Other Pages » Tenth Anniversary Special Reprint

• Print Version

 

• Order Form

Site Menu:

Main Pages: - Home Page -Comment -Site Map -Search -About Us ---------- New Series: -Stop Press -S:1 Guide Pt 1 -S:1 Guide Pt 2 -DVD Covers -05 Specials -S:2 Guide ---------- Radio Times: -Hartnell -Troughton -Pertwee -Tom Baker -Davison -Colin Baker -McCoy -McGann -1990's -2000's -Eccleston -Covers ---------- Other Listings: -Non-RT ---------- Papers/Mags: -1960's -1970's -Early 1980's -Late 1980's -Early 1990's -Late 1990's -2000 ---------- Other Cuttings: -Comics -Adverts -Miscellaneous ---------- Other Pages: -Who on Beeb! -10th Reprint -Dr Who @ 40 -Missing Who! -My Who! -Links -Updates -Help -Copyright -Contact Us

The menu above uses JavaScript - if you experience problems see our Help page or use the Site Map.

Doctor Who is returning to BBC ONE for a third exciting series starring David Tennant & Freema Agyeman.

To keep you informed we have regular updates of cuttings, comment & news.

Also see our Radio Times and Other Listings Magazines pages.

Our updates listings include all recent additions to the site.

No attempt has been made to supersede any copyrights held by the BBC, Radio Times or any other publication, past or present.

Doctor Who logo © BBC 1996, 2005. Doctor Who & TARDIS © BBCtv. Daleks © BBC/Terry Nation, designed by Raymond Cusick.

Torchwood logo © BBC 2005, 2006.

This website is intended as a resource for researchers and fans of the BBC programmes Doctor Who and Torchwood and as such it is run on a not for profit basis. There is no intention to infringe the rights of any copyright holder. Please contact us if you would like any of your material removed.

Please contact us before using images from this website.

Terms and Conditions

All cuttings and materials originated from the media are © the original publisher, magazine and/or newspaper.

All original elements © cuttingsarchive.org.uk 1998-2007. Other elements © BBC 1963, 1996 - 2007.

This site was originally created by Roger Anderson in July, 1998.

 

The Recreation of a Classic Doctor Who Publication

In November 2003 the Radio Times released a reprint of the 1973 Doctor Who Tenth Anniversary Special. The man responsible for the project, Graphic Designer and Head of Heritage for Radio Times, Ralph Montagu talks to Cuttings Archive Webmaster Roger Anderson about how this milestone publication was recreated.

In 1973 the Radio Times published one of the most successful and best remembered items of printed merchandise from the 1970s, the Doctor Who Tenth Anniversary Special [1] magazine. The 'special' was available by mail order from the BBC/Radio Times and from high street newsagents and bookstores; it had an original cover price of 30p.

The magazine contained articles on, and a guide to, the series, interviews with the three actors who had played the lead role on TV (William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee), behind the scenes interviews, a new Dalek story by Terry Nation and plans for building a Dalek. It was illustrated with many never-previously-seen photographs from episodes and behind the scenes as well as a number of memorable shots specially taken for the publication. Probably the best known photographs specially taken for the 'special' are the cover itself, showing Pertwee being menaced by a Dalek, Cyberman and Sea Devil, and the photograph of the three Doctors, Pertwee, Troughton and Hartnell, together.

The 1973 Tenth Anniversary Special was one of the first proper guides to the series; the Piccolo book, The Making of Doctor Who [2], written by Who script writer Malcolm Hulke and Script Editor Terrence Dicks, having preceded it in 1972. The 'special' was, however, the first in magazine format, the first to be fully printed in colour and the first to have story-by-story synopses (however inaccurate the details and some story titles printed in the magazine may have been).

This edition remained an authoritative piece of work for some time and it was not until the 1980's and the explosion in Doctor Who related merchandise and books that much of the information contained in the magazine was superseded and more accurate information became available.

The original Tenth Anniversary Special remains to this day a fascinating early look at the series and an item of merchandise that is highly sought after by collectors, regularly fetching high prices on eBay and valued at £75, in near mint condition, in the 2003 edition of the definitive guide to Doctor Who merchandise, Howe's Transcendental Toybox (David J Howe and Arnold T Blumberg). [3]

There the story might have ended and the magazine been consigned to the rare early merchandise file but in late 2003 news broke that the Radio Times was planning to publish a reprint edition [4] of the 'Special' for the 40th anniversary in November of that year. The man in charge of the project was Ralph Montagu, Graphic Designer and Head of Heritage for Radio Times.

