small screen

Born-again Timelords

Twentysomethings all over the country know one thing of which they are more certain than any other. It's got nothing to do with Blur, Molson Dry, kebabs or Cantona, mind - it's just that Tom Baker was the best Doctor Who ever. Don't give us none of yer Jon Pertwee, yer Peter Davison, yer (gagging noise) Sylvester McCoy: amateurs all. So all hail BBC Video for launching their Price Destruction range, in which you can lay your sink- plungers on a pristine copy of The Robots of Death, containing all four original episodes of the story, for a remarkable £7.99. Far away, on a distant planet, members of a mining vehicle's crew are murdered one by one, and the finger of suspicion begins to waggle in the Doctor's direction. But, of course, the problem is really that the robot staff of the cruiser are being controlled by a mad scientist. Check out the Doctor's "assistant", Leela, with her ridiculous jungle-suede bikini outfit; laugh at the robots' pointless hairstyles (above); but you'll still watch with awe, filtered through a rosy viscous jelly of nostalgia. Oh, and what's the best TV theme tune of all time? You've got one guess.

Sing Sing, darling

Like to have a nice sing-song of a Saturday night? Too inhibited (or too kind) to do it in a public place? Always have trouble remembering the words? That's okay: Pioneer video have released a collection of karaoke videos for use in the privacy of your own front room so you can make the neighbours happy. These Nineties equivalents of the Top of the Pops record come in many guises, including The most requested Kerrang! karaoke songs and The most requested karaoke songs Broadway. So for a bargain £10.99 from questionable retailers everywhere you too can treat your television to your version of Stairway to Heaven, The Way we Were, Livin' on a Prayer or I Could Have Danced all Night. Just don't expect to have any friends the next morning.

Top of the glossies

Hot off the presses comes the very first issue of Top of the Pops Magazine, a monthly trawl through the pop fisheries in search of a few nice big trout. Executive editor of this publication is Ric Blaxill himself, flame- haired producer of ToTP on the television. Blaxill clearly knows what's what music-wise, and his rag looks quite promising. The main feature is a blind-date double interview with two stars who have never met before: Brett from Suede and Tony Mortimer from East 17 (right), who have a good old natter about flying and groupies and end up as best mates. Other subjects are the simply terrifying Shampoo, the rejuvenated Human League, cool girl guitar bands Elastica and Sleeper, and lots more. You'd think the music magazine market would be saturated, but ToTP is very cleverly pitched: more substantial than Smash Hits, less yawn-inducing than Q, and a snip at only £1.25. You never know, it might catch on.

How's it going, Freud dude?

What do psychoanalysis and septicity have in common? Just about everything, according to Secret Lives: the Young Freud (Thur 9pm C4). If Freud's surgeon pal Wilhelm Fleiss hadn't cherished the idea that he could tell people's personality from the insides of their noses, persuading the shrink to let him perform a laughably botched rhinoplasty on one Emma Eckstein, Sigi (right) would never have started delving into the subconscious.

Freud was all too prone to ignoring facts that didn't fit his theories: Eckstein, like the famous Anna O, had come to him complaining of specific incidents of sexual abuse which he interpreted as sexual fantasies. Given that an awful lot of 20th-century attitudes to the female mind are based on the old fraud's theories, he has a lot to answer for. According to this programme, it was an obvious associative-guilt nightmare over what he had done to Eckstein that prompted him to work on dream interpretation. Bet that made her feel a whole lot better.

Compiled by Steven Poole

and Serena Mackesy