Regardless of your take on Season Six, the Matt Smith era, the Private Eye controversy, or even the entirety of ‘New Who’, you can’t escape how remarkable it all is.
Ten or fifteen years ago, when all we had to go on were audio books, tie-in fiction and rumour, it was utterly inconceivable that you’d be seeing one of the Doctor’s companions clutching a baby on the cover of almost every TV guide in the land, that Sandman author Neil Gaiman would have written an episode, and that children would be gushingly relating the plot to the latest episode with enthusiasm usually saved for Harry Potter, Pokemon or Ben Ten.
Being a Whovian used to be such a lonely pursuit, but not an unpleasant one. The wilderness years between 1989 and 2004 were like a long winter spent in front of the fire, snowed in away from civilisation, but with plenty to keep us entertained in the shape of such a vast, rewarding canon to analyse, dissect, rediscover and bask in. Since Doctor Who’s return, though, it’s become a genuine sensation; one that transcends genres and interests as a half-way house in popular culture.
The Monday morning following ‘A Good Man Goes to War’, I found myself in an animated discussion about the episode (you’ve no doubt found yourself in a few of these since), clustered around the kettle with the office’s resident Who fans, when someone who’d previously shown no interest in the series – or in sci-fi at all in fact, leapt in – opining on the Amy/Rory dynamic and the story arc with impassioned fervour.
Doctor Who is no longer this dusty old suitcase we found in the attic, full of brilliant relics and snapshots from another era; it’s something that’s very much alive, constantly shifting and growing. It might still frustrate, disappoint, delight and excite us, but it doesn’t belong to us alone. It belongs to everyone, and that’s its single greatest gift.
Ten or fifteen years ago, you wouldn’t have been able to talk about Doctor Who at work. Now, you can’t get away without talking about Doctor Who at work.
SciFiNow Issue #55 is out now, featuring a Captain America exclusive and a whole cosmos of sci-fi, from Green Lantern and Cowboys & Aliens, to Falling Skies and True Blood. Check it out at www.scifinow.co.uk
