The big five-oh next year, with 2013 promising to be a year of Doctor Who reflection, analysis and celebration like no other.
I thought I'd get in early before everyone is completely sick of it and (hopefully) come at it from a slightly different angle.
I mean; what? Why? Why is this thing still with me?
Maybe Harry Hill and William Roache can explain...
"I am Ken Barlow and I am the only constant in your life"
If you are not from the UK you may not understand this reference. In short, Bill Roache has played the character, Ken Barlow, in Britain's longest running soap opera, Coronation Street, since 1960 - a world record for the longest serving actor in the same role.
He was playing Ken Barlow ten years before I was born. My family watched Coronation Street when I was a child. I still watch Coronation Street today.
A thrice weekly ritual, observed by one generation and passed on to the next.
Doctor Who fits this too.
So, at least part of my preoccupation is to do with a sense of continuity. The World is in constant flux, but Ken Barlow and Doctor Who remain. Although, Doctor Who has the edge on Ken Barlow, because you can change his location and the period where events take place. You can change the bloke who plays him. You can change the tone, the genre and the medium of the stories.
Doctor Who remains, but, like the World, he too is in flux.
Look at this.
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| So Vile A Sin |
It's the cover of the book I am currently reading. So Vile A Sin was published in 1997 and co-written by Ben Aaronovitch (latterly the author of the Peter Grant novels) and Kate Orman.
Aaronovitch started it, suffered a catastrophic PC crash, losing most of what he had written and finding himself unable to pick up the peices, Orman took over and finished it. I have been enjoying the book, despite it reading a bit like a book started by someone, been lost in a catastrophic PC crash and finished by someone else.
It's a Doctor Who book. An official one. Doctor Who is in it. There's a TARDIS and everything.
Where's the Doctor Who logo?
Well, this was published by Virgin Books at the tail end of their licence to produce the ongoing Doctor Who: The New Adventures from 1992 to 1997 - when there was no TV version.
The BBC took the book series in-house when the US TV movie was made, expecting a television revival that wouldn't happen until they had the bottle to do it themselves in 2005.
When Virgin's licence was revoked, the publisher decided to carry on without the Doctor, the TARDIS or any of the BBC owned properties. They had created their own characters (like Bernice Summerfield, Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester) during the New Adventures run and felt that the series was strong enough to survive on its own merit and removed the Doctor Who logo, five books before the character himself left.
Now, Matt Smith in the current TV version of Doctor Who is great. I love it. My family, my wife, my kids all enjoy watching the show together, much in the same way as I watched it with my parents and siblings when I was a kid.
For me the TV show is sort of like the Greatest Hits of your favourite band. All killer material, for sure. The heavy hitters. The million sellers. The one that even your Grandma knows the words to. The three-minute floor-filling, crowd-pleasers. I love that shit.
But, what I love just as much, and in some cases even more so, is the esoteric stuff. The novels (like sprawling album tracks), the comic strips (genre experimentations), the novelizations (remixes and 'live' versions of old classics) and the spin-offs (solo & side projects).
Maybe I'll do you a compilation of my favourite oddities?
49 and counting.
Happy Birthday.
"Let's put on our Classics and we'll have a little dance shall we?"
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