Interest in Who waning?

How often have you hit a period with Who where you just stop caring about it or just lose interest in watching it?

Very often. I don't think I'll ever love it as much I did five or six years ago again. The show is still in my life, but sadly it has lost a lot of its magic for me. I only really watch it for the companions these days.

I often go through phases of being more interested in other things, but I always come back to it eventually.

There have been times in recent years when I've found it hard to disassociate my anger at what's become of NuWho with the real show, particularly in light of all the Orwellian, revisionist crap being shoehorned into the classic animations, books and audios. Watching Arachnids back in 2018 was such a scarring experience that I very seriously considered giving up on the entire franchise. It's such a horrific piece of television that I feared I wouldn't be able to watch the classics without its stench lingering in the back of my head. Thankfully, this has turned out not to be the case. If it had, I would have sold all of my DVDs by now.

I've always had phases where my attention will drift elsewhere if there's no new Who content to consume.

I became a fan in 1993, aged 11, watched the repeats, read as many Target books at my library and bought as many videos as I could. Got quite obsessive about it.

Then midway through the following year my mum urged me to take other interests, telling me she'd much rather give me the money to get a Red Dwarf video instead. Which I did, and it kind of worked. Soon I was more of a Red Dwarf fan than a Who fan.

I kind of got back into the series at 14, at around the time the TV Movie happened. The problem was, by then it was near impossible to find any of the videos I wanted, as most of the stock had been deleted. I really wanted to find Genesis and Dalek Invasion of Earth, but I couldn't, anywhere.

I managed to find Frontier in Space and The Sea Devils that year, and that was it. Soon I was getting into Star Trek far more, after First Contact came out. Infact the following year, I remember managing to finally find a copy of Resurrection of the Daleks in HMV, and rushed to buy it. Took it home, watched it, and was so disappointed I was left thinking I should stick to Star Trek now as the more mature franchise.

At 17 I did manage to find a second-hand copy of Genesis in a video market, and rushed to buy it. And that got me properly into the show again, and into finding my local monthly fan group for the first time. So they were able to lend or pirate me what I didn't have.

However, the more I saw of the show, the more I came to think only really a select few stories, largely from the Hinchcliffe era or the Harper classics, really stood the test of time. By aged 20 I'd moved out, and fallen out the habit of watching TV. I did manage to finally see City of Death, and the WH Smith Time Lord box set stories, and I did enjoy them fondly. But by that point I was far more into J-Horror and obscure 80's music.

I didn't even listen to the audios much.

2005 was where I think my fan gene really was re-energized. At first I was behind Series 1 and the early part of Series 2, but occasionally I found myself exploring more of the old classics and finding them usually much more tonally tasteful and rewarding. Again though it seemed the Hinchcliffe era had the best offerings.

It did seem like a time in fandom where you had to pick a side over whether the new or old was superior. You were mocked for even suggesting it by the RTD sycophants, which made me double down all the more. but I was still trying to get a sense of the classic series. So when I watched the likes of Seeds of Doom, I really did feel like Classic was better. When I unfortunately gave into the curiosity to watch Warriors of the Deep, afterwards instantly *anything* New Who did seemed like an improvement and needed reformation.

However by 2007 I was so sick of RTD's version that I'd come to get more into Big Finish, and that's where I think I really started to get more obsessive.

The more I listened to it, the more I felt I'd finally discovered the Doctor Who I'd always wanted the show to be, but been so often denied. And up until around 2012, I was pretty much listening to two audios a day and really getting immersed in that world.

Between series 7 and the Anniversary special, however, I had a very devastating, traumatic life-crisis. So much so that I began panicking about my mortality. I can't really go into it, save to say that the show suddenly became something I didn't care about and didn't seem to matter. I went completely off the internet too. I shut down my facebook account and if I hadn't restored it, it probably would've been deleted forever.

That passed, and actually Day of the Doctor did prove in some ways a bit of a needed pick-me-up. I got back into online fandom. Reconnected with old fan friends. I even started making my first Doctor Who music videos on my channel.

Then by the end of Series 8 it all suddenly seemed meaningless again. My enthusiasm gave way to embarrassment that other fans still had any. I went offline again, largely stopped watching the show, and became much more absorbed in the horror of world events during the Syria conflict and the spread of ISIS. Doctor Who just didn't matter to me at that point. I felt again very nihilistic.

Last year I started going to conventions again, but I have to say at the moment, after hearing about the latest retcons, the show does feel pretty dead to me, and it's left me wondering again if I should just leave it in the past as something I was a fan of once.

I'm pretty much in such a phase right now. Will still pick up the animations and probably the Blu rays, though the latter especially feels kinda obligatory. New Who just needs to go away, die and be forgotten.

It's natural for people's life interests and hobbies to ebb and flow at different times.
Until last year, I'd hardly touched DW since 2012, but I'm quite into it again at the moment.
I've done lots of things in my life, but DW has always been a part of it since I was 6, and I started collecting stuff and being a 'fan' when I was 10, so it's pretty much part of me.
It's spent a lot of time in the background, but it's never gone away, and never will. I'm 57, and if it was going to disappear altogether, it would've done so a long time ago.
And I for one am pleased that NuWho has no effect on my affection for real Dr Who. I can unreservedly enjoy the program that I've loved for 50 years, and nothing's ever going to be able to impact on that it. And if you let that's happened to you, then it's because you've let it happen.