My Goldfish Bowl is Bigger on the Inside than the Outside

I remember, from way back in 1981, my vague sense of bemusement when it was announced that Peter Davison would be taking over from Tom Baker as Doctor Who. How was that going to work, then? They didn’t even look vaguely similar.

Anyone who knows me now will find this scarcely credible but in late 1980 I had stopped watching Doctor Who entirely, lured away by the cheap thrills of Buck Rogers on the other channel (and – shame upon shame – Meglos was just too scary for my six-year-old brain). But the sheer novelty value of the impending regime change pricked my curiosity – not to mention that news of the departure of K9 was the cause of tears (am I really putting all this stuff out in public? Masochism reaches new heights) – and I started watching again.

This will once again seem insane to modern readers, and maybe it was just the result of me being six, but I genuinely didn’t know when the regeneration was actually going to take place. Excitement started to build as early as the last episode of Warrior’s Gate (when the Doctor goes off to sabotage Rorvik’s ship I thought he might meet a sticky end and the new man would just wander into the now-ownerless TARDIS and adopt his title out of… well, I didn’t figure out all the angles). But – no regeneration that week, although K9 went (waaah!).

So I felt obliged to stick around for The Keeper of Traken – which was a pretty good tale to stick around for, not least because my Who-consciousness was massively expanded by the presence of the Master (there were old enemies other than the Daleks? other people had TARDISes? Cool!). Once again the final episode came around with our hero in pretty dire straits (I should’ve realised he spends every final episode  in pretty dire straits), but… you guessed it. Same old Doctor leaving at the end. Though there was that odd business with the clock and the guy with the beard right in the closing seconds.

Well, anyway. I finally got my dose of Time Lord snuff with Logopolis – along with a truckload of tantalising flashbacks – but the damage had already been done. The hooks had been inserted, the pattern had been set, and I would never willingly miss another episode again (unless you count going abroad and watching the show via YouTube or TV links some time after its UK transmission). Why? I don’t know. Sometimes you don’t choose, you get chosen. But I’m quite certain of a couple of things. Firstly, while early-80s Who gets a lot of stick for overdoing the flashbacks and other continuity references, the sense of that vast and rich history just waiting to be explored was, I’m sure, fundamental in tipping me over the edge into fandom.

And the second is that, had the specifics of Tom Baker’s departure been as widely known as those of David Tennant are today (he’s going to croak round about 8pm on New Year’s Day 2010), I would have been able to just tune in to the last episode of Logopolis, not got into the Who-habit, and today be… well, I shudder to think. Am I complaining that the show is now too famous and popular and spoken-of? Is this just another rather convoluted manifestation of ‘I hate the fact my favourite band is now everybody’s favourite band’? I would certainly hope not. Instead I would say… I don’t really know what I would say. Time moves on.

In other news: Michael Moorcock to write Doctor Who novel shocker. Finally BBC Books have hit upon a strategy that actually makes me want to buy one! (Other than employing Gareth Roberts or Terrance Dicks.) Be interesting to see if the Doctor is revealed as yet another facet of the Eternal Champion (like they don’t have enough incarnations between them already).