Happy Birthday, Doctor Who!

Today?is the 60th?Anniversary episode of Doctor Who and although I gave up on it a few years ago, I actually can’t wait.

It will start with that fabulously recognisable theme tune which gives me a little thrill of nostalgia taking me back over decades, every time I hear it. I think it’s the?woo-oo-ooo bits that do it!

I’m really quite sensible and not one of those superfans who knows everything about Doctor Who.? In fact, often when I watched it in recent years, I didn’t really have a clue what was going on, which increasingly made it a bit of a chore to sit through and probably why I just gave up on it.?

However, it will always have a very special place in my heart as I grew up watching it and it has been around for as long as I can remember.? It defines British television and is most definitely a national treasure.

In 60 years of time travel, the Doctor’s victories have always been total and when I was little, that made him the perfect father-like protector.

I have no idea now how many Doctors there have been - they seem to change so often and John Hurt and Jo Martin have to be included, so I’m lost … again! ??

I started watching when I was about seven or eight and Jon Pertwee was the Doctor.? That gives him a special place in my own personal ranking.? He was a proper Dandy with his frilly shirts, posh voice and general flamboyance.? I saw him as a rather lovely eccentric granddad. In those days, each episode ended with a cliff hanger and I had to wait until the following week in a state of anxiety as to whether he would be all right!

And then Tom Baker took over.? He was the one I grew up with and loved. So completely strange with that voice, the wide eyes, that slightly childlike but mesmerising nature, the jelly babies and that long, long scarf.? He was my Doctor.

By the time Peter Davison took over, I was a teenager/young woman and Saturday evenings were more about going out and finding my own hero rather than watching TV, so I missed quite a lot of episodes …. but I do remember thinking he was really quite cute, in a jolly nice chap way.

I had no time for Colin Baker and his ridiculous technicolour coat and so I stopped watching and then gave up on it totally when Sylvester McCoy took over.? I guess others felt the same as the BBC pulled the plug in 1989.

But in 2005, the Doctor’s return really set my world alight.? Christopher Eccleston was so cool and rather sexy and I loved him straight away.? Rather disturbingly, my daughter who was entering her teens felt the same! He was such a great Doctor.? He gave the series back the huge success it deserved and he thoroughly owned the role.

However almost as soon as he started, he left.? I was distraught and I didn’t think that I could forgive David Tennant for well, not being Christopher Eccleston.? However, that lasted about an episode!?

Halfway through that first series with him, he was my favourite, my absolute favourite, and not just because I did, and still do, fancy him rotten but because it was clear that he genuinely loved being the Doctor.? He was gorgeous, cool, cheeky and as far as I’m concerned, he?was?THE Doctor.? The end of the Tennant reign was absolutely heartbreaking and I sobbed for hours.? Well, a good few minutes!

Matt Smith had such a hard act to follow and I didn’t appreciate how good he was until he announced he was leaving.? A cross between a boffin, action man and alien and probably the best physical actor of the lot.? His problem, as far as I was concerned, was that he wasn’t David Tennant and he didn’t have scripts from Russell T Davies.? But I realised too late that I didn’t dislike him as much as I thought.? Although I moaned about him, I did watch every one of his episodes.?

I gave him a hard time.?I was wrong. Matt Smith, I apologise - you are up there as one of the best.

And then came Peter Capaldi who I adore as an actor but by now the writing was beyond understanding and the episodes were too interconnected for me to keep up, and so I gave up.

Over the years, it wasn’t just the different Doctors that made this programme so watchable.? Where the companions have been great, Doctor Who has been at its most magical.? Sarah Jane Smith arrived soon after I started watching and it may have been her that kept me hooked with her guttural “Doct-err” every time she was in danger.? Even at my very young age back then, I think I had a bit of a girly crush on her!? In the modern era, she returned in one of my favourite episodes, sparking off much jealousy from Rose.? Sarah Jane was brilliant.? RIP Elisabeth Sladen.

And talking of Rose.? I was so sceptical when I heard Billy Piper was to be in it, but she was fabulous from the start.? I adored her.? Every episode was wonderfully compelling.? And the relationship between the Doctor and Rose was so beautiful.? I’ll never forget their heart-wrenching goodbye when he disappeared before actually telling her he loved her.

But just as beautiful, was the Doctor’s relationship with Donna Noble.? I never thought in a million years that casting Catherine Tate could work and at the start it really did just seem as if one of her sketch show characters had pitched up on the show.? But soon, I LOVED her. ?Really loved her.? And when it ended with the Doctor having to erase her memory so she didn’t even know who he was, it was even more upsetting than the ending with Rose.

I really can’t wait to watch the 60th anniversary episode tonight with the return of Tennant and Tate.? I know it won’t be a letdown because Russell T Davies is head writer on the show again and he is, quite frankly, a genius. If anyone is going to get me hooked on Doctor Who again, it’s him.?

I’m literally counting down the minutes to 6.30pm and I think a huge chunk of the country is doing the same thing too!

Not long to wait now.? Woo-oo-ooo…..