Doctor Who is gonna fix it, Doctor Who will put it right
As he moves across the galaxy at twice the speed of light!
Back into the future, the TARDIS travels time
With his beautiful assistant and his trusty mate K9!

The Ballad of Doctor Who (AKA Doctor Who is gonna fix it). Written by S. Watson, D. Ovenden and R. Young. Performed by Bullamakanka

I write this from a hotel room in Alice Springs. For those of you outside Australia, Alice Springs is smack bang in the centre of the country. It’s about as far from everything as you can get, nothing but desert for hundreds of kilometres. It’s a funny old place –  beautiful in some ways, deeply troubling in others. But despite its contradictions, one thing you can say about it for sure, is that it’s remote.

What, you must be thinking, does this have to do with The Invasion of Time? Well, only that being in Alice Springs has reminded me that watching classic Doctor Who was something done all throughout Australia, including in its most isolated pockets. When I grew up watching Doctor Who in the 70s and 80s, I watched it on ABC TV. It was one of two channels we had when growing up (how ridiculous that must seem to today’s kids) but out here in Alice, there would only have been one, the ABC. Luckily, that’s the one which showed Doctor Who.

The Invasion of Time was a landmark story in ABC TV’s regular repeat runs of Doctor Who. It marked the end of a set of familiar stories repeated often, from Robot to this one. So as a viewer, I noted whenever The Invasion of Time lobbed around. It marked the end of the current run of Doctor Who.  To be replaced by… who cares? Something boring. And the start of the wait until the series was shown again. Probably starting with Robot.

For many other, more casual viewers, The Invasion of Time would be quintessential Doctor Who. It has Tom Baker, being funny and eccentric and putting things right. With his beautiful assistant and his trusty mate K9. It has aliens made of tinfoil and the Doctor shoots the bad guy with a big space gun. For many viewers in Australia of a certain age, this is what Doctor Who is. And any doubt that watching Doctor Who could be a distinctly Australian experience was put to bed by Australian bush band Bullamakanka, singing about the shared experience of watching the show.

Well I was sittin’ in front of the TV set, there were nothin’ much else to do
Then along comes this amazing co’, they called him Doctor Who
It was half-past-six on the ABC, just before the news
No ads to interrupt me, on an interspatial cruise

Half past six on the ABC, before the news, no ads to interrupt me… that describes the viewing experience pretty well. Sittin’ in front of the TV set, nothin’ much else to do. That’s certainly how it felt out in regional NSW where I grew up. Which is nowhere near as remote as Alice, where there was surely even less to do, and at an average temperature of stinking hot, next to no motivation to do it.

I’ve been thinking about the Australian experience of watching Doctor Who for a while now, but Alice has made me think about watching Doctor Who in isolation. I bet there are tales like this from all over the world – fans who found Doctor Who while living in remote corners of Asia, Europe and America, for whom the show was a regular dive into fantastic adventure. I bet there are people from Alice Springs who became fans. And I bet there are people in cities who found Doctor Who to be a respite from isolation of other kinds: bullying, loneliness or family dislocation.

It’s an experience now lost, because people who love Doctor Who today – the old series, the new series or both – are linked by the internet. Want to talk/argue/rant about the latest episode? You’ll find thousands of people on Facebook, Twitter and Gallifrey Base who want to join you. You could do it from Alice Springs or from any other far-flung corner of the earth with wifi. You can do it instantly and easily. It was not always like this. For many, watching in isolation was the norm.

It’s not that Doctor Who is special in this regard. All television – all media really – has the power to relieve isolation and to forge connections with people. But for me, I am often bemused by how different the modern experience of watching Doctor Who is to how I watched it growing up.

For a start, nearly all of the show is available at the flick of a cursor. That alone is mindblowing enough. Then there’s that it’s a mainstream phenomenon; not an odd, niche filler of a program, beloved of dorks and loners, but a palpable TV hit. All this plus the instant global community of Whoheads one can join with only a login, a password and a few thousand opinions.

Watched from this perspective, The Invasion of Time is just another story among many. One where all six episodes can be devoured at once, your enjoyment of it supplemented by special features, partwork magazines and online reviews. But watched from Alice Springs or a rural town in Canada or a village in New Zealand or wherever it is, I think it was something else altogether.

It was a weeknightly treat, an interspatial cruise. And something of a special event, too. The Doctor’s transformation into to roaring, bellicose tyrant was unsettling. The return of the Sontarans was a rare rematch with an old enemy. A tour through the labyrinthine TARDIS interior, which for some reason never looked, through a child’s eyes, so much like a shabby old hospital. The mythos of Gallifrey explored. The Vardans… well, they always looked rubbish, but you can’t have everything.

It was a lifeline, this show, to people watching all over the world. In a way which it isn’t as much anymore – or at least not in the same way. Which is good, right? We wouldn’t trade away the show’s newfound popularity and the technology that links us to fans all over the world.

But watching the show now is a completely different experience for those who used to watch in isolation. Sitting in front of the TV set, with nothing much else to do.

LINK TO The Unicorn and the Wasp: because Christopher Benjamin is in Unicorn etc, both feature cast members of The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

NEXT TIME: It’s always been you, Craig. Please finalise your purchases and head to the checkouts, it’s Closing Time.