Ralph's original intention was to use modern scanning equipment to produce digital copies of an original magazine, clean up the resultant images, and print the new version from this, creating a straight forward facsimile of the original. This however was deemed problematic, as Ralph explains. "The 'pre-press' company were concerned that the quality would not be very good and that a lot of re-touching would be required. My concern was that a recreation with newly set type would not look the same as the original. To make an informed decision, I agreed to do a trial layout which came out quite well, and on the basis of that, decided to re-set the whole thing.

"This involved a huge amount of work as I was constantly checking the new version against the original so that every detail was the same. For example, all the line breaks in the text follow the pattern of the original.

"All text was re-set except that appearing on the 'Build your own Dalek' plans (these were carefully scanned and with the black and blue re-separated). I had to source as many of the pictures as possible on transparency (for colour) and print or negative for black and white. Sourcing these pictures was the greatest problem, and in some cases I had no choice but to scan directly from the original 1973 magazine. Where I could find similar pictures to the originals (effectively out takes) I sometimes used these in preference to re-scanning the original.

"For a brief period, it seemed that the project might have been halted since the brand protection dept were concerned that we should not be encouraging people to build their own Daleks! Fortunately they agreed that it could go ahead."

Some of the work was outsourced but Ralph did much of it himself, "the design and layout was initially done by a 'pre-press' company, but I then spent a lot of time 'fine tuning' the pictures and the type - the Radio Times production department handled the printing."

The idea to produce a new edition of the special had been Ralph's. "Being a Doctor Who fan, Head of Heritage for Radio Times and a Graphic Designer put me in a good position to manage the project", he explains.

"At one time, a separate 40th anniversary magazine was being considered. When it was decided to bind this into the main magazine, I suggested that we could re-print the 1973 special as a limited edition reader offer to coincide with the 40th anniversary."

The Tenth Anniversary Special is generally seen as a landmark publication but there was a very popular Twentieth Anniversary Special published in 1983. The tenth anniversary edition is, however, rarer, certainly more sought-after by collectors, and was a milestone (the first publication to give a detailed listing of previous TV adventures, companions and actors), but in the final analysis the question of whether to reprint the Tenth or the Twentieth was perhaps more a matter of personal judgement on Ralph's part, "the time of publication - 1973 - represents a period during which many of today's adult Doctor Who fans were in their impressionable childhood or teenage years. I am one of them."

"For me this was a golden era for Doctor Who which was encapsulated by that Tenth Anniversary Special. Because many fans were so young at the time, a lot of us either lost our original copies or have very dog-eared editions. Somehow the Twentieth Anniversary Special just wasn't as appealing, but that is a personal view."

Ralph still has his own original edition, "carefully looked after, but not in perfect condition. For scanning purposes I was loaned two other copies by Andrew Beech who was working at the BBC at the time. This enabled me to choose whichever magazine offered me the best quality image for the picture which needed scanning. The BBC archive has a copy, but it is bound into a volume with other Radio Times specials for 1973."

The design of the magazine was, in many ways, well ahead of its time. As Ralph points out, "the choice of fonts would probably be different now, but I think it remains fairly modern looking. For example, the use of cut-outs is a common element in magazine layouts these days."

Sadly though nothing is known about the original designer of the magazine - no credit being included in the small print on page 3. However, Ralph did track down the then Managing Editor, Russell Twisk, who recently retired from Readers Digest magazine. Twisk worked on number of other Radio Times specials at the time, "in the same year, he did specials on War and Peace, a Radio Times Fiftieth Anniversary Special (a really splendid thing) and the Onedin Line - all collectable now!"

In contrast to the techniques used on the original, the 2003 edition was created using modern computers and scanning technology, "the 2003 edition was created using Photoshop and Quark Express on a Mac. The 1973 edition was produced using photographic processes and artwork on a drawing board". This offered those working on the new edition a number of advantages over their 1970s predecessors and allowed certain 'improvements' on the original.

"Modern scanning techniques for transparencies and prints are much better. In some cases I was able to go right back to source (i.e. negatives) whereas the 1973 edition would have been done from prints (a generation down). This resulted in some really sharp images."

Modern technology also allowed Ralph and his team the chance to enhance the quality of many images but most of the differences between the two editions were more the result of necessity (such as the lack of some original photographs) than design, as Ralph explains. "The re-made title sequence (pages 2 & 3) represents one of the few conscious changes to the original.

"This was made from a new set of electronic screen grabs. To achieve this in 1973 would have involved making copies from a 35mm film print. Perhaps because of the complexities of doing this, the old edition only featured about 7 different frames, each being repeated several times. Most people were fooled into believing this was a continuous sequence, which the new one is!

"The other change was the treatment of the tinted black and white pictures.

