So, today is the 56th anniversary of the first episode of Doctor Who, a show that - for good or ill - is just an inextricable aspect of my consciousness.

I have a lot of followers, readers and listeners now who weren't around when I started blogging (roundabout 2007) and so don't know me primarily as a Doctor Who blogger. But that's what I was for a long time.

I started writing online because I had Stuff To Say about episodes of new-Who from the time, especially Gridlock. I was initially prompted to start showing this sorta stuff to people online by my friend @kinnemaniac who asked me to write for his online fanzine.

I didn't write about Doctor Who primarily because it was my only interest in life, much as it was and will continue to be an obsession of mine, so much as because it was the only thing I felt confident pontificating about in public.

Over the years, my confidence grew (thanks to nice feedback from readers etc) and my old Blogger site Shabogan Graffiti expanded to cover lots of things besides Doctor Who.

Shabgraff (as I called it) was always DW as seen through my particular political perspective. I started looking at other things from that perspective too. So DW became a route for my writing to expand, as indeed the show was a route for my mind to expand when I was a kid.

In November 2013, the fiftieth anniversary year of the show, I wrote something I ended up calling The Fifty. Fifty blog entries about 50 DW stories. Here it is: http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/author/jack/the-50/

I like to think it can be read by people who know nothing about DW, new or old, because I give a bit of context for the story I'm talking about at the start of each entry. The little essays are about the politics of the show, and via that the politics of the world it existed in.

I've written about the show since, but The Fifty turned out to be something like a 'settling of accounts' with the show I will always love, which was extraordinary for its political engagement, sometimes radical, sometimes reactionary, bc it was so keyed into its changing times.

The Fifty is far from perfect (bits of it make me cringe now) but it's still one of the