Today, Doctor Who is one of the best-loved shows on our TV screens, but for long-term fans that were forced to fast for 16 years, there was a time not so long ago when it seemed that their beloved show was gone forever. But how did children who grew up in the 1990s become so captivated by a show that had was not broadcast during their early years? Hayden Gribble tells us his story.
“There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea’s asleep and the rivers dream, people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger, somewhere there’s injustice and somewhere else the tea is getting cold. Come on, Ace, we’ve got work to do”.
As the sunset on the Doctor’s adventures on 6th December 1989, I was just a babe in arms, barely six months old. My adventure had only just begun as another was coming to an end, just as it began to rise out of the murky depths of cancellation, poor plot lines and rather unfairly losing its dignity in a ratings battle with Coronation Street, back then this was no contest.
As I grew up, and became engrossed in books and TV shows about talking cars, puppets fighting Mysterons from Mars and brightly coloured Power Rangers, I was unaware that there was one adventure that I was missing out on, and I have been making up for it ever since.
The journey begun in May 1996, when on a family holiday to Leamington Spa my Father bought the Radiotimes and although I forget what the front cover looked like, my attention was drawn to the short magazine that was stapled in the centre of the TV listings. There were 8 faces floating through space - two in black and white, and upon asking who these men were my Dad replied, “Doctor Who”. “Which one?” I enquired. “All of them”.
I wanted to watch an episode straight away, and I did not have long to wait, as the TV Movie was about to air for the first time. My parents told me that the Doctor was to change in this face halfway through the film, and I was yearning to see more. But when I asked when the next episode would be shown, my Mum told me there wasn’t one.
I remember feeling both thrilled and disappointed with the TV Movie when it was originally broadcast, probably like many of the fans that had also tuned in, but my feeling was for different reasons. Here I had been caught hook, line and sinker by a truly brilliant piece television, but I could not watch anymore. I have never heard of one hour programming that can have such an effect of the imaginative mind of a seven year old since.
The concept of Doctor Who fascinated me right from the word go. An alien traveling through space and time, taking young humans on dangerous and exciting adventures, meeting important figures in history and fighting monsters as brilliant and original as the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Yeti thrived in my imagination. My birthday was just around the corner so I pleaded with parents and grandparents to buy me Doctor Who videos. It was not long until I got my first one, 1983’s Snakedance with Peter Davison, and the more I bugged my elders, little by little my video collection grew.
I used to invite friends around the mine after school to watch a video or two but to varied results. Some were engrossed just as I was a couple of years earlier, one time we even sat down to watch The Abominable Snowmen Episode 2 on The Troughton Years and we all saw past the black and white and polystyrene and gazed into wonderland.
Of all the tapes I owned, and still do, my absolute favourite was that Troughton Years video. The myth of Doctor Who was enhanced greater in my mind when I found that these episodes were the only ones that survived from their stories, and Patrick Troughton quickly established himself as my favourite Doctor. He was like the naughty uncle I never had, and I began writing stories based around the missing episodes and playing them out with my cousins. Heaven knows what my family must of thought when they heard, “Oh my giddy aunt! Jamie! Don’t go in that cave!” belting from my bedroom.
As my childhood dissolved into memory and the angst of adolescence reared it ugly head, I continued to write my own Doctor Who stories, replacing companions with myself and my friends and hiding them in a dusty file under my bed, praying my footballing friends would never see them otherwise I was doomed.
How many 10 year olds do you know who went to a Sci-Fi convention in Clacton and met Deborah Watling and the man who played Chewbacca? Not so many back then, but yet just ten years down the line, the world of Doctor Who is thriving again, the series has arguably never been stronger and children all across the world are playing it in the playground, writing about it when they get home, drawing pictures of Daleks and the Doctor and dreaming that one day they will find the TARDIS on the corner of their road, and they too will be whisked away to another world.
It is fairly safe to say that that one moment back in 1996 shaped my future and is now the main reason why I am a writer. Perhaps one day, when Doctor Who is no longer on our screens or in the public consciousness (heaven forbid) another young boy or girl will come across an old looking, long out of fashion DVD of Matt Smith’s first series, maybe he or she too will fall in love the programme just as we all have. Time will only tell.
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