"How long have you been into Doctor Who?”

            “How long have you been into Doctor Who?”

            The question startled me, and I took refuge in imprecision: “Ages.”

            My mumbled response was misunderstood and let to a triumphant retort. “Eight years? Right. Then why do you like it, because Doctor Who’s been shit for the last eight years!”

            It was a rhetorical question and my interrogator had no interest in eliciting an actual response from me, which was good as I didn’t have one ready. I was 13, he was older (probably around 18, but I would have guessed somewhere in his 20s at the time) and I was finding the situation rather intimidating.

            This was a fairly typical meeting of the Cardiff local group of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society.

*

            My name is Chris, and this is my blog. I’m going to talk quite a lot about Doctor Who on here, though I may digress from time to time. If you’re reading this, I’m going to hazard that you’re interested in Doctor Who. Unless you know me personally. In which case, thanks for coming and try not to get too bored.

            If, however, you’re not familiar with Doctor Who fandom, you might be surprised to hear such sentiments voiced at a DWAS meeting. Why would a fan say that a whole eight years of Doctor Who was “shit”? An adult (or thereabouts) who was making a special effort to hang out in the YMCA on a Saturday afternoon purely out of affection for this TV show?

            This was 1989 (ish). My fellow fan was condemning all Doctor Who made with Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, something which many newspapers and media commentators have also done. Received wisdom has it that the show was fantastic with Tom Baker, then terrible in the 1980s (like so many other things), then revived in 2005 to be fantastic again. But that doesn’t explain people like me, does it?

            It’s been about 23 years, but I finally feel ready to answer his question.

            “Eight years? Right. Then why do you like it, because Doctor Who’s been shit for the last eight years!”

            “Has it? Really? Everything from Castrovalva onwards? That’s astonishing. And yet you’re still watching it? I have to admit, if I’d enjoyed a programme when I was 10 years old, then throughout my teenage years it was shit, I doubt I’d still be watching it at 18, let alone attending fan club meetings. Might I suggest that actually some part of you must still be enjoying it?

            “Secondly, are you sure everything’s been awful since 1981? Did you really hate Earthshock, Enlightenment, Caves of Androzani, Vengeance on Varos, Remembrance of the Daleks and The Curse of Fenric? Or are you tarring 40 individual stories with the same brush because you don’t like aspects of the production style?

            “Thirdly, let’s put your own beloved eras under the microscope, shall we? For every Tomb of the Cybermen there’s a Wheel in Space; for every Genesis of the Daleks there’s a Destiny of the Daleks; and The Mind of Evil is quickly followed by Colony in Space. I’m not trying to claim that the 80s Doctors were better than their 60s or 70s equivalents – they probably weren’t. But the nature of Doctor Who has always been that it’s patchy. And even if the last 8 years have been patchier than others, that still leaves many patches of greatness.

            “Fourthly, I was five years old in 1981. I knew little of your UNIT Family or Classic Holmesian Double-Acts. I’d never read Doctor Who Magazine and had no idea who Sydney Newman was. I didn’t even know about the Daleks. I started watching this show because I enjoyed Full Circle. After five stories, Tom Baker was replaced by the bloke from All Creatures Great And Small, and this was even more exciting. When they started releasing old episodes on VHS, I started watching them, but this didn’t stop me enjoying the new output.

            “You see, it’s all about context. To you, seasons 19-26 were a disappointment compared with the previous 18 seasons. (Well...maybe the first 16. I reckon you didn’t like 17 or 18 either.) To me, they were something new and exciting I’d discovered. And they still are.”

            Is that too long-winded for an answer? Maybe I’d have been better with “Piss off.” But the fact is, I turned 18 five years later. Then 28 and, before too long, 38. And I can still see good stuff in that era, and every other era. Which is why I watch it, read about it, talk about it, think about it and – finally – write about it.

            In 2012, I will be contributing to fanzines – my first attempt at this has just been published in issue 13 of The Terrible Zodin. I’ve also got a contribution in a book called You And Who, which should be published any day now. So I thought I’d better have a blog too.

            I hope you enjoy what you read. If not, please feel free to read other things.