On Saturday 30^th April 2005, Dalek was first broadcast in the United Kingdom and I missed it. I’m not 100% sure what I was doing to be honest. I could have been sat in my bedroom playing some Crash Bandicoot on my PlayStation 2. I could have been reading my latest comic about the adventures of Scooby-Doo or the cast of characters in The Beano. But in all honesty, I was probably sat watching Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway over on ITV, a popular light entertainment show that had already been running for a few years by this point in time. Why watch something new when you can watch something that you already know and love?

When the BBC decided to bring back Doctor Who in 2005, a number of the higher-ups wanted the Daleks to appear in the very first episode of the new series. Russell T Davies, the lead writer and executive producer hired to relaunch Doctor Who, disagreed. Once the 13-episode length had been decided upon, Davies’ staunch opinion was that the Daleks should return in episode 6, around the mid-point of the series. This would mean that the first five episodes of the series could focus on orientating the new audience around the show’s format, having adventures set is the past, present and future, whilst also establishing the new Doctor and companion, Rose Tyler. Davies has also gone on record saying that this episode would have effectively acted as a ‘second’ launch night if need be. But given that the series was recommissioned for a second series after just one episode airing, it seems Davies needn’t have worried about this.

However, his decision was wise, as this helped the show from both a writing perspective, in terms of constructing the series arc, and a marketing perspective, with a mid-series boost in publicity for the show’s most iconic antagonists. Which is why my first glimpse of the episode Dalek was actually in the form of a clip shown on Newsround the day before it aired. It was that bit where the Dalek glided up some stairs. This was very important stuff for the 8-12 year olds to understand in 2005. The BBC were, in no uncertain terms, telling my nine year-old self to tune in tomorrow. But I didn’t. Like an idiot.

Then the following week, one afternoon after school, I had a friend over. Yes, I know, difficult to believe, but I did have at least one friend as a child. My memory is hazy as to which day it was but I choose to believe it was the Monday (2^nd May 2005), though it could have been the Tuesday or Wednesday. My friend brought over this piece of modern technology called a videotape, a fancy device that can be used to record upto TWO HOURS of television, as long as you had set it up correctly in a VHS recorder and pressed the record button when the TV programme started. The tape had an episode of Doctor Who recorded on it. The one broadcast last Saturday at the same time of Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway. He said I should watch it. So we watched it. I was utterly transfixed from start to finish. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the moment when I became a fan. My interest in Doctor Who began right there and then, watching that very videotape, and has never lapsed since, not even for a moment.

Having an understanding of Doctor Who became important social currency within my primary school playground. Everyone wanted to be a Dalek that week. If you hadn’t watched Doctor Who, then you were out of the loop. How else would you know what a Dalek is? How it moves? How it kills people? My friend probably told me who Davros was – man who was king of his own little world – years before we ever saw him return on screen. The following week’s episode introduced a new monster called The Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe, but when we arrived back at school on Monday we still wanted to play as Daleks. The week after that introduced us to the Time Reapers and they were the coolest monsters to be at school on Monday. But after a couple of days, they were no longer cool and we had all gone back to being Daleks. It was only when we all watched The Empty Child that we collectively decided that Daleks were no longer the coolest monster to be in the playground, now we all wanted to be gas mask-wearing children from the London Blitz! For three weeks! But then, the Daleks came back on screen, and so they came back into the playground, there to see us through to the beginning of the summer holidays.

This was critical for me, because my birthday is towards the end of July, and so it was always at the start of the summer holidays; I never had to go to school (or university) on my birthday. I can still picture my 10^th birthday in my head: I’m sat on the floor of the living room of one of my aunties. I unwrapped a present with two DVDs inside, Doctor Who: Volumes 1 and 2, which contained the first six episode of Series 1. Not only could I now rewatch my very first episode of Doctor Who, but I could also watch the five episodes before it which I’d never seen before! If I concentrate hard, I can still hear the BBC ident, with its red, blue and green ribbons of light on a black background, the letters BBC embossed over them in bold white text. It feels like I spent all summer watching those DVDs to fill the long wait for the Christmas Special. I still have them now on my shelf, next to all my other Doctor Who DVDs and Blu-Rays. (Perhaps we can cover my non-linear viewing experience of Series 1 another time in a separate blog post!)

