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Strange Matters

Sunday, July 22nd 2007.
Mortality.


It struck me that although Doctor Who's been with me for my whole life that the series being off-air at least gave me a sense of completism. Although deep down you always know that fiction will outlive you, not having a current TV series on-screen at least created the illusion of a manageable, mostly retrospective genre.


As the cancellation of 1989 faded further into the past, along with the idea of each generation of children having its own Doctor, the desire to see the TV series return became a forlorn wish that, in all honesty, I probably didn't want to see come true.


Of course we all wanted Doctor Who to come back to our screens. But did we really want to give up our geeky isolationism by giving it over to a new generation? Probably not.


I took great pleasure in being wise about Doctor Who, and sharing it with my daughter, whose favourite Doctor quickly became Jon Pertwee. I loved talking not about the TV series, which she could see on video for herself, but about the books I'd been reading since 1991, and the comic strips I'd followed since 1977. Nostalgia gave me a kind of warm authority, and I liked that being a fan was a rarity.


Then came the Golden Age. Three years in and already my daughter's favourite Doctor has become David Tennant. She and countless other teenage girls "squee" over what's become a mainstream phenomenon.


At least my early fear, that the X-Files/Buffy bandwagon of twenty-something fangirl-armies would steam roller across fandom's old guard, disregarding the continuity of eld and condemning the creaky-jointed geeks of yesteryear to a smelly corner of the genre, didn't quite come to pass. True, they're there. and squeeing loudly, but they're overwhelmed by something I honestly hadn't expected when Doctor Who was in its wilderness years.


Children.


Doctor Who was always a Children's Show watched by families. That's how I got into it, but in the 80s something happened. It became a teenager's show - a series that appealed to the post-pubescent that had grown up with it, but which was losing ground to lowest common denominator sci-fi. From around 1980 Twiki, Dr Zee and the A-Team were hitting the viewing figures, and those who stayed with the good Doctor did so because they'd grown up with him.


And in the 1990s the books decided to pander not just to teenagers, but to adults. Sex, foul language, drug culture and the Cornell revolution turned Doctor Who into an adult pastime. That's why I stuck with Who over everything else. Star Trek was in a mid-teens viewing limbo, and nobody made mature sci-fi series' any more.


So its odd, looking back, that when Doctor Who returned as a Children's show in 2005, it had spent more years NOT being for children than it had been a Children's TV show. It means the expectations of older fans are considerably higher than the expectations of its current target audience. Hence Torchwood, no doubt. Although Ipersonally see Torchwood as a show designed to sidetrack the previously mentioned X-Files/Buffy lobby.


I'm glad I've seen it happen. My sense of vindicated belief in the best sci-fi show ever feels well-placed, but my sense of ownership is waning with the realisation that I'll never complete my journey, that Doctor Who is immortal and will outlive us all. Looking forwards, I can only imagine what artificial milestones my completist gene will struggle to come up with. A post-RTD hiatus perhaps? The end of the thirteenth Doctor maybe? The collapse of the BBC even?


Whatever lines I draw, Doctor Who is in its second childhood, and its proved beyond all doubt that it will never be laid to rest the way it was before.


The Silver Age is dead. Long live the Golden Age.

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All text contained within Psychopomp and Circumstance is copyright © Adrian Middleton, 2007. All thoughts and opinions expressed within the confines of this thread are those of the author and do not, in any way, reflect the views or opinions of any other group or individual connected with the newapocrypha site.


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