Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring...

Banana phone.

"Always take a banana to a party Rose, bananas are good" - The Doctor. 

The Doctor (David Tennant) said the above line in the episode titled "The Girl in the Fireplace" a brilliant story involving period drama and some fantastic clock work monsters that were terrifying.  There's a scene with a horse and a mirror that is truly amazing that made me cheer like my home team had won a cup and  of course there are the scenes that made me sob like a toddler who has lost their teddy. In my opinion if you do not laugh, cry and cheer throughout an episode of Doctor Who and preferably experience all these emotions at the same time then it's not a proper episode.  

Click here to listen....

B is for Banana

Nephew

 Photo copyright Lisa Hazlegreaves

Nephew was an Ood trapped on the sentient asteroid named House in the episode called The Doctor’s Wife.  House kept Nephew alive along with the other ‘Patchwork People’ for hundreds of years as a lure to attract Time Lords.  House fed off the ‘rift energy’ that powered Time Lords TARDIS’s and it would use the bodies of the dead time lords to patch up the people to keep them alive. 

We love The Ood in our house, we imitate them all the time.  It’s common place if one of the kids is upset or having a strop for me to dangle my hand under my chin in an Ood fashion to try and break a smile.  We even have our own little rhyme for when we burp.

Pardon me for being so rude

It was not me

It was The Ood.

Therefore it was natural for me when choosing our tickets for the Doctor Who Convention to go with The Ood stream (you could pick Ood or Silurian) we met an Ood at the convention, it was a very strange feeling.  I mean I’m a 41 year old woman (I will deny that if ever asked again) I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Oods were some creation made up in the mind of a brilliant writer, that the makeup and costume was put in place by some highly talented team but when I posed with The Ood to have my picture taken I was a little nervous.  I’d like to state at this point that neither of my children would go near him and I was just explaining to small child in that way that you do because they think it’s real, that it’s absolutely fine because Oods are only bad if their eyes are red as this means they are possessed...then standing a few inches away I turned to look at The Ood and realised it’s eyes were red.  I was more than a little nervous, I actually felt fear.  It’s ridiculous how I felt, I mean my very sensible head was telling me that it was a person like me, dressed up, but every other part of my being was thinking ‘oh my god it’s eyes are red’  The photos aren’t very good, they are a little blurry, well, Father took them and he is the most technically useless person that I know but I wanted to post them because you can quite clearly see by my body language that I am more than a little nervous.  There is one when Father said ‘do the thing, do the hand thing’ so I did the hand thing, my little imitation of The Ood that I do at home at least five times a day, and then, then I felt embarrassed because I had taken the mickey out of the person standing beside me.  This shows how Doctor Who gets into us in a way that nothing else can and why we as a family love it so.

 

Photos copyright Lisa Hazlegreaves

Father

 Photo Copyright Lisa Hazlegreaves

In our house there are three massive Who fans, Daughter, Small Child and I.  Now I have been into Science Fiction in all its genres since my teens.  Sparked by an early love of Classic Who and discovering Terry Pratchett at the age of 15. (Totally different I’m aware but the fantasy element remains the same)  I have eagerly awaited every single Terry Pratchett release for nearly 30 years...30 years that’s incredible really, to be able to keep readers interested in a fantasy world for that long is an amazing feat.  It would appear that Science Fiction/Fantasy can run and run, look at Who.

I have known Father since I was 14, we both attended the same Drama group.  We were in regular contact through Drama until our late teens when we lost touch for many years.  When he came back into my life when we were both adults (I was going to say mature, but I fear we don’t fall into this category) we hit it off and so began our relationship.  That was 14 years ago.  Now Father and I have very differing tastes in most things but especially in this.  He used to poo-poo my science fiction/fantasy novels in favour of Captain Corelli's Mandolin.  In fact he bought me this book ten years ago and I still haven’t read it as a matter of principal.  I refuse to read it until he reads a book of my choice, a classic like Lord of The Rings or The Hobbit.  This is a stand off I feel will run forever, as Captain Corelli’s Mandolin sits on one of my many bookshelves the pages browning and gaining that wonderful smell that old books have, un-read, teasing me every time I pass.  Father laughs at The Matrix, one of my very favourite films, Father in fact can not tolerate any science fiction at all, he believes it foolish and comedic.

