DWB [Doctor Who Bulletin / Dream Watch Bulletin] - Biography

The biggest problem with this fanzine was working out what to call it. DWB originally started life as "Doctor Who Bulletin", but was branding itself as "DWB" for a good many of those issues. From issue 62 onwards the name of the magazine was changed to "Dream Watch Bulletin", although it continued to use the DWB title on the cover.

The name change happened because the BBC licensed the "Doctor Who" name to Marvel for a project which ultimately fell through (although they published Doctor Who Magazine for some years). At that time, Marvel were being very bullish towards the whole Doctor Who fan scene. The name "Dream Watch Bulletin" was created to enable the fanzine to continue in production as DWB and be able to prove to the Marvel lawyers that it no longer meant "Doctor Who Bulletin", although the fans knew it was a purely political name change.

The covers of the Dream Watch Bulletin magazines continue with the Doctor Who Bulletin numbering system, so the first of the new look magazines is issue 62. However, inside issue 62 the editorial states the new magazine is volume 1 number 1, presumably, to prove to the lawyers that it really was a "new" magazine.

Unfortunately, Magazine World doesn't (yet?) allow for a separate cover number to the volume issue number, so I've added the volume and number in the notes and kept the cover number as the "issue" number. This will allow any of the earlier DWBs to be added and keep the cover numbers consecutive.

DWB goes through one more name change at the end of the nineties, to Dreamwatch (all one word). That magazine has its own listing, as it becomes a whole new beast at that point.

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