Doctor Who Mentioned by "Normal" People story #1

I'm now back in Australia, and I'm glad to see Doctor Who's profile has also risen here. I remember when, in the few shops that still stocked Doctor Who books and videos, the Doctor Who section gradually dwindled until it was the Doctor Who shelf. Now just the release of a new DVD gets a full window display at the ABC Shop. Schoolgirl got on the bus yesterday. What did she have in her hand? A Doctor Who book. As well she should. I remembered with a shudder when I was a teenager and used to display the Doctor Who book I was reading as prominently as I could at school and rehearsals and stuff, thinking that out of all these people my age, someone must be a Doctor Who fan. No one was. Or, at least, no one admitted to it. The rooms I entered were probably full of Doctor Who fans, but they were all thinking "God, what is he doing? Doesn't he know that our kind can only survive if we stick to the shadows? The humans must not know that Doctor Who fans walk amongst them!" Realising that there were no Doctor Who fans around me, I resolved to create some, and I was moderately successful with that amongst some of my nerdier friends. But I also wanted to convert members of my other main group of friends - the future actors, writers, and directors. But when in 2003 I suggested to one such friend that, since the ABC was about to start showing the whole series again (one episode at 6pm every weeknight), perhaps he should watch it, because, you know, he might like it. AND HE LAUGHED. If I'd known what I know now, I'd have said, "Laugh now but one day we'll be in charge." Of the BBC. Of British politics. Hey, if Doctor Who had featured as prominently in the Australia's federal election as it did in Britain's, maybe we'd have a minority government by now. What would your focus groups think of that, Karl Bitar?

But I digress. File this under Be Careful What You Wish For if you like, but the other day some of the actors in the play I'm assistant directing were discussing Wales and Welsh, and the conversation turned to the rise of BBC Wales. Naturally someone credited this to Doctor Who, and rightly so because it was explicitly designed to be BBC Wales' and the BBC's new flagship programme. So this actor confidently informed everyone that Russell B. Davies, who had written for the original series and was now the executive producer of the new series, decided that if he was going to do Doctor Who it might as well be made in Wales. Now, I sincerely hope that you can spot at least one error in that statement. In fact, every part of that sentence is wrong. Russell T. Davies never wrote for the original series, is no longer executive producer of the new series, and BBC Wales hired him. Yes I know the T doesn't actually stand for anything and was just thrown in there to differentiate him from another Russell Davies (something I might have to do one day given that IMDB has 18 Michael Deans listed), and yes Russell did submit a story that would eventually become "The Long Game" (N1.7) during the '80s and it was rejected, but that doesn't change how wrong the statement was, nor does it change how hard I had to bite my tongue so as not to say anything. It wasn't my place to correct him. For one thing, those facts were clearly not the point of his story, and my corrections would not have mattered at all to his listeners. And more importantly, Doctor Who is out there again. Fans who think Doctor Who still belongs to us are idiots. It belongs to the public (technically it belongs to only the British public, but still), and they can remember it however they want.