Dear all, This is a quasi historical article I wrote in 1996 for the WHOVENTION programme book (for the Australian clubs 20th anniversary). It contains a lot of useful background material, some may enjoy a nostalgic blast about 1976. As it was written almost 20 years ago, I think my memory in 1996 was probably better than now (2014)! Antony Howe THE DAWN – 1976: THE ORIGINS OF THE AUSTRALASIAN DOCTOR WHO FAN CLUB The Australian Doctor Who Club was 20 years old this August, so time for some history. As fan guest of honour at this Convention, it is a good chance to indulge in nostalgia about how I founded the club and my fanzine Zerinza in 1976, helped by Kerrie Dougherty, my mother Rosemary, and Dallas Jones. This is a way of thanking all the people who made it possible. A sad event has also made us dawn-timers nostalgic, a good friend of ours from the early days (David Wraight) died of AIDS in April this year [1996] and so this article is dedicated to him and happy memories. I started watching Doctor Who in early 1965 and as early as 1973-4 at school I had been organising petitions to Hoyts to re-screen the Dalek films, writing Dalek fiction, etc. In Sept 1975 a Mrs J. Brennan of a childrens film group helped me to arrange a film screening of DALEKS INVASION EARTH in North Sydney (possibly in the same building as this con! - is this some form of temporal displacement?). At school I may have had ideas about doing a Doctor Who zine, but no idea how, until 1976 when I went to Uni., and was elected President of the Sydney University Science Fiction Association (SUSFA) where I met other Doctor Who fans such as Kerrie Dougherty, Dallas Jones, and Jon Noble. SUSFA was the cradle of our Doctor Who club. It was a wonderful experience meeting fellow fans for the FIRST time and not being the lone school freak! Here I also came into the world of fanzines which inspired my own Doctor Who zine Zerinza. Jon edited a Tolkien zine South of Harad, East of Rhun, his Feb 76 issue being a Special Dalek Issue. This was the days of no Doctor Who merchandise, so although printed in pale ink with bad art it was like rare gold!! SUSFAs zine, Enigma, was more impressive, I was elected assistant editor and got to know the editor/printer, Van Ikin. A 1975 issue had had a clever Doctor Who (Pertwee) cover and a very good article on the show. Little did I know that my involvement with Enigma was to grow, teach me about quality fanzines, and `train me about printing, etc. A students S.F. Convention (UNICON II) in Melbourne was holding a Dalek race on Sat 17th of April. (This is the original race which inspired the recent Dalek races at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney - where Kerrie now works!) Some of the Engineering students in SUSFA had begun to build our own Dalek to enter the race, Kerrie and I helped out on several occasions. They got the Dalek to Melbourne, its big lower half strapped on a car roof - what a sight!! - and we won the race. Kerrie even filmed some of it. I also urged SUSFA to use the Dalek in a protest against the ABC for not showing all episodes of Doctor Who, but nothing happened to this idea until later. Soon afterwards the ABC first screened Tom Bakers Doctor Who. For some reason they did not screen GENESIS OF THE DALEKS or REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN, which remained unseen for a year, until mid-1977! This sort of thing had become typical of mid 1970s ABC scheduling: stories not screened at all, or out of order, seasons disrupted by cricket broadcasts, then episodes shoved in unannounced when rain stopped play, etc! As fans we were really fed up and SUSFA protested, even sending in a small petition of about 200 signatures gathered outside the Uni Library. But we were fobbed off. As the year went on I thought about doing a Doctor Who zine as it looked like future issues of Jon Nobles zine might not happen or would be too Tolkien/Dungeons and Dragons oriented to satisfy our group of Who fans in SUSFA. I also helped the editors of the student newspaper Honi Soit produce a Science Fiction Dalek Soit special, it included photos of the SUSFA Dalek conquering the University. I think this all set me onto the path of doing a totally Doctor Who zine. But how? Here is where SUSFAs Enigma played a key role, Van gave me materials used in his printing process and explained how it worked and Jon also encouraged me. SUSFA film screenings brought together a group of us to hand out leaflets and patrol the Uni with the Dalek for publicity work. At our July screening of Dalek Invasion Earth 2150 AD over 130 people attended (it had not been on TV). The crowd made all things seem possible. Obviously you need numbers to start a club and sell a magazine. The fun and success showed there were lots of people willing to come to a Doctor Who event and pay for it, and crucially, a core group who were keen to help out. Soon after this I definitely decided to do a zine and for its title decided to use a supposed Dalek word Zerinza (Good Success). I discussed my planned art for the contents page with Van Ikin and he agreed to print it when he did Enigma, this meant printing in August or early Sept. So work