A strange phenomenon has swept the planet. In a plot twist that defies time and space, it is now kind of cool to like Doctor Who. As the world over seems to be going batshit mental in anticipation of the special anniversary episode, i’ll just take a moment to pause and reflect.
It wasn’t always this way you see – as many folks of a certain age will know, being into Who used to be something you kept very much under your wide-brimmed hat.
I am an (unearthly) child of the 70s, so “my” Doctor was Tom Baker. I admire each of them of course, and especially Jon Pertwee who starred in my favourite ever Doctor Who adventure ‘The Daemons’.
I was lucky enough to meet Tom Baker many years later during my London Dungeon days in the mid 90s. He is a giant of a man and he bellowed his ideas for bringing out a live victim for the Theatre of the Guillotine show with that mad, brilliant glint in his eye.
I remember watching, lump in throat, as Baker’s Doctor regenerated into Peter Davison’s incarnation like it was yesterday. A new generation of fans will experience that powerful feeling of optimistic loss soon enough when Matt Smith’s Doctor regenerates into Peter Capaldi’s.
I met Doctor the Fifth, too, many years later at a party and recounted how i’d once seen him at a telly shoot when i was a kid. I remembered being astonished that the Doctor ate sandwiches! “He eats!!!” Mr Davison laughed. Like all the actors portraying the Doctor he came across as a charming and thoroughly likeable man. Those qualities are probably what has kept the character and show going for a staggering 50 years.
Well, that and the rubber monsters.
(See, we Whovians knew they were cool all along)
Happy 50th, Doctor!
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