Welcome to Zeiton 7- My love affair with Doctor Who by @zeiton_7

Hello and welcome to Zeiton 7, my new blog site. I thought I would use this opportunity to share with you all how I fell in love with "the mad man in a box". To do that we have to go back, way back, to my childhood and a typical saturday tea time....

The familiar strains of the "Grandstand" theme tune can be heard echoing through our house. This to me means only one thing. Doctor Who is nearly on! Every week I would dream of this time, this magical time when I would learn how The Doctor would escape the cliff hanger posed from the proceeding week. Whether it was a nasty scrape with the cybermen or at the wrong end of a gun pointed by some other villain he always seemed to manage to escape.

My Dad had been a Doctor Who fan since he was a child and had passed on his addiction to me. My first recollection was of staring transfixed at the screen as the Marshmen rose from the steamy swamps to stalk the land (Full Circle and The Fourth Doctor) The mix of fright and excitement is something I still experience today as do most fans! Together we would watch as The Doctor devised plan after plan to achieve his objective and then debate and discuss long after the titles had left the screen.

This was the "way of things" through the 80's right up until the final scenes of 'Survival' and The Seventh Doctor. I grew up with The Doctor and filled my time when I couldn't watch new episodes catching up with his previous incarnations through the excellent Target books. It seems amazing to me now with new Who episodes so readily available via BBC Iplayer and DVD/ Bluray releases that, back then, if you missed the broadcast on Saturday.. well you missed it! The only way I could familiarise myself with the previous Doctor's was by reading and listening to audio versions of the stories. My love for Genesis of the Daleks started by playing over and over the audio version of the story on tape.

If I wasn't watching, reading or listening to Doctor Who I was pretending to be the great man with my friends. We would relive our favourite stories or create our own for hours during a summer holiday, those were fun times!

My shock at the cancellation of my beloved program was profound and its effect on me was devastating!  I just couldn't understand why someone wouldn't enjoy such a totally groundbreaking and captivating program. To be honest I still struggle with that one! Unlike many other people, I really doubted whether it would ever return and as the months turned into years my fears seem to be confirmed. The announcement of a Doctor Who movie in the early 90's filled me with excitement again! I watched all the trailers and couldn't wait to see the now oh so familiar title sequences (yes even then I loved them!) to invade my television again.

Now, to be fair, I  have never felt that Doctor Who: The Movie or whatever the official title is was all that bad! McGann is brilliant and has gone on to give us some excellent performances through his work with Big Finish. Yes, there were problems (The Doctor is NOT half human) and Grace kind of annoyed me a little. I think it suffered from not really knowing what audience it was trying to reach (the die hard Who fan or a new unfamiliar one) Consequently it didn't really reach either so the promised new series never er.. materialised. Once more into the wilderness my friends!

However, then came Russell T Davies and the almighty Eccleston! I had long been aware that Russell is a massive Who fan. So the revelation that he was to bring the series back and that Eccleston was to play The Doctor was just the best news I had ever heard. My only other experience of a new Who story had been seeing Colin Baker play The Doctor onstage during The Ultimate Adventure! The now oh so familiar teaser campaign featuring Eccleston asking if I "wanted to come with him" still sends shivers down my back. The answer? 




Always and without reservation yes. I now know I have an incurable addiction to Doctor Who. It will never be quenched. Though I complain sometimes about things I don't like (don't we all) I will always tune in and watch and find something that makes me very very happy.

Doctor Who, right now, is more popular than its ever been and I am so unbelievably proud that it is moving into its 50th Year celebration with an amazing Matt Smith at the helm. Long may it continue!

Raise your glass to The Doctor, who has captured the hearts and minds of all of us!