Fast forward to 2013, and I have arrived as a student at the University of Exeter. I find out there’s a Doctor Who Society. I join it. I even buy a society t-shirt that says “Exe-terminate!” on the back. By the end of my first year, I’ve been elected President of the Exeter University Doctor Who Society (no other candidates stood) and find out from the older committee members that we’re running a small-scale convention in October 2014. Two of the guests’ names stand out for me in particular: Robert Shearman, the writer of Dalek, and Barnaby Edwards, the operator of said eponymous Dalek. Both of them were ‘there’ when my journey with Doctor Who first began. Both of them, I learn, are alumni of the University of Exeter and they first met each other here. I begin to think that the Universe has conspired to create this meeting happen.

The day of the convention arrives, and there’s barely a moment for me to sit back and take it all in. I have to stand on the stage of The Great Hall to welcome everyone, I have to tell people where the fire exits are, the guests need to be served food and drink, there’s sound tech to be monitored, photographs to be taken. Most of the day went by in a massive blur of excitement and frenzy. But I do remember my first meetings with Barnaby and then Rob, how polite and kind they were, how delighted they were to be here, all the items they had brought to sign and sell. I think I even jumped up and down and squealed a bit once they turned their back on me to head elsewhere.

There’s that old saying, “Never meet your heroes.” And whilst I would more accurately describe the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler as my childhood heroes, it seems to me that as fans of Doctor Who become older and more and more entwined with the show and fan culture, it’s almost like everyone who has ever worked on the show (or at least the bits of the show that you like) becomes a sort-of hero to you. These are the people who made the dreams of your childhood happen, whatever role that may have been. They were genuinely lovely people to meet and they told many wonderful stories about being fans and then working on the show.

I remember going over to Rob’s stall during one of the breaks, looking to buy one of his short story books. My plan was to buy his first one, called Tiny Deaths, as that seemed like a sensible place to start. But Rob managed to sell me his latest one instead, entitled Remember Why You Fear Me, because it was a mixture of his latest work and his best work from earlier books, and was on sale in America but not in the UK. It was also a more expensive book. It turns out that Rob isn’t just The Most Self-Depreciating Man to Have Ever Graduated from the University of Exeter, he’s also a rather clever salesperson!

Rob then asks if I would like the book signed, warning me that it depreciates the value of the book. I say I want it signed. He then says he also draws Daleks. So I ask him to draw a Dalek as well. He draws a large cartoon Dalek in black felt pen with a speech bubble that says “EXTERMINATE THE EVAN BEING!”. Then on a separate page, using a finer biro pen, he signs it for me, “To Evan, thanks for the con, Rob.” It was quite a strange feeling for me when I read this, because it turns out that upto that point I had felt like my convention wasn’t actually a real convention at all until Rob had now said so in writing. I can see it right now on the bookshelf next to me as I type this. It remains one of my most cherished and well-loved books.

This Sunday, I’m journeying once again to the BFI Southbank to watch yet another episode of Doctor Who on the big screen which I already have at home. What can I say, I just love the viewing experience! But this time around it’s not 20^th Century Who, episodes from before my time. This time, it’s Dalek (and Father’s Day). I’ll be watching the episode where my entire journey as a fan began, twenty years ago today (or roughly so). It remains one of my personal favourite episodes ever in the show’s entire history because I still think it’s dark and witty and powerful stuff. It should be an exciting, emotional and exhilarating experience for me.

In fact, I’ll tell you what it will be: the trip of a lifetime.