on the fanzine was begun before the club. A SUSFA meeting discussed the ABCs erratic scheduling of Doctor Who. I suggested a protest and when the vote was called, Jon, who was in full medieval-type costume for the TolkienFest, threateningly drew his sword and asked Those against? It was passed unanimously! We would hold a small public demonstration against the ABC outside its main office, or stage an invasion of 2JJ with the Associations Dalek. A letter was sent and later a ‘demo’ was planned for Tues 24th August. The ABCs reply to SUSFAs letter said - the Doctor Who series ... has failed to attract a sufficiently large audience to justify its continued purchase. Bad ABC schedules were no longer our problem, now the ABC were ending Doctor Who completely!! The report in Zerinza #1 gives more details: Horrified, I contacted Kerrie Dougherty and we subsequently met to plan the demo in a last ditch attempt to save Doctor Who. Press releases were sent to the four TV stations, [some newspapers] ... A few radio stations were also contacted and a poster was put in the GALAXY bookshop. Dallas Jones later typed a shortened version of the Press release, as background for the demonstrators. About 20 of us started gathering outside the Sydney head office of the A.B.C. at 10.45 and the Dalek arrived (after terrible difficulties with transport) at 11.15, operated by Greg Platt [Gollum another Tolkien fan]. Placards, [drawn up by my mother and] brought by Kerrie with the Dalek, were handed out and brandished at passers-by and the people at the bus stops opposite. Apart from one or two small references the only media interest was from 2JJ which interviewed me and the Dalek which ordered the extermination of all ABC bosses. This protest created the Australasian Doctor Who Fan Club, set up to fight the ABC and get Doctor Who back on TV. About the end of August I got several letters from Melbourne SF clubs offering support. The ADWFCs exact `birthday is uncertain, but Aug 24 will do! Dallas Jones took a few photos and developed them at home for the first issue of Zerinza (one is reprinted here). To help SUSFAs Van Ikin with Enigma and to prepare Zerinza I had hired a typewriter and been working on the zines during the August vacation. By a stroke of luck, the typewriter hire shop had showed me a new technique for preparing the printing process, if it worked it meant I could use photos very cheaply, without this my TV zine would have looked shabby. In early Sept I went around to help Van do the printing and we tried the new process with the cover of Zerinza #1, a photocopy of a Dalek photo. This was the first photo Van had ever printed and was a big gamble, anything could have gone wrong. But it was miraculous, the printing worked, we had a photographic cover. As each sheet shot out of the machine we were really excited. This revolutionised his zine too. Now headings could be letraset (not hand drawn), photographs could be used, and text reduced by the copier so we could squeeze in more on less pages. All at minimal cost. But of course there had to be a disaster too! The pages I had typed had been with a new style ribbon which did not work in the printing machine, the typing just washed off!! Both zines came out in Sept. Van had kindly printed it with no fee for his work, I basically just paid for paper and ink. Without him I could never have done it - Van deserves special thanks for his many hours of work!! The first issue was ready for a SUSFA screening of the film Doctor Who and the Daleks on Sept 21. It was only six pages to keep costs down. As part of the Save Doctor Who protest I gave away a copy to everyone who attended the film (50 or so I guess), others went to Galaxy bookshop and a lot were posted out by friendly fanzine editors, like Jon Noble, to readers they thought might be interested. As a promotional campaign this was not very successful, hardly anyone subscribed! So we only printed 100 or so of Zerinza #2 during the Christmas holidays. It was a vastly better issue and really launched Zerinza on its long career. From this small start it grew, so that by the early 1980s 1,500-1,800 copies were printed professionally. 1976 was an exciting `Dalek year. Despite a lot of work, I had made more friends in this one year than in my whole life and had had a wonderful fun time, full of high-lights. It was the birth of our club and Zerinza. Disasters in 1977 almost sank it all, only my patient mother kept the zine going - but that is another story!! Then in 1978 our ABC protests turned to amazement as they suddenly bought all the Tom Baker Doctor Who stories and lots of Pertwee repeat rights and began a deluge of screenings. It was a Golden Age for the club with some of the best years of the show in Australia. This article is a summary of a longer memorial I started writing but that grew too long, so this was edited down to fit into the 1996 Dr Who Club’s 20th anniversary convention in 1996. It was reprinted in 2001, almost unchanged (except to remove obvious changes of year) in “Data Extract”, for the 25th anniversary.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 08:49:11 +0000
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