When did Classic Who first start to become seriously ridiculed?

I'm very much a 90's generation fan. I grew up at a time when the show was taken for granted as being over and having fallen out of cool with the kids.

Not *quite* as much as is often made out, however. I *do* remember some of the 1993 repeats stoking a little bit of interest among the kids (then again some of that might have to do with the recent Dalek Attack computer game too).

When our primary school was taken to hear a children's poet read his work, which included a parody of Daleks meet Neighbours where they systematically exterminate the whole of Erinsborough, I wasn't even a fan yet and I remember other kids in the group were ahead of the curve and knew what Daleks were (I'd seen pictures of Daleks in the Radio Times, but I'd always assumed they were something from some art program).

It wasn't *impossible* to find kids to play Daleks with (or for that matter Mummies) in the playground, or who wanted to have a look at my DWM supper special too (and it's not like my school or area wasn't rough.... I grew up in a suburb but it still had its gangs and scallies). I remember in the swimming baths once actually asking another kid if he'd watched the repeat of Revelation and us talking about what did either of us make of that odd Alexei Sayle DJ character. Even in secondary school there were other boys willing to trade their novelizations with mine.

I did even go to a friend's house (who was into Wrestling and Hulk Hogan) and brought over The Five Doctors, Remembrance of the Daleks, Day of the Daleks, and the Cushing Dalek films, and we enjoyed them. We even rewound the bit where the Dalek blows itself up in the Death Zone and is exposed for all its wriggling tentacles as a several times. He even said he liked McCoy's Doctor the best because of his jokes.

I can't say I was picked on for being a fan because I was picked on in general anyway, although inevitably liking the show (particularly in as eccentric, dramatic and shameless a fashion as I did), was something the bullies mocked me for. Though I do remember by 14 being considerably more self-conscious and wanting to keep it concealed about being a fan. Maybe there is something to be said there for how the kids might've liked Doctor Who so long as there weren't so many telling them not to.

I still to this day think that the likes of The Daemons, Genesis, Planet of the Daleks and The Green Death which they repeated, didn't actually look that dated in the early 90's. Some of them wouldn't look that out of place in the middle of a saturday morning show like Ghost Train. Infact the only thing that would've looked out of place about Genesis in that slot was all the violence.

Infact there is a little part of me that thinks what *actually* killed the chances of a popular youth resurgence of the show in the 90's wasn't so much the Saward/Levine era or the Kandyman, as the fact the bloody NA novels had absolutely *nothing* of interest to offer my age group. Sure there was the comics maybe, but generally you only got them through buying DWM, which you generally had to be a fan in the first place to want to get.

Maybe this changed in the late 90's, when the remastered Pertwee repeats didn't do so well, so much so that even after the 2005 success, the BBC still didn't dare try such old repeats again. As Buffy seemed to raise the TV standard to something that now had to be cinematic, maybe that's why viewers weren't even interested in following The Silurians.

Or maybe culture had become so 'knowing' about the show, it was never going to be as *intriguing* as it once had been for me back in 1993. Dawson's Creek and American Pie were what the youth were into now, and Classic Who didn't seem to offer offer any of those things (unless maybe you went all the way back to The Dalek Invasion of Earth's last scene).

What I was really meaning to ask though is, when do you remember opinion on the show changing, and the show becoming uncool in the schoolyard? Was it always uncool to some degree or did something happen that shattered the looking glass and meant the kids weren't as bewitched by the show like they used to be anymore?

I never remember folks opinions changing that drastically. I know a lot of folk outgrew the show and put it behind them but it was hardly the big embarrassment that the Fitzroy Crowd made it out to be and at best, it only received light ribbing for the dodgy effects.

Indrid Mercury wrote:I never remember folks opinions changing that drastically. I know a lot of folk outgrew the show and put it behind them but it was hardly the big embarrassment that the Fitzroy Crowd made it out to be and at best, it only light ribbing for the dodgy effects.

Uhuh.

I think if there was a general drift of mainstream interest, it was probably more down to a sense the show was becoming difficult to follow or engage with around the time of the Trial season, and that's why it kind of became forgotten. Maybe Time-Flight and the duller run of season 20 had something to do with it too.

The second-hand embarrassment probably was just in a lot of fans' heads, and often feels like a kind of manic hypochondria they've still never gotten over.

