50

Today's post on the eve of my fiftieth birthday (!) traces the last decade of my relationship with Doctor Who and the texts that span off from the series.

By the time Doctor Who and I were forty, after a gloomy stint in the passport office, I had finally secured a contract to work in Easterhouse as an employment advisor. The Doctor had acquired a coffee table book and a series of commemorative Radio Times covers:

Celebratory events had begun earlier however. In the summer of 2003, the BBC produced another webcast adventure for Doctor Who. Excitingly, it was Shada, a recast version of the lost 70s story by Douglas Adams and starring the Eighth Doctor and Lalla Ward's President Romana.

But even more excitingly, a Ninth Doctor was cast in November's Scream of the Shalka. Paul McGann's Withnail co-star, Richard E. Grant voiced a cadaverous Time Lord racked with guilt and ennui and called back into action in a modern UNIT-style adventure in a Northern town. I loved it although REG's performance was roundly derided.

Meanwhile, Big Finish was still producing monthly audio plays and had ventured into publishing. Reviving the BBC's short story imprint Short Trips, they released a postmodern version of the traditional Who annual, including Xmassy recipes.

The most astonishing news of 2003 of course was the revival of Who on tv. I spent the next few years, aptly enough, working in the regeneration sector with Glasgow's East End social enterprise organisations. As you can see on Youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOiS7wPyjVw) I also acted in The Crucible and a few more Shakespeares: Timon, Lear and Much Ado.
 Delightfully, Russell T. Davies' revival of Who was a staggering success. The first- and only- Ninth Doctor annual led to a yearly series of "Storybooks", lavishly illustrated and written this time by scripters of the tv series.

2007 began with a new Big Finish series for BBC radio, starring the Eighth Doctor and introducing gobby new companion Lucie Miller ( Sheridan Smith). In the summer of that year, Raymond McFadyen's Who exhibition had a last hurrah in Paisley Museum. The exhibits were looking more than a little tired and worn.

 David Tennant's Tenth Doctor went from strength to strength, teaming up with Kylie Minogue at Xmas and starring in his own all-new American comic:

The Tenth Doctor came to rival the Fourth, I think it's fair to say, in terms of recognisability and popularity. It would be unthinkable only five years earlier, during the fortieth anniversary.

Meanwhile, my work with unemployed young people in Glasgow's East End inspired me to return to Strathclyde University to train as an English teacher on a part-time basis. It was a taxing time: I had to work ten-hours shifts at weekends in my old call-centre to pay the bills and  I lost a very good friend to a brain hemorrhage. Falling prey to the various infections from kids in school, many times I wondered if I was cut out to teach at all.

In the summer of 2010, however, I was appointed to my first full-time teaching role in Moray, in the North-East of Scotland. That autumn, I made several trips back and forth to Glasgow at the weekends. The flat I had bought five years earlier, near Alexandra Park, was untenanted for months and it was an economic strain.
 The adventures of Matt Smith's newly-minted Eleventh Doctor continued in a variety of formats: from  a welter of audiobooks to an original graphic novel by Justin Richards and Mike Collins ( the penciller of some of my favourite DC comics in the late 80s and early 90s.)

The Only Good Dalek is a space opera that draws upon the 1960s iconography of Daleks, in particular The Daleks' Master Plan. The other  literary event of the year was this mammoth novel by Michael Moorcock:

The Smith and Thomas Elric issues of Conan in the 70s had led me to psychedelic Moorcock paperbacks in Strathaven Library in my teens. While there were references to the author's own cosmogny and archetypes, I felt he hadn't really captured Matt Smith's giddy, eccentric performance. Nonetheless, it was a validation of Who's place in pop culture.

That autumn, my friend David Steel got me a ticket for Dr. Who Live, the family friendly stage show that celebrated the Eleventh Doctor's arrival. It was a highly entertaining blend of circus and musical theatre.

The trend for substantial weighty novels like Terraphiles continued alongside a more staggered release schedule for tie-in adventures. The latter are less prevalent than the EDAs but they are often better-written. However, the playful Brilliant Books of the last couple of years with their blend of gossipy insider features and witty fiction have been my favourite NuWho texts.

While I've not been very enthusiastic about Steven Moffat's direction for the series latterly, I am of course still excited to find out who will be cast as the Twelfth Doctor. I hope the pair of us have many more happy times and places.

Coming soon: Man of Steel; Summer Horror Double Bills Redux; and the Renegade of Callisto

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