Your Parents and Doctor Who

[Si Hunt]

My parents are totally to blame for my Doctor Who addiction which made it all the more galling when, like Si, they complained when I leant on it a bit (ok, a lot) in my teens. My Dad sat and watched the early Davison episodes with me, and then took me to Longleat. I can remember he also bought me the Radio Times 20th Anniversary Special as a surprise when I was 6 too.

Yet by my teens, my parents were thoroughly sick of it! It was all "how can you like that?" etc. And now, oh joy of the impossible, they are both regular viewers again! And there is a strong sense of "see, THAT'S why I have always loved it!". The new series has vindicated me really, not that there's much sense of being smug or proved right - I'm just overjoyed that it's being made well enough now that the whole family can once again enjoy it.

Si.

[Ian Lethbridge-Stewart]

As far back as I can remember the whole family watched Doctor Who on Saturday nights (well, my Dad would when he was in – he worked shifts so was at work during the evenings quite a lot). Me and my 2 younger brothers always watched the show and played games around the house that were based on it.
I do blame my Mum for turning me into a serious fan though. I was bought the last Tom Baker Doctor Who annual (the one with a picture of Davison from “All creatures” in the bottom right hand corner of the front cover) by my Mum, because she had returned from a parents evening at my school and apparently I had behaved myself in class and was doing very well at school (it was before I had met Ant Cox and our strange friend Leonard – not that I blame them for my school work suffering over the last few years of course)!!! I was excited at the time as I had never seen a regeneration – the album being bought for me before Davison had appeared as the Doctor on the TV.
Anyhow, my Mum bought me the annual as a present….and that’s when it all changed. I became a mad obsessive fan after that. I started recording episodes on audio cassette and would get really upset if someone coughed or spoke during this time (it was before we had any leads to connect directly to the TV from the cassette recorder). I recorded the last 10 mins or so of episode 3 of ‘The three Doctors’ when they showed the 5 faces repeat season. This lead to my very favourite recording of Logopolis (also from the 5 faces season). Later I recorded various bits of Arc of Infinity on audio cassette.
The Logopolis tape became so worn out that it started to play at half speed before it finally died. At one point I accidentally recorded over the opening titles to episode 3 (a serious crime, I’m sure you will agree), I had to ask my Mum to record the opening titles of that week’s episode (which turned out to be Earthshock) over the same spot on the tape to correct my error!!!!

Although I was obsessed with the show in those days (far more than I am now, I should add), it was really the theme music and the TARDIS that I really became very obsessed with – that’s still true today really!!!!

Around 1987 Ant Cox and I became friends and my obsession was taken to another level. Between us we recorded loads of Doctor Who audios (not all of which were a true reflection of the show itself), 3 fan videos (The predecessors to the Tamaras Crisis were short affairs and not in the same league as Tamaras – Oh yes, standards were even worse prior to Tamaras!!!).
We went to conventions together, signings, Doctor Who locations, exhibitions and even played the TARDIS materialisations sound very loud in the middle of a deserted park late at night!!!!
Those were the days – mind you neither of us had too much else going on to get in the way of our Doctor Who related activities back then.

Getting back on topic I often wondered what my parents thought of all of this. I know my Dad wasn’t impressed when one morning (when he was still asleep) I decided to play rather loudly a recording of the Delia Derbyshire version of the theme music (end titles from the previously mentioned 3 Doctors recording) to him and my Mum early one Saturday morning. He had been on nights and was enjoying a lie in at the time!!!
My Mum put up with my obsession and did watch at least 2 episodes of all Davison stories for me (she packed me off to Scouts every week and so I only got to see 2 episodes from all his 4 parters – we didn’t yet have a VCR in those days).
My Dad didn’t really get it – however I should point out that he was the camera man on Tamaras Crisis and had to put up with nothing but Doctor Who while all that was going on!!!

My Mum still cuts out bits from newspapers about the show and brings them to me.
They have both watched the new series – My Dad loved ‘Dalek’ (which to me was odd, as at the time I hated it – it’s since grown on me).

Thankfully as I’m now living in my own place with Oksana, my parents don’t have to put up with Doctor Who related things all the time (unless they come to visit me of course). Even now my Dad still chuckles to himself when my computer boots up to the sound of the TARDIS or the Who theme tune!!!!

The fun thing (to me anyway) is that whenever my Mum used to get annoyed with it all I could always remind her of that Doctor Who annual and that it was all her own fault!!!!

Oksana now has to put up with it instead although she does occasionally ask me to put a Who story on. Of course our child will like the show…………………………….I’LL MAKE SURE OF IT……Mwa, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, - THE CLANCY’S DOCTOR WHO OBESSION SHALL LIVE FOREVER mwa, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

[Si Hunt]

I demand we are told more about Leonard.

Si.

[Antony Cox]

Well here's a photo of him now:

[Si Hunt]

He has madness in his eyes.

Si.

[Antony Cox]

I can confirm that he has it in his mind, too!

[Dirk Gently]

And madness!

[Antony Cox]

It's martial arts, Tim, not marital aids!

