Long term relationships for Doctor Who fans can tend to become love triangles of sorts.
Your girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse/whatever you like to call them (I refuse to say “Partner”, it’s a relationship, not a law firm) and your since-childhood relationship with The Doctor aren’t always compatible to say the least, particularly where the classic series is concerned. Doctor Who, is, in many respects, “The Other Woman”.
(And, no, that does not mean he should be a woman)
I discovered Neil (and Sue) Perryman’s Wife In Space blog in late 2012, and became an avid reader. For those unfamiliar, it’s a hysterically funny account of a superfan watching the original run of Doctor Who from beginning to end with his not-we wife, recons and all. Sue enjoys the ‘new’ series (are we still allowed to call it that?), and tolerates Neil’s obsession with the original series, but make no mistake, she’s not a fan. Sue goes into this in good humour, her often sweary observations, criticisms, and frequent hurled cushions are what makes the blog so funny, as she ruthlessly shreds sacred cows of fandom and playfully mocks her husband’s devotion to Who. Go and read all of it, if you haven’t already.
I’ve tried watching old Who with my girlfriend myself. I’ve tentatively picked a few choice cuts from my DVD collection, and they’ve generally gone down well in isolation, apart from when we both unexpectedly fell asleep during The Daemons. I’m not sure if we’re ready for anything over four episodes or pre-colour yet, let alone recons of the likes of The Space Pirates. Neil’s a brave man.
Now, Adventures With the Wife in Space has begat a book, published by Faber and Faber. It’s not the blog in book form, but snippets are peppered throughout the book as context to Neil and Sue’s story. This book is really about their relationship. Early chapters focus on Neil’s relationship with Who itself as he grows up, from discovering it as a toddler, through playground re-enactions of Pyramids of Mars, Target novelisations, being disappointed by The Krotons, a period of embarrassed abstinence in his teens where he walks away in search of girls, and his reconnection with Who while at University.
Flash forward a few years to the early 90s, and enter Sue. When they first meet, he’s rather earnestly removed the “man” from his surname as a gesture to a feminist former girlfriend, and as their courtship progresses carries a VHS tape in his jacket pocket in case he gets the chance to tape some repeats from UK Gold on the sly while she puts her young daughter to bed. She, on the other hand, is older, more practical and worldly, and much more likely to put up some shelves to support his motherlode of Who merchandise than he is.
When Neil first meets his future wife (in Space), he initially conceals his fanboy urges with some success. This ruse falls down the minute he moves in with Sue and her daughter Nicol and is promptly rumbled when Nicol reaches into one of his boxes and pulls out Day of the Daleks on VHS
Neil sees an opportunity early on to watch Who on VHS with Nicol, in the hope that she embraces it as he did as a toddler. Unfortunately for him (but not for the book), although they bond and become a family unit, his efforts to recruit her to his cause fail ten minutes into Day of the Daleks.
For many years afterwards, Sue indulges her husband’s obsession as he discovers the internet and creates the likes of Behind the Sofa and Tachyon TV, she even watches and enjoys Genesis of the Daleks with him and phones up Tom Baker on QVC, but doesn’t get properly involved until the beginning of “The Experiment”.
As they progress through their marathon, Sue develops, shall we say…frank.. opinions on each of the Doctors (and “Terry ****ing Nation”), can spot Douglas Camfield’s directorial style a mile off, fixates on the quality of carpentry of the sets, and gives scores to much-loved stories that might cause you to howl with laughter or outrage depending on your outlook, a full list is included as an appendix.
Sometimes Nicol and Sue’s brother Gary join in. Ironically, she understands far more about black holes than most people who watch Doctor Who do and bakes the occasional themed cake, he prefers Lost in Space and becomes something of a hate figure among the blog’s readers. As with anything on the internet, the comments on the blog get a little bizarre. Neil shields Sue from some of them, and frets about exposing her and Nicol to the occasionally dubious attentions of online fandom when musical marriage proposals for Sue start to appear on YouTube.
By the end of the experiment they’re looking for the next project to watch, as after over two years it’s become apparent that doing this has brought them closer together.
Happily, they’ve now started on Blakes 7, which is shaping up to be just as funny and irreverent, let’s hope those missing episode rumours turn out to be accurate and that Neil and Sue can be persuaded to watch them all together.
This book is very funny and has real heart, and you should buy it, even if you aren’t in a love triangle with The Doctor.
Adventures With The Wife in Space is available now from Amazon.
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