Seeds of Doom

"The Seeds of Doom" joins the hallowed ranks of a certain special set of stories for me - the Ones I Got My Parents To Sit Through. Well, it was actually my Dad that agreed to partake in that particular tale with me. My parents have an odd relationship with Doctor Who; I suspect that they half dislike it purely out of principle. I don't mean this to suggest that they have such little respect for my tastes as to assume anything I'm keen on is crap, but they've been worn down over the years. Thanks to me, they're both thoroughly sick to death of Doctor Who.

And who can blame them? Twenty years is a long time to suffer endless quoting and amusing impressions of Paul Whitsun-Jones. Then there were the five years when Mum could only watch Coronation Street in constant fear that she had buggered up the taping of Doctor Who on the other side. And the primary school days! I remember them helping me to strip my room of every photo, poster and item of merchandise so I could take it all into school on "hobbies" day and show it off. We visited Longleat and they spent two hours trying to find me after I got lost in the maze. Finally, after many long teenage years (the "UK Gold era") during which they weren't allowed to ask Grandad to tape desirable films for them using his satellite dish (because he was always videoing Doctor Who for me instead) they'd had enough. They didn't even stop to ask if I was going to grow out of it any more. They just blocked it out of their minds.

The irony is that it was they who first planted the seed; they propagated and nurtured my love for Doctor Who. I didn't arrange to be sitting, enraptured, in front of the TV at the age of 3 on a Satuday evening by my own doing. I didn't drive myself to Longleat aged six, and I didn't buy myself alluring items like the TARDIS tent for early Christmas presents. These days, I've left home, and so Mum and Dad are slightly more disposed to my whims than they might be otherwise. If I pitch it right, and make sure they've got absolutely nothing else they can say they need to be doing, and book the sitting room a day in advance, I can even sometimes get them watching it again.

And so it was that Dad was caught snoozing in the lounge, the TV turned down to such a volume that he couldn't possibly claim to be paying attention, his idle state such that the prospect of sitting through Doctor Who was just about more attractive than having to get up and leave the room. The story was "The Seeds of Doom", no doubt pitched by me for a maximum chance of success. He quite enjoyed it at first, laughing (but not in too critical a fashion) at the Krynoid and gaining the requisite amount of pride at name checking John Challice from "Only Fools and Horses". In fact it was all going excellently until he got up five minutes from the end to go to the loo and missed the whole of the finale. It had never occurred to me before how rushed the resolution is, but then Doctor Who is always stashed full of new insights when you're watching in fresh company.

I can remember, long ago, that I used to be able to get Mum to watch it too. These were the days when a new video only arrived once every few months, so I guess they felt somehow reassured by the fact that any signs of encouragement from them couldn't result in me re-running the whole series for their benefit. They happily knew I didn't have any more stashed away, so if they just watched this new one it would be out the way and I'd be shut up until the next one came out. This strategy was spoiled when I foolishly let my inexplicable, never-ending desire to make them love Doctor Who overtake me and the only thing left to watch one day was a second airing of my off-air "Silver Nemesis" recording. After loudly complaining they'd already seen it, the regular showings ended there.

I don't know why I always had this urge to prove to them how good Doctor Who is. It's obviously purely a point of opinion that we're never going to agree on. Perhaps I'm trying to subconsciously recapture the days when we used to sit together in my childhood, and Dad and I experienced such events as the death of Adric together, or maybe I've been blinded over the years into thinking Doctor Who is so much better than it actually is. After so many unconvincing monsters, CSO nightmares and conditioning myself to appreciate the finer points of the series regardless, I simply can't accept that Mum and Dad won't be able to do it either. But like anyone, they're always going to laugh when the first rubbish monster appears, and miss the significance of the Silurians death, and not find "City of Death" so cool. They're never going to love it like I do.

"Seeds" was the last complete story Dad watched with me for a while, and he actually became quite aggressive when I tried to force him to watch "Horror of Fang Rock" some months later, although I had just caught him freshly wounded from a newly arrived credit card bill. As for Mum, she's having none of it since the end of my complete-Blakes 7-in-order campaign. She made it to Season 2, then bailed out when we got to a dull one with Deep Roy in. But I think there is a quite complex relationship between myself and Dad with regards to Doctor Who. I have always outsold myself with it, become just too enthusiastic and not subtle enough in my appreciation to hold onto his respect (that died the day I returned from a convention with a life-size cardboard K9).

Yet recently I saw a new side of him which perhaps suggested that Doctor Who now stood for far more between us; perhaps the last thing there was that we could share. I asked him, very casually, if he fancied "watching a Doctor Who". There's no fooling him, of course, and it takes more than softly-stated, slightly sympathy-vying politeness to crack him, and he said he was busy. Usually at this point I'd pitch a story at him, make a case for the defence and force him to produce an alibi for a better use of the next hour. But this time I didn't even try, and just turned round to leave the room silently.

I don't know why, but for some reason this must have made him stop and think. Perhaps, he was thinking, I could put up with Doctor Who just this once. Maybe he realised that compromise was the only way we were going to spend any time together that weekend. Or perhaps he even stopped his own instinctive reaction and realised he might actually quite like watching good old Doctor Who again. So, and you probably have to know my Dad to realise how unprecedented this is, he suddenly changed his mind.

"Well... maybe we could watch one." he said. And we did. Maybe one day I'll turn him back into a fan after all...