Liking Doctor Who is normal now. Isn’t that weird? Since 2005, it’s socially acceptable to admit to liking the show and even to discuss it in public. I can wear my “Calm Down And Don’t Blink” t-shirt without fear. It’s probably a bad idea to make a habit of loudly cataloguing one’s DAPOL collection as a form of polite dinner conversation – not everything has changed – but being a Doctor Who fan is no longer as socially catastrophic as joining the BNP.
In 2001, this sea-change had yet to happen. There were no rumblings from Cardiff. We were on our own. This was when I met my wife. She wasn’t my wife then. That would have been odd. She was this fantastic, wonderful woman who was, for some reason, allowing me to orbit her. I certainly didn’t want anything to ruin it.
We’ve all done it at some point, I expect. Nervously ushering a loved one in the direction of some classic eps in the hope they will abandon the Not-we and throw in their lot with the Time Lord. It’s certainly better than adopting the missionary position: “No, honestly, it’s really good and the sets don’t really wobble, and some bits are really scary and Douglas Adams wrote for it once...” That never works. So, in 2001, I began the process of indoctrinating my wife-to-be.
I’d had practice. Not with a girlfriend, but the principle was the same. I met Simon at university and we discovered a number of shared interests, including science fiction. He was a Blake’s 7 fan; I was a Doctor Who fan. We agreed to exchange. He showed me The Way Back and Pressure Point and The Harvest of Kairos; I showed him Spearhead From Space and The Brain of Morbius and Shada.
The conversion worked (both ways). A few years later, Simon and I ended up sharing a London flat – just me, him and my video collection, now bursting at the seams thanks to UK Gold. Many an evening ended up with me selecting a four-parter for us to watch. Some happy Doctor Who memories there – Simon saying how good it would be if the Ice Warriors weren’t the villains of The Curse of Peladon; Simon’s disdain for The Greatest Show In The Galaxy; most of all, the moment when, shortly after midnight, episode five of The War Games came to a halt and Simon turned to me and said, “Go on, put the other tape on!”
Perhaps I should have realised that this was different. After all, Simon was already a sci-fi fan. It’s no great leap to go from Blake’s Seven to Doctor Who. This time, I would be working from scratch. She’d agreed to watch one. I had to choose carefully.
Pyramids of Mars. Atmospheric opening. TARDIS scene. A-list Doctor-companion team. Pseudo-historical lusciousness. Scary Mummies. Great first cliffhanger. I’d always thought it was a perfect story to be someone’s first time. In went the video and we snuggled up to watch as Ron Grainer pumped through the room.
She fell asleep. Part way through episode 2, I realised I was watching by myself. She was bored. Undaunted, I upped my game for the second onslaught. City of Death. Probably the best story ever. Another A-list team. Funny, imaginative, charming. This time, she didn’t even make it to the first cliffhanger.
When would you give up? I gave it one last try, inspired by her admission that she’d been under the impression he fought the Daleks every week. Remembrance. Granted, Sylvester McCoy isn’t exactly your go-to when selling the show, but this was the most recent Dalek adventure. Explosions, excitement, Dalek-on-Dalek action. A bit of doomed romance and political commentary to wash it down with.
Whaddaya know, she liked it. Ben Aaronovitch, you are a hit. Thus we came up with a formula for watching Doctor Who from now on. “There’s got to be monsters,” she insisted. So, there were – she met the Autons, the Haemovores and the Cybermen. She also enjoyed The Five Doctors, although she decided Patrick Troughton was annoying.
Over-confidence brought me down. One day I discovered that, while I was out, she’d voluntarily polished off the remaining episodes of The Ark In Space, which we’d started the day before. Euphoric, I spun it off into a Season 12 marathon. She was horrified by the sadism in The Sontaran Experiment and couldn’t believe I hadn’t shown her Genesis before. Then we hit Revenge of the Cybermen, a personal favourite of mine. By episode 3, she was in the other room, tidying. I’d lost her. (Not as a fiancée, you understand. Just as a fan.)
When the series returned in 2005, the goalposts shifted. She enjoyed the first couple of episodes, but it was Father’s Day that blew her away. She sat there with tears streaming down her face and, to my surprise, so did I. Doctor Who had never had this effect on me before. The Parting Of The Ways sealed the deal. Nina liked Doctor Who.
She still won’t watch the old stuff, mind you. We may describe Doctor Who as a 48-year old programme, but the other viewpoint – that it’s only been on for 7 years, inspired by an old series that ended in 1989 – holds water. After all, I love Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but find it hard to sit through an old episode of Shatner’s shenanigans. The difference is no less stark.
Simon, incidentally, got married to a sceptic and also used the Eccleston/Tennant years to turn his wife into a Doctor Who fan, but my own conversion attempt was less successful. My wife was the Craig Owens to my Cyber-wimp. It took a higher power to convince her – and not just her. Now, at school (I’m a teacher) I hear children discussing old Jon Pertwee episodes. They’d never even have heard of Pertwee if they hadn’t seen Tennant and Smith. RTD was trying to convert the entire world at once and he couldn’t have been better at it if he’d had the big plot-device-gate thingy from The End of Time. He remade the nation’s viewing habits in his own image.
You – Will – Be – Like – Us.
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