The Man In the Blue Box

When I was younger, television time (other than my ritual of Saturday Morning Cartoons and the syndicated Muppet Show reruns) was usually whatever my parents were watching at any given time. My parents usually had the local PBS stations on at any given time, mostly Channel 12 (or Channels 23 or 52 which were the PBS feeds from New Jersey) . PBS usually offered The Lawrence Welk Show, This Old House, and British television shows (a favorite of theirs was the show Upstairs, Downstairs). However, there was one show that my father started watching that really changed things for me and that happened to be Doctor Who. I had to be about at least 5 or 6 years old, I guess my father wanted to make sure I was old enough to understand what was going on. I just thought it was the coolest show ever. And best of all, I got to share it with my dad.

My father was a fan of the whole Science-Fiction/Fantasy genre. He told me stories about being in the Air Force and reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy while he had down time in the barracks. He allowed me to borrow his Alan Dean Foster and Piers Anthony books when I was old enough and he'd talk to me about the books that he had read (and about Lord of the Rings, aside from being a Who Fan, he would discuss Tolkien with me, a lot!). We also liked other shows and movies that involved time travel, alternate universes, outer space, and aliens, but Doctor Who always remained a constant in our lives. I was also fascinated with horror movies, not so much the slasher films (which for some reason unknown to everyone, especially me, my friend Elysa was allowed to watch), but more of the ones that kept you on edge and scared the crap out of you. I supposed my father liked those sort of movies too, a lot of the Doctor Who episodes were scary like that. My father said he guessed that was probably why he liked "Image of the Fendahl", from the Tom Baker era, to him, it was more of like a ghost story. A majority of the creepier episodes my father had to use his discretion to allow me and Louie. I loved "Terror of the Autons", which is one of the aforementioned "creepy episodes". That was the debut of The Master, as portrayed by Roger Delgado, but it was also the return of The Nestines, and they were pretty nasty (the Autons were plastic people with no faces and other plastic items controlled by the Nestine Consciousness). It was still scary, maybe a bit too scary. It was still the coolest show ever made even cooler that there was a Jon Pertwee episode involving dinosaurs. Of course there was some sinister plot involved, but you have to admit that it was beyond awesome the moment The Doctor drove Bessie (his yellow roadster) right under a Brontosaurus. WICKED!!!!!!!