Doctor Who 30 day fandom challenge - Day 30: How do you become a Doctor Who fan?

Well, we're finally at the end of the 30 day marathon - although I still owe you a gif. I'm sure this won't be the last time I write about Who this year, however, not with the big 50 fast approaching. By the way, if you haven't already been there, go and check out the new BBC 50th anniversary website.

And so to the question? It's a bit weird because I don't think there's any other thing you need to do to call yourself a fan than watch and love the show. I've only watched it on tv - I haven't read all the books, or listened to all the radio stuff from the intervening years between McCoy and Eccleston, but I kind of like that I have that to come when I'm old and infirm.

I suspect the true interpretation of that question is how I became a fan. It only took one episode, the right one - the first episode of Robot. I just loved Sarah Jane and the Fourth Doctor.I wanted to be Sarah Jane and that was pretty much the end of it. Or the beginning. And I never, ever got to watch it at home because my parents don't like it. So I'd hope against hope that they wouldn't arrive to pick me up from my Grandma's (where I went most Saturday afternoons) until it was over. More often than not, they came in the middle or sometimes before it even started. I guess I grew up always wanting more. And then when I did get my own house and my own telly, they cancelled it. And so I wanted more again.

Now I have regular fresh supplies - and I still want more. I love the values, I love the characters, the comedy, the tension and the action. I love the wondering how on earth the writers are going to extricate themselves from the latest cliffhanger.

I've really enjoyed the nostalgia that this challenge has encouraged in me. I have spent many hours on You Tube, watching clips and interviews. On the back of it, I've bought a good few more DVDs to add to the collection.

I am going to enjoy every single moment in the build up to the 50th anniversary in November. From the new series which starts on 30th March to Starfury's Return to the Eleventh Hour with Karen Gillan AND Caitlin Blackwood, Karen's cousin who played young Amy.

So, thanks for sticking with me for the whole 30 days.

Doctor Who 30 day fandom challenge - Day 29: Favourite guest star

Realistically, there can only be one answer to this. It really has to be Bernard Cribbins, who played the part of Wilfred Mott perfectly. He was funny, brilliant and who can forget the poignant way in which he sympathised with the Tenth Doctor as he talked about his impending death - and then discovered that he was the cause of it.

There are some honourable mentions to be handed out:  to Kylie Minogue as Astrid Peth in the Voyage of the Damned. The end bit was a bit mawkish and sad, but, let's face it, Kylie couldn't really spare the time to film a whole season, so she had to die really.

I wonder if we'll see Brian Williams, Rory's dad, played by the guy who played Arthur Weasley in Harry Potter, Mark Williams, again. It would be good to see him meet his granddaughter, after all. He was hilarious, it has to be said.

Doctor Who 30 day fandom challenge - Day 28: Favourite gif

You know, I really don't do this gif stuff. Maybe it's because I am forbidden from inhabiting the crazy world of Tumblr which Anna sees as her domain and does not want to run into her mother on it.

Anyway, I'm going to pass on this one. Anna has one in mind, which I quite like, and she will get it on here for me at some point. I actually have no idea how to do it.

I don't think I've ever felt quite so old.

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge - Day 27: Favourite interview

I could waste hours on You Tube trying to answer this one. Here's a selection of good stuff.

Tom Baker on Richard and Judy talking about Who, God and the pretty destructive relationship between his parents - when his autobiography was out, around the time I saw him at Cult TV.



And Jon Pertwee on Wogan - it must be from Comic Relief's first year in 1988.



And Matt and Clarkson on Top Gear



Saving the best till last.You know, I think I watched this interview with Tom and Lis live on Swap Shop in 1976..."I'll never see a psychiatrist, I've lived out all my fantasies" says Lis.



I could literally go on all day. Hope you've enjoyed this as much as I did.

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge - Day 26: Favourite Doctor Gadget

Everyone will probably say the sonic screwdriver, although I'm not sure it's ever actually been used as a screwdriver. Yes, it's pretty versatile and useful, but it doesn't make me want one.

Some people might want to say the TARDIS, but, frankly, to do so after The Doctor's Wife would be so wrong.

I'm not sure that Bessie counts as a gadget, but it's too long since we've seen her and I'd like to see her brought back and given a bit of a 21st century update. That should be Moffatt's Mission for this anniversary year.

The most useful thing, of course, would be psychic paper, accompanied with the Doctor's seemingly endless capacity for bull***t.

