That’s The Lion King (Full Circle)
But I want a television in my tummy!
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It’s October 25, 1980. Barbra Streisand is at number one with “Woman in Love,” which lasts for three weeks before Blondie unseats her with “The Tide is High.” David Bowie, Adam and the Ants, and The Police also chart, while Air Supply, Kate Bush, and XTC lurk about the lower reaches of the chart.
In real news, six IRA prisoners in Maze prison begin a hunger strike that lasts through December. El Salvador and Honduras resolve to put a border dispute to the International Court of Justice to decide. The border dispute stemmed from the 1969 “Football War,” the first war to be directly caused by a football result. The Polish government reluctantly recognizes Solidarity, Jimmy Carter gets his ass kicked by Ronald Reagan, and Voyager I flies by Saturn.
While on television things begin to get interesting. Some people suggest that this is the true beginning of the John Nathan-Turner era. This claim, however, is based on the difficult to defend assertion that there is a unitary John Nathan-Turner era. Nathan-Turner oversaw four script editors, three of whom deserve to have eras named after them. And one of those – Eric Saward – oversaw the bulk of five seasons and two Doctors, stretching the notion of the era to something in the vicinity of its breaking point there alone.
No, the Nathan-Turner era, inasmuch as such a creature can be said to exist at all, firmly began with The Leisure Hive and the ostentatious drive for change that it entailed. Nevertheless, there’s clearly something that shifts here. The most superficial aspect of it is Adric, who I suppose I have to deal with. Like so much of the John Nathan-Turner era, however, it is difficult to deal with Adric in the correct order. His first moment on screen is haunted by what’s to come. A commenter way back in Planet of the Spiders observed that the story is far better when Jon Pertwee regenerates into a funny looking man with curly hair instead of into Tom Baker. A similar principle applies here. Knowing what becomes of Adric makes every moment he is on the screen resonate oddly and in a way it could not possibly have at the time.
Added to this is the difficulty of Matthew Waterhouse himself. It is difficult to find any creative figure associated with the show that fewer people have anything good to say about than Matthew Waterhouse. He is notable for being, one of only two living leading actors on Doctor Who to have never reprised their roles (the other being Jackie Lane). It is a challenge to find kind words from any of his co-stars about him. One ought be fair – he was eighteen when he took the role. That the work I did and the gossip of people who knew me when I was eighteen is not how I am primarily known to the world can only be called a blessing. But Waterhouse is difficult to like even now, and his autobiography about his time on the series is an… interesting document to say the least.…