[Dirk Gently]

I have a black belt in Martial & Marital arts!

[Antony Cox]

Indeed, Monitor - indeed!

[Ian Lethbridge-Stewart]

Well here's a photo of him now:

"yellows", "Volkswagon Beatles" and "Stralingford" spring to mind.

Nobody but Ant will understand this post!!!!

[RetroRobot]

My Dad and i became keen Doctor Who watchers from the first story on when it first showed in Western Australia (which was the first state to see it so that's yet another first in this long sentence of firsts).

It was his fault i got into SF due to his owning some Heinlein, Asimov & Bester collections (and a boxfull of Pulps i 'explored' from the garage).

Actually, it's unfair to exclude Mum from this (even though she had totally no interest in Fantasy or SciFi - suspicially/typically like one of those alien creatures from Venus called Grils) as she helped me design and build a fullsize Dalek out of pine-framing, aluminuminium-foil-&-pieplates on casters for me to trundle round in at the school "FancyDress-Ball" that same year. Which makes me an excitingly original and terribly authentic early-antipodean Dalek Builder, i spose!

Dad has an anecdote about those early days of Country WA newness of telly (we only got it in our town when i was eight and Doctor Who arrived 2 years later) wherein he was travelling around the rural area as a company rep and would time his return to a home base that had a TV-Store with the ABC playing in the window and he says there was never less than a dozen people crowded around to watch DW! It played 4 or 5 days per week at 6 o'clock before the news in those days (oh yes, we had news back then! - it wasn't 'olds' like it is now.)

Ah yes, those were the days, when the world was black & white and we could Believe in men wearing curtains and cardboard-box robots and waterpistol rayguns and huge apocalyptic End-of-the-Skaro battles between armies of toy Daleks, not like all this 'see it and believe it' cgi guff - pooh!

RetroRobot
(Setting the World Back to an Idyllic Time without ControlWands)
"RetroRobots Conquer & Enjoy!"

[Wayne]

Actually, it's unfair to exclude Mum from this (even though she had totally no interest in Fantasy or SciFi - suspicially/typically like one of those alien creatures from Venus called Grils) as she helped me design and build a fullsize Dalek out of pine-framing, aluminuminium-foil-&-pieplates on casters for me to trundle round in at the school "FancyDress-Ball" that same year. Which makes me an excitingly original and terribly authentic early-antipodean Dalek Builder, i spose!

Fantastic!

Shame you haven't got a pic! Did you win a prize?

[Jon Masters]

I never knew if my mum or dad had been fans of the show before I started watching it, but I always remember sitting down with my Dad on Saturdays while mum cooked the tea and my younger sister played under the table.

As with many others here, my obsession was tolerated and gently mocked, not only by my immediate family but aunts and uncles, but it never stopped them buying me books, annuals and later videos for presents. Its an often repeated family tale about how, when travelling all over the country on holidays, I would be happiest in the back of the car reading through a pile of Target books and ignoring the scenery, or trawling through every secondhand book shop I could find to purchase more. Luckily the issue of storing all this stuff never became an issue, even when I went to uni.

In the end I think I got my dad into liking it more (and TV sci-fi in general), to the extent that he would remember to video it for me when I was away, and now we often chat about what he's thought of the New Series. Of course, he's more than happy to provide grandchildren with associated DW items too

[Lord President]

My Dad loves the new series, and Torchwood too. He would sit and watch the old series with me when I was growing up. My Mum never got Doctor Who, and still doesn't!

They took me to the original Blackpool and longleat Exhibitions though!

My brother, on the other hand, is a Trek nut!

[Stuart Wallis]

He has our sympathy.

[RetroRobot]

>...Shame you haven't got a pic!
<
Actually i do, but i don't have a photo-host so can only post on sites that provide their own!

> Did you win a prize?
<
Can't remember - i probly Exterminated it!!

ReminiscoBot

[Dirk Gently]

>...Shame you haven't got a pic!
<
Actually i do, but i don't have a photo-host so can only post on sites that provide their own!

You could always use Photobucket. It's free to use.

[Kaybee Bailey]

Hmm, well Mum probably slightly regrets the day she said 'Planet of the Daleks is on, it's an old Doctor Who' to me, because I'd probably have forgotten all about Doctor Who if it wasn't for that... but in fairness all my family will watch as casual viewers. Actually Mum probably liked 'The Idiot's Lantern' more than I did. The best thing they've all done for me though was indulge me when I suggested that we went to Llangollen to see the Doctor Who exhibition. It's only about an hour from here, so we all went, even my then 80-something grandparents! As I recall my Grandpa liked Bessie... and the model train exhibit at the same place. But I was really surprised by how much they all enjoyed themselves and made sure I knew it.

[Stuart Wallis]

As I recall my Grandpa liked Bessie

Who is this Bessie woman? We need to be told!

[Kaybee Bailey]

Ha, she looked a little bit like this as I recall:

http://www.shillpages.com/dw/johnc09.jpg

Think there were a few gentlemen around admiring the strong Ford engine under the fragile carbon fibre shell.