Frequently the anecdote I heard from older fans who were kids back in the 80's, is that the worst thing about Season 24 was having to go to a friend's house to watch it because their own parents were watching Coronation Street, and from that being made very conscious that the show was looking a lot naffer and childish than usual (but even then, in the context of the time it didn't look that much cheaper than T-Bag, and that was still a popular kids' show).

I think indeed the Fitzroy Crowd probably exaggerated the show's embarrassing reputation. I think some of that inevitably came from the fact they came from a more middle class world where standards were a lot more ruthlessly sniffy (doubly so for those like Moffat who actually worked *in* the BBC), certain unfashionable views and opinions were not said at their get-togethers and occasions, their tastes were meant to be more sophisticated, and they prided themselves on being more enlightened, cultured and articulate than your typical anorak who's all about reciting lists.

(it might indeed be that in a kind of snobbish way, they assumed the working class masses disdained the show too from the opposite position of it not being 'macho' enough for them).

Tanmann wrote:

Indrid Mercury wrote:I never remember folks opinions changing that drastically. I know a lot of folk outgrew the show and put it behind them but it was hardly the big embarrassment that the Fitzroy Crowd made it out to be and at best, it only light ribbing for the dodgy effects.

Uhuh.

I think if there was a general drift of mainstream interest, it was probably more down to a sense the show was becoming difficult to follow or engage with around the time of the Trial season, and that's why it kind of became forgotten. Maybe Time-Flight and the duller run of season 20 had something to do with it too.

The second-hand embarrassment probably was just in a lot of fans' heads, and often feels like a kind of manic hypochondria they've still never gotten over.

Frequently the anecdote I heard from older fans who were kids back in the 80's, is that the worst thing about Season 24 was having to go to a friend's house to watch it because their own parents were watching Coronation Street, and from that being made very conscious that the show was looking a lot naffer and childish than usual (but even then, in the context of the time it didn't look that much cheaper than T-Bag, and that was still a popular kids' show).

I think indeed the Fitzroy Crowd probably exaggerated the show's embarrassing reputation. I think some of that inevitably came from the fact they came from a more middle class world where standards were a lot more ruthlessly sniffy (doubly so for those like Moffat who actually worked *in* the BBC), certain unfashionable views and opinions were not said at their get-togethers and occasions, their tastes were meant to be more sophisticated, and they prided themselves on being more enlightened, cultured and articulate than your typical anorak who's all about reciting lists.

(it might indeed be that in a kind of snobbish way, they assumed the working class masses disdained the show too from the opposite position of it not being 'macho' enough for them).

Most the people I knew still looked back on Who fondly for the most part. Younger kids were into it and it was remembered more with affection and an nostalgic whimsy rather than disdain and embarrassment.

I think Season 20 was the last time the show's popularity with the general public was relatively high with the hype for the 20th anniversary as well as Davison's still high star appeal. Season 21-22 were still decent with the ratings and I'd pinpoint Trial as being where the ratings started properly declined and Doctor Who's reputation started fading.

The Fitzroy Crowd are well known for knocking the original series to place the remake series on a higher pedestal to make them look more heroic for taking a dead franchise and reinvigorating it  so it's not exactly a surprise that they would exaggerate things a tad bit.

It was definitely post-season 22. The BBC's own higher-ups slagging it off every other week - every other week with a different reason to justify their shit treatment of it - gradually seeped its way into being the press attitude as well.

The Fitzroy Crowd continuing to persist with this lie is sick-making in the extreme, of course.

Indrid Mercury wrote:Most the people I knew still looked back on Who fondly for the most part. Younger kids were into it and it was remembered more with affection and an nostalgic whimsy rather than disdain and embarrassment.

You know, thinking about this, I think the problem is that (as Iank alludes) it almost seemed as though the BBC couldn't do those 90's repeats and revisitations of the show that got the audience interested again.... without in some way quickly backlashing against the show again, by doing special documentaries that seemed to almost quickly become apologies for the show, for its supposedly naff or sexist elements.

It's like every time the BBC restarted the flame, they wanted to quickly snuff it out again because they felt that bloody embarrassed by the show for some reason.

I think Season 20 was the last time the show's popularity with the general public was relatively high with the hype for the 20th anniversary as well as Davison's still high star appeal. Season 21-22 were still decent with the ratings and I'd pinpoint Trial as being where the ratings started properly declined and Doctor Who's reputation started fading.

Odd really. I always thought Season 20 was where the ratings lull began. Then again the arrival of Channel 4 might've had something to do with that.

