The Scottish Sunday Post – Sunday 20th July, 2003

By Douglas McNaughton – Dr Who Appreciation Society.

Dr Who hasn’t been seen on our screens for a few years but it’s one of those shows that just won’t lie down.

It’ll be 40 years in November since it first appeared on our screens, with eight actors playing the part of The Doctor. The ninth is Richard E Grant, who will provide the voice for a special animated episode, it was revealed last week. Choosing a big name like Grant shows the BBC see the show as an ongoing concept rather than a dead one.

Doctor Who has become a bit like Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes or James Bond, where lots of different actors have played the part but everybody recognises the character and the concept of the series. So it’s really much more than just an old TV show.

There’s far more going on now, in terms of new products, than when The Doctor was regularly on TV. He exists in books, comics, CD’s, DVD’s and now through the internet as well.

The webcast – a programme transmitted through the internet on to a user’s computer screen – was made by BBC last month. It was from a script written several years ago by the late Douglas Adams, of Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy fame, for Tom Baker, which was never made.

The BBC got Paul McGann, who played The Doctor in the American movie version in 1996, to do an audio drama of it and then put it on the website, where it’s been a huge success. That led to the casting of Richard E. Grant for the latest webcast which will be shown online in November.

For people my age (33) Dr Who is a nostalgia thing and a bit like supporting a favourite football team. If it grabs you at the right age you stay loyal to it for the rest of your life. You never quite let go and in a way it never quite lets you go.

Fondly remembered

What is great is that more and more young people are seeing it on digital TV channel UK Gold and then discovering there are years of stories they can watch. Some are also buying the new novels and then finding out it was also a TV series.

So it’s nice that something that was always meant to be a family show can still be so popular.

And it’s fondly remembered by casual viewers too – at a Dr Who convention in Edinburgh last month, as I was wrestling various Daleks into taxis, the drivers all told me what a great programme it was and all of them asked, “When are they bringing it back then?”

I think the success lay in the flexibility of the format, where it could go anywhere and do anything. That made it appealing. It stimulated the imagination and that’s why people still remember it.

It’s a social thing too. In our branch of the Appreciation Society, around a dozen fans meet every Monday night to discuss the latest books or DVD’s, to gossip about the actors, but really just to get together and have a laugh.

We recently held a convention where we limited attendance to 40 people, but we sold out weeks before the event and had to turn many people away.

Dr Who could come back tomorrow with a new actor, keeping only the title and the Tardis, and the makers could go anywhere with it. That’s why it was such a brilliant idea and why it still lives on.

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