Over the two and a half years it took the experiment to run, Sue viewed over 350 hours of classic Doctor Who. Her highest rated Doctor was the Third; her lowest rated Doctor was the First. She loved season 24 (Sylvester McCoy) and she didn’t care very much for season 15 (Tom Baker). She didn’t cry when Adric died; she fell in love with Sergeant Benton and out of love with John Levene; she felt sorry for Colin Baker; she grew fed up of the Daleks; and her soft spot for Peter Davison remained soft. Her average score for the classic series is 5.77 out of 10.
Sue: It was all right, I suppose.
I am satisfied with this result. A slightly above average 5.77 sounds pretty good to me. If anything, it’s a relief. If Sue’s score had been any higher, I would have been concerned. I don’t want to be married to me; I want to be married to her.
Yes, it’s sad that she’ll never experience the joy one gets from knowing that the production code for ‘Planet of the Spiders’ is ZZZ, and it’s a shame that she’ll never bid for any Weetabix cards on eBay (I’m still missing Davros), let alone a painting of Nicola Bryant in a bikini. But I’m fine with that. I never set out to turn my wife into a fan, which is just as well really, because if I had, the last two and half years would have been a complete waste of time.
Sue: I can’t remember half of them. I can’t see myself watching any of them again, I’ll never read the magazine, or the books, and I’ll never go to another Doctor Who convention as long as I live.
Me: Can you name any of the stories you gave 10 out 10 to?
Sue: Yes, don’t tell me … ‘The Seeds of Death’?
Having said that, Sue’s sustained exposure to classic episodes of Doctor Who has had an unexpected side effect:
Sue: I appreciate the new series a lot more now. When the Great Intelligence turns up in a Steven Moffat story, I actually get it. I’m excited when I see Ice Warriors and Sontarans, when I didn’t care before, and I understand some of the jokes that I never used to get. If anything, the old series has made me a fan of the new series. I bloody love it. But at the same time, I don’t need to wallow in the past. Yes, it’s nice to have it there to refer to, but you have to keep moving forward. You know, like a shark.
And what about me? What did the experiment reveal about me?
If I’m honest, there were times when I hated it; I often wished we’d never started. Sometimes I would blame the programme; sometimes it was the anonymous insults on the blog in the middle of the night; sometimes real life got in the way – we came close to throwing in the towel halfway through ‘The Moonbase’ because we had had a row over some washing-up liquid but, five minutes later, still had to go through with the blog; and sometimes it was my ego that got the better of me. Never mind Sue, never mind someone calling themselves CloisterBalls, why wasn’t anyone interested in what I thought about Doctor Who? I’d studied for a PhD in the subject; no one cared about that. Whereas my wife couldn’t tell the difference between a Quark and a Chumbley and she had her own fanbase. How the hell did that happen? If only there was somewhere I could leave an anonymous insult in the middle of the night. But that outlet was not available to me.
There were even times when I imagined the blog finishing with a YouTube video which would feature me throwing my collection of Doctor Who DVDs onto a huge bonfire (in strict chronological order, of course) because that’s what happens when you turn something you love into an endurance test – it’s what happens to some marriages. But a week after I published Sue’s review of The TV Movie, I woke in the middle of the night and felt compelled to sneak downstairs to watch ‘Horror of Fang Rock’. On my own. And for the first time in almost two and a half years, I enjoyed a Doctor Who story for what it was: a thrilling, slightly scary, slightly ridiculous adventure in time and space – well, a lighthouse, but you get the idea. Only this time, when I watched ‘Horror of Fang Rock’, I wasn’t only reminded of what it felt like to be a frightened seven-year-old boy in Lavender Avenue, I was also reminded of what it felt like to watch it with Sue. She’s quite right, you know: the Rutan does look like a giant zit and the Doctor definitely should have stepped on it.
I would never have held it against Sue if she had given up before the end; but I also knew that would never happen. She is special and funny and ever so slightly mad, you see, and I also knew that it didn’t matter to her if we did this thing in public or not – that was a trap I set for myself. Sue just wanted to make me happy. She must be indomitable; after all, we are still married.
Me: Would you ever do anything like this again?
Sue: I thought you’d never ask.
Me: Are you joking?
Sue: I miss it. I never thought I would, but I do.
Me: Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the specialists are right, maybe I have turned you into a fan after all.
Sue: It’s not fucking Doctor Who. I miss sitting down with you every night and the two of us having a laugh together. It doesn’t matter what we watch – it could be Downton Abbey for all I care. Just so long as we do it together.
And for me, this is the only result that matters. The experiment is over.
Sue: Saying that, it’s my turn next. I’ve found a nice place in France that needs doing up, which means you’ll have to live in a caravan again, but we could do it in public this time, which means you’ll have to take an active interest in the design, the plans, and all the building work. Hey, you never know, you might enjoy it.