"I was unhappy about reproducing the black and white pictures with the same heavily coloured tints, as I felt these really killed the images (especially the Web Planet picture on page 12). In the 2003 edition, I made the images into 'duotones' in Photoshop, which achieves a more attractive range of mid-tones, and better contrast. This is something which is easy to achieve in the electronic medium.

"We also opted for a slightly heavier paper which has certainly improved the overall feel of the magazine."

However efforts were made to make many other parts of the magazine as faithful to the original as possible. "I tried to achieve the same overall colour, although individual pictures are not always quite the same".

It is not known why many of the original photographs have been lost, or where they might be now if they still survive, but the decision to go back to source as much as possible in order to produce the highest possible end result meant that the lack of some photographs used in the original edition presented a dilemma. "In those cases where the original print, negative or transparency couldn't be found, I sometimes had a difficult choice: either a high quality out-take, or scanning from the original magazine.

Where an out-take existed and was very similar, I generally opted for the out take, however a number of the large colour spreads are re-scans as the out-takes varied too much from the original. This includes the cover as I felt this had to be exactly the same as the 1973 edition."

After the chromalins (digital proofs) of images scanned from the original magazine were examined it became clear that they required a great deal more touching up work than images sourced from original photographic prints and transparencies.

"The main drawback is that a re-scan results in a grainy image, rather in contrast to pictures scanned from an original source, and so re-scanning was a route of last resort. There can also be problems with a pattern arising when you scan a printed half-tone picture but this can usually be overcome using the de-screen filter on the scanner. The main problem was out-of-register printing on the original, especially on the centre spread with my childhood heartthrob Katy Manning (pages 34 & 35). This involved a lot of re-touching, but what man would decline to touch up Katy in the course of their work?

"The other large images that were re-scanned included Peter Brookes artwork of the 3 Doctors morphing into one another (pages 6 & 7), Peter Purves (pages 14 & 15), Wendy Padbury (pages 26 & 27), Caroline John and Nicholas Courtney (pages 30 & 31), Elisabeth Sladen and Linx (pages 36 & 37)."

Some images were too dark or too small to re-scan and where reasonable alternatives were unavailable it was necessary, as a last resort, to create composite images (made up from a number of similar photos) that came as close to the original as possible.

The Martian Ambassador with arm outstretched, on page 28, is actually a composite made from 3 separate photos from the same photo session. "The image closest to the original had the right arm outstretched, so that was 'flipped' and blended into another photo with the pose of the body being closer to the originally-used image. Finally, the reflections in the visor were inserted from a third image. The final composite gives a picture that is very similar to the original pose (although it is taken from a slightly lower angle).

"Another example is The Master standing outside the TARDIS on page 28.

"The top picture of The Mind Robber on page 24 is taken from a recently discovered black and white print, and tinted. I suspect the 1973 edition was done in the same way as I've never seen this picture in colour elsewhere."

Sourcing original photographs also posed some problems, "The two pictures of Planet of the Daleks on page 33 are actually screen grabs from the story, as scanning the 1973 edition for such small images would have resulted in a very poor picture.

I had help with picture research and sourcing from the BBC Picture Library, Doctor Who Magazine and some private collectors."

The text and layout of the magazine appears to be absolutely unchanged from the original, even down to the early erroneous story titles. There are, however, a few small differences that the 'eagle eyed' might spot. "I did correct one or two typos, but one or two new ones have crept in! I did consider changing the story titles but felt this was too much of a departure from the original."

The magazine has been produced in a strictly limited edition of 5000, the print run of the original edition is unknown but Ralph estimates that it was probably nearer 50,000. This makes the 2003 edition potentially a rarer magazine than its predecessor, certainly once current stocks of the magazine are exhausted it is likely to be become a valuable collectors edition in its own right. However, the Radio Times still have some stock left so the magazine is available for ordering at it's offer price of £7.99 including postage (see full ordering details to the left).

The reprint was initially only made available through Radio Times offers mail order but limited stocks are also now available through the Who Shop in East Ham,London. Unlike its predecessor though it is not available through high street newsagents, "It was regarded as a specialist collector's item and not of sufficient appeal for distribution through newsagents."

Finally, we wonder what aspect of the work Ralph is most proud of; "I think the duotone treatment of the black and white pictures, and generally the positive remarks I've received.

"However I remain concerned that many fans are unaware of the publication, so please spread the word!"

Thank you Ralph Montagu.

 

Interview conducted in January/June 2004.

© Roger Anderson & Doctor Who Cuttings Archive 2004.

 

---

[1] Doctor Who Tenth Anniversary Special. 1973

[2] The Making of Doctor Who. 1972

[3] Howe's Transcendental Toybox

[4] Doctor Who Tenth Anniversary Special (reprint). 2004