The Doctor and I
The Blankety Blank Era
Anyone around the DWCV in the early 1990s must have played Blankety Blanks a million times. Along with other games, it marked a bit of a move by the committee, under new President Shane Cook, to avoid us getting square eyes by watching videos all day. It was amazing how many matches you could get by answering ‘Carrots’ or ‘Twin Peaks’ (the latter referring to Sixth Doctor companion Peri’s most startling attributes)…
In mid-1991, with rising costs for meeting places, the DWCV moved to St. Michael’s Church near Princes Park in Carlton. In the main hall you sat on rough benches, assaulted by cold draughts in the winter and with pinpricks of light through the roof (though it remained, thankfully, dry within).
About this time the "first" issue of Nemesis was brought out by the club. It became infamous, not because of any concern about its quality but due to the fact that they printed many many hundreds more than they ever sold. A similar issue arose when the club, who were the Australian distributer of the prozine The Frame, bought larger-than-usual batches of several issues, and they ended up with a large collection and a debt of over $1000 to the prozine creators… Sean-Paul Smith, who would launch the Gallifrey club just a few years later, also became Sonic production editor. Increasingly the club magazine was filled with reviews of stories dressed up as feature articles, something I would rebel against once editor. There was also a rather lax approach to reaching the "every two months" deadline!
1992 rolled around, and Tomb of the Cybermen was found in Hong Kong. I still have the Stop Press whacked in issue 70 that over-excitedly pronounced all of Season 5 had been found. Oops. 1992 also saw the move for meetings to the Box Hill Central Child Care Centre. While generally better equipped, most of the chairs there were designed for much smaller people than the typical meeting attendee! Meetings had been cut back to bi-monthly on the basis of improving attendances.
Next page: Q Who
Here’s the list of the Doctor Who articles available here
→ A Bit of Adric in All of Us
→ Ace Timeline
→ Cursed References
→ Doctor Who Collectible Card Game FAQ
→ Doctor Who Collectible Card Game Tips
→ Doctor Who in America
→ History of the Daleks
→ History of Doctor Who
→ History of the fanzine Sonic Screwdriver
→ How I Killed a Fanzine (or, What’s an EFG?)
→ Survival the (Con)vention
→ The Doctor and I (First Memories)
→ The Doctor and I (1985 — Move to the USA)
→ The Doctor and I (Organised Fandom? Huh?)
→ The Doctor and I (Doctorin’ Ithaca)
→ The Doctor and I (Back to Melbourne)
→ The Doctor and I (Whovention)
→ The Doctor and I (David, Meet the DWCV)
→ The Doctor and I (Enlightenment)
→ The Doctor and I (The Blankety Blank Era)
→ The Doctor and I (Q Who)
→ The Doctor and I (DWCV Committee, Meet David)
→ The Doctor and I (Whovention II (Control))
→ The Doctor and I (Sonic Screwdriver, Meet David (and Marco and Matthew))
→ The Relative Confusion of The Curse of Fenric
→ What Makes a Warrior?
→ What’s in a Name?
→ Or just head back to the Doctor Who Index
This page last updated by David J Richardson on Wed, 8 Jan 2003.