GOING TO THE PICTURES

Oh dear. I wasn’t going to watch THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR at a cinema because the thought of my enjoyment of the 50th anniversary being subject to what passes for considerate social behaviour among 21st century cinema goers appalled me. Also, the fact that it’s in 3D doesn’t inspire as that means wearing 3D specs over my own specs for no other reason than that they’ve probably inserted one gratuitous shot of the Doctor pointing his sonic screwdriver out of the screen.

However, the flesh is weak and I’ve just booked it for nostalgia’s sake. When I were nobbut a little lad in the 1970s, cinemas used to put on special screenings for kids during the school holidays lasting the full afternoon to give parents a respite from their offspring. My local cinema went through a period of devoting whole afternoons to running a full Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon series followed (after an intermission) by both Dalekmania movies back to back. And this was in the days when cinemas hadn’t yet been broken up into 3 or 4 smaller screens but were still their full, enormous, several thousand seater size (plus a full circle upstairs). So we’re talking about a full size screen when full size really meant full size. Nine or ten times I must have spent an afternoon in the front row of the stalls, revelling in proper Daleks (don’t believe anyone who tells you the the paradigm daleks look really like the movie daleks – they don’t) in full Technicolour and Techniscope.

I couldn’t turn down possibly the only opportunity of seeing Doctor Who that visually huge again. So, if any of this blog’s select (that’s blogging code for tiny) readership is planning on visiting the cinema on 23rd November, please please please avoid the following:

• Eating anything with your mouth open
• Juggling your bucket of popcorn to toss the larger pieces up from the bottom
• Making infantile slurping noises with your drink straw
• Buying nachos smothered in smelly cheese sauce
• Waiting until the film starts and there are no spare seats left before producing a tube of Pringles and eating them throughout the film by placing a whole Pringle vertically in your mouth and cracking it in two to get a really good echo
• Providing a running commentary on the film to your neighbour
• Sticking your feet between the seat and the back of the seat in front
• Checking your text messages every five minutes
• Answering an incoming call on your phone in the middle of the film
• And, if you plan on fetching more food or visiting the toilet 3 or 4 times during the film, please sit at the end of a row rather than in the middle.

I’ve suffered all of the above in my time and anyone ruining my enjoyment of the 50th anniversary (to quote a great man) will be “erased from Doctor Who”.