Doctor Who: why the old shows have never been bettered I actually feel sorry for Doctor Who-watching kids today. OK, more resources are thrown at the series and there's more special effects know-how. But do they quiver behind the sofa across the country as they once used to? I doubt it. Yes, I'm partisan. I grew into consciousness to that eerie BBC Radiophonic Workshop sound-track. My childhood nightmares were scripted in Television Centre. To me Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker were like demi-gods, especially the latter - I couldn't swallow a jelly baby or play with a yo-yo without imagining myself in his shoes. I can still remember the knot in my stomach as the moment of the broadcast arrived. The series struggled in the Eighties but looking back, at its best, that first era has not been surpassed. The resurrection of the Zygons this weekend - another villain from the vaults - inevitably invites a comparison with 1975, when Baker's fruity-voiced, scarf-trailing Time Lord faced Terror of the Zygons, a gripping yarn set in the Scottish highlands. Just look at the vintage episodes put out that year: The Sontaran Experiment, Pyramids of Mars, Genesis of the Daleks, The Android Invasion, each one so foreboding-filled I can still recall much of them years later. We haven't seen an equivalent run of classics since. Nowadays, Doctor Who pops up here and there, amid much fan-fare; back then, it rolled on for months on end, one cliff-hanger after another holding you in thrall. What did the programme have that today's incarnation lacks? Wobbly sets, laughable effects and dodgy costumes - sure - but necessity is the mother of invention and it had a sense of mood, pace and suspense that few recent episodes achieve. It was understated, often unhurried, took its time. So what that the production team didn't even have digital clocks to do countdowns to Armageddon? We lived in the shadow of the Cold War, many of our parents had experience of the Second World War. The apocalyptic landscapes, the visions of an England subjugated, connected at a visceral level as part of our national story. The most memorable and perturbing episodes of the past eight years, in my view, have harked back to the glory low-tech days, where darkness, absence and the unknown could be as scary as Daleks: The Empty Child, Silence in the Library, Midnight. Maybe the truth of the matter is that Who worked best when we knew who we were - and these days, perhaps, we don't.