What Doctor Who Means To Me - #SaveTheDay

You may have worked out by now that I'm a raging Whovian. And, in 9 days time, the Day of the Doctor will air at the same time right across the globe. A celebration worthy of a wonderful Time Lord who's been racing around our screens for 50 years. (With a sabbatical in-between).

But I wanted to take a few moments out of my researching for my new politics essay to just explain what Doctor Who means to me personally.

So there's this girl on my course. I shan't name her but she doesn't particularly like Doctor Who but she's obsessed with Merlin. (We have great sassy arguments about them. It's fun). And the one thing I often say to her is "I'm sorry, is Merlin celebrating 50 years this year?" Which is both childish and harsh I know. But it's the best thing I can say in that situation because, well, I take Doctor Who incredibly seriously. And to me, it's more than a TV show.

I had never heard of Doctor Who until a week before Christopher Eccleston made his fantastic (see what I did there) debut back in 2005. That being said, my mum claims we looked round the Doctor Who Exhibition at Longleat back in the 90s but I don't remember it sadly. I wanted to watch the show as it seemed pretty cool at the time and I resolved to. Mum proceeded to tell me the day before that Doctor Who had been around in her childhood and had been going since the 60s and for all intents and purposes, it was a very British show. She loved it growing up and it was a huge part of her formative years. The more I heard about it the more I wanted to watch it. If mum liked it, why wouldn't I?

Sadly, I missed the original broadcast of the 2005 episode 'Rose' as our car broke down on the way home from the cinema that night. We got back in at 7:46 and I missed the whole episode. I was gutted. The credits were rolling and I was rather upset. But didn't think anything of it at the time.

A week goes by and mum reminds me Doctor Who's on again. I sat down and watched it, not sure what to expect as I'd seen nothing of it. So my mind was completely open to what was coming. Then came 'The End Of The World'. An episode where the Doctor takes Rose to 5 billion years in the future to watch the Earth burn as the Sun expands. (Judging from the ending of the episode, I think Rose has had worse first dates...). I watched it eagerly and immediately fell in love with it. I loved how sarky the Doctor was and I loved how he was...different. I fell in love with the show. I was in love with Doctor Who.

I continued watching the show eagerly in the weeks that followed. 'The Unquiet Dead' was next with the Gelth. Gaseous creatures claiming to be benign but ended up being an evil invasion force coming out of Eve Myles in Victorian Cardiff. (God that sounds so wrong...) That was my first Doctor Who fright. The Gelth scared the shit out of me. As a 10 year old, the idea of ghosts made of gas fighting Charles Dickens was both brilliant and terrifying. Especially the zombies that came next.

Then game 'Aliens Of London' and 'World War III'. A two-parter which saw the Doctor challenge the ambition driven farters the Slitheen. This story didn't scare me so much but I remember staring in amazement as the Slitheen unzipped their forehead to reveal a cute, yet disgusting, alien beneath hell bent on melting the Earth for molten scrap. I fell more and more in love with the character of the Doctor as it became apparent he actually had no clue what he was doing. I liked that in him as well as his very dry humour. Being a 10 year old boy with Autism who couldn't quite grasp humour, the fact I understood what the Doctor was saying was a miracle in itself but still I watched with eager eyes.

Then would come my life-long fear. When I look back on this particular experience, I feel a bit like someone watching the first ever series in 1963 when they were confronted with the iconic Daleks for the first time. I'd come across Daleks before, but not in Doctor Who. I'd first seen them in the film 'Looney Tunes Back In Action' when it was revealed a Peter Cushing Dalek was a lab rat in the Area 52 facility run by 'Mother'. Anyway, the episode 'Dalek' was genius in itself. For people my age, we were made to feel sorry for the Daleks. Being the last one of its kind, just like The Doctor, yet the Doctor was being horrible to it. But then it became apparent what Daleks really do. And then I got scared. I remember as a 10 year old, seeing Rose touch that Dalek and watching it rebuild itself, that was terrifying! Suddenly the alien wasn't restrained and it was hell-bent on killing EVERYONE. That's scary.

The series goes on, Jagrafess, Reapers, Gas Mask Zombies (they still creep me out big time), Slitheen again until finally, the Daleks come back again. But en masse. Eccleston's final stories 'Bad Wolf' and 'The Parting Of The Ways' were the stories that stick out most in my head for the fear factor. Suddenly, there wasn't just one Dalek anymore. There was a whole army of Daleks, made of humans. Gulp. We're screwed.

I watched Eccleston's final story, 'The Parting Of The Ways' , over a friend's house. They hadn't seen Doctor Who much and didn't understand why I was currently in tears. Rose had been sent away and the Doctor, the man I'd idolised for this wonderful series, was sure to die. Then Rose came back but different, after looking into the heart of the Tardis, destroyed the Daleks, the emperor of the Daleks before nearly dying herself. Suddenly, all seemed well. But then the Doctor kissed Rose and absorbed the very time vortex that Rose absorbed. The confusion in my mind was incredible. To top it all off, we see the Doctor dying. He stands in the Tardis clutching his stomach before saying that he's dying but Time Lords 'have this little trick, it's sort of a way of cheating death!' Suddenly, Eccleston explodes and, amongst this amazing spectacle and light show, appears David Tennant. My mind blew at this point. "Who the heck is this guy? And where's the Doctor?"

