Image © Mark Saunders / Simon Pierce, 1989

Tranquil Repose was a top tier Doctor Who tapezine that registered a high of 7th place in the 1988-89 DWAS Fanzine Poll and hailed from the Isle of Wight. It was produced over its eight-issue run by three separate editors, Nick Laister (issues 1-3), Patrick White (4-6) and Mark Saunders (7-8). Interestingly, it appears to have been one of the few tapezines not directly influenced by the output of other tapezine producers, as Nick Laister remembers: “It was made in complete and utter isolation. Does it show? I knew there were other tapezines out there because I subscribed to Celestial Toyroom, but I didn’t listen to them. Perhaps we ended up doing something similar by accident. The reason I did a tapezine and not go for print is that I was much more fascinated at the time with sound. It opened up the potential of including clips from the programme – I had a big collection of old episodes from Australia – and interviews with the cast and crew. Generally, it seemed more fun to produce a fanzine on tape.”

Patrick White, who contributed to the first three issues and became producer from the fourth, remembers those early days of Tranquil Repose with affection: “I met Nick Laister through a close school friend who told me that there was another Doctor Who addict living a few streets away in his home town. So, being the brave 16-year-old that I wish I was now, I asked to be introduced, and a couple of weeks later I was standing on Nick’s doorstep being beckoned in. Nick was a couple of years older than I was, and during our talks about Doctor Who – favourite story/Doctor... you know the drill! – he told me of the DWAS and CT and we talked about making a fanzine, but Nick wanted to do something different! A tapezine... We would advertise in CT and the first Tranquil Repose ad, a hastily felt-tipped, typed and photocopied effort, went off. Another friend of Nick’s – Simon Pierce – was interested in the technical / recording side of it and then, of course, we had to have the content. Having strapped a pair of headphones to a couple of microphones lashed to a lab retort stand – so that clips from the show could be fed in at the appropriate times – we were off and running with a varied mix of articles and of course the main selling point, the clips (varying in quality depending on which generation of audio copy we had managed to obtain). We would read our own articles, reviews, retrospectives and the like and rope friends and family members in to read other bits and pieces. For instance, Nick’s Dad was heard as a particularly northern Professor Stahlman in a ‘Guess the Character’ spot! Another piece that was a little bit different in the opening issue was a two-handed discussion between two fans regarding Destiny of the Daleks, one arguing the case for it being one of the best Who stories and the other the case against.”

The initial idea for Tranquil Repose was Nick’s: “Yes, it was my idea, and I brought in some of my friends who had different levels of interest in Who,” he reveals. “Patrick was a big Who fan; Graeme Wey liked sci-fi, which included Who, but he was not specifically a Who fan – he lived a few doors away from me in Seaview; Simon Pierce was a Blake’s 7 fan, but liked Who, and I knew him from school; Keith Hopkins set up the Isle of Wight DWAS Local Group, and he became involved from Issue 3; and the others (Moray Laing, Simon Harries, and so on) became involved because they bought copies of Tranquil Repose and offered to contribute. We had a good time making Tranquil Repose and I remember it fondly, despite the fact that I seem to have based my presentational style on 1960s Blue Peter. We had great fun doing it, even though sometimes it seemed a little serious. Listening to it now, it isn’t quite as earnest as I expected, with some attempts at humour, which I quite like.”

Tranquil Repose was one of the best-looking tapezines, with attractive cover inserts designed by Simon Pierce, who also worked behind-the-scenes on the ’zine as sound editor. Simon’s eye-catching designs were further enhanced with coloured felt tip pen, applied by hand to the cover of each individual cassette ordered – the mark of a dedicated artist!

Unlike many other tapezines which took a few issues to find their rhythm, Tranquil Repose properly hit the ground running with its first issue in May 1987, boasting several contributors as well as an exclusive interview with writer Johnny Byrne, conducted via letter, with Byrne recording his responses on cassette. “Johnny Byrne was very frank and honest in his replies to some rather banal questions from me!” Nick comments. “I also liked the bit where he brought his children Jasper [then 10] and Barnaby [8] in, which was quite lovely. Most of the people I asked to do interviews agreed. The one I remember being a bit blunt was Anthony Ainley, who replied using my stamped addressed envelope and just scribbled on my letter the words, ‘Alas no time’.”

