Second paragraph of third chapter:

“I became fascinated with the Daleks at an early age. I remember in the early 1980s, being quite disturbed by children’s television programmes such as Jigsaw and Chockablock — things that were supposed to be fun, completely freaked me out, while things that were designed to be terrifying — like the Daleks — enthralled me.[“]

I remember going to the Doctor Who exhibition in Blackpool in 1977, when I would have been ten; it was a subterranean chamber full of Doctor Who monsters, and I bought the new novelisation of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, the very first Doctor Who book that I bought for myself. My memories of exactly what was on display are dim.

Not so for the contributors to Blackpool Remembered, a lovely full-colour commemoration of the exhibition which ran from 1974 to 1984. There’s a loving recreation of the exhibition space, which was updated each year to bring in more recent monsters – and these were genuine BBC props, with only a couple of Daleks specially made for Blackpool. There are extensive memories by fans who kept more careful notes and photographs than I did, including a couple who have gone on to become bigger names in the Whoniverse, such as Steve Cole and Matt Fitton. It’s a great example of how to reconstruct a purely physical and temporary display space after almost four decades.

There is a great interview with Julie Jones, the Doctor Who production office staffer who masterminded the whole thing; but disappointingly, we don’t get much from the female fan perspective. Lots of mums and sisters and a few girlfriends appear in the photographs; I don’t think we hear directly from any of them. I guess that reflects the resources available to the editor, but it’s an unfortunate gap. (Also everyone seems to be white.)

Still, it’s a lovely production which you can download for free from here.