It's a pity this is just Doctor's gadgets - and I'm not saying he couldn't use hallucinogenic lipstick, but it does belong to River. That would be pretty good to have in your back pocket, though. Not much use against the daleks, but if you can get an entire legion of Romans thinking you're Cleopatra, it must be worth having. And it even has its own thread on Tumblr.

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge: Day 25: Favourite Doctor Who Catchphrase

Well, "Geronimo" and "Allons-y" are all very good - and it was fab to hear David Tennant say the latter in person at Starfury: Midnight last month, but, really, there is no substitute for Tom  Baker saying "Would you like a jelly baby?" with that big grin on his face.

DoctorWho 30 Day Challenge...Day 24: Favourite quote

A selection of the finest:

There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace. We've got work to do. 7th Doctor, Survival. Last words of Classic Who on tv in 1989

Even then, even if I change, it feels like dying. Everything I am dies. Some new man goes sauntering away...and I'm dead. 10th Doctor talks poignantly on his impending death.

You're Scottish, fry something.  11 gets away with this purely because Moffat is Scottish.

 Have you noticed how people's intellectual curiosity begins to decline the moment they start waving guns about? 4 in the Horns of Nimon

I am a lizard woman from the dawn of time and this is my wife. Madam Vastra, The Snowmen, 2012

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge: Day 23: Favourite spin-off

There is no doubt here, even for a tiny little second. The Sarah Jane Adventures. A cool car, good writing, a super mix of characters even down to the bitching between Mr Smith and K9. Good villains like Androvax and the Trickster, and appearances by the 10th and 11th Doctors.

When we were at Starfury: Midnight in December, Gary Russell, the script editor for SJA said that when Matt Smith and David Tennant were on the SJA set, they gave total respect to Lis, as it was her show and they followed her leads.

My second choice would have been K9 and Company purely because it was a chance to see Sarah Jane again.

Now, Torchwood. Loved it despite the violence and strong thread of misogyny in the writing. Not even in the same sport, let alone the same league as SJA, though.

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge...Day 22: Favourite friendship

I think probably the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith for its endurance across the years and its appeal to much of the fandom - so much so that it had its own successful spin-off, the Sarah Jane Adventures. And Sarah Jane was such a good role model for girls.

I've liked having the whole relationship between the Doctor and the Ponds explored - the effect he has on their day to day life and their feelings about it. 

And then of course there's the entirely freaky idea that your best friend that you grow up with could actually be your daughter. What does finding that out do to your head? If you remember kissogram Amy in the first Matt Smith episode, you can see where River got her sass from. Or did her morals and attitude from having to make her own life rub off on Amy? Nature or nurture? You could tie yourselves in all sorts of knots thinking about that.

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge...Day 21: Favourite Couple

So, we have 9 and Rose, 10 and Rose, 10.5 and Rose, Amy and Rory and Madam Vastra and Jenny. We could also include the Doctor and Idris, of course.

While our Silurian private detective and her wife are just brilliant and have so much more to give us, for me, the best couple has to be Amy and Rory. We've seen their relationship develop, it's a partnership of equals, they love each other incredibly and that love has been well and truly tested. I don't think for a moment, though, that they would have actually split up. They would surely have talked it through before it got to that stage. Even if Amy had thrown him out, Rory had the emotional intelligence to get to the bottom of it.

As for 10 and Rose, it was a really soppy love story but it was pretty one dimensional and only really there to make us cry when they were separated at the end of Season 2.

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge - Day 20: Favourite writer

This is pretty much impossible as there have been so many good writers in the history of Who.

I have never subscribed to the fashionable fandom trashing of Russell T Davies. He brought back my favourite programme and made it cool again. He gave my daughter the chance to enjoy it. For that I am extremely grateful. Oh, and Stolen Earth and Journey's End were brilliant. He deserves lots of credit.

Likewise Steven Moffat with his ever-so-complicated season long story arcs - heaven knows what he's up to with Miss Clara Oswin Oswald - and stories like Blink that make you wonder what the hell you just watched but when you've worked it out it's all very logical. He loses points for not quite getting the effect of long term kidnapping and having her baby stolen would have on a young woman.

Ben Aaronovitch wrote two of my favourite stories featuring the Seventh Doctor - Remembrance of the Daleks and Battlefield. In the former, the moment when Ace is horrified by the "no coloureds" sign in the B and B is a reminder of a time that's long gone, thankfully. It was a good touch to add in.

Robert Holmes was a huge influence on the series in my early years of watching it so he has to be in there.

