Image © Gary Wales, 1984

Zero Room Audiozine was produced by John Ryan in association with fellow members of the DWAS South Surrey Local Group, under the banner Castrovalva Creations. The ‘repertory company’ of Local Group members heard on most issues included John, David Balston, Graeme Balston, Simon Davies, Ian Edmond, David Hodson and Gary Wales, who also served as graphic designer from Issue 4 onwards. It was one of the most successful Doctor Who audio fanzines ever produced and this – and John Ryan’s voluntary work on the DWAS Executive as Publicity Officer – led to many top fanzine writers and editors, such as Paul Cornell, Simon Lydiard and Gary Russell, becoming involved at varying stages from midway in the run. Despite the heights to which it quickly rose, it was also something of an oddity – an audiozine that began its life in 1983 as a standard printed fanzine. The first issue was a 20-page A5-sized magazine, just one of a mind-boggling number of similar publications on offer to Doctor Who fans at that time.

“I was running the South Surrey Local Group of DWAS, which covered most of Surrey, North East Hampshire and a big chunk of Berkshire,” recalls John Ryan. “We originally met in each others’ houses, then discovered the brilliant South Hill Park Arts Centre in Bracknell, which had a small cinema room with the ability to project VHS tapes on a cinema-size screen. We met once a month or so in that space and clubbed together for the hire fee. Friendships blossomed and the inevitable idea of collaborating on a fanzine came up. A rather sad-looking photocopied ’zine called Zero Room began, which was terrible, especially when compared to some of the terrific stuff around, such as Shada, Skaro and Aggedor, among others.”

The cover of Zero Room in its short-lived print incarnation
Image © John Ryan and Simon Davies, 1983

The first printed issue, edited by John Ryan and Simon Davies, was launched in the DWAS’ monthly Celestial Toyroom newsletter in April 1983. The Zero Room title was inspired by references made in the opening Peter Davison serial, Castrovalva, and right from the initial, solitary foray into print, the names of a number of features were drawn from that story, with the news reports being dubbed Event One and the reviews supplement being called Shardovan, with a bookish tone and its writers presumably donning some ludicrous headgear! This practice would later be carried over into Zero Room’s audio incarnation. Amongst the other content in the printed fanzine was Part One of The Fugitive – fan fiction in which the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa arrive in the middle of a conference of the Daleks’ enemies on the star-liner Jetsam – while Relative Dimensions cast an eye over science fiction other than Doctor Who, and Dr. Who-USA revealed Rosalinda Arias’ experiences as an American fan.

While the venture had proved that the Local Group could drag themselves away from the comfy seats of the South Hill Park Arts Centre and produce something as a team, the results had been disappointing and, even before the issue was finished, Zero Room’s bold future was decided. John Ryan had come up with the idea of a “radio ’zine”: “I’d done work experience in a few radio stations and used to go to Radio 210 in Reading during school holidays and on some weekends and was fascinated by the medium.” With his heart set upon a career in radio, shifting Zero Room over to audio cassette was a logical step; it combined his love of Doctor Who and interest in radio and provided an excellent opportunity to develop skills and techniques that would benefit him in his chosen career.

Readers of the printed fanzine were given fair warning, as page 10 of Zero Room Issue 1 was given over to an announcement, headed “Zero Room 2 about to go where no ’zine’s gone before” in stencilled writing. The declaration continued, “The next issue, Zero Room 2, is to pioneer a brand new method of ’zine presentation, never before used by the fanzine producers. A new method that will enhance presentation and make the ’zine ten times better than this, our first attempt. That’s all we are prepared to say at the moment, but you can be sure that when Zero Room 2 materialises... it will be totally unique.”

Plans were hatched for the move to audio, and with a lightning fast turnaround, the awkwardly titled Zero Room 2: Audio Fanzine 1 – which sounded more like a football scoreline than a fanzine – debuted just two months after the printed Issue 1, being advertised in June 1983.

However, even in this short space of time, John Ryan and the Zero Room team found themselves suddenly in the position of looking more like bandwagoners than pioneers, as John notes: “To my dismay, someone beat us to it! Technically, we weren’t the first.”

