Changing the World with Whatever Comes to Mind

It’s far beyond time I devote some of this blog to my favorite thing in the universe: Doctor Who. Yes, that often-designated “silly, little show” about friendship, time travel, and a fair amount of heroics is my favorite thing about life. Not just my favorite show, because as a good deal of you may know, Doctor Who spans more than just television, as does its impact on many of us. I wanted to take a moment to share with you all how I found my way into this incredible fandom and how it has changed my life.

I was born at the—potentially—inopportune time known as “the Wilderness Years,” when there was no new Doctor Who content on television. I was born before Big Finish started producing their wonderful DW audio dramas, before the DW TV movie, and during the very early days of DW novel content. At that time, the only Doctor Who that was being broadcast were reruns on local channels, and even then it was a limited selection, and were not being broadcast everywhere.

For me, I discovered Doctor Who at the local comic book shop my dad would take me to. He’d shopped there for a long time and started bringing me in when I was very young. So young, in fact, that the store itself feels like a staple of my childhood, a place I have so many fond memories of that I cannot divorce it from the overall idea of my youth. Consequentially, this also means that Doctor Who is entwined in my childhood in the same regard. John, the store owner, had recorded a few shows on VHS over the years. I think he had taped reruns of Flash Gordon, maybe The Lost Planet, but most importantly, Doctor Who. He would keep these shows on regular rotation on a TV in a corner of the store. The one that always stood out most to me was Doctor Who. I remember looking through the boxes of comics and often getting distracted by the show, then picking out my comics for the week and settling down to watch the show for a while.

I have many memories of hanging out in that store with a stack of comics in front of me, rain beating and splattering down outside, as I watched what would become my favorite thing in the universe.

Perhaps unfortunately, due to this way that Doctor Who became so meshed into my life, so woven into it, what I don’t remember is exactly which story was my first. Most of my earliest memories of the show include Tom Baker as the Doctor, and from there it’s a combination of Louise Jameson as Leela, and Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward as Romana, so I can narrow it down to being that rough timeframe as a likelihood to what I saw first. From there, I can only go off of what stories stick out as the most vivid in my memory. Among those stories are “The Robots of Death,” “Horror of Fang Rock,” “The Invasion of Time,” all of the Key to Time arc of season 16—specifically “The Ribos Operation,” if you make me choose one—and finally, “City of Death.”

I can’t narrow it down any more than that, though one day I may make the attempt, despite the expectation that I won’t be able to figure out the exact story. However, I associate those few years of the show as my introduction to it, and from there my engagement with it stood by for several years. I was unaware of the release of the TV movie until a few years later, somehow it just slipped past my radar. Subsequently, I was also unaware of the Big Finish audio dramas for many years, for much the same reasons that I missed the movie.

In fact, until the return of the show in 2005, my primary interaction with it was catching more episodes at the comic book store—mostly expanding my knowledge of the Tom Baker years, as those were the majority of the stories John happened to have recorded, though I do recall seeing a few stories with Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, as well. I also recall the occasional instances of seeing Doctor Who things at the conventions my parents would take me to, fan-made merch, comics, VHS tapes of old stories. It was all around me here and there, even when it wasn’t right up in my face. Outside of the conventions and the comic shop, I hardly knew anyone who even knew what the show was, much less was as prepared to geek out about it as I was.

I remember the show’s return in 2005. I remember watching every episode of the new series as quickly as I could. I remember doing the same with every series since then. And as the show continued, grew into something far more wide-reaching than perhaps it ever had been, I found my ability to interact with other fans also expanding. I found more people who love the show, I found people who introduced me to other aspects of the Whoniverse, and, for perhaps the first time in my life outside the comic book store and conventions, I found a place where I felt like I belonged: among the fandom.

Doctor Who has come to mean so much to me. It’s introduced me to some truly incredible people. It’s brought me into a figurative space where I feel accepted, where I feel like I belong. No matter what my gender identity or romantic preferences are, no matter what mental health issues I may be confronting, no matter what I’m going through in life. It spurs on my creativity, having been one of the earliest instances of me experiencing a story and thinking “this is what I want to do for a living.”

No matter where I am, what I’m dealing with, I can turn on an episode of Doctor Who and immediately there’s a smile on my face and a warm vibration along my shoulders and the back of my head that make me feel so much better.

In some cases, it’s because of Doctor Who that I’ve made it this far. It’s thanks to Doctor Who that I’ve met some of the amazing and lovely people that I’ve met. It’s in part because of Doctor Who that I’ve become a writer. Specifically, a writer whose ultimate ambition is to write for Doctor Who someday.

Going forward, I will be writing this series of blog posts, which I’m calling my Key to Time series—purely because of how strong an attachment I have to that particular story arc in the show—and it will have a corresponding podcast, called the Key to Time podcast. Both of which will be focused on anything Doctor Who related, even stuff that’s just DW adjacent, if I see fit, like perhaps Blake’s 7. For the majority of the early episodes of the podcast, I’ll simply be recording audio versions of the blog posts in my Key to Time series, however I do have eventual plans to bring some rotating guest hosts onto the podcast to discuss specific topics, such as TV broadcast stories, Big Finish audios, and many more things, with the hopes of eventually finding someone who fits so well with the podcast that they want to stay on as a regular co-host. Who knows, maybe I’ll manage to get a few guests on for interviews, which would be amazing. Either way, no matter what happens, I’m dedicating this entire series of blog posts and podcast episodes to the Doctor Who fandom. To paraphrase Peter Capaldi, everyone who ever turned on Doctor Who, at any age, at any time in its history and in their history and who took it into their heart.

This is for you.

I appreciate everyone who joins me along this adventure. I’m excited to see where it takes us! Thanks for reading!

-Sean