I was eight years old when Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper first appeared on my TV screen as The Doctor and Rose Tyler in 2005’s Doctor Who revival. After a long time away, the historic science fiction show was back to usher in a new generation of viewers. As a lover of the genre, I was adamant this was going to be something special. Turns out, I was right!
Fast forward to 2025. I’m 28 years old and preparing for a summer of sci-fi with Doctor Who and Andor. Doctor Who received a new lease of life (and a whole lot of dough alongside it) in 2022 when Disney Plus became its new international home. For a show that’s called ‘One Piece for British people with its eye-watering number of episodes dating back to the series premiere in 1963, the fact that Doctor Who was suddenly available to much wider audience was exciting. (As an aside, I’d also called it the summer of Varada Sethu, who appears in both Andor and in Doctor Who, as the latest companion to Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th Doctor. I couldn’t wait to see how these shows would feature one of my favorite actors. Spoiler: This would not work out for me. Varada Sethu, I’m so sorry.)
After a truly topsy-turvy season, I decided the only thing left to do was rewatch the entire series to see what had ensnared eight-year-old me in the first place. But I refused to do so alone and, knowing that my friend from the States — an avid Star Wars fan from Texas — had expressed an interest in getting into Doctor Who, it seemed like the perfect excuse to call her bluff.
Trouble is, my distance from the show’s beginnings made me forget something very crucial. Doctor Who is incredibly British.
Now, when I say this, I want you to know that I mean it in a way that doesn’t make me sound like a gammon — one of those pro-Britain, anti-everything else kinda people. Doctor Who has always embraced diverse stories and companions (how well it’s handled them is up for debate), but it’s also a show that, at its roots, is steeped in British culture. For god’s sake, there’s a whole scene where a good cuppa tea cures David Tennant’s 10th Doctor from his regenerative sickness. It doesn’t get more British than that.
I had forgotten all of this, and I am so glad I did because watching the 2005 pilot episode “Rose” for the first time with my friend — and then watching the first four seasons of ‘New Who’ together — turned out to be one of the funniest, most mind-boggling experiences of my life. What was normal to me was, at times, as alien to my friend as the Daleks were to Rose.
At one point I was asked what a “chippy” was (fish and chips) and why Rose and her family liked to have one every night. As bizarre as that may have been to my friend, to me it was a return to my childhood. A fish and chips supper, at least back in the 2005 era, was seen as the most succulent of meals the British working class could have. In our house, chippy night was a Friday, and only if my dad and mum could afford it and had money left to put in the electric and gas meter afterwards.
Growing up poor isn’t just ‘a British thing’ by any means, but this was a show following an alien from outer space who just so happens to pluck a companion from that specific background, my background, and whisk them off on incredible adventures. While there were certainly other shows at the time that depicted the lives of the working class, a lot of them made us the butt of a long-winded joke. In Doctor Who, we could be heroes, we could be important, and yes, we sometimes had chippy suppers and had that one dodgy geezer down the road who was selling cheap SIM cards because no way was we going to pay full price at Carphone Warehouse. Explaining this to my friend and watching her mind slowly be rearranged to understand it was genuinely delightful.
It also made me realize just how utterly bananas this show must feel to anyone who didn’t grow up with British pop culture. From crossover appearances like EastEnders Peggy Mitchell (portrayed by the late Barbara Windsor, an icon in British TV and film) yelling at alien ghosts that the only spirits she serves in the Queen Vic is “whiskey, gin and vodka,” to a whole episode dedicated to British reality TV and game shows like Big Brother UK and The Weakest Link (but make it alien), this felt both bizarre and normal to me.
My friend, however, continued to go through the motions. She didn’t understand why these appearances were so phenomenal, nor why I found them so funny. At one point, actress Michelle Ryan (Bionic Woman, EastEnders) appears in an episode where the 10th Doctor and the 200 London bus full of passengers get sucked through a wormhole. Ryan is a British legend, well-known for her role as Zoe Slater in British soap EastEnders and for her truly iconic scream of “YOU AIN’T MY MOTHER.” It’s become such an iconic moment in British TV that it’s referenced again and again on TV. Seeing her, and many other British icons (Lee Evans, comedian, starred in the same episode), in Doctor Who was a treat.
It wasn’t just Doctor Who’s pop culture references that left my friend scratching her head; it’s the humor embedded in the show’s writing and dynamics, particularly in Eccleston’s season. British humor is often self-deprecating, with a real willingness to laugh at ourselves and the dire straits we find ourselves in. Sometimes, we even divert our scathing humor to one another, and that’s easily reflected in the dynamics established between The Doctor, his companions, and their family members. Having been to the States a couple of times, one of the most mind-blowing things to me was just how nice everyone is to each other. Strangers were actively talking to one another, just because they could. In comparison, us Brits are a bit miserable. Then again, if you lived on a small island where it rains all the time and the buses are always late, you would be too.
Despite this culture clash, it would be a lie to say my enjoyment of the show waned in any way. In fact, as the human equivalent of the nerd emoji, I delighted in giving out small cultural history lessons on why the Doctor Who era of 2005-2009 was so adamant to hold up a mirror to the changing attitudes of British culture, particularly when it came to family dynamics. More importantly, the show highlights how the mundane — like Rose’s home on the council estate, Martha’s long-suffering role as the eldest child with a large family, and even Donna’s life of temp job after temp job — could transform into something fantastical. The stakes may not have been as high as they were in later seasons, but this version of Doctor Who was overwhelmingly relatable even among a galaxy-spanning backdrop.
And as much as Doctor Who has changed over the years, it’s still undeniably a British show. There’s no other show out there that sees a Time Lord with a Mancunian twang go toe-to-toe with aliens during The Blitz, nor have I seen the American equivalent of The Doctor having beef with the UK Prime Minister.
Currently, we’re just one episode away from the arrival of Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor, and I am eagerly looking forward to introducing my friend to the episode where The Doctor, in typical fashion, attempts to save the world with the best British biscuit of them all: the Jammie Dodger. I think it will blow her mind.