In May 1983, David J. Howe’s Dr. Who: Tapezine 1 had launched, much to the surprise and chagrin of the people behind Zero Room, who had been pipped to the post by a single month. There should be no accusations of plagiarism levelled at John and the South Surrey group, who had devised and recorded their “radio ’zine” in pioneering fashion, unaware that David was simultaneously working on a similar project.

The first two audio editions of Zero Room, in common with Dr. Who: Tapezine, ran to modest durations. The transition from print to sound caused the text story The Fugitive to be reworked as a radio play and this was serialised in three parts (two of which featured on the first audio issue, with the concluding instalment appearing on the second). The first audio issue was intended to have Doctor Who share the limelight with Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but due to unforeseen technical problems, the feature was postponed and the running time of the first issue was therefore curtailed, running to just half an hour (one side of a C-60 cassette). The half-hour format was repeated for the subsequent issue. David Balston remembers that the duration of these early issues was arrived at because “At the time, tapezines hadn’t been done before and half an hour seemed like a good ‘Radio 4 length’!”

Castrovalva Creations’ first special issue of Zero Room was the third on audio and celebrated the twentieth anniversary of Doctor Who. This landmark for the series was rightly deemed deserving of in-depth coverage and prompted the team behind the ’zine to extend the running time of Issue 3 to 90 minutes. Although Issue 4 reverted to a C-60, all remaining issues from the fifth onwards adopted this extended format, which was favoured by most other tapezines.

In terms of content, the special issue featured reviews of the first and then most recent Doctor Who stories transmitted, An Unearthly Child and The King’s Demons, a look at Marvel’s Doctor Who Monthly, a Local Group discussion about the Daleks, Russ Mould’s Cyber-History, an interview feature submitted by Skaro editor Simon Lydiard featuring Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning and Nicholas Courtney, and The Doctor’s Moriarty, a feature by Gary Russell, the editor of the fanzine Shada. Additionally, there was a comedy feature, Woctor Dho, the Event One Headlines news service and a review of the first two years of Peter Davison’s Doctor by Ian Edmond. “My participation in Zero Room coincided with my full exposure to fandom, especially the jaded anti-JNT stuff, which I temporarily got swept up in,” Ian remembers. “It was only a few months later that I settled down to become the rather affable fan that I hope I still am – and I love 1980s Doctor Who.”

As with many other tapezines, the key to Zero Room’s success was in its regular reinvention. Sound quality was constantly being improved, as was the quality of the features. “Many audiozines were pretty bad quality,” notes David Balston. “I remember being told off by Simon Lydiard for poor quality on Zero Room. Sadly, tape copying really was not the best in those days – and the editing was crude to say the least. I dubbed the tapes originally on a York dual tape music centre and latterly on a JVC portable player. Both have long since given up the ghost.”

The producers even advertised in Celestial Toyroom for – and quickly appointed – a graphic designer to spruce up the Zero Room cassette covers, advertisements and stationery. The successful applicant was Gary Wales, who remembers how he became a part of the team: “I’d responded to the advert that John Ryan had placed in Celestial Toyroom. I called him and that was that – I hadn’t made any artwork outside of my own use before that. But the brief was to design the cassette cover, plus the CT ads for it, of course. I was given a free rein, so that’s why they sort of looked different each time and probably had no relation to the content.” Regardless, the impact in this area brought by Gary Wales was marked, undoubtedly contributing to the tapezine’s rapidly improving profile within fandom.