Even if you have never watched Doctor Who, you are likely to know what a Dalek is. That's a testament to the work of Terry Nation who not only created them, but also wrote The Survivors which I was probably too young to watch at the time but I enjoyed anyway and created Blake's Seven.

And then there's Helen Raynor, the first woman to write on the modern series. She wrote the two parters involving the daleks in Manhattan and the Sontarans in seasons 3 and 4 respectively.

Terrance Dicks wrote the very first episode of Doctor Who I properly and deliberately watched - the first story with Tom Baker, Robot. And he's written for 8 televised doctors which is pretty impressive.

Tom MacRae wrote one of the best stories of the new series - The girl who waited - which features an older Amy. The story stands up as a good work in itself, but Karen Gillan playing both Amys definitely enhanced the production.

I would never have thought that Chris Chibnall would have managed to show his face in place like this. I will never forgive him for Cyberwoman and Countrycide  in Torchwood, but he's kind of redeemed himself but his contributions to Doctor Who in 2012 were pretty good. Not only did he give us dinosaurs on a spaceship, but he gave us Brian Williams as well and it's a pity he didn't get to film his PS to Amy and Rory's story.

Given that I'm such a bit softie, I loved Richard Curtis's Vincent and the Doctor and its sensitive exploration of depression and mental illness. Of course it was going to be a bit schmaltzy - but it wouldn't have been Curtis any other way.

It would be so wrong not to mention Neil Gaiman, too. A writer of his quality was always going to do good things with a Who script and The Doctor's Wife was inspired.

But who to pick as my favourite? I promise you this was not where this was going when I started to write  but for sheer imagination and diversity of good stuff over a long time, I'm going to have to go with Moffat. Ok,so he has a bit of a thing for people jumping off buildings and for flying aquarian mammals, but he has built probably the best set of characters in the new series from Madam Vastra to the Ponds to River Song to our intriguing new companion.

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge - Day 19: Least favourite actress

If I had to pick anyone it would probably be Bonnie Langford. It's not her fault, but Mel was a bit too Violet Elizabeth Bott for my liking.

I was also a bit annoyed that they gave us Jenny, who was clearly alive and around, and then didn't do anything else with her, but that's not Georgia Moffett's fault.

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge - Day 18: Favourite actress

Lis Sladen would win this one hands down, but I've already written about her lots during the course of this challenge and elsewhere, so let's leave her out and look at the wider "whoniverse".

Alex Kingston has managed to get across the complex River Song very well - the vulnerablility, the sassiness, the courage of someone who has been kidnapped, abused, and still turns out all right in the end.

Sheila Hancock was fantastic as Margaret T  Helen A in the Happiness Patrol.

Angela Bruce got exactly what a Doctor Who brigadier should be about - bit of British stiff upper lip, but also open minded - in Battlefield.

Annette Badlands is brilliant as Margaret Slitheen - and also extremely pleasant in person. We met her at Starfury: Midnight in December.

Then there's Frances Barber's evil Madame Kovarian.

Sarah Lancashire as Miss Foster was conniving and easily able to share the stage with Tennant and Tate.

Jean Marsh's Morgaine from Battlefield was condescending, evil and funny.

And I know I said no companions, but I think a special mention of Karen Gillan's portrayal of the older Amy in The Girl who Waited is supreme. I just wish they'd had the imagination to let that character survive.

And, of course, little Caitlin Blackwood, who played the young Amelia Pond is just too cute, in every sense of the word.

Who to pick as favourite? I think it probably has to be Sheila Hancock. She really was supreme.

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge - Day 17: Least favourite actor

I don't like these "least favouite" categories because they are so negative. There's so much good to celebrate about the series that concentrating on the weakest stuff isn't always productive.

I guess the two companions I never quite got to grips with were Adric and Turlough. Could they never have a nice ordinary lad accompanying the Doctor? Did they really have to be so arrogant and up themselves and super intelligent? That, I guess, is why I never quite appreciated Mark Strickson and Matthew Waterhouse as much as I should.

Then there was Mickey in the new series. I really didn't like the character and the way he treated Rose and his superficial attitude to life. I don't much take to the actor who plays him, Noel Clarke, either. Anyone who describes themselves as a "shagger" in their Twitter profile is never really going to win my respect. I knew I wouldn't have to look far down his timeline to find something that would make my stomach turn. His answer to the Jimmy Savile affair is positively medieval.

Maybe trying to change the misogynist culture that exists to this day in the media would be more effective. Just a suggestion. 

Doctor Who 30 day challenge - Day 16: Favourite actor

Can't believe I'm into the second half of this already. We're on to favourite actor.