The second issue of Tranquil Repose followed in August 1987. Patrick White remembers the thinking behind it: “Issue 2 was produced around the time that [Doctor Who producer] John Nathan-Turner was really being vilified by a certain section of fans and Nick wanted to have a two-sided discussion about JN-T and the ups and downs of his time on the show. Nick and I debated this subject and the recording headlined the second issue. The general feedback that we received and the people who bothered to suggest articles for the next issue was certainly positive enough for us to produce another issue and the orders came piling in from there.”

The interviewees in Issue 2 were The Trial of a Time Lord’s Inquisitor and ‘Oxo Mum’ Lynda Bellingham and the well-respected Doctor Who artist Alister Pearson. Pearson was in fact another Isle of Wight resident, and he would become a part of the regular team over the subsequent three issues. Today, Nick Laister considers that “Alister should probably have presented TR as he has the best voice out of all of us.”

Two months later in October 1987, Tranquil Repose Issue 3 was released, dedicated – perhaps bravely – to Doctor Who’s arguably unpopular historical stories. Alongside features looking at what makes a historical story a historical story, a book review of David Whitaker’s classic Doctor Who and the Crusaders novelisation, and a light-hearted study of ‘The Hystericals’ – the historicals which were laced with humour, such as The Romans, The Myth Makers and The Gunfighters – the issue sported an interview with former producer Innes Lloyd. In addition to discussing his era and his thoughts on historical stories, Innes also paid tribute to Second Doctor actor Patrick Troughton, who had died on 28th March 1987.

Nick Laister stepped down as Tranquil Repose producer after putting the finishing touches on this third issue, leaving the island to attend university in Edinburgh. Having handed over the editorship to team member Patrick White, who also assumed the distribution duties for Issue 3, Nick continued supplying articles remotely. However, these recordings were not as clear as those he had previously made at home: “I recorded these items on a portable recorder through a built-in microphone and then posted the tapes down to the Isle of Wight! Of course they would have lost a generation when being copied, presumably by Patrick. I would have continued had I not gone to university so far away from home (it’s a long way – 371 miles by air and 461 miles by road – from the Isle of Wight to Edinburgh), so we could have been rivalling The Master Tape’s 24 issues! It was a bit of a social thing. We would all get together to record it and have a good time whilst doing it.”

Whilst living and studying in Scotland, Nick befriended the long-distance TR contributor Moray Laing and became involved in two projects, one of which saw the light of day and another which ultimately came to nothing. The latter was a spin-off from Tranquil Repose entitled Doctor Who – The Documentary, which was to be a “nostalgic look back at Doctor Who’s past in an attempt to bring back the magic of [its] golden years.” It was announced as forthcoming in Tranquil Repose Issue 4 (January 1988) and was to feature extensive clips from all eras of the show. Sadly, Nick is unsure about just how far the idea got: “The 25th Anniversary tape almost certainly never happened. I have no recollection of it at all!” Patrick White concurs: “I do vaguely remember it being proposed, but would assume it didn’t come to fruition due to the usual lack of time.” A promised CT advert failed to materialise and Doctor Who – The Documentary has to go down as an unrealised project.

The other announcement that Nick made in Tranquil Repose Issue 4 met with markedly more success – a charity event involving actor Colin Baker: “The Colin Baker event definitely happened,” Nick confirms. “I organised a sponsored walk, The Who Charity Walk Scotland, from Edinburgh Castle to Dunfermline. Colin supported us with publicity in the Edinburgh local press and we had a really good turnout. Colin provided quotes, statements and photographs for the press, and was very engaged with it. Colin himself didn’t attend, but supported the event from a distance. I remember we raised more than £1,000, which was a good amount in those days. It all went to Colin’s charity for cot death research.”

