Life is too short to be dull. Be interesting. Because not very much else matters does it? In large areas of our lives, hardly anything matters at all. I mean, nothing can beat being with loving friends, and a few wines, and a few beers, and a few lies, and a few yarns. And to still be adored after 40-odd years… yeah that’s the life.

Maybe I’m the longest-serving actor, in the whole history of actors, who’s actually still, 40-odd years later, adored for the same part and enjoying it in the same way. When I get sent messages from middle-aged men… or from the wives of middle-aged men, who say, ‘Tell Mr Baker he cannot imagine how important he was to my beloved husband when he was a boy’… it moves me deeply to think about it.

I was just going to work. I didn’t know, to begin with, how far-reaching this role would be. I was aware of the excitement, and the generosity, and the affection of the fans, but how could I ever have dreamed of all this?

The Essential Doctor Who Issue 8: Adventures in History

Panini’s acclaimed bookazine series The Essential Doctor Who continues, with a lavish 116-page issue about the Doctor’s journeys into Earth’s past.

Adventures in History includes interviews with:

• Artist Jeff Cummins (Doctor Who Discovers)
• Story editor Gerry Davis (The Highlanders)
• Actor Bernard Kay (The Crusade)
• Costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux (The Visitation)
• Writer John Lucarotti (The Aztecs)
• Writer Jamie Mathieson (The Girl Who Died)
• Actor Ian McNeice (Victory of the Daleks)
• Director Saul Metzstein (Dinosaurs on a Spaceship)
• Writer Marc Platt (Ghost Light)
• Story editor Donald Tosh (The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve)
• Artist George Underwood (The Doctor Who Dinosaur Book)
• Actress Anneke Wills, who played Polly in The Smugglers and numerous other stories.

Elsewhere in this packed issue, Andrew Pixley reveals Donald Cotton’s notes for the 1965 story The Myth Makers, timelines chart the Doctor’s adventures from the creation of the Earth through to 1963, and 15 trips into history are revisited, from the era of the First Doctor right through to that of the Twelfth.

Editor Marcus Hearn says:

When I was growing up, the same publications would print the same pictures over and over again. But then suddenly Doctor Who Magazine will produce something from the 60s that you’ve never seen. To me, that’s magic

The magazine caters to a whole range of ages and interests, and so many of your readers are so creative. It’s one of the things I love about Doctor Who, that it stimulates creativity in people. They may go off and become writers, or actors, or artists – and the magazine is part of that. As an examination of the nature of television production, it gives people a clear idea about the processes involved, both now and historically. You have very clever, very detailed articles for those who are of a scholarly bent… But also Doctor Who Magazine has a great artistic flavour to it. It’s about endeavour

The magazine was enormously helpful to me. When I started playing the Doctor I was able to get piles of them and dive in. I went out and bought lots of Doctor Who Magazines, because I deliberately wanted to steep myself in Doctor Who and connect – reconnect – to it in a very kind of visceral way, to the affection and the heartbeat of it.

500 is a big milestone, and I’m sure you’re right to want to mark it BIG. Your magazine has been extremely good to me, and has helped to create a warm and faithful fanbase for the programme. I am still signing first editions. After all these years

I didn’t need direction – I knew how to do a cover. I was always very aware that a book cover needs to be attractive – almost interactive, in a way – so that you’re drawn to pick it up in a shop. I still think they work as good punchy covers.

The Three Doctors was my first and perhaps still my favourite. The incredibly evocative orange and green luridness of Omega’s deadly fingers, the Doctors themselves in grave monochrome. I still get a Proustian rush from seeing these images.

Doctor Who Magazine 498

The Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble are returning for a brand new audio series and David Tennant and Catherine Tate are thrilled to be back in the TARDIS…

DWM asks the actors themselves whether the scripts for their new audio series capture the past or reimagine it:

“I think they do and they don’t,” David Tennant ponders. “Each episode on TV would go to a slightly different place, and have a slightly different set of criteria, and tell a story in a slightly different way. I think, in that sense, they’re very representative of the shows that we did on TV. Obviously, the characters are the same, and they have that relationship that you will, I’m sure, recognise. But they’ve been put into some slightly different, new situations, with new types of stories.”

“And a new way of telling the story,” adds Catherine Tate, “because this is audio. But obviously, by necessity, the convention of an episode is going to be the same, isn’t it: you arrive somewhere, something goes wrong, and then it’s all okay again. But I think these ones have been really original, and very fun to do.”

“Yes, it’s telling stories in a slightly different way,” David Tennant agrees. “But you’ll certainly recognise the same show, if you’re listening to these. When you put your headphones on, you’re going to recognise the world you’re in.”

