Free Adventures with the Wife in Space: Living With Doctor Who by Neil Perryman

And then there was the incidental music, which sounded like it had been composed by me on a ZX Spectrum.
    When the programme had finished, Rugby Man stood up.
    Rugby Man: Well, that was bloody shit.
    But Rugby Man was wrong. It was a little bit shit but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot.
    The Doctor is trapped in the cellar with a Dalek. He runs up the stairs
…
    Sue: F**king hell! A Dalek is flying up the stairs!
    And then the theme music crashes in.
    Sue:
That’s
how you do a cliffhanger.
    Me: ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’, part 1 got me back into
Doctor Who
. It was the first episode I’d seen in four years. I saw it by accident, in a halls of residence TV common room in my first week away from home in the north-east. It was the cliffhanger that pulled me back in.
    Sue: I can see why. It’s really good.
    Me: If I’d been a child prodigy, and I’d gone to university a year earlier, I would have walked in on ‘Time and the Rani’ instead, which you gave a score of minus 1 to.
    Sue: And we wouldn’t be sitting here now, doing this.
    Me: And I would have no friends or any interests to speak of. Yeah, 1988 was a big year for me.
    Sue: I gave birth to Nicol in 1988 so I think I win that one.
    *
    The thing about ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’ is that it had obviously been made by fans of the show. So not only did the story feature the Doctor’s deadliest enemies, it also took place in November 1963, the month
Doctor Who
was born. It even featured the same Shoreditch School from that first episode, ‘An Unearthly Child’. The show was treating its own history with a slightly stalkerish kind of affection. I was impressed. The Doctor’s new companion, Ace, wasn’t bad looking either.
    I bought the latest issue of
Doctor Who Magazine
the very next day, my first since 1984. I found the issue in the children ’s comic rack, sandwiched between
Jackie
and
Bunty
. Kneeling down to rummage through the children’s section of WHSmith felt reassuring somehow. It harked back to amuch less complicated time. I should add that I bought the
Guardian
as well.
    The following week in the TV room, I faced down a challenge from Rugby Man, who had brought along a few burly mates to back him up. However, the majority managed to watch episode 2 of ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’ in a tightly anxious silence, certain that at any minute the opposing group would rush to the front and form a scrum around the TV. As a result, as soon as the episode had finished, I was so relieved I could hardly remember anything about it. But once again, I felt like I had enjoyed it.
    I may have fallen under the Doctor’s spell again because I was feeling vulnerable and homesick. Maybe I was grasping for a connection to my childhood, something reassuring that I could fall back on because my new student life was stressful and unfamiliar. And it wasn’t like I could go home – with Mum and Dad divorcing, home wasn’t really there to go to.
    Sue: Or maybe you just really liked Daleks?
    She’s right, of course – some things are better with the Daleks. As soon as my student grant cheque turned up the following week, I bought a second-hand portable colour television , and as a result I saw the Doctor blow up the Daleks’ home planet, Skaro, I grappled with the left-wing allegory of ‘The Happiness Patrol’, I thrilled to the celebratory pomp of ‘Silver Nemesis’, and tried to forget the surreal postmodernism of ‘The Greatest Show in the Galaxy’, without having to worry about a challenge from the First XV. And in between all that, I even found time to lose my virginity.

    Sue: You just can’t help yourself, can you? You want to tell everyone that it’s possible to have sex and watch
Doctor Who
at the same time. Well, not at the same time exactly, but you know what I mean.
    When I moved into rented accommodation the following year, my flatmates couldn’t have cared less about
Doctor Who.
Not that they ever mocked it – that would have required