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?

The time of arising is at hand

That's a hand in that picture. It's kind of hard to see.

Anyway, TONIGHT Doctor Who returns to BBC One! I'm wearing my hipster-store-bought Doctor Who t-shirt in celebration, which even a few years ago would have been met with the utmost derision and a lot of "What does that mean?" Now Matt Smith stares back at me from the side of New York City buses! Sometimes I have moments when I forget that new Doctor Who is being made and then I remember and it's awesome all over again. We in the Rest of the World will have to wait a short while until someone posts it on YouTube (though if you have access you should watch it again when it's on BBC America or whatever station is showing it in a couple of weeks). Until then, here is a recently-released clip from what will be Episode Six of the new season, "Vampires of Venice" (31.6). Okay, before you ask why it's 31.6 and not N5.6, Moffat was apparently advised that Series 5 sounds like an aging brand, and so has said that this season should be referred to either as Series 1 ("exciting") or 31 ("awe-inspiring"). I have my doubts about this (if the fifth season is an aging brand, what is the thirty-first?), and hope everyone will just call it the 2010 season. But for the purposes of the blog numerals, I'll use 31. Because, let's be honest, it's true. If you disagree, let's argue about it in the comments like good little fanboys. Anyway, for some reason, Blogger won't show the clip if I put a break in, so you'll have to see it "after the jump" as they say.

Is Doctor Who cool yet?

Doctor Who Magazine gave me a giant poster of the Eleventh Doctor, which I put on my door. I mainly did this to annoy my flatmate who thinks Matt Smith is ugly (I initially put it on his door). Point is, it was the most fanboyish sight I have beheld since I made the mistake of attending Whovention 2003. It made me wonder whether things have improved for my kind since the dark days of my teenage years.

Lest we forget, in its early days Doctor Who was the shit. In 1965, considered by some to be the height of series' popularity, kids were talking about it in school, everyone wanted a Dalek for Christmas, and outgoing producer Verity Lambert was leaving as her legacy a hit show that was being sold to 44 countries or something. Doctor Who wasn't a nerd thing in its early days. It was a groundbreaking series that collided the mundane with the ultra-modern, and histories of the period list it, along with the Beatles and the Bond films, as one of the defining