Fourteen years ago, Doctor Who came back on TV and my eleven year-old self loved it. Thanks to my Dad, I had seen a few episodes of classic Doctor Who and I quite liked them, but the new, modern version really captivated me. The original run had ended in 1989 – sixteen years earlier.
It’s very interesting to consider that it has now almost been on again for as long as it was off the air. When the show came back, the span of time between then and its original cancellation seemed impossibly huge to me, but now the span of time between it coming back and today doesn’t seem quite so big. Don’t get me wrong, being eleven does feel like a very long time ago, but nothing next to the incomprehensible gulf between 1989 and 2005.
Obviously, the reason one seems so much longer than the other despite only being ever so slightly bigger, is because I assessed it as a child and it stretched back prior to the start of my life – but reflecting on it now, it’s easy to see that 1989 wasn’t really that long ago. It helps me to grasp spans of time which exceed my lifetime. It’s amazing how much our perspectives of spans of time change so much as we grow older.
