Koch Media, out now

Fascinating interviews with the core stars of the Third Doctor era…

If you’ve been an avid aficionado of the Myth Maker releases that Reeltime have been producing for some decades now, you’ll be familiar with the content of this two disc set… but odds are, like me, you may have some but not all of these, and certainly not looked at them in some time. This new release compiles six of them into one easy package.

Myth Makers are roughly hour long interviews with the stars of the show, sometimes interpolated with dramatic interruptions, but more normally simply an opportunity for the featured actor to expound about life, the universe and everything, particularly relating to their time on the show. They’re in conversation with Nick Briggs, who’s got the good interviewer’s gift of knowing when to shut the hell up and let the interviewee speak!

Jon Pertwee as the Doctor is – as he was throughout his life – the star of the show. A good argument has been made in recent times that Pertwee was the incumbent Doctor for two periods – 1970-1974 that no one would disagree with, and again from 1993-1996 when he was the only Doctor producing new material (The Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space) – and it’s a wonderful piece of nostalgia to watch him in this piece.

He’s accompanied by another fabulous raconteur who’s also no longer with us, Nicholas Courtney. Nick’s stories may have been (and become) the stuff of legend, but he never seems to have a problem going into new areas, or repeating the old. The other key Season 7 cast member, Caroline John, comes across the kind, caring person she was, grateful for the time she had in Doctor Who.

Katy Manning, Richard Franklin and John Levene, of course, are still very much with us, making new stories as the characters they first created forty-plus years ago (nearly 50 in Levene’s case), and each has plenty of stories to share.

Those of us who grew up with this period of Doctor Who on our tellies every Saturday have retained a fondness for it, I suspect in large part because of the family feel that came across from what we saw on screen. This release reminds us just how much that was a reality, and not just an act put on by the cast.

Verdict: A highly recommended oral history relating a classic period of the classic show. 9/10

Paul Simpson