Is There Life Outside the Box? by Peter Davison

Author:Peter Davison [Peter Davison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786063274
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2016-12-17T05:00:00+00:00

In 2006 my two sons were five and seven years old. They loved Doctor Who, a passion that had started when I’d dug out some old VHS tapes a couple of years before. Louis had started school with an iron curtain of shyness that was only breached when he talked to his school friends about Doctor Daddy. Of course his school friends had no idea what he was going on about for at least another year and half, when the series returned to television in its younger, brighter, all bells and whistles format. After that Doctor Daddy was never spoken of again, the old tapes and DVDs gathered dust, and cobwebs formed across the fronts of the DVD shelves and probably across me as well. Then at the end of the first season, which was only twelve weeks long, children started having withdrawal symptoms. Across the land they stared blankly into space, or would sit on the sofa rather than crouch behind it, so much so that parents, in an attempt to save their offspring from distress, searched the cable channels, or in some cases, their VHS and DVD collections, and discovered an almost infinite supply, an alternative universe, of other Doctors. These were the now re-designated classic series. Yes, the picture was a funny shape, and the effects a bit lame and fizzy, the music a bit weird and the action didn’t exactly race along, but it filled a space.

There was only one problem.

I remember picking Louis up from school one day, chatting to another parent until the children came out. When they did, the mum turned her son towards me and said,

‘Look, this is the Doctor Who you were watching last night.’

The child looked at me, looked past me, looked up at his mother, and for the life of him could not see a young blond-haired demigod anywhere in the playground.

Then along came David Tennant, saving the universe in his pyjamas, and once again the old codgers faded gently into the mists of time. Meanwhile, in an attempt to impress my children, I had taken advantage of contacts and arranged a visit to the set when they filmed in London.

David Tennant and Billie Piper were there and had their picture taken with the boys. My youngest, Joel, was so besotted with Billie he couldn’t bring himself to show his face and so hid behind tightly clasped hands, and couldn’t bring himself to speak. At the end of that season, there was a rumour that Rose was going to die. The boys were distraught, and rather than let them be traumatised, I sent an email to Russell T. Davies, briefly explaining, and asking him if Rose’s death was a fact or not. I received a brief reply;

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