Tranquil Repose, meanwhile, was under new management, and Patrick White was settling in as the new producer: “I don’t think there was any sort of official handover – it just naturally seemed to come my way. I had done some of the duplicating of tapes to ease the burden on Nick for the first issues, so I just upgraded to putting it together. I don’t feel I approached it any differently – or really had a personal stamp to put on it. Why mess with a successful formula? The mixture of articles and clips was always the star. It’s up to the listeners to decide if there was a discernable change between our production styles. The actual process was usually a lot of fun. Getting together to record sometimes ended up with lots of outtakes and you’d wonder how we ever managed to get an issue together. I also enjoyed trying to get the right clips to fit an article. There was a great community spirit with all of us who worked on it. The ‘recording studios’ were usually someone’s bedroom, with a ‘do not disturb’ notice taped to the door. We’d photocopy the library’s Letraset books and cut the letters out to make the inlays. It was always a pleasure to get articles though the post, and even better if the author had recorded them. I corresponded with some of the article authors for some years after, too. It was just fun and Doctor Who with good friends... although the duplicating could sometimes keep you up all night! As I recall, Tranquil Repose 6 hit the 70-something mark for orders which was a good amount for a little bedroom-based production. The duplication in those days was in real time and those 70 would have taken nearly four and a half days of tape-to-tape copying!” And, of course, that’s to say nothing of the time spent packaging them up and posting them off...

In common with Nick, Patrick White chose to leave after the “magic three issues”, as Nick refers to the length of stay, a little nod to the advice that Patrick Troughton famously gave to Peter Davison went they met in the BBC Television Centre car park in 1981. “Like Nick, I stepped down because I no longer had the time to devote to it, sadly, and I was reticent to leave it in limbo.” A replacement had to be found.

The choice for editor number three was Mark Saunders. “He, as I recall, lived next to a tea rooms in Godshill on the Isle of Wight, and I shared old VHSs with him,” Nick reveals. “I had contacted him sometime before and asked if he wanted to become involved with Tranquil Repose.” Patrick thinks this initial contact is what ultimately led to Mark eventually taking over the reins of the Isle of Wight’s only Doctor Who tapezine: “After Nick mentioned TR to him, Mark submitted some music and other items to me – I remember having a tape of demos for theme music from him. Mark had also really impressed with professional sound design and clips editing in a couple of pieces he’d submitted earlier – the Genesis of the Daleks clips compilation at the start of Issue 5, with the theme music running underneath, came from him – and so he seemed to be a natural choice to take TR forward.”

Mark’s connection to Doctor Who goes back to his earliest days, something that he credits with gratitude to his father, who watched the series regularly. Mark remembers, “I was almost literally a ‘behind-the-sofa’ viewer back in the 1960s – I would wedge myself in the gap between an armchair and the sofa alongside it, where the monsters couldn’t see me, and watch from there! Who this ‘Doctor’ was, where he came from, the time and space travel in the TARDIS machine, the ever-changing stories and settings, and, perhaps most of all, the monsters, were what kept me watching, casually at first (I was very young!). My first memory of Doctor Who is the cliffhanger of Episode Six of The Invasion (1968), where the Cybermen throw off the manhole covers and emerge from the sewers onto the streets of London. I really became hooked, though, when it went to colour and Jon Pertwee arrived. Tom Baker taking over just increased my enjoyment.”

By the early 1980s, Mark had joined the Doctor Who Appreciation Society. After seeing Tranquil Repose advertised in the Celestial Toyroom newsletter, he purchased it on a regular basis. “I’m not sure I bought all the issues, but I think I jumped in fairly early. I sort of fanboyed the TR creators, and moved to the Isle of Wight in 1988, so it all just seemed to happen like dominoes falling. Up until then, I’d only ever done fan stuff from a distance, being keen on the series, but quite a shy child. I was always writing about Doctor Who in one way or another since I learned to write, as the show generated strong opinions and ideas in me. I produced outlines of fan-fiction ideas, articles, letters. I wrote a few things for Doctor Who Bulletin in the late 1980s, including my view that the National Viewers and Listeners Association had ruined Doctor Who permanently with its unwarranted criticism for political reasons in the 1970s. I wrote to DWM regularly as well, and I had a letter – in which I praised Remembrance of the Daleks – read out on the BBC’s Points of View in 1988. Around this time, I became a fan of Tranquil Repose. So, when Patrick suggested in Issue 6 that TR was going into ‘suspended animation’ for a while, rather than have it stop there, I volunteered to fill the breach, knowing that I at least had the technical ability and access to equipment to do it. Being a fan of a thing is no guarantee of the ability to produce something even slightly as good, but I decided to try and was welcomed on board. There was a certain amount of hand-holding from Nick and Patrick, who helpfully made suggestions and offered advice – but nothing was imposed on me. I think they were both pleased that someone was continuing Tranquil Repose – as was I.”

