Rymill and Son's Doctor Who Emporium

The Emporium is rummaging around in some rather dusty corners this week. There are tapes to rewind, television sets to remember, and a few things that perhaps shouldn't have survived from the 1980s at all.As usual, one memory leads to another, and before long the boxes are beginning to stir...The Memory Box takes us back to the Wilderness Years, when Doctor Who may have been off our screens but was very much alive elsewhere. At the heart of the story are the remarkable productions of Bill Baggs and Reeltime Pictures: The Stranger, PROBE, Downtime and a host of other adventures that helped keep the flame burning when the BBC had temporarily put the TARDIS into park.And what an extraordinary training ground it proved to be. Careers began, friendships were forged, and the productions became a meeting point for talents who would go on to shape the future of Doctor Who. Among them was Nicholas Briggs, future voice of the Daleks and, rather wonderfully, half of The League of Gentlemen.But the Memory Box contains one particularly delicate item. A certain infamous production has found its way into the Emporium, and Gavin is faced with a profound moral dilemma: is it really right to share Zygon: When Being You Isn't Enough with his own father? Some things, perhaps, should remain lost...The Music Box spins up a reel-to-reel adventure from another era. Mike takes us back to the days when owning such a machine required commitment: a recorder bought on hire purchase, paid for week by week from pocket money, and treasured accordingly. It soon became a portal to another universe when Mike used it to record Star Trek during its first BBC run. The operation required absolute concentration and, most importantly, absolute silence from parents. One cough, one slammed door, and the perfect recording was ruined.Meanwhile Gavin and Paul Jenkins discovered that the same magical technology could be used to create their own Doctor Who adventures. There was only one slight problem. When they played back their recordings, the mysterious voice of William Shatner seemed to have infiltrated the TARDIS.From there, the conversation drifts into the first encounters with colour television, the strange magic of suddenly seeing the familiar world transformed, and the extraordinary ingenuity of children determined to control the technology around them. Which brings us, inevitably, to one of Gavin's earliest inventions: a homemade variation on the television remote control.It may not have changed the world.But it did, at least temporarily, change the channel.And so the Emporium closes another pair of boxes, leaving us once again with that peculiar realisation that the history of Doctor Who is not simply found in television programmes.Sometimes it's hidden on a reel of tape.Sometimes it's buried in a box in the attic.And sometimes it's something your dad probably shouldn't be allowed to see.The door is still open.For now.You can get in touch with us on all sorts of social media.Gavin's Twitter and Bluesky: @themindrobberGavin's Instagram: gav_themindrobberPaul's Twitter: @paulcarmichaelv / Paul's Bluesky: @paulcarmichaelukMusic by Graeme Allan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Emporium is bustling this week. There are plans afoot, projects underway, and the faint smell of soldering iron and old videotape hanging somewhere in the air.Before the boxes are opened, conversation turns to future endeavours. Gavin is preparing a video celebrating the work of the great Michael Ferguson, one of Doctor Who's most accomplished directors. This leads naturally to a discussion of The Seeds of Death, and the curious way in which that story was filmed. Somehow grander, somehow more cinematic, and somehow unlike almost anything else the programme was producing at the time.But the shelves are restless, and the boxes are eager to be opened.The Memory Box is first to reveal its contents, transporting us back to 1989 and an evening at Liverpool Empire Theatre. There, before packed audiences, Doctor Who: The Ultimate Adventure brought the Time Lord to the stage, with Jon Pertwee taking his final bow as the Doctor. The memories remain vivid: dazzling laser effects, theatrical spectacle, and the sheer excitement of seeing Doctor Who performed live. Other recollections are perhaps a little less glowing. In particular, certain musical numbers have not improved with age, despite the best efforts of memory and nostalgia.Next comes a newcomer to the Emporium's collection of curiosities.The Toy Box creaks open for the very first time and immediately reveals treasure. Mike recalls the joy of acquiring a Louis Marx Dalek from Woolworths in 1965. Never mind that the head wasn't quite the right shape. To a young Doctor Who fan it was perfection. From there, the discussion wanders into the extraordinary influence that toys can have upon imagination. Plastic Daleks became film stars, cardboard sets became alien worlds, and childhood play evolved into lifelong creativity. Along the way we hear how Paul very nearly electrocuted himself attempting to construct a "spark generator" from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine, while Gavin's own youthful experiments with electronics culminated in a feat of engineering so ambitious that it succeeded only in plunging the entire house into darkness. To Mike's enduring horror, this appears to have been considered a successful experiment.And so the Emporium acquires yet another box, another collection of stories, and another route back to childhood. The toys may have been made of plastic, the special effects