Relative Dimensions

Doctor Who Magazine is a publication that inspires great loyalty in its readership. Many of us have read it from childhood onwards. I’m one of those long-term readers, although I did have a non-fan blip for a few years in my late teens/early twenties when things like exams and boys temporarily took over my brain. But I came back into the fold eventually, and I can’t tell you how exciting it was to actually become part of the magazine with the Time Team. Then, later on, I got to write the celebratory Countdown to 50! That was, fairly obviously, going to come to an end – but I wanted to keep writing for DWM! Writing a column on Who and families was actually my husband’s idea. I really wasn’t sure that readers would be particularly interested in the minutiae of my family life – it’s more a Sunday supplement sort of thing than a science-fiction mag thing – but he said to at least suggest it to Tom Spilsbury, DWM’s editor, so I did. And he liked it! (Or, possibly, was desperately in need of something to fill the slot. I’m not going to enquire which.) My poor children. They had their birth announced in DWM (how many children get that?!), they’ve appeared in its pages dressed in Dalek and Cyberman costumes, and now they have to suffer my presenting them with a DVD and demanding ‘Watch this and say something funny or meaningful!’ every time a deadline approaches…

(NB Some of the columns reproduced here are in their original, unedited state.)

Reproduced by kind permission of Doctor Who Magazine.

Illustrations courtesy of Ben Morris and Doctor Who Magazine. Check out more of Ben’s fabulous work on Facebook and Tumblr