“I loved producing Tranquil Repose. I’ve always enjoyed playing around with sound, since recording soundtracks from TV back in the early 1970s on the family’s portable cassette recorder as this was pre-VHS. I’d listen back to the recordings and memorise dialogue – Starsky & Hutch and Kojak are two shows I definitely remember recording and listening back to repeatedly! I had a Tascam Porta-One 4-track cassette portastudio that I used for my own songwriting in a spare room, so I just used that for Tranquil Repose. Creating an issue of TR was a lot less complicated than recording a song as fewer tracks were needed, so I was able to whip up something reasonable. I pulled together articles that I’d recorded myself or which had been provided by others, and added various Doctor Who soundtracks and effects to enhance them. I created a TR theme on my synthesiser, which basically started as my version of the Doctor Who theme and then morphed into a variation on it. I also created some simple stereo two-word jingles to punctuate here and there between articles. I enjoyed the technical side of it immensely and, though I’m far from expert, I think the result was largely of a good quality. As for duplication, luckily I had a double cassette deck unit bought for me as a birthday present, so it was quite easy: broadcasting cassette in slot 1, receiving cassette in slot 2. However, I found that for best quality I had to record the cassettes in real time and not use the speed dub facility or the sound quality would drop off noticeably. That meant everything took longer to copy, but it was worth it.”

Mark’s first issue was, aside from two articles, from Nick Laister and Simon Harries respectively, more or less a one-man show. “I don’t think there was a huge amount of unused content to hand over from Patrick – possibly just those two things – and in any case I harboured a desire to see what I could do!” Mark comments. “I had plenty of ideas that had arisen while listening to earlier issues of TR, and I just wanted to continue and build on the established ‘TR style’, so it was just a case of writing and recording them. I did put out requests for reactions and contributions on TR 7, though I had no practical facility to assist people in recording stuff, so it was only folk who literally had the necessary sound equipment and could already record articles who responded with content. And of course that was quicker to achieve and therefore more practical. After my first issue, I was happy to receive letters, positive comments and contributions (by post – this was pre-internet!), which I was happy to include in TR 8. I was certainly bolstered by this and was keen to continue. I imposed no specific editorial policy. I was quite happy for people to present and discuss virtually anything about Doctor Who, as long as the content was well-considered, good-natured and clearly explained.”

One of the contributions for Issue 8 came from a Tranquil Repose listener who was also a member of the Bath Doctor Who Local Group. The group had interviewed Jon Pertwee and the recording was offered as a potential TR feature. Mark comments: “I was grateful for whatever people were moved to post in, and was chuffed that we had an interview to include, and especially one with Jon Pertwee, my first Doctor as a full-time fan! Amazing. I remember dividing the interview as it was quite long, and I think we ended up with two different main topics that Jon was speaking about, which was good. It slotted into two parts nicely.”

Mark stayed on for two issues before announcing at the end of Tranquil Repose Issue 8 that the time had come for him to leave, inviting listeners to write in if they felt they could possibly take over the producer role. His memories of the end of Tranquil Repose – and indeed the specific reason for stepping down – are somewhat vague after more than thirty years: “I think it was because I’d just started a new job, having had to change from the job I thought I was going to do on an ongoing basis when I moved – long story. There was a lot of training and acclimatising involved, so I just knew I wouldn’t have the time to do TR properly any more. I’d had a go at hosting two issues, but I was happy to hand it on again, to a new host. However, no one was able to take over, so sadly I became the ‘John Nathan-Turner’ of the TR tapezine – it ended on my watch! Luckily, I don’t remember there being any contributions unused at the end – I’m pretty sure that I used up everything I was sent. I fitted my own stuff around that to finish off the issue. Actually, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who submitted an article, interview, suggestion, comment or contributed in any other way to TR. You were great and made it what it was!”

