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By Simon Hunt 2004 could be a popular choice for people looking to add to this section of "The Vervoid" in times to come. 2004 was, after all, the year when we waited for Doctor Who to come back - when it all started happening. Somewhere in Cardiff, they were manufacturing lots of fake snow while blurry polaroids escaped onto the Internet showing us uninspiring and dangerous glimpses of technicians and production people making new Doctor Who. Not that we ever saw any shots of Daleks rampaging down the Thames or Sea Devil gun battles, mainly just lots of pictures of the TARDIS looking too wide-windowed and bored people standing about in the cold. Nevertheless, it was happening. Doctor Who was quietly coming back. Except for me, it was almost gone. I wasn't really a fan in 2004. For a start, I desperately didn't want my involvement in the new series hype to begin so long before the damn thing hit our screens. Everyone, from those trying to snap Billie Piper in Wales to OG printing every little spoiler photo they could find, seemed to want to wear out the concept while that "2 years away" pledge was still cooling. I mentally closed the shutters on my excitement, and didn't think about it too much. Then there was the everyday business of being a fan, namely actually watching Doctor Who, a practise which seemed to dry up over the whole of the year. I didn't go and buy up all the Star Trek box sets and officially place my cross in the Spock box or anything (I'm not stupid), but finally after 20 years, the novelty of Doctor Who seemed to be wearing off. Seventeen years is more than a long time to go without your favourite series. The TV Movie doesn't really count - being at University I couldn't even watch it live, so it was really just another new video to buy, albeit immeasurably more exciting than "Downtime", "Shakedown" or any other of those awful spin-off things we got in the nineties. Granted, it did give us a shot in the arm just when we needed it - when a substitute diet of books and DWM had just begun to feel a little stale. But it's interesting that if you take the number of years we had to wait for it, and add that same wait onto the period after it had been certified dead, buried and series-less, you get a year which is around about 2004. The tea had just got cold again. I used to think that I could, actually, go on watching the same stories forever. I used to marvel at how, at any one time, at least one video seemed ripe for re-watching. But it's not true. There does come a time when you can't watch "The Sensorites" or "The Time Warrior" or "The Curse of Fenric" again. Round, and round, over and over. Hartnell, Baker, Pertwee, McCoy. Video after video. DVD after DVD. Then finally, there just isn't one you feel up to watching again. Perhaps Real Life got in the way. Perhaps the arrival of cheap comedy classics on the Playback DVD label meant there just wasn't time to dig out a choice old Who amid the rapid running through of series like "Hi De Hi" and "Bread". Or maybe that boyish enthusiasm finally disappeared. Grown out of Doctor Who? If only Mum was here! So I spent 2004 barely reading each new DWM (I never stopped buying it, I think that compulsion must have become ingrained into my DNA by now) and hardly watching Doctor Who at all. To date, our "Ghost Light" DVD has never been played! I didn't go to any signings or conventions. I didn't read any books. Not that Who wasn't still all around me - it's always been buried in who I am, ingrained in me like a stick of rock. It's in various words I use in conversation, the pictures in the sitting room, the idle chatter made to friends. We just stopped living it. Then something happened, quite recently actually. We realised that the new Doctor Who wasn't 2 years away any more. It was actually a matter of months, then weeks. They actually brought out a half-decent story on DVD ("Horror of Fang Rock") and we realised we might quite like to see it (very good it was too). And then, everyone else started talking about Doctor Who again too. There it was! Coming back! Not the same as before, but something new (I wasn't 11 anymore). This Who wouldn't be watched every week on Mum and Dad's bed while Mum hogged the big TV downstairs for "Coronation Street" - it would be viewed on Saturday night, in my own house, with my boyfriend. Something new. Doctor Who is still dead, you know. New Doctor Who is with us now. And "new" is how "The Mind Robber" seemed when we watched it the other day. Not tired, or familiar, but fresh and half-forgotten. We needed that year - 2004 - to forget all about Doctor Who so that we could re-discover it. And, perhaps, remember why we loved it so much in the first place. Yes, it was a good year. But this one is going to be even better.
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