Weird Britannia: A love letter to Doctor Who series one

There are few things I truly love: I love British History, I love the original six Star Wars films, I love Alton Towers, and chief among these I love Doctor Who. The origins of these infatuations though are all in my childhood which makes them somehow harder to explain.

Like any childhood memories, my love of such things is based on half-forgotten and hazy recollections that go beyond nostalgia. For Doctor Who, I know I like it because I always have. It’s like breathing; it wouldn’t make sense not to. It’s not that I like it because I liked it in the past. I’d still like it even if I only discovered it yesterday.

The nature of the show being what it is, Doctor Who is primed for this sort of fandom. I grew up watching episodes in a piecemeal order, jumping largely between those featuring the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors because they had featured so prominently in my early years.

Then, one day, as a teenager with too much time on my hands (even before Covid) I decided to rewatch the show from start to finish so to speak, from series one of the revival through to series 10. The intention was, I think, to gain a new sense of appreciation for the show I love by watching in its entirety. 

I did. Yet to my surprise, I did not come away loving the Tenth or Eleventh Doctor eras even more; instead, I came to realise what it is about this show I truly love, and what I truly love I found not in the later series but in its first.

For one thing, series one of the revival is wholly unique. Think of it: the concept of reviving a cult sci-fi show with a reputation for silliness, sixteen years after its cancellation must have seemed ludicrous at the time, not least because it was being sold as a prestige BBC one drama. As such, the production team only planned for the one series before inevitable cancellation and therefore much of the elements of series one are self-contained as opposed to the much bigger stories told across later series.

From start to finish though, series one is worlds apart from the show that came before and even after. The opening moments of ‘Rose’ consisting of Outer Space, then Earth, then a Council Estate in London communicate perfectly the ethos of Series One. This is Rose’s series but it’s also for the everyday, average person.

The episodes of series one are stories not about outer space but real people. From the political commentary of ‘Aliens of London/World War Three’ and ‘The Long Game’ to the brutal mundanity of ‘Father’s Day’ and ‘Boomtown’ it always remains grounded, and as the audience surrogate, Rose represents all of us: the human race who go to work, eat chips, watch telly…

Into this very average existence enters the Doctor. He introduces her to a universe of wonders but more importantly forces Rose to reconsider her entire existence, and therefore the audience too.

In episode two, ‘The End of the World’, the Doctor takes Rose to the far future, to the day the Earth is destroyed by the Sun. It’s an objectively silly episode with weird Aliens and some very camp needle drops and it’s altogether a very strange imagining of the future. Still, it’s endlessly fun and endlessly watchable. Rather than alienating new viewers it’s the perfect introduction to proper Doctor Who: all the beautiful weirdness of the universe.

However, ‘The End of the World’ is also beyond this, oddly profound. After the Earth is destroyed, the Doctor takes Rose back to the present day. He laments: “you think it’ll last for ever, people and cars and concrete but it won’t. One day, it’s all gone. Even the sky”.  It’s the weight of time that Nine feels and that defines him but it’s a gift that’s passed onto Rose and to the audience at home.

The entirety of the first series manages to encapsulate this feeling: the entirety of existence all bottled up. It reminds us that we’re specks on a floating rock in outer space like Rose is. But also, as Rose ascends to the Bad Wolf entity in ‘The Parting of the Ways’, the series displays how everyone of us is the most important person in the entire universe. The world revolves around each and every one of us.

It’s a sentiment that the show returns to in the Eleventh Doctor era, in the series five Christmas special (the best Christmas special by the way), ‘A Christmas Carol’: “In 900 years of Time and Space, I’ve never met anybody who wasn’t important before”. It’s the character of the Doctor down to a T but it’s best displayed through Nine not Eleven.

This is what Doctor Who means to me. It’s a story that opens up your worldview to the strangeness, and the vastness of the Universe but also to how extraordinary the ordinary really is.

The world is weird, Britain especially and it’s not always a nice place. With all that though, it’s a beautifully strange place nonetheless: vast, unknowable, and altogether ‘fantastic’ as the Ninth Doctor would like to say.

In series one the weirdness, the darkness, and the beauty are all there in equal measure.

And altogether that’s what makes it so special. At least to me anyway.