“It’s amazing really how these little projects are still remembered,” Nick Laister comments. “Nice to know, though. I have not really been ‘inside’ Doctor Who fandom over the years, but I still love the show enough to buy all the Blu-rays when they are released, and have stayed in touch with the modern era. I did plan a CD reissue of Tranquil Repose back in 2011/12. I had just got back in touch with Alister and then later Patrick, after many years of no contact with them both. I floated with them the idea of doing it to raise money for a farm for disabled children that I was building at the time. Sadly, my commitments in making the farm a reality resulted in the Tranquil Repose reissue project not happening. I was thinking of doing a ‘best of’ compilation, sourced from the issues that Patrick, Alister and I did, but nothing later as we were not in touch with Mark. However, I would have tried to contact him if we had got things up and running. Interviews would have been the main feature with some of the best bits from the rest of it. I even got as far as getting Alister Pearson to design a cover and new logo, which was fantastic. But sadly it never got off the ground.”

“The highlight of editing TR at the time was being part of the fanzine community and getting good reviews in other ’zines and contributing to the Doctor Who world,” says Patrick White. “If that sounds facetious, forgive me! It was a fun thing to do and I really enjoyed it.”

For Mark Saunders, it was the technical side of producing Tranquil Repose that really held the greatest appeal: “I enjoyed that side of it immensely – the aspects that involved playing around with sound, using my voice, and the satisfaction of creating and finishing something artistic like that. The TR theme, jingles, voice recording, mixing in SFX and soundtracks, and the presenting, were all huge fun. I also enjoyed the writing of articles, but I was less interested in the admin side of things, and the aspect of being the producer. I tend to be more of a Mr. Spock than a Captain Kirk!”

The first issue of Tranquil Repose (May 1987) included an interview with scriptwriter Johnny Byrne, who was very honest in his taped responses to Nick Laister’s written questions. He was particularly outspoken about what happened with what proved to be his final transmitted Doctor Who story, Warriors of the Deep: “When I was writing it, I felt that I was writing something that was slightly different in terms of Doctor Who. It was one that, because of the story, necessarily had a message to it, the message being that people who live on a divided world, in a divided situation, where each have the means to instantly obliterate the other, rather makes a nonsense of human activity. It’s a unique situation – it’s never been so in the past. There’s always been the threat of wars – horrible wars – but there’s never been the threat of instant global annihilation, and I found, almost by accident, a means whereby I could tell something of that situation. It had a strong story – what I would call a ‘nuts and bolts’ story. It was one that dealt very much with a hard, fast situation that develops over a short period of time that has limited objectives, although the stakes, obviously, in this context were very, very high. The production of the story was very good in its basic design and what went badly wrong for me, I think, stemmed in a large part from the direction and the casting. I thought Ingrid Pitt was hopelessly miscast. The Myrka was a farce. It had no presence. If I remember rightly, it was played by two people inside a costume, rather like a pantomime horse. It lost all credibility and, of course, when you’re structuring a story that has an episodic element in it, when you work towards the end of an episode, you try to give it a feeling of a cliffhanger. In one of the episodes, I had the Doctor and Tegan, I think, trapped in an airlock with this fearsome creature from which there seemed to be no escape. Of course, looking at the thing, one felt sorry for it, not frightened by it, and in the scene where Ingrid Pitt encounters it, it reached its final lunacy and stupidity as far as I was concerned – and I give the director a very black mark for handling much of that. There were other changes to the script as well, which I didn’t entirely approve of, but that’s all history now and I would rate Warriors of the Deep as an awfully interesting notion and idea that went very badly wrong in its execution.”