ALSO INSIDE THIS ISSUE...

• YOU ARE KIDDING ME?!
DWM previews the Tenth Doctor and Donna’s first three audio adventures: Technophobia, Time Reavers and Death and the Queen.
• ROBERT BANKS STEWART
A tribute to the Doctor Who writer who died recently, and was responsible for 1975’s Terror of the Zygons and 1976’s The Seeds of Doom.
• JOHN LEESON
The man behind the voice of K9 talks about his long and varied career.
• SADIE MILLER
The daughter of Sarah Jane actress Elisabeth Sladen, Sadie chats to DWM about her new Lethbridge-Stewart novel, Moon Blink.
• ASK STEVEN MOFFAT
Doctor Who’s showrunner Steven Moffat answers readers’ questions
• THE WITCH HUNT CONTINUES…
…in the second part of our brand-new comic strip adventure, Witch Hunt, written by Jacqueline Rayner and illustrated by Martin Geraghty.
• SHARING THE LOVE
In her column, Relative Dimensions, Jacqueline Rayner gives advice on how to go about introducing your loved ones to Doctor Who.
• ANGEL INTERCEPTOR The Time Team welcome the return of River Song and the Weeping Angels return in this month's episodes, The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone.
• FOUR TO DOOMSDAY
A frog-like alien with delusions of divinity makes a return to planet Earth, in this issue’s Fact of Fiction. THE EVIL OF THE DALEKS In Missing in Action, we delve into this seven-part classic story which is mostly missing from the archives
• COMING SOON
DWM previews all the latest Doctor Who CD and book releases.

PLUS! All the latest official news, reviews, competitions and The DWM Crossword.

Doctor Who Magazine 498 is on sale now

Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition - Special Effects

The latest Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition celebrates the series’ greatest special effects and meets the people who created them. From the trailblazers of the 1960s to the digital artists of today, this is the story of Doctor Who’s journeys into the impossible. Highlights include:

Interviews with visual effects designers Peter Day (Fury from the Deep, The Dæmons, Genesis of the Daleks), Tony Harding (The Invisible Enemy, The Awakening), Mat Irvine (The Face of Evil, Warriors’ Gate), Peter Logan (Destiny of the Daleks, Kinda), Colin Mapson (Image of the Fendahl, Time and the Rani) and Eric Alba (the TV Movie) plus crew members Ian Gosling (The Curse of Peladon, The Green Death) and George Reed (The Seeds of Doom, The Talons of Weng-Chiang). Rare and previously unseen images from the scrapbooks of visual effects designer Ian Scoones (Pyramids of Mars, City of Death). Guides to techniques by BAFTA-winning visual effects designer Mike Tucker. Visual effects producers Will Cohen and Dave Houghton reveal the stories behind Doctor Who’s adoption of twenty-first century effects.

Inside the making of Heaven Sent with the teams from BBC Wales, Milk VFX and Millennium FX. Grant Hewlett of axisVFX on the making of Flatline and The Husbands of River Song. Afterword by Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin (Inception, Interstellar).

This lavish 100-page Special is edited by Marcus Hearn. “Doctor Who has been pioneering television visual effects for more than 50 years,” he says. “It was our aim to cover as much of that incredible legacy as possible. In many ways it’s an alternative history of the series itself, brought to life by some amazing photographs, designs and sketches.”

Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition: Special Effects is on sale now

The events of the last series restored the Time Lords, and their home planet Gallifrey, to the forefront of Doctor Who. We’ve brought together that mythology and production information in a guide that covers everything you need to know – from The Time Meddler in 1965 to Hell Bent in 2015.

It seems like yesterday. If you’d have said ‘ten years’, I’d have said, ‘Yeah, that’s about right.’ But it’s actually 20! I remember every bit of it. It’s an anniversary, isn’t it? We love anniversaries in magazines, and we love anniversaries on the telly.

Those of us who were involved in it, when on the occasions that we do get to meet and talk about it in front of an audience, even four or five years ago... Phil Segal was there, and Yee Jee was there, and Daphne was there, Eric Roberts was there… we all met and there was a proper reunion and we talked about it, and I think the feeling then between us, and the audience agreed, was that yes, flawed it might have been, and a long shot it certainly was, and in the end it failed its chief function which was to go to a series, but... all things considered it was a good idea and it played its part in restoring the momentum enough. It kept Doctor Who going. Ten years later, it came back. And Russell T Davies [showrunner 2005-10] gave the nod, in subtle ways, to it.