The sudden deluge of hermaphrodite babies on television has made us yearn for more innocent times.

That’s why were were so delighted to see that UK Gold had started repeating old episodes of Doctor Who from the Jon Pertwee years.

These stories, which date from the early 1970s, follow a fairly standard pattern in which the Doctor, stranded on earth by the Time Lords for being naughty, would team up with some army types to defeat alien invasions. All good, wholesome stuff.

Unfortunately, we then remembered a story called The Curse of Peladon, which featured a cowardly hermaphrodite monster with a squeaky voice named Alpha Centauri.

If that wasn’t shocking enough, when the actor playing this strange beast appeared on the studio floor in costume for the first time, the director realised that he/she was basically a dressed in a giant rubber phallus.

As you can see from the picture, even the last-minute addition of a fetching yellow cape could not disguise the awful truth.

So, on reflection, you should probably just stick with Footballers Wives after all.

2013 UPDATE: I’ve added a YouTube video tribute to Alpha Centauri to this post. I promise I didn’t make it myself, despite the fact that the soundtrack is Floorfiller by A*Teens.

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