Christmas Day 2005, I watched Tennant's debut. I'll always remember the first few scenes with Jackie and Mickey hearing the roar of the Tardis and running out to try and find it. I felt safe hearing that Tardis. But imagine my surprise, as I'm sure you all were too when you first saw this, the Tardis comes out of the vortex, crashing into a Royal Mail van with that different man stepping out. But, by the end of the episode, I fell in love with David Tennant and I realised the Doctor hadn't gone. He was right here.

It was at this point mum started explaining the other Doctors. I was also finding them myself and I was shocked at what Doctor Who was as a show. How unique it was to Britain. how much it had impacted our society and what the show meant to so many people. Doctor Who had run, effectively, non-stop from 1963 until 1989. That for any show is impressive! With only shows like Coronation Street matching it. After realising this rich history and canon, I set about watching as many classic stories as I could. And, just like I had with Eccleston and Tennant, I fell in love with the classic Doctors. I couldn't believe the Doctor, the man I'd seen running about in a silly brown trenchcoat, once was a bitter old man, a dandy, the owner of a cute robot dog, an insanely long scarf and jelly babies, a cricketer and a stranger in San Francisco. It blew my mind how many different Doctors there had been. It was then that the show hit me even more.

Move forward 4 years and it was David Tennant's time to leave. People always say that they have 'their Doctor' or 'the Doctor I grew up with'. My mum's 'Doctor' was Jon Pertwee for example. But Tennant was my Doctor. He was like my strange older brother growing up who I always knew would be there to protect everyone and, to me, he WAS the Doctor. That the show really started with him. I know there were 9 other Doctors but he was the one true Doctor. When I heard he was leaving, I was devestated and I dreaded his regeneration scene, which was inevitable.

I felt this all the way through 2010. 'Planet of the Dead', 'Waters Of Mars', 2 more to go, until finally, on january 1st 2010, David Tennant regenerated. I cried 4 times during that episode and I cried most after he said "I don't want to go..." (I'm filling up even as I write that...) It's at this point I say my childhood ended. As Tennant left, so did my younger self. But all was not lost, Matt Smith took over and I fell in love with him from the first 'Geronimo'.

So where does that leave me now? Well, we're 9 days away from the long-awaited 50th anniversary and The Day Of The Doctor. What will I do with it? I'm going to see it in 3D at a local cinema with a friend, while dressing up as David Tennant's Doctor. I'm 19 and I still dress up as a strange Time Lord flying around in a Police Box. I'm never going to grow up am I...

But while I'll have these arguments with that Merlin fan friend of mine, there's one thing she'll never understand about my undying love for Doctor Who. Unless she reads this of course...But Doctor Who effectively saved me.

A year before Doctor Who returned to our screens, I was diagnosed with paranoid depression. It was set off in 2004 when it was reported that a large asteroid would pass close to Earth on March 21st 2014. (Oh shit...) But, in true media tradition, they couldn't help but illustrate this news with scenes from Armageddon and Deep Impact amongst others. In my 9 year old brain, this scared the living hell out of me and it just got worse. I was seeing psychiatrists and everything. I had various methods of calming myself if this kind of news ever appeared again but nothing really worked long term. But then, seemingly out of no-where, this wonderful man appears on my television screen with the sole purpose of helping anyone and everyone in danger and doing his best to save them. When you're 10 and have paranoid depression, this has a very calming effect on you. For a few years, I believed that the Doctor wouldn't let that asteroid hit the Earth because he loved the Earth too much. I believed that the Doctor wouldn't let the human race die. He wouldn't let me die...

Not only that, I came up with another coping strategy, which I still use today. Most of my personality comes from the Doctor in his various forms. Even though Tennant will always be my Doctor, I identify most with the Eight Doctor Paul McGann. I have a lot of his traits but my personality derives from an amalgam of all of them depending on my mood. It's a coping strategy that, for 9 years of my life, has worked remarkably well. Give or take a few certain periods of weirdness. As a matter of fact, because of all these things, some people have even resorted to calling me 'Doctor'. (I gotta say, I quite like that...)

So that's what it means to me. And it will mean this much to me on my death bed too. Because it's at that point that I can finally accept that the Doctor won't save me.

Doctor Who may not be real, but it's real enough for me to believe in it and the ideals behind it. I'll show it to my kids and, if they don't like it, that's cool. As long as they accept their dad will always be a raging Whovian. But it'll always mean that much to me. No matter what happens. I'll travel with the Doctor as long as he travels.

So, until the next time I write something, ALLONS-Y!