1989. I am just about a teenager and the programme that I have been obsessed with for as long as I can remember watching TV programmes has just finished its latest series. I don’t realise it at the time but this isn’t just its latest series. It’s effectively been cancelled without being cancelled. It won't be coming back.
1996. I am a student now and that show is coming back. For years, it’s been a bit of a joke - wobbly sets, villains that can't go upstairs* - but this time, it’s got money, advertising and that bloke from Withnail & I in it. It does well but not well enough for the Americans co-funding it and, so once again, it fades into the background, kept alive for years by spin-off books and audios.
2004. I am a working man now and it’s announced that the show is properly coming back for a full series with a proper writer, a well-known actor and… a pop star? Ok, fair enough. I’ve been through the rumour mill a few times now. I’m pretty jaded. It might get one series and then it’ll fade into obscurity again and I can fade back into that odd group of people who still get excited about an old TV show, hidden away in the shadows.
2005. Rose, the first episode of the latest version of Doctor Who, airs. And it’s great.
Fifteen years later and Doctor Who is still a big part of people’s TV watching life. A couple of generations have now grown up with a whole raft of new Doctors (counting John Hurt and Jo Martin, we’ve now had almost as many Doctors in the last fifteen years as in the first thirty three**). It still generates headlines and press attention, good and bad (pretty every year sees an article about how the ratings have declined and it’s going to be cancelled; seriously, every year) and it’s still going strong. In my opinion, this year’s batch was the strongest run in a good few years and that’s a pretty divisive opinion - just the fact that it can still provoke so much divisive opinion after fifteen continuous years back on TV and fifty seven (!) years overall is impressive in itself; there really aren’t any other series that can say that.
So hats off to Russell T Davies, Christopher Eccleston, Billie Piper, Phil Collinson, Jane Tranter and all the other on-screen and behind the scenes people who did the impossible and successfully resurrected a programme largely ignored by the viewing public, turning into a national institution once again.
D’you wanna come with me?
* Even though they did back in 1988. Any excuse to nerdily correct…
** Yes, Paul McGann counts.
2 comments:
This is a lovely tribute to the modern show! It's easy to forget just how exciting it was back in 2005 when it returned. As you say, hats off to RTD,Julie Gardner, Phil Collinson and the rest for bringing Who back with such a bang, and all done with such love.
Thanks, squire! Yeah, it's become such a fixture again that The Wilderness Years get taken for granted nowadays...
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