-month hiatus (and beyond). The book does wander into some unsavory rumors and stories around JN-T and his partner Gary Downie, though, so be prepared for that if you pick up a copy! Also, at the moment, the book is out of print, so it's hard to find at any sort of sane price. The documentary "Showman", on the Sylvester McCoy Season 26 Blu-ray set (which we mentioned on this episode) covers much of the same material from "Totally Tasteless", though, without getting into those more unsavory stories.
We also mentioned the audio adventure Slipback. We weren't huge fans of this story - it feels like a continuation of Eric Saward's problems writing for the Sixth Doctor, to be honest - but it's available for listening on YouTube if you're so inclined.
Finally - Frobisher! In case you're interested in checking out the adventures of the Sixth Doctor and his shape-changing penguin companion (and Peri as well!), here's the graphic novels of their original adventures from the Eighties, as collected from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine:
Frobisher's also appeared in more recent Doctor Who from IDW - Mike mentioned in the podcast that he met the Tenth Doctor. This was in the Prisoners of Time story arc. He was also featured in the novel Mission: Impractical, as well as the Big Finish audio stories The Holy Terror and The Maltese Penguin. (And we may be covering one of those audio stories when we finally get to Big Finish!)