fashioned from cardboard and optimism, but the memories remain remarkably real.After all, every adventure has to begin somewhere. Sometimes it begins with a toy Dalek from Woolworths.You can get in touch with us on all sorts of social media.Gavin's Twitter and Bluesky: @themindrobberGavin's Instagram: gav_themindrobberPaul's Twitter: @paulcarmichaelv / Paul's Bluesky: @paulcarmichaelukMusic by Graeme Allan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s a slightly celebratory atmosphere inside the Emporium this week. The glasses have been polished, the cork has been persuaded from the bottle, and somewhere between the shelves and the boxes comes the unmistakable sound of three men raising a toast to listeners scattered across the globe.The shop, it seems, is busier than ever.And with that, the boxes begin to stir once more…The Post Box arrives laden with questions both deceptively simple and surprisingly dangerous. Is a love of Doctor Who something inherited… or something encountered at precisely the right moment in childhood? With both father and son seated behind the counter, the Emporium may be uniquely qualified to investigate. But matters grow rather more complicated when allegiances begin to shift. What, for example, is a parent supposed to do when a child wanders away from Gallifrey and pledges loyalty to Star Wars instead? Paul considers the possibility with all the concern of a man who knows only too well..The Props Box clangs ominously open to reveal the cold metallic history of the Cybermen. But behind the silver masks and electronic voices lies something rather more unsettling: genuine scientific and philosophical anxiety. The trio explore the reality of these marvellous monsters and the influence of Kit Pedler, whose fascination with cybernetics and the relationship between humanity and technology helped shape one of the programme’s most enduring creations. The result is a conversation that drifts from television monsters into the distinctly uncomfortable question of how much of ourselves we might willingly surrender in the name of progress.The Travel Trunk transports the Emporium to Cardiff, where modern Doctor Who found a second home among the streets, bays, alleyways, and hidden corners of the city. There are memories of location hunting, unexpected discoveries, and standing in places suddenly made magical by television. But among the travellers sits one member of the trio who went a little further than the others, stepping aboard the TARDIS itself and emerging with whispers of closely guarded script secrets still rattling around in their head.And as the evening draws on and the bottle grows lighter, conversation inevitably turns toward the future. What shape will Doctor Who take in the years ahead? Who might stand beside the BBC now the Disney arrangement has reached its conclusion? And perhaps most intriguingly of all… does the programme truly need a co-producer in the first place?The Emporium offers no definitive answers, of course.Only more doors to open.You can get in touch with us on all sorts of social media.Gavin's Twitter and Bluesky: @themindrobberPaul's Twitter: @paulcarmichaelv / Paul's Bluesky: @paulcarmichaelukMusic by Graeme Allan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The door is easier to find this time. Or perhaps it’s simply that you remember where it ought to be....Either way, the Emporium is open once more, its shelves quietly shifting, its contents rearranging themselves as if in anticipation. There are stories waiting, after all… and not all of them are entirely where you left them.From there, the boxes begin to stir…The Post Box opens onto a rather special excursion, as Gavin journeys to Riverside Studios to witness the recovered episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan on the big screen and to take his place among the panels discussing their return. But amid the excitement, a mystery presents itself: looming quietly in the foyer, an unusually tall and rather skinny Dalek… not quite as expected. Where did it come from? And why does it feel just a little… off?The Memory Box whirs reassuringly to life with the soft clunk of a VHS cassette. This week, it’s the golden age of Doctor Who on video. Treasured releases that arrived not just as stories, but as moments in time. A particular tape, a particular cover, a particular evening… all anchoring us to who we were when we first pressed “play.” Memory may be unreliable, but a worn cassette case rarely lies.The Tool Box reveals something altogether more formidable: Davros, creator of the Daleks, reborn here through the decidedly less malevolent hands of Mike Rymill. The wires, the textures, the unmistakable presence… a villain painstakingly reconstructed, not to conquer the universe, but to celebrate the craft that first brought him to life.The Travel Trunk carries us to Llangollen, a picturesque town in North Wales with a quietly remarkable place in Doctor Who history. Once home to the Dapol factory, where countless figurines were brought into being, it stands as a reminder that even the smallest objects can hold entire worlds within them… if you know where to look.And so the Emporium shifts once more. its contents rearranged, its stories retold, its corners revealing just a little more than before. There are always more journeys to take, more artefacts to uncover… and, inevitably, more questions than answers.The door, you may notice, is still there.For now...Rymill & Son's Doctor Who Emporium is presented by Mike Rymill, Gavin Rymill and Paul Carmichael.Music by Graeme Allen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.