Hello everyone! 🙂

Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!

On the 1st of November 2023, before I went away for my weekend to attend the ‘Scarborough Comic Con’, I saw two items to celebrate 60 years of ‘Doctor Who’. These were originally shown on BBC Four, and I caught up with them on BBC iPlayer. I found these very nice celebrations to check out. 🙂

‘Talking Doctor Who’ is a documentary presented by David Tennant, who plays the Tenth and Fourteenth Doctors in the new TV series. In the documentary, David gives us a guide back in time on how the original actors who played the Doctor in the classic TV show were presented in the media. 🙂

This is from William Hartnell to Paul McGann in ‘The TV Movie’. It was interesting to check out this documentary, as I’d seen a lot of the BBC interviews with the actors on ‘Doctor Who’ DVDs over the years and I liked how David Tennant recalled his memories of watching ‘Doctor Who’ through that. 🙂

So, we have interviews with William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann through various sources, including ‘Blue Peter’, ‘Wogan’, ‘Saturday Superstore’, etc. A shame that it was only the classic series Doctors that got the focus and not both classic and new series Doctors.

As well as the Doctors being talked about, there’s the role of the Doctor’s companions, which includes an interview with the late Elisabeth Sladen, who played Sarah Jane Smith. A shame that other companions like Sarah Sutton aren’t mentioned. Jon Pertwee is interviewed about his Whomobile on ‘Blue Peter’ with Peter Purves.

There’s an interview with Terry Nation who created the Daleks, K-9 on ‘Blue Peter’, BBC1 Controller Michael Grade pausing ‘Doctor Who’ for 18 months, and Sylvester McCoy’s audition tape with Janet Fielding. I enjoyed David Tennant’s reaction to the regeneration scene from Tom Baker into Adrian Gibbs into Peter Davison in ‘Logopolis’. 🙂

‘Doctor Who at 60: A Musical Celebration’ is a music concert that was presented as a BBC Radio 2 concert on 28 September 2023. I enjoyed the televised version of the concert on BBC iPlayer. It’s presented by Jo Whiley, who I saw in a ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ Christmas episode with David Tennant. 🙂

She’s clearly a ‘Doctor Who’ fan, and the concert was recorded live in Hoddinott Hall at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff by the National Orchestra of Wales and the BBC Singers. I don’t know how I missed attending this concert. 😀 The music was enjoyable to check out when hearing it played. 🙂

A lot of the music performed in the concert is composed by Murray Gold. There’s ‘I Am The Doctor’ for the Eleventh Doctor, a ‘Companions Suite’ including Rose, Martha, Donna and Amy’s themes (I wish Nyssa’s theme was in this 😀 ), ‘Abigail’s Song’ from ‘A Christmas Carol’, ‘The Long Song’ from ‘The Rings of Akhaten’, ‘Vale Decem’ from ‘The End of Time’, ‘A Good Man?’ for the Twelfth Doctor and ‘I am a Good Man’ from ‘Twice Upon a Time’.

I enjoyed the ‘Classic Who Medley’ very much, which includes music from ‘An Unearthly Child’, ‘The Daleks’, ‘The Tomb of the Cybermen’, ‘The Sea Devils’, ‘City of Death’, ‘Logopolis’, ‘The Five Doctors’ and ‘The Curse of Fenric’. I also enjoyed the Thirteenth Doctor era suite composed by Segun Akinola.

This included music from ‘The Woman Who Fell to Earth’, ‘Spyfall’, ‘Flux’ and ‘The Power of the Doctor’. It was also nice to hear Ruby Sunday’s theme and the Fifteenth Doctor theme performed in the concert. And it was nice to see people like Russell T. Davies, Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall, Murray Gold, Segun Akinola, Peter Howell and Mark Ayres interviewed. 🙂

‘Talking Doctor Who’ and ‘Doctor Who at 60: A Musical Celebration’ are two very nice treats to check out on BBC iPlayer to celebrate 60 years of ‘Doctor Who’. I’m glad I’ve seen them, as both of them combined helped me to embrace 60 years of the ‘Doctor Who’ TV show, which is what I’m expecting to do on the show’s 60th anniversary.

Thanks for reading!

Bye for now!

Tim 🙂