Spectrox was a standard printed fanzine, edited by Simon Black, which launched at WhoCon 21 in October 1984. Two and a half years later, in June 1987, it notched up its fifth issue, which was one that made an interesting sidestep into the world of audiozines. Issue 5 of Spectrox was a printed fanzine as per normal, but it had a tapezine containing exclusive content to accompany it. Purchase of this audio cassette was optional.

The billing in the Celestial Toyroom advertisement for Spectrox 5 claimed that this experiment was the "first and probably only time" that such a dual-format approach would be employed on the fanzine. With the benefit of hindsight, this appears to have been somewhat prophetic, as Spectrox ceased in its original form with this issue.

Audio content for this ninety-minute bonus included an interview with actor Richard Franklin (Captain Yates in the Pertwee era), and a memorial tribute to the second Doctor Who, Patrick Troughton, who had recently passed away. Also vying for the attention of the listener were interludes of "typically warped Spectrox humour", the all-new Matrix Data Bank and a Local Group report.

Spectrox's editor, Simon Black recalls that the thinking behind offering the tape were that audiozines were rather popular at the time and that logistically, it was the most straightforward way of presenting an interview he had arranged: "I had set up the Richard Franklin interview at Panopticon, and he offered to come down to Nottingham and conduct it as a drama workshop with our local group. To be honest, transcribing the output, which was done using an old ghetto blaster in a room full of twenty people was never going to be ideal so I hit on the idea of releasing it, as is, on cassette."

"When we realised just how much tape time there was to fill, Tat Wood and myself frantically put the rest of the material together and recorded it at a studio in Chesterfield with Chris Newbold, which is why it all sounds ten times better than the interview material. Chris did the wonderful voice over for the Wheeltappers and Shunters Local Group report - which I would love to get hold of."

"Sadly for me, Spectrox was a victim of its own success by that point, and had a print run of 500 which sold out within a couple of months - I think I did about 300 of the tapes. Once it was mastered down, I then had the dubious privelidge of having to duplicate by hand each copy on my Mum's old Pioneer twin deck hifi, which I wore out! After this I gave the 'zine over to Tat to concentrate on my A-Levels, since I had to earn some hard cash to buy a new hifi for my mum!"

Just under a year later, Tat published his first issue of Spectrox and he went on to helm the magazine for four printed issues in total, the fanzine closing its doors for good in 1996.