As part of an audio letter included in Tranquil Repose Issue 3 (October 1987), listener Kevin Galliers recalled his earliest memories of Doctor Who: “I started watching Doctor Who in 1973 with Jon Pertwee’s story, The Green Death. I was lucky enough to watch the location filming for it. It was done in a little village called Deri, which is about a mile from where I live. I didn’t get to meet any of the cast, but it was interesting to watch. One scene I remember very clearly was when the Doctor had gone to Metebelis III and a creature swooped down on him as he climbed some rocks. For this sequence, the BBC had hired a crane. The claws of the creature were suspended on a wooden frame [from] which the claws were hanging on wires and lowered into shot. It was amazing how effective it looked on screen – as it didn’t look like anything [special] while I was watching it being filmed. That’s the magic of television, of course. The colliery has now gone and the farmhouse – the Nut Hutch in the series – is all that remains.”

One of the highlights of Patrick White’s editorship was his interview with Doctor Who director Andrew Morgan, which appeared in Issue 5 in June 1988. “His next story, Remembrance of the Daleks hadn’t been screened then, so it was a nice scoop!” comments Patrick today. After explaining his route to becoming a director, he compared the experience of helming Doctor Who and the TVS drama serial Knights of God, which he had directed seven episodes of immediately before: “Knights of God was all on film, so everything was done shot-by-shot. Every shot was lit, thought about, carefully rehearsed on location, and done. Of course, with Doctor Who, the studio side of it anyway, is all multi-camera recording, and the exterior scenes are done on video rather than on film. Also the subject matter was totally different. The casting was different, the whole approach to the job was different. I didn’t approach Knights of God as a sci-fi thing at all... even though it was set in the future, in 2020... It was a hard-hitting adventure story, that’s how I tried to make it. Doctor Who is completely different... The filming [for Time and the Rani], the outside broadcast side, was all done on location in a quarry near Frome in Somerset. It rained the entire time, so the Lakertyans, with all their make-up, it kept running all the time. The poor make-up [people] – and wardrobe [too], with all that long hair. Poor Kate O’Mara had a rotten time with her make-up. It was freezing cold. That was the first thing... Then the bubbles were particularly difficult to do because I didn’t quite understand what was going to happen afterwards in the effects workshop. I found it quite odd filming something that I couldn’t see and that I knew was going to be put on afterwards. On Easter Monday, we did some filming down at Waterloo [for Remembrance of the Daleks] – some outside broadcast – and it involved a few explosions. One was underneath Waterloo East railway station under a big bridge; the station is above the road, as it were. There was a big explosion there... and smoke billowed out everywhere. It was all perfectly safe, but it was a big explosion with a lot of smoke – and of course all the smoke alarms on Waterloo East railway station went and I think about six fire engines turned up. By the time they arrived, all they could see were three Daleks as the dust had settled, three empty Daleks underneath the thing, and that was that! But I don’t think there was any question of worrying anybody – we took great care to go around every house in the district and put a leaflet through the doors, saying there would be some explosions and that there was nothing to worry about. The police knew about it. The ambulances knew about it. Obviously, when we do something like this, we try to do it in a professional way.”

In Issue 7, Mark Saunders invited listeners to send in their opinions on a subject that in recent years has become a hot topic in Doctor Who fandom: “Was William Hartnell the First Doctor?” He also gave his own view: “You might say, yes of course, but I’m not so sure. Admittedly, in The Five Doctors, Richard Hurndall – playing Hartnell’s Doctor says, ‘As it happens, I am the Doctor. The original, you might say!’ But I tend to believe that he is only the original in television terms. As evidence, I cite the much misinterpreted scene at the end of The Brain of Morbius, where the Doctor has his mental duel with Morbius. We see Morbius push the Doctor’s mind back and back, and the faces of previous Doctors flash across. Jon, Patrick, William, and then more faces appear, showing older and older Doctors. This is why Morbius declares, ‘How far, Doctor? How long have you lived? Your puny mind is powerless against the strength of Morbius. Back, back to your beginning!’ These lines clinch the argument for me. Morbius, being a Time Lord, knows of regeneration, but his mind is so overwhelmed by the sheer number of previous Doctors, that it is perhaps this momentary confusion which causes Morbius’ brain seizure, and lets the Doctor – who was at that point losing – finally win the battle. I prefer this view as it opens up the Doctor Who mythos backwards from Hartnell as well as forwards – and begs the question, how has the Doctor had so many lives? The mystery of his pre-Hartnell days would make for fascinating speculation. Maybe Lady Peinforte’s words in Silver Nemesis have some relevance? Now, you might point out to me that the faces shown were Hinchcliffe, Camfield and others working on Doctor Who at the time, and thus that it was simply an in-joke, but many film makers like to appear in their work – Alfred Hitchcock being the obvious example. For artistic reasons or even economic ones, it was easier and cheaper to use their own faces in The Brain of Morbius than to hire several actors to provide the still faces that the story required. So, I throw down the gauntlet. Can anyone come up with a definitive argument on the First Doctor? I’m convinced I’m right on The Brain of Morbius. Can you prove me wrong? Let’s have a good old brainstorm on this, quoting examples from the programme and come up with some kind of reasoned conclusion.”