During the production of the fourth issue, the Zero Room team suffered a tragedy when Simon Davies, one of the four founders of Zero Room, and whose involvement dated back to its days as a printed fanzine, passed away suddenly. Simon had contributed two items to Issue 4, reviewing the feature film WarGames (1983) and Marvel’s Doctor Who Winter Special. “Simon was a few years younger than myself, but he was a lovely guy and quickly became a really good friend,” David Balston comments. “He loved The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and was very popular amongst the Hitchhiker’s fan group – I recall he often wore a HH coat. Therefore he was very keen to do the non-Doctor Who stuff in Zero Room. Simon’s loss was a shock. He got hit by a car walking home from school. He was in hospital, but I think died within a day. All the local group members were at the funeral, so it seemed the right thing to do to carry on the meetings after a short break as we were our own support group. Zero Room never really had a regular schedule, so we just jumped back into it when we were ready.” The fourth issue was dedicated to Simon’s memory, and, as a mark of respect, copies were held back and sent out only after his funeral had taken place.

Over the coming months, Zero Room continued to thrive, and began to figure in the DWAS’ annual fanzine polls, placing 17th in 1984, and rising to an even more creditable 9th a year later. At a time when tapezines were massively outnumbered by those of the printed variety, this must be seen as a great achievement on the part of John Ryan and his team.

Perhaps the biggest claim to fame of Zero Room’s later issues - and quite possibly of any tapezine produced - is that ZR were there right at the birth of Audio Visuals, the fan group that grew into BBV and Big Finish. This all started with ZR presenting the first episode of a drama produced by the Southampton Doctor Who Local Group, The Planet of Death. Written by William Baggs, who would soon after be spearheading Audio Visuals, this audio drama was included on Zero Room 6, and several of those involved would join Bill at Audio Visuals in one capacity or another. Although the second episode of The Planet of Death was never recorded due to the switch to the Audio Visuals project, Zero Room then secured behind-the-scenes access to the early AV productions. John Ryan’s half-hour feature on the Audio Visuals recordings helped launch and publicise the series and captures the genesis of Big Finish. An amazing time capsule. Among those interviewed is Nicholas Briggs, who they had just chosen to play the Doctor in their audio stories, replacing the one-shot Doctor, Stephen Payne. 

The cassette cover insert for Zero Room 7 suggested that Issue 8 would arrive in April 1985 and teased that the contents would include Season 22 Seasonscan, information about the Tra-Con convention and a slightly concerning feature entitled ‘JN-T Reveals All’! It was also suggested that the eighth issue could well be “brought to you by a revised production team. Hide yourselves!” Neither the new ZR personnel or the promised eighth issue arrived.

However, as with many other tapezines, particularly those produced by groups of fans, the friendships forged through making them has led to lifelong connections. This is certainly the case for Gary Wales: “Ironically, John Ryan lived only eight miles away from me – I lived in Fleet and he lived in Camberley. I’d not had any real-life contact with fandom until November ’83 when I’d attended an event hosted by David Howe in, I think, Tolworth. Having contact with similar nerds living nearby meant I joined DWAS Local Group 20, which John was host of. We used to meet at one of the group’s house to view the ‘nth generation’ VHSs doing the rounds a the time. So I sort of fell into recording for ZR as I was a willing horse and enjoyed the taping, using my own two cassette boombox and my family’s hi-fi stack unit to try to get some echo effects to schuzz my section up. Like many others in fandom, I forged relationships that have lasted ever since. Zero Room Audiozine springboarded my fandom and my design career – and both are still fundamental to me today. Simpler and joyful times!”

Zero Room’s first issue – in printed form – clearly failed to impress occasional DWAS fanzine reviewer, Kevin Swann. His July 1983 Fanzines in Focus column in Celestial Toyroom laid heavily into a fanzine called The Leisure Hive and then implied that Zero Room was no better: “[The Leisure Hive] is no more than photocopied A4 sheets clipped together. The advert boasts of an exclusive selection of photos of Sarah Sutton taken between filming of The Visitation. What a let down – it is totally impossible to see a clear image of her. The ’zine has no articles of interest. Heaven help us when Issue 2 comes out. I would like to mention Underworld and some of the newer ’zines like Zero Room, Melkur and TDB, but I would be merely reiterating my comments on The Leisure Hive.” As with all endeavours, lessons were learned, techniques and content were improved – and with the move to audio from the next issue and over the following two years, Zero Room became one of the better regarded Doctor Who tapezines.