When Doctor Who returned to our screens in 2005 Father was still promoting and djing at a clubnight in town and was therefore never here on a Saturday evening when The Doctor was gracing our screens.  Daughter and I would regale him with anecdotes about the previous days episode over Sunday lunch, he would try to be gracious but eye rolling would commence and the corners of his mouth would turn up in that hint of a smile.  It wasn’t until he stopped working on a Saturday night that he began his Doctor Who journey half way through Tennant’s reign.  The first few episodes he watched found him chuntering under his breath at the ridiculousness of time travel, tutting and mumbling through pursed lips.  I felt I needed to have a strict word with him, I told him that he could watch with us but he couldn’t criticise.  During this conversation, Father said although the programme didn’t really cut it for him he found the whole experience of sitting together as a family a most wonderful thing and he would try really hard not to laugh.

Over the past few years Father has softened to Who, mainly I think because of our love of it.  He loves us and when you love someone you cannot help but be influenced by their excitement.  As I have mentioned on more than one occasion, I love nothing more than glancing at my children during an episode, watching their faces go through the same emotions as mine.  It’s charming in the extreme.  Now during these moments I will glance at Father and catch him looking at us and we have a shared glance, a look of love for our children. Father also plays the most important role, he is the protector of Small Child when it all gets a little too scary for him (small child not father) when my cardigan is not protection enough, and Father will take Small Child out of the room and distract him with cake and stories of Pirates.

If we go anywhere as a family and Doctor Who is brought up, I find people talking to Father, they automatically think that it is the male who is the massive Geek, Nerd, Whovian or whatever term you care to use.  When we attended the Doctor Who Convention in Cardiff I know that people were thinking...aww look at that poor woman being dragged round with her partner and kids.  However if they had paid close attention to our faces they would have seen that ridiculous smile of excitement on mine and a slight look of boredom on his and the secret would have been out.  It’s Mother who is the Whovian and Father who is simply there to carry the sandwiches.

Excitement

Saturday  24^th March 2012 is a date that will be burned into my memory forever.  It is the day that as a family we visited the TARDIS.  That’s the real TARDIS, where they actually film Doctor Who, where The Doctor, Amy and Rory cavort with levers and bells and telephones.  The build up to this visit was intense in the extreme, it was exciting anyway because we flew from Newcastle to Cardiff and flying always adds to the sense of adventure.  We flew down on the Friday morning so we had a day to get our bearings.  Our Convention day was the Sunday so we still had that excitement to come but the Saturday, well, the Saturday was TARDIS set tour day.

Our coach for the set tour was due to leave at 11.30am and we were there at 10.30am to hassle the lady in the yellow t-shirt and clipboard, waving our tickets in her face like demented lottery winners.  She gladly gave us our wristbands and told us to return in forty minutes or so to await our coach.  We sat outside the Millenium Centre to wait.  What a wonderful place it was, we saw so many small Doctors  with their Who goodie bags hanging from shoulders right down to their knees and Ood or Silurian lanyards swinging like pendulums from their necks, teasing us with glimpses of the Convention that for us was yet to come.  As we walked back over to join the small queue that was forming for the coach I had that fluttering in my stomach that only comes with such quantities of excitement, were it alcohol you’d be poisoned.

Sitting on that coach was the most thrilling time, you could almost see the excitement crackling in the air,  we were told that once at the BBC Studio we would be split into two groups, our group would be taken to The Blue Box Cafe initially whilst the first group went to the set.  Then they put The Doctors Wife DVD on for the rest of our journey.  I love this episode, I may discuss it at a later letter.   Sitting in that little cafe with twenty or so other excited fans was a real buzz and as we were lead through the BBC centre, down a corridor covered in huge framed pictures of Doctor Who, Torchwood and Sarah Jane I thought my head was going to blow off.  We were bundled into a room with a wooden ramp, at the top of this ramp was the door...that door...the BLUE door, then we were in.  Inside the TARDIS.  I really wanted to try and explain to you all how brilliant it was but I know I do not have the words.  I can tell you this though as I walked through that door I got a lump in my throat and my eyes were prickling with tears such was the intense emotion I felt actually being there.  I thought perhaps some of the pictures I took would make you understand.

 

Photos copyright Lisa Hazlegreaves

Even though I know it’s a television show, a production, a made up world in some clever writers head, there was a tiny part of me that expected to walk back out through that door on an alien planet or in another time, and I can tell you, I’m still a little disappointed that this was not the case.