The Tea's Getting Cold

Originally printed in The Terrible Zodin # 1

It's all my Dad's fault really.

5th October 1988. I was six years ago. Flicking through a copy of that weeks Radio Times, Dad noticed an article about the new series of a show he'd watched in his youth and one he didn't realise was still running. And so it was that we sat down to watch episode one of Remembrance of the Daleks. My life would never be the same again.

Doctor Who was the best thing EVER! Straight away I was sucked into the adventures of this funny mysterious man with a straw hat and an umbrella who was running around saving the world from the evil and hidious Daleks. And who can forget that cliffhanger - "The stairs!". I was hooked and as those weeks went by I knew I was going watch forever.

One of my earliest memories is drawing a picture of a Dalek in school. It wasn't very good, a triangle with a dome on top and the two gun sticks but I remember the class bully saw it and was very impressed. Daleks were followed by the Kandy Man, the Cybermen and the Gods of Ragnarok, all of whom were immortalised on scraps of paper by my childish hand in the week long enternities between episodes.

Dad had told me of course that there had been many Doctors before this one and many adventures but I hadn't really payed attention engrossed as I was by this Doctor. My Doctor with his frowns one minute and smiles the next. I even thought his question mark jumper was the epitomy of cool and so when Mami knitted me one I refused to wear anything else. I walked around with a hat and an umbrella which Dad had taken a blow torch to and melted it into a vaugely question marked handle. I would scurry around the house fighting the Daleks in my mind, deliberatly tripping up on the stairs and wishing my wardrobe was blue and would whisk me away to the farthest reaches of my imagination.

I wanted to be the Doctor, he was my hero and with callous disregard I ditched the previous holder of that title. Who wanted to be Arthur Fonzarelli when I could be Doctor Who? Sure the Fonz had all those girls but the Doctor had Ace and she was the prettiest girl EVER.

With a whole year to wait for the next series after The Greatest Show In The Galaxy ended, I was ready to discover the other Doctors my Dad had told me about. My local library had a very battered copy of Doctor Who: The Making Of A Television Series, with its spine held together with masking tape. Inside were my first glimpses of the other five Doctors (At the time both Dad and I were ignorant that there had even been a Colin Baker). There was a very grumpy looking old man, a funny man in a fur coat, Worzel Gummidge, a man with curly hair and boogling eyes and the young man who also had a straw hat. But the best part of all was the monsters. Those colourful dread inspiring creatures; Kraals! Nimon! Marshmen! Voc Robots!

The book was in such bad condition that the librarian offered to sell it to me for 50p, which was more than three weeks pocket money and meant forgoing my usual Mars bar but it was worth it. Now I had those adventures with me always and when we went to Colombia that year the book came with me and after dark when Abuelos garden took the form of a nightmarish jungle, I would wonder if there were Mandrells lurking out there.

The year of waiting for the next series had my imagination blossoming. It would be inaccurate to say that my path as a writer began then, because it began long before that from the days when I first learnt to write my own name. But nonetheless adventure after adventure would be scribbled by me, written in fluent gibberish and usually involving the Doctor fighting all those aliens which had appeared in that colour double spread in The Making Of...

Finally now however the new series was here and every Wednesday night I was enthralled by the Destroyer, by the Husks, by the Heamovores and finally by the Cheetah People. As the Doctor and Ace walked off into the sunset a few weeks before Christmas 1989, my hunger for all things Doctor Who was insastiable and I remember clearly that I felt deep concern that the continuity announcer hadn't said that the show would be back next year...

As it turned out we had to wait 14 years before the series came back properly.

Nonetheless in the wilderness years there was plenty to keep this Doctor Who fan happy. My local library had plenty of the novelisations of past adventures for me to read and read I did with a religious fervour, so much so that my school teacher had to request that if maybe just once when we did our weekly book reviews I could chose something that wasn't written by Terrance Dicks.

I saved up my pennies for months on end, counting them everyday longing for the day when I finally had nine hundred and ninety nine pennies so that I could go to W H Smith and buy Death to the Daleks or The Five Doctors or City of Death or which ever cover grabbed my attention that week. Death to the Daleks won the honour of being the first video I ever bought and how could I resist, the cover had an exploding Dalek!

Of course with time came my teenage years and I had to hide my fandom from the world. Being a Doctor Who fan wouldn't win me the heart of the girls who were no longer strange alien creatures in their own right but were now alluring creatures undergoing their awkward transformations which required a constant tugging down of my jumper to hide my own transformations.

Like an addict with a shameful secret I would bend the covers of the books I read so the Doctor Who logo wasn't visible. I no longer proudly expoused about the scariness of the Sea Devils, or shake my hand in a withered Davrosesque manner, nor did I associate monks with the word meddling or pretend when drinking a glass of milk that it was spectrox, the most precious substance in the galaxy!

Only my best friend Big Al, back in the days before he became Big Al, knew of my secret though being an African refugee he had no idea what the programme was about but he understood even though he himself was an out and unapologetic Star Trek fan.

Later still when I finally went away to university, with no hope of Doctor Who ever coming back, and with me now playing with those grown up toys of cynicism, criticism and disillusionment I turned my back on Doctor Who. I didn't bring any of the books or videos with me and whilst I didn't have the heart to cancel my subscription to Doctor Who Magazine I skipped over the articles with a detached interest. Doctor Who was just a silly programme I'd watched as a kid. It was full of wobbly sets, rubber monsters and bad acting. I had much more important things on my mind like sex and whisky.

When the news that fandom had been waiting for ever for broke, that the series was coming back my reaction was minimal. I could well remember the empty hollow feeling I had that Bank Holiday weekend back in '96 when Paul McGann had had a crack at the whip.

As it got nearer and nearer to the time however I took the time to start reading through the back copies of DWM, read a couple of books, even watch a video now and again. And then I came across the comic strip Doctor Who and the Fangs of Time. The plot? The Doctor pays a visit to a 20 something who loved the show when he was 6 but thinks he should have grown out of it by now.

It did the trick. I was hooked all over again and as the new series approached I could feel all my fan boyishness coming back and I rejoiced.

The Doctor still was and always had been my hero. Never cruel, never cowardly as the cliche goes. He wasn't like James Bond or Captain Kirk, he didn't save the day with his fists and he certainly didn't get the girl and that's what made him better than all those others. He was just somebody who wanted to travel, someody who was rootless with no home of his own, flitting about wherever and whenever he wanted. He never sought out trouble and when he did become involved in such situations it was his brains that won out, his ingenuity, his inventiveness. He did what was right. Not what was good but what was right.

I'm no longer ashamed to call myself a Doctor Who fan. I was wrong. For every set that wobbles, there are the ones that don't, for every unconvincing alien there is a breath takingly real one and for every camp performance is one so straight and earnest that you really believe in the danger. If you were to ask me my favourite story I could be ready to trot out such safe bets as City of Death or The Caves of Androzani but the truth is it's joint place between Nightmare of Eden and The Claws of Axos. Both have wobbly sets and poor acting. But alongside they also have ambitious designs, strong performances and cracking scripts. I think they could simultaneously fall into the Best and Worst categories and I love them. And that's why I love Doctor Who. It can be anything and it is everything and when it's at it's best it's fun and it's exciting, ultimatly it's a great way to spend an hour on a Saturday evening.

I'm [26] years old but I tell you when I put on my battered brown leather jacket, I strut down the street and pretend I'm Christopher Eccleston. When no one's looking and I'm in Earls Court, I'll stop and touch the police box and I'll wonder if the doors will open and I'll be whisked off to Skaro or Peladon or Raxacoracafallapatorious.