Writing in the Audio Zine Scene section of Celestial Toyroom (December 1987) Hans Allen cast his ears over the third Tranquil Repose: “[The] Historicals Special is nothing short of brilliant. For a start, I have to hand it to the producers of this audiozine for daring to produce an issue solely about historicals, as this would well cost them a lot of listeners as they are not the most popular stories. The in-depth, solid articles look at the eleven stories from all angles, bringing to light new and interesting views. The interview with Innes Lloyd was also exceptionally well handled, resisting the temptation to talk only about Cybermen and Daleks, but also finding out his views on historicals, the stories he phased out. Tranquil Repose’s past failing has been its production values, which have been less than smooth, but on this tape the problems have been ironed out to make a smooth and lively tape.”

Tranquil Repose was later reviewed by Roy Stevens on The Master Tape Issue 6 (June 1988): “The first noise to assail my eardrums was a jingle-type piece of music, followed by Nick Laister, who claimed this to be the last issue, before being eradicated by Patrick White, the new producer, and then things start to progress. Being a UNIT special issue, reviews of UNIT stories abound. First up is a general overview of the UNIT stories, which is a well thought out and well timed review. When I say ‘well timed’, I mean it doesn’t last too long, and fortunately it is not just a simple recital of all the plots. Part 1 of the overview is followed almost immediately by a Three Doctors review. This archetypal article does suffer from the story-telling syndrome, with a few opinions and lots of clips thrown in for good measure. The Season 24 opinion spot by the production team is concise and interesting and, on the whole, it is quite right. It is a well executed article and at least the criticism is constructive. [On Side 2, there’s] an interview, which – if you can hear it – is with Lesley Standring, talking about Doctor Who – The Illustrated A-Z, an informative little piece which helps to balance the tapezine and add extra interest instead of letting it struggle on reviewing until the batteries run out. After the clarity of all the previous articles, it is surprising that the interview is verging on the inaudible, without fiddling with the volume, but this does not in any way detract from it. The letters section featured on the tape rounded the issue off well, leaving just enough time for a list of contributors and the closing theme – a nice touch.”

Brian J. Robb cast his ears over Mark Saunders’ first issue of Tranquil Repose for Celestial Toyroom (March 1989): “This is the first tapezine I’ve ever heard, and it’s a very impressive effort. I’ve been meaning to order a few simply to see how the audio medium is used by tape producers. Mark Saunders has done a good job in this stereo production of blending spoken commentary, music (home produced and from various episodes) and clips from televised stories. This last feature is the main advantage audio ’zines have over magazines: they can illustrate points with a direct quotation from the episode, including inflections of speech! TR 7 includes in its 90-minute running time a review of Terror of the Autons, which includes a little too much plot recitation for my liking – more critical analysis would be better; a comparison between ’60s and ’80s Cybermen; a very impressive report on the Brigadier by Simon Harries, making very good use of clips, music and the spoken word; Mark Saunders claiming that Hartnell was not the first Doctor; Nicholas Laister reviewing Season 25, sparingly illustrated with well chosen clips; reviews of Brian Hayles’ Ice Warriors stories – again a bit too much plot explanation – and a review of Time Trace, another tapezine. All in all, this is a very impressive production, with a hand coloured cassette insert complementing the tape. Presentation could be a bit punchier, more snappy and upbeat, but that’s a small point. It actually takes a lot more imagination to put together a tape than a fanzine.”

