Five Against the Fiends

[purplecat]

This is from the inside back cover of the Radio Times 20th Anniversary special, which the sharp-eyed will observe has not survived well. Roger Woddis was, apparently, a poet who regularly wrote for the Radio Times though I have no memory of this. One wonders if he was a fan of some kind, or if he was supplied with a list of potential monsters and so on to include.


Five Against the Fiends

Out of the mists of imagination,
Passing the limits of time and space,
Tardis appeared from a distance planet,
Shifting our minds from their normal base -
Magic medicine and immortal Doctor,
Strong in defence of the human race.

Nothing seemed real in that far November,
Nemesis lurked at the garden gate,
Friends were forgotten and jobs abandoned,
All our priorities had to wait:
Day-to-day problems are unimportant
When we are facing an awful fate.

How many light-years has Tardis travelled?
How many monsters have chilled the blood?
Daleks and Cybermen, Quarks and Zygons,
Robots and renegades swell then flood,
Dragons and snakes have been fought and vanquished,
Master-plans nipped in their evil bud.

Five fearless Doctors had brave companions,
Sarah and Leela and Liz and Jo;
As in the world that is all around us,
Horrors and heroines come and go.
Wickedness aches with a rage to conquer,
Goodness demands an eternal foe.

Here is a reason for celebration -
Toast 20 years in your coke or wine:
Time Lords are part of a nation's culture,
Nor shall the children forget K-9.
Children? There's nobody, six or 60,
Heedless of shivers along the spine.

This is then world of the scaly creature,
WOTAN computer and canine pet,
Fantasy bred from our fear of danger,
Dreams that reflect the imagined threat:
We are the noble ones, they the evil -
Hail Doctor Who, who is with us yet!

ROGER WODDIS

Comments

[john_amend_all]

I do remember seeing Woddis's poems, though the only one I can recall in any detail was about Yes, Prime Minister, pastiching Kipling's The Ballad of East and West. In fact I think I encountered it before the Kipling original.

[jesuswasbatman]

I think anyone who remembered WOTAN in 1983 was a fan.

[purplecat]

sir_guinglain has pointed out he actually wrote an episode of The Prisoner so I think we can safely put him in the fan category!

[sir_guinglain]

Woddis also wrote an episode of The Prisoner.

[purplecat]

Oh yes! I remember noticing that on the Wikipedia page and then promptly forgetting it. It would suggest at least a passing familiarity with 60s Who in that case.

[liadt]

Aw, kind of sweet:) Ta Roger even if you only did it for the money!

[purplecat]

parrot_knight has pointed out that Woddis wrote an episode of The Prisoner so we can probably assume he was at least a bit of a fan.

[liadt]

'Prisoner' and poetry! That's a cool thing to know.