Zero Room Issue 4 (January 1984) featured a Listener’s Letter from John G. Moran, who gave his opinion on the previous issue: “The whole issue was a fitting tribute to twenty years of Doctor Who, the best features being the Pertwee, Courtney, Manning interview, the article on the Master, and the analysis of Peter Davison’s years in the series. The Pertwee era interview provided some very fascinating views, especially Katy Manning’s idea of repeating one story from each year. The family atmosphere was truly borne out by their feelings about the late Roger Delgado. The Cybermen feature was interesting and the Marvel history proved to be a very down-to-earth reminder of the magazine’s ups and downs. Finally, the discussion is a good idea and should be kept on in future issues as it is a very different form of article than the usual analyses, reviews or interviews.”

The Tapezines in Focus section of The Logopolitan Issue 1 (February 1984) included a brief review of Zero Room by Michael Flint: “At the time of speaking, the only tapezine to have done more than one issue is Zero Room Audiofanzine. [On the third issue,] the highlights are The Pertwee Years and the Master article… It is [also] interesting to hear other people’s discussions and I hope this becomes a regular feature… The rest is fairly moderate with The History of the Cybermen being the worst.”

Flint evaluated the next issue in The Logopolitan Issue 2 (June 1984): “The ‘new look, new sound’ Zero Room 4… is nothing of the sort, except that it sports a far better cover than anything previously. I ordered this mainly for an Ambassadors of Death review which was cancelled. None of the articles are particularly good, except those by Simon Davies, who sadly died a short time afterwards. There are a couple of items of interest, firstly the 1973 theme that was never used and also a regional BBC item, plus one from America. The Terminus book review wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t what I’d sent my money for. It is not as good as their Issue 3. That contained David Balston on everything you already knew on Marvel and he persists with this in Issue 4, loosely describing the last five Monthlys for us. As a result, I’ve stopped ordering Zero Room.”

John Ryan ran the DWAS Local Group 20 in and around Berkshire and West Surrey. As a precocious Doctor Who fan, he wanted to be a TV producer from the age of 12, and joined hospital radio to get some media experience. The moment he lifted a fader, he knew he’d never leave radio – hence recruiting several LG20 friends and others and convincing them to produce Zero Room on cassette rather than paper. His radio dreams came true at 17 when he bailed on his A-levels and joined a commercial radio station as a gopher/tech op. He went on to present on BBC Radios York, Newcastle and Lancashire. He was a BBC training instructor, then helped invent BBC Southern Counties Radio before becoming MD of CTFM in Canterbury. He came back to the BBC two years later to run Radio Northampton, before looking after Radio Leeds for eighteen months. In 2005, he was given the BBC station in his beloved Manchester to run. He stayed there for seven years, rounding off 23 in the BBC. He left in 2012 to start his own radio consultancy and production firm, 2ZY. He’s worked in prisons, in war zones, and invented an ’80s radio format called Max. Nowadays, he reads the news for Doctor Fox (amongst others), chairs Gaydio, runs programmes for Bolton FM – and makes podcasts. 2ZY made the documentary The Story of Trock for BBC Radio 1 to celebrate the fiftieth. Inspired by RTD2, John’s been reconnecting with fandom. Some of those Zero Room associates are still going... now a podcast, it returns for the sixtieth. After all, that’s how it all started.

Zero Room Audiozine gave Gary Wales an outlet for his design and artwork at the (clearly) amateur level. He went on to design, illustrate and co-edit the three issues of the irreverent Doctor Who fanzine Chronic Hysteresis and then took over stewardship of Wholook, a news and features fanzine. Gary contributed to many fanzines at the time including the DWAS publication TARDIS, before producing graphic design work for Visual Imagination’s Starburst magazine. A professional design career followed and during this time he worked on DWB and DreamWatch magazines until 1998. Gary designed over 150 music CD covers for EMI/Virgin Music including the Now That’s What I Call Music range and The Ministry of Sound releases for the world outside of Europe. Working in CGI naturally led to video animation and production and he is now a professional video producer and director (including commericals). He isn’t done with Zero Room yet, though.