Sue threw more than thirty cushions at me over the course of the experiment – or one cushion more than thirty times – although only one projectile ever caused me any serious harm (I was drinking hot tea at the time). Reasons for a cushion in the face were many and varied. Maybe I’d been too complimentary about the attractiveness of a female guest star. Maybe I’d misled Sue about the number of episodes she was about to sit through. Maybe I’d accidentally on purpose led her to believe that the Doctor was about to regenerate when he quite clearly wasn’t. What can I say? It kept me amused.

Sue could have shut this down any time she liked. A quick visit to Wikipedia could have told her that the next story featured the Daleks. There was nothing preventing her from reaching over and reading the back of the DVD cover either. The comments section of the blog was riddled with spoilers, too, because some of our readers just couldn’t help themselves:

I wonder what Sue will think of the next one when the Master turns up again for the first time in five years?

The idiots.

One title that I didn’t need to hide from Sue was ‘Earthshock’. This was the story that had made me fall out of my chair when I was a teenager back in 1982, and I couldn’t wait to see if the Cybermen turning up at the end of part 1 would have the same effect on Sue. When it came down to it, she didn’t fall out of her chair, but she did lean forwards a teeny bit, which was almost as satisfying.

Sue gave ‘Earthshock’ 9 out of 10 and the blog’s readers were thrilled, although somebody did accuse my wife of letting the side down because she didn’t approach the story with the mindset of a twelve-year-old amnesiac.

But there was more to ‘Earthshock’ than just its brilliant reveal of the Cybermen. There was also Adric’s unexpected death to cope with.

Sue liked Adric at first (‘He’s adorable’) but her affections soon turned to loathing (‘He’s a thick, whining brat’). In fact, one of the most entertaining things for me was watching Sue slowly fall out of love with the Alzarian pup. One minute she wanted to mother him, the next minute she wanted to smother him (‘He can’t act – and it doesn’t take a boy genius to work that out’), and when Adric was finally blown to bits, she definitely wasn’t moved to tears.

On the blog, several people suggested that one possible explanation for my wife’s reaction to ‘Earthshock’ is that the experiment was a complete success and I’d turned Sue into a Doctor Who fan. More prima facie evidence for her transformation into a fangirl could supposedly be found in her commentary for the twentieth-anniversary celebratory romp, ‘The Five Doctors’.

But people needed to read on a little further to see Sue wasn’t about to turn into a fully fledged Whovian.

I believe that there’s a simpler explanation for my wife’s ebullience during this phase of the experiment: she fancied Peter Davison, aka the Fit One. She wasn’t keen on some of the Fifth Doctor’s stories (‘“Time-Flight”? They should have called it “Time-Shite”!’), but when she noticed that he was sporting black underpants under his cricket whites in ‘Castrovalva’, it was clear to everyone that she was smitten.

In fact the only time my wife wasn’t ogling the Fit One was when she was drooling over Adric’s replacement, Turlough, aka actor Mark Strickson, aka the Ginger One. As far as Sue was concerned, this was an era in Doctor Who’s history when it had ‘something for the mums’ for a change.

Peter Davison has been quite open in dismissing most of his stories as ‘crap’. And with some justification. He had to put up with not just the Myrka but also pink inflatable snakes, homicidal woodlice and an increasingly tedious and inept Master. Sue was mostly in agreement but she still seemed to be enjoying the adventures of the Fit One. If some of his stories had starred anyone other than Peter Davison – with the possible exception of David Tennant – she might have been less forgiving. When the Fifth Doctor bravely sacrificed himself to save the life of his companion in ‘The Caves of Androzani’, I noticed that my wife’s bottom lip was wobbling.

Sue didn’t have any preconceptions about Colin Baker when we started this. All she knew about him was that (a) he didn’t play the Doctor for very long and (b) he once shouted at me at a convention. However, by a strange quirk of fate, just as we were preparing to engage with the Sixth Doctor, Colin appeared as a contestant on the reality TV show I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!

I was concerned that Sue’s newfound love for Colin Baker would skew her opinions of his Doctor. But within minutes of starting the Sixth Doctor’s first story ‘The Twin Dilemma’, it was clear that normal service had been resumed.

Around this time, we took a break from the blog and spent a few days in London. After a quick pint at the Tavern in Fitzrovia (we were quite safe, it was the wrong Thursday), we decided that it would be a good idea to get hold of tickets to the mentalist* Derren Brown’s live theatre show. During the interval, Sue’s mobile phone lit up with a text from an unrecognised number:

I can see you

We scanned the auditorium for a familiar face but couldn’t spot anyone we recognised. I was convinced the text must be part of Derren Brown’s act so I found it hard to relax and enjoy the second half; I kept thinking Derren was about to ambush us. When the curtain eventually came down, there was another text waiting:

It’s Nev and Nicola

Phew. Nev was Nev Fountain, the comedy writer best known for his work on the satirical impressionist show Dead Ringers and Private Eye magazine, as well as various plays for Big Finish and comic strips for Doctor Who Magazine.† Nicola, meanwhile, was Nev’s girlfriend. But this wasn’t any old Nicola. This was Nicola Bryant, the actress who played the Sixth Doctor’s companion, the American biology student Perpugilliam Brown – or Peri for short. We arranged to meet up after the show, even though I wasn’t too keen; I was terrified of accidentally calling Nicola Peri. But it was OK, I didn’t disgrace myself and nor did Sue – and nor, for that matter, did Nicola.

When we got home, I cued up the 1984 story ‘Planet of Fire’.

As we progressed through the Court Jester’s time – which took little more than a month; Colin Baker had been the Doctor when the show went on hiatus – Sue began to wonder whether his whole run was a prank as ill-judged as his costume.

When the time came for the Court Jester to regenerate, Sue was understandably confused.

* In a good way.

† Nev sent the text to Sue because when I arranged to meet him at the Tavern in 2001, I didn’t own a mobile phone and I ended up borrowing hers. I gave Nev Sue’s number and he must have kept it.