The L Word

I expect that there are some people who are either utterly bemused or actively irritated by the sheer amount of attention Doctor Who has been attracting over the last ten days or so. It is, after all, just a TV show, an occasionally silly, sometimes unpopular and unfashionable one, originally made for children and in not especially well-financed style.

And you would have a point, were it not for the fact that this is, after all, the fiftieth anniversary of the programme’s first appearance. Fifty years! For a TV series to still be on the air fifty years after its first broadcast is, surely, of some historical significance. When it is a genre series, that significance is surely greater. Greater still, when the series is arguably enjoying an unprecedented peak of global popular success.

So it’s a significant day. But why should anyone outside the Doctor Who village really care? For those of us who have been on board for the long haul, this is of course a wonderful occasion for taking stock and recalling the legions of unsung heroes who have made such remarkable contributions to this most rich and varied of cultural artefacts, people whose names are never usually mentioned in the mainstream media – not just the famous, celebrated people like Verity Lambert or Douglas Adams, but Waris Hussein, David Whitaker, Raymond Cusick. Innes Lloyd. Derrick Sherwin. Douglas Camfield. Malcolm Hulke. Robert Holmes. Barry Letts. Terrance Dicks. Dudley Simpson. Philip Hinchcliffe. John Friedlander. Graham Williams. David Fisher. Graeme Harper. Christopher Bidmead. Eric Saward. Andrew Cartmel. Ben Aaronovitch. Philip Segal. Phil Collinson. Joe Ahearne. Paul Cornell. Gareth Roberts. And many others.

But why should anyone else care, let alone feel the need to celebrate in any way? Is today a good day for more than just the fans of the programme? I think so, and permit me to explain why. Doctor Who may be my favourite TV show – although those words seem madly inadequate – so I am inevitably going to be biased, but I honestly think it has had an effect on our culture and society over the past five decades which has been wholly positive, and is wholly to be celebrated.

This isn’t just because Doctor Who is a brilliant vehicle for telling a certain style of story, though it is: Doctor Who, at its best, has always been unbeatable when it comes to a particular type of fantasy adventure. Nor is it because of the undoubted wit and craft of the storytellers, although the history of the series sometimes looks like one brilliant coup after another, particularly in the early years when their ability to turn limitations into triumphs (the spaceship has to look like a phone box, they have to recast the lead character, and so on) seemed almost supernatural.

These just mean it is a great TV series. What I think makes it such an honestly wonderful institution is the fundamental ethos of the thing: it is about creativity, and imagination, and beyond that it is about tolerance, kindness, politeness – freedom of thought, freedom to be silly. The importance of reason, the importance of compassion, and the importance of fighting for what you believe in.

And if that’s all a bit abstract and airy-fairy for you, look beyond the actual substance of the series: friendships made through a shared love of the series, marriages brought about, children born. Imaginations sparked into life – whole generations had their appreciation of the joy of reading kindled by the 13 million Doctor Who novelisations published between the 1970s and the 1990s – and careers in publishing and TV forged as a result.

So that is why I will personally be enjoying today, regardless of exactly how the actual anniversary episode turns out (hey, I’m on such a golden cloud of positivity at the moment that I’m fully expecting it to be wonderful). Today is not just a good day for Doctor Who and its fans: it is a great day for British culture and everyone who would like to believe in a better world.