Nick Laister went on to become a planning consultant advising many of the UK’s most well known theme parks and attractions, initially as a director of RPS Group plc then as the Managing Director of Laister Planning, a specialist planning consultancy in Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire. Nick also owns the award-winning visitor attraction Fairytale Farm, just outside Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, which he opened to the public in 2013. This was the UK’s first attraction to be designed around the needs of children with disabilities, but open to all. Nick is also founder and former chair of a charity, the Dreamland Heritage Trust, which was responsible for securing funding for the reopening of Dreamland Amusement Park, in Margate, Kent. Nick still enjoys watching both classic and new Doctor Who.

Having completed his Youth Training Scheme placement with the library service during his time producing Tranquil Repose, Patrick White was taken on permanently by the Isle of Wight Council and has – in his words – “even more of a one line CV than JN-T, although I have moved up to Senior Library Assistant!” Patrick enjoys attending conventions and is a regular helper at DWAS events and can often be seen hurrying guests between autographs and photo sessions. He is really chuffed when a photo of his gets into Doctor Who Magazine with a credit. He remains a fan of both classic and new Who. “It’s all the same thing, anyway,” he says.

Mark Saunders left school and became an office worker, where he met the woman he would spend the next forty years (and counting) with, has had contributions printed in DWB, DWM, Radio Times, newspapers and the Avengers book Anticlockwise, writes occasional short stories (as yet unpublished), creates songs, draws cartoons (some published!), reads Cthulhu novels and vintage US comic books, enjoys tabletop and video gaming, and once ran the UK Moonlighting TV series fan club. His songs appear on Bandcamp and YouTube – where he occasionally writes and performs comedy sketches (for example, Gavin Dumpleton Sings Christmas!) – and he hopes to get into voice acting and / or vocal presenting in the future. He can currently be found hosting The First Four Doctors Facebook page. His interest in Doctor Who is now mostly confined to those four Doctors and the 1963-1981 period, though he does watch its 21st century iteration. He tends to consider it as a separate entity from the Classic Series and finds it “at times rushed, superficial, undramatic, over-complicated and quite forgettable once you’ve seen it”, though he is happy that the new series has its own fans. He’s spending the next year identifying as a millionaire in the forlorn hope this might magically help pay his bills during the cost of living crisis.

Moray Laing later wrote comic and prose stories for the official Doctor Who annuals published in 2013 and 2015 and served from 2006 as editor of Doctor Who Adventures, the official tie-in Doctor Who magazine aimed at younger readers.

Tranquil Repose was not only an excellent tapezine, it was deservedly rewarded with one of the highest Fanzine Poll placings for a Doctor Who tapezine – 7th in 1988/89. It was consistently well produced and captured the enthusiasm and community spirit of fans based on the Isle of Wight, one of the most beautiful parts of the United Kingdom. As someone who knew the Island well from family holidays spent there during my childhood, Tranquil Repose always had a frisson of the Island for me. While the tapezine’s geographical location wasn’t much played upon, listening to issues I’d be transported back there in my mind to fight the dinosaurs in Blackgang Chine, scale the walls of Carisbrooke Castle or wander around the corridors of the Brading Wax Museum – where the stern-looking Queen Victoria tapped her toe via an animatronic mechanism and scared the living daylights out of me at the age of eight or nine. But Tranquil Repose didn’t need to rely on such gimmickry – it was superbly presented and was interesting right from the off. The issues were always well thought out, the opinion and information clearly disseminated, intelligent but never pompous, and the interviews excellent and surprisingly varied – I don’t recall any other publications that included an interview with artist Lesley Standring, for instance, the author of Doctor Who – The Illustrated A-Z (W.H. Allen, 1985). Many of these interviews are of great interest now, many decades on, particularly those with Innes Lloyd and Johnny Byrne, both of whom are now long gone. At the most basic level, Tranquil Repose was one of those tapezines that as a fan of Doctor Who you didn’t want to miss, that you knew would always be worth sending off your blank C-90 cassette for. Three editors, eight issues, barely a step misplaced. Top notch.

Alan Hayes