Now, I am going to exclude the actors who play the Doctor from these or I could go on all day and, actually, I think we need to honour those other talented people who made the show so special.

I thought Ian MacNeice made a fine Churchill in Victory of the Daleks, so he deserves a mention.

Arthur Darvill, as Rory, has died so many times and so well.

James Corden, father to Stormageddon, was brilliant.

But I'm damned if I'm going to get through this series without honouring the man who played one of the best and most constant characters in Who history, Nicholas Courtney.

His long association with the show, from the Troughton Years to the Sarah Jane Adventures, was fantastic and it was awful to lose both Nick and Lis Sladen within a couple of months of each other in 2011.

I still have fond memories of Battlefield and Sunday mornings spent watching the Pertwee years on UK Gold.

30 Day Doctor Who challenge - Day 15: Most annoying character

Top of my list for this is Mickey Smith, Rose's selfish, unambitious, control freaky boyfriend. He does grow, admittedly, as the series develops, but he never gets to the point where I can say that he doesn't irritate me. He could cope with Rose going off with Nine but as soon as he realised, in Boom Town, that Captain Jack was in the TARDIS, he felt threatened. So we can add superficiality and shallowness to his qualities.

Speaking of Captain Jack, yes, I love him, and so does everyone else, but even his best friends would consider him annoying at times, wouldn't they? Smugger than smug, fickle, voraciously omnisexual, vain, but very funny, charming and unconventional.

Mel. Screaming. Need I say more?

30 Day Doctor Who Challenge - Day 14: Character you like but everyone else hates

I guess River Song would have to come into that category. I think now her story is known she's better understood, but even when we didn't know who she was, I liked her. Yes, she was a bit full of herself, and it was annoying that she knew more about the Doctor than we did and wasn't backward about telling us so, but she was clearly clever, brave and loyal. That repeating, haunting "I'm sorry, my love" in the Big Bang shows us that her feelings for the Doctor are 100% genuine.And of course she had already sacrificed herself in the Library.

Ace irritates some - and, certainly, there are moments during Dragonfire when you just want to shake her. However, she too, is a feisty and brave girl, clearly deeply affected by a crap childhood.

The Sixth Doctor also gets a rough ride from many people. Yes, the outfit was god awful, he was loud, egotistical, volatile, but Colin Baker portrayed that character extremely well. He was still, despite all the bluster, at essence our Doctor. I really must get round to listening to some of his Big Finish stuff as apparently the influence of a good companion, Evelyn Smythe, makes him a bit less highly strung.

30 Day Doctor Who challenge - Day 13: Favourite theme song

Well, the one that's always going to be special is the one you grew up with. This was MY theme.



I wasn't keen when it went all boingy and electronic in the 80s. Mind you, I liked the bit where Sylvester McCoy grinned and the melodic bit in the middle:



I was ok with the Eccleston and Tennant titles, but it was the Matt Smith ones in 2010 that really felt like proper Who.



And what of the new ones? Well, all very good, especially with that snippet of the Doctor's face, except they make me motion sick.



I also liked the first five episodes of series 7 having slightly different titles. I'm going to go with the 2010 Matt Smith original titles.

30 Day Doctor Who Challenge - Day 12: Episode that scared you the most

Again this is another easy one. Scaring a bairn is one thing. Scaring a grown adult is quite another. The Vashta Nerada, the shadows that melt the flesh, as seen in The Silence in the Library and The Forest of the Dead.

Creatures that lurk in the shadows, disembodied people continuing to talk after death, all the haunting stuff that went on as you were trying to figure out about Cal, wondering who this bloody awful River woman was and whether she could be trusted. Then she goes and (as we later find out, again) sacrifices herself for the Doctor.

It was proper creepy and one that I have to be feeling very brave to watch.

30 Day Doctor Who Challenge - Day 11: Funniest episode

This one, actually, is quite easy. Could it be any other than Love and Monsters, in which Peter Kay played the "Abzorbaloff." Admittedly, it poked fun at the fandom, but it doesn't seem to have stopped us. I didn't really like the way Jackie Tyler was treated in that episode, though. 

This is an episode that wove tragedy and comedy together. That lovely community that LINDA had developed cast asunder by the evil Skinner who absorbed most of them into his replete alien body. I guess at least they were still able to talk to each other...

Peter Kay was absolutely brilliant in an episode that was "Doctor light". I also liked the fact that LINDA was referenced in the 2007 Children in Need special where David Tennant and his future father-in-law Peter Davison crashed into each other. You can see it here on You Tube.