In hindsight, it does indeed feel like The Five Doctors was the "it could go either way from here" point. I suppose the ratings for S21-22 were decent, but I do think an air of disillusionment was growing, even among those who remembered the show fondly, over the violence and nastiness (i.e. Resurrection, The Two Doctors). So I think even without Trial, there were some bad omens in the air.

The Fitzroy Crowd are well known for knocking the original series to place the remake series on a higher pedestal to make them look more heroic for taking a dead franchise and reinvigorating it  so it's not exactly a surprise that they would exaggerate things a tad bit.

Well earlier than that, that seemed to be their approach back in the 90's, to big up their own New Adventures novels. Chiefly the likes of Cornell and his chapel smeared the Pertwee era, to paint it as representing everything cozy, conservative, chauvinist and pro-establishment that the McCoy stories and NA novels were so furiously against.

I suppose to a degree, being fans who were writing the Doctor, they did start to pick up consciously on the dilemma of making the Doctor both pacifist and believably formidable to enemies... which I suppose is where they came to see more flaws in the classic show (at least in Davison's time), and came to believe this is why the general public no longer bought the premise of the show (at least not without Tom Baker there to really 'sell' the magic of the character and make audiences suspend their disbelief) and that they probably still wouldn't, if not for RTD and Moffat's whole angle about having the modern Doctors express a vengeful God streak now and again.

Indrid Mercury wrote:I never remember folks opinions changing that drastically. I know a lot of folk outgrew the show and put it behind them but it was hardly the big embarrassment that the Fitzroy Crowd made it out to be and at best, it only received light ribbing for the dodgy effects.

Fuck the Fitzroy crowd, I don't care what they think; but your account is not really how I remember it.
It may've started a bit with Colin, but it was McCoy/S24 when people really started to take the piss. There are people on here that don't like to hear it, but it really was S24.

The Williams era and K fucking 9 is where the programme lost its cool and bullies started using it as an excuse to be a cunt.

Particularly Season 17.

It was seen as a program only simple minded infants watched.

Thank you Tanman.

This is what I'm always saying.

Speaking as someone who grew up in the 90s I was never once picked on for liking DW. Now granted this is just my personal experience, but ersonally I think that one persons experience is always a crap way of measuring things. Personally I was picked on more for liking Buffy and Xena than DW and they were seen as the trendy shows by the Fitzroy. If I said I liked DW the attitude would be "Oh yeah thats that show about the monsters?" if it was Xena and Buffy it would be "Oh god that's that sappy show about romance and Buffy and Angel, Xena and Gabrielle" etc.

Ultimately the facts show the following.

All Classic era stories were released on video (that is all the stories that survived) and they continued to release them on DVD. If no one as buying them why did they keep releasing them?

Many classic era videos were best sellers. Even the Pertwee years was a huge hit.

Anything Who related that was shown on tv was a big hit. Dimensions in Time over 13 million, the 96 movie over 9 million.

In 2002, DW was voted the show most people wanted to see come back. That same year in SFX magazine the Doctor was also voted the nations favourite sci fi character beating out the likes of Buffy, Xena and Star Trek characters.

Affectionate references to it still popped up all over the place, including on American tv. The Doctor was included in the Simpsons, in one episode alongside Godzilla and Gort, in another alongside Xena, and in another as one of tv's esteemed representatives. Leela from Futurama was even named after Leela from DW. Buffy even mentioned it, alongside Red Dwarf as being the quintessential British sci fi series.

"You're English right?"
"Yeah?"
"I've seen every episode of Doctor Who. But not Red Dwarf because its not out on DVD yet."

All of this shows that DW was not a dead brand in the 90s and the 00s. TBH it was like Batman now. Batman's latest movies haven't been big hits, but the character is still hugely popular, everyone still knows who he is and there is always the possibility of a new Batman movie being a big success.

Dan Dare as much as I love it, is a dead brand. The majority of people don't know who Dan is. Dan Dare comics aren't big sellers, he's not likely to win a "nations favourite comic book poll." Every Dan Dare era has not been released in paper back. Its almost impossible to get the 80s stuff sadly. You won't even see references to it in nerdy shows like The Big Bang Theory or Futurama.

THATS a dead brand that you have to start from scratch again if you want to revive.

The Fitzroy Crowd love to exaggerate how bad it was however to big themselves up.

I will say though that DW was a favourite whipping boy on arsehole panel shows in the 90s and 00s, but I personally despise panel shows. They are all made up of talentless cunts who can't sustain a career outside of them and who go with whatever the mainstream media say.

We know that the mainstream media thanks to the Beeb hated classic who, so they all joined in, but again who cares about arsehole panel show comedians. From about 2015 on they started to trash New Who too because the media started to turn on it (for the horror of having a white male protagonist.)

Given that I grew up during the NuWho years, I can only give an account of my experiences there. I was actually mocked somewhat at school whilst series 7 and 8 of NuWho was on (secondary school had just started), although given that I often slagged it off too due to how fucking awful it was, I never saw this as a major issue (and it was often done in a cordial way), and no one could be arsed to talk about NuWho once series 9 came about. I did admittedly feel ashamed to be known as a fan after Death in Heaven, given that the mainstream associates TruWho with NuWho (I usually have to awkwardly explain to casual friends that NuWho is nothing like the original run), and although I’ll gladly discuss it with those willing to do so, the utter embarrassment of the current iteration of the programme usually just has me taking the piss out of it whenever someone brings it up.

I know a few intelligent TruWho fans in real life too who never bought into the media’s depiction of it post season 22, mind, although I don’t usually prefer to publicly discuss the programme unless prompted personally. I guess the Who “shame” only fell upon me due to NuWho.

Bernard Marx wrote:I did admittedly feel ashamed to be known as a fan after Death in Heaven, given that the mainstream associates TruWho with NuWho

I have to say I felt embarrassed after that bloody episode too.

It's almost like the separation between the show, and the worst excesses of the New Series' hysterical fanbase just suddenly collapsed. Part of that might be because explanations for the Missy revelation genuinely were left solely to the domain of ridiculous online fan theories I didn't want to have to take seriously whilst watching.

But just the fact youtube's fan community seemed to be behind where this was going, and seemed to be genuinely over the moon about wicky-wacky Missy (those FiveWhoFans videos with CristelDee were utter cringe), and doing weepy reaction videos to the Cyberbrig moment.

It's like suddenly the show looked hollow in a new way, and seeing fans still go hysterical for its insipid content just made me wonder what the hell they were on (and can I have some?).

I just didn't feel any connection to the fanbase there. I didn't want to be known as associated with it.

In response to burrunjor, I probably should become more familiar with Dan Dare (to be honest I've still been rather slow in revisiting the old Green Lantern strips), but I get the impression that why it's been a bit of a buried brand since is that it's felt that so many things (i.e. Star Wars) have superseded it since.

Maybe it would've been different if Glenn A. Larson had chosen to revive Dan Dare rather than Buck Rodgers on TV in the early 80's.

I think people always felt that there was always more stuff Doctor Who had to offer and play with, and that even the 26 years of it we got on-air were still a tease for more.

I mean controversially I do think it might be that a rest and a reboot was something the show needed, in order for that public nostalgia to kick back in. for absence to make the heart grow fonder.

When the public voted that they wanted the show back, I think chiefly they wanted back the memories of the charm of the Tom Baker era, and they'd drifted a bit since, partly because Tom wasn't there anymore, and partly because it had seemed to become a lot less accessible since, with more demands for an encyclopaedic knowledge of the show's history in order to follow.

But if it was rebooted on a clean slate, then they'd be all for it, with or without RTD's populist trash additions.1993 or 96 probably was the right time, at least in Britain.

But yes, I think a lot of the sneery attitudes to the show were more internal within the BBC than outside it. And infact it might be that that's why Saward went a bit off the rails trying to make the show more adult and shocking to prove the beeb wrong.

Later seventies. Basically the Williams era.

Based soley on my direct experiences at secondary school in Birmingham and not some tv history of the programme written by somebody like DJ Howe or Stephen James Walker.

The situation seemed to improve during the Davison era. I remember hearing non-fans talking approvingly about stories like Kinda.

I dont know about popular attitudes to Colin or Sylv.

TBH, i tended to watch the progamme regardless. What school mates thought of Resurrection was irrelevant. I enjoyed it. I just addressed conversation about the programme to people who shared my fondness of the show. So that was two other people in the case of Archbishop Ilsley catholic comprehensive shool ...

stengos wrote:
The situation seemed to improve during the Davison era. I remember hearing non-fans talking approvingly about stories like Kinda.

Yes, it did.

The new Doctor, "Black Orchid" and the return of the Cybermen in "Earthshock" was the very first time since the Hinchcliffe era that I remember non-fans at school discussing Doctor Who appreciatively again.

During the Williams era the programme was basically a forbidden or quickly shut down topic in the classroom.