Early Memories: Doctor Who

I've been reading Sherman and Hadoke's Running Through Corridors vol.2 lately, and it's awakened some memories of my earliest contacts with Doctor Who, a show that at some point overtook, and at times overwhelmed, my life, but that initially seemed mysterious and arcane. I thought I'd share some of those memories with you.

My Doctor Who origin, and I've told this one before, lies in The Hand of Fear (4th Doctor, Sarah Jane), which I saw in Texas, in those too-long months of shared custody. That squirming hand in Tupperware. Sarah zapping the camera with a magic ring as she walks into a nuclear power plant. Eldrad's female and male forms. And of course, "Eldrad MUST live" burned into my mind (did the catch phrase have the same effect as such modern favorites as "Are you my mummy?" and "Don't blink!"? I think it must have!). I had no idea what I was watching, and as you can see, none of those memories have anything to do with the Doctor, so I was hard pressed, going back to Canada, to find the Sarah Jane Adventures (cough, cough) even if I thought it might air here. Texas had all these crazy cable channels that showed vintage movies and shows; we didn't. I wasn't expecting to find this mysterious program any more than I could find Ozzie & Harriet on the dial.

A couple years later, I flipped to PBS, and there was The Hand of Fear. Eldrad had to live once more. So this time, I took note of when and where the show played, and I was off. Every week, I'd try to catch whatever omnibus was airing, even suffering through those long PBS pledge drives. Most of the time, it was a Tom Baker story. Occasionally, it was something unwatchable in black and white. Some of the confusion was lifted thank to a Dragon Magazine article about the FASA Dr. Who role-playing game, giving stats for the first 6 Doctors, which was my first contact with most of them, in almost photocopied black and white pics. By the time I BOUGHT the RPG, I still hadn't seen a story with each of the 7 Doctors, even though the show had ended (but just, I graduated from school the year McCoy and Ace went to check on the tea's temperature).

The real watershed year was catching an episode of Planet of the Daleks on YTV (a Canadian youth-centric channel). It was the one where Jo Grant is infected with ugly fungus. Striking and traumatic even though I didn't know who this Sarah Jane wannabe was, but it meant Doctor Who was playing on WEEKNIGHTS, not just weekends, and the way it was meant to be seen, in half-hour chunks with cliffhangers. Notably, it played at dinner time and it meant the whole family was forced to watch (again, just as it was meant to be seen), and to my delight, while my mom probably thought "here we go again" as she wasn't much of a science fiction fan, my sister and brother really took to it, and my sister especially loved Pertwee and from that first serial on, would frequently imitate the sound of the Dalek guns, which had a sort of slurping quality. She can still do it, I checked.

Soon enough, I was taping everything I could, which consisted of almost everything from thr 3rd, 4th and 5th Doctors. I only threw them away a a couple years back, when my DVD collection was complete. Or as complete as it can be, given the circumstances. From college on, I wouldn't consider them "early memories" anymore. I started reading about Who, watching and rewatching stories, even caught the TV Movie when it aired on TV. Looked at Virgin Who novels but did not then pick any up (to my contemporary self's shame and irritation). At some point, I was just a Whovian (a word I first heard on a PBS pledge drive, in fact) and it became about knowledge more than memory. So here are some actual early memories where I can see myself in my mom's living room:

First Doctor
The only one I remember seeing is The Web Planet. I loved the Zarbi in a most ironic way and would mock them years into the future, and yet years from seeing the story again on DVD.

Second Doctor
I KNOW I saw a black and white episode that was reputedly a Troughton story, but all I remember is someone shooting someone else with a laser that wasn't drawn in, just a sound effect. I see it still in my mind, but though I've watched all the Troughtons since, I don't remember ever seeing that moment again. A corrupt memory then, no idea what that was about.

Third Doctor
The Ambassadors of Death, which only survived in black and white, made me believe for the longuest time that the color era started in the MIDDLE of Perwee's run.

The Green Death was a big favorite at home, especially the flying insect the giant maggots become. Lots of laughs. I ended up giving my sister a DVD of it as a Christmas gift once it became available, so iconic was the story at our house.

Fourth Doctor
I remember The Seeds of Doom quite well. The Bond villain playing the organ for his plants. His death in a gruesome mulcher. The take on The Thing. Sarah and the Doctor going to the beach in the Antarctic.

The Face of Evil: "They say the Evil One eats babies." (Leela on being offered a jelly baby) became a catch phrase between my brother and I.

Destiny of the Daleks: I remember the Doctor playing with a gooey Dalek mutant in a trench and later kept expecting the moment from every Dalek story.

The Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors
By the time I was watching Doc5, we were out of "early memories" as I had almost 9 seasons under my belt. YTV didn't air much of Docs 6 and 7, I'm afraid. I half remember a single sixth Doctor episode, possibly The Twin Dilemma (the rest were hour-long and didn't fit the slot, presumably), and only a single McCoy story, Time and the Rani, before going back to the beginning of Pertwee again.

What about you? What are your first, possibly traumatic memories of Doctor Who? What strange moments still glimmer in your brain long after you first saw them? Did they prime you for becoming a Whovian?