N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!
When did geek anoraks start to hail from the West Midlands? Did the association with the Black Country begin with Barry Taylor in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet?
“I only seemed to have vanished …”
The Doctor, The Ambassadors of Death: Episode One
Mildly insulting stereotype aside, re-watching Resistance is Useless: A Doctor Who Retrospective is a surprisingly nostalgic experience.
It was the first Doctor Who documentary I viewed with the eyes of a fan and is filled with the sort of low-def clips we no longer see thanks to the decades of effort put in by the Doctor Who Restoration Team. (By this, I mean that it includes blurry, fuzzy excerpts from Hartnell and Troughton episodes and clips of Pertwee in unrestored black-and-white.)
“Well, when I was a little girl I thought I’d like to be a scientist, so I became a scientist.”
Anne Travers, The Web of Fear: Episode One
With Doctor Who‘s thirtieth anniversary just around the corner, there would be better retrospective documentaries than this one, of course. Watching Resistance is Useless now, I for one am disappointed that, in attempting to illustrate the reductive role of female characters over the years in Doctor Who, it cuts off Anne Travers’ brilliant retort in The Web of Fear. It would’ve undermined the argument somewhat (albeit only slightly). Nevertheless, I must have enjoyed the thoughts of an anorak sufficiently for me to watch the repeat season that succeeded it.
Indeed, I rewatched the first three of these again after the documentary. Nothing much has changed in my impressions of them. The Time Meddler remains my favourite Hartnell, I still shouldn’t really like The Mind Robber but am won over its many great ideas, and The Sea Devils will always have a bonkers soundtrack.
Later in 1992, the BBC broadcast a re-coloured version of The Dæmons before, in early 1993, continuing with the Resistance is Useless plan of airing one story per Doctor with repeats of Genesis of the Daleks, The Caves of Androzani, Revelation of the Daleks (in four episodes with its gloriously underwhelming cliffhangers) and Battlefield.
By then though, I was already hooked.
