Growing Up With The Doctor

I’m sure you’re all sick of me mentioning my un-published manuscript at every opportunity, so you’ll be glad to hear that Lissa has appeased my ego and allowed me to post it here on The Vervoid as a series of ongoing daily articles for you all to either enjoy or ignore. However, by way of a preface to the first post and also as an opportunity for you to perhaps decide now whether you want to read it at all, I though it best to give you some background on the book as the title is not as obvious as it seems.

Doctor Who has been enjoying somewhat of a renaissance in my life over the last few years. There was a period between 1997 and 2000 when I lost interest in the series quite dramatically; I stopped buying DWM and I stopped watching any of my limited collection of BBC videos because I’d seen them all so many times and was becoming bored with watching the same stories over and over again. However, it was ironic that when I met my partner Martin towards the end of 2000 – he who is the most unbelieving of Doctor Who unbelievers – I started to miss the series simply because I now had almost no opportunity to watch any of my videos even if I wanted to – a prime example of not really appreciating something when you have it and only missing it when it’s taken away.

It was also his scorn and scepticism of the series that led me to ponder the question as to why we hardcore fans love the series whereas others can ridicule it at every opportunity. It was these thoughts which began to build up in my mind to the point where I felt I had to write them down and really start to explore these polarised views. So, in October 2001 I began to put some thoughts down on paper, and my own passion for the series prompted me to recall watching the show as a child, then as a teenager and finally as an adult. It was only then that I realised how adept the writers and production team had always been in making the series so appealing to all age groups, and how the show was entertaining on so may levels. All terribly obvious to me now, but it was only at this relatively recent point in time that I really thought about it.

The nostalgia associated with recalling childhood memories of watching the series lead me to recall my childhood in general, and I really enjoyed reminiscing about specific times and events that had remained dormant and forgotten about in my mind for years and years. By this time I was on a roll, and I was churning out all sorts of stuff about growing up with Doctor Who, not only from when I was a kid but through to my teenage years and beyond when I became best friends with a fellow classmate at school who was a mad fan of the show, and who converted me from a childhood viewer to a passionate fan of the series. Along the way I explored my own changing opinion and appreciation of the show, and how I was discovering new and more intricate aspects of the storylines to which I was oblivious as a child. The factor which remained constant throughout these different periods was that Doctor Who was supremely entertaining, whether I was watching the scary monsters wide-eyed from behind a comforting cushion as a kid, or marvelling at the wit, wisdom and moral undertones of the series’ greatest stories as an adult. I’ll include the odd post here and there which deals with this aspect of growing up with the show, but I’ll concentrate mostly on my own personal experiences of life as a Who-fan over the past 25 years or so.

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that there was a period when I was sat here at work and my mind would wander onto the subject of the manuscript so far, and I’d then have to start typing away there and then lest I forget some juicy anecdote or inspired viewpoint. I spent quite a few hours churning out pages and pages of stuff instead of getting on with real work, but my enthusiasm was such that I just could not stop. It was at this point that I suddenly realised that this was something I really enjoyed doing, and that perhaps I could write for a living. Well, I’m still here at work and as yet haven’t earned a penny from the manuscript or anything else that I’ve written since. So the title ‘Growing Up With The Doctor’ has a double meaning; not only is it a loosely semi-autobiographical piece revolving around my own experiences of growing up with Doctor Who, it’s also about how we, the viewers, grew up with the series and how the series catered for us in different ways at every stage.

The way it’s laid out is quite spontaneous, i.e. it doesn’t necessarily run in a strict chronological fashion. A lot of the time it jumps backwards and forwards, or I’ll mention something relevant to my childhood that actually happened years later. I prefer this unrestricted way of writing because it’s more natural and free-flowing, though it may not suit every reader. The original manuscript contains a lot of general comment on the series which I’m not going to include in my daily posts; there’s plenty of opportunity for me to express my views on PS so it’s not really relevant here.

For those of you who may be expecting a tedious daily diary of "I watched this in 1978 and that in 1982", have no fear, it’s nothing like that at all; in fact it’s surprising and somewhat ironic that I actually remember very little of watching specific stories until Season 24. The main chunk of Who-related anecdotes and recollections comes from my teenage years with my best friend Andrew Clancy, where we spent much time together with our world revolving around Doctor Who, and also my early twenties when we shared a flat for three years and got up to all sorts of Who-related shenanigans. Major inclusions are visits to filming locations, exhibitions and attending conventions, details of home-made Doctor Who adventures including seriously scripted audio stories, silly ad-libbed audio stories, ‘alternative’ off-the-cuff soundtracks to existing BBC stories which we recorded onto dubbed copies of pre-recorded and off-air videos whilst we were pissed out of our heads, and even our serious (at the time, at least) fan-videos which we made in 1989 and 1990. I also have lots of photos to post at relevant points, some of which you may already have seen in the Picture Gallery thread on PS, and others which no-one will have seen and which I’m sure will provide much amusement.

As this is the culmination of a few years’ hard work on my part, and I had all but given up on trying to make this widely available for other Who-fans to read, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Lissa for agreeing to post it, and for all the articles that I and everyone else have submitted over the last few months.

Dear God – where did I put that sick bag?

Anyway, I hope you get as much enjoyment from reading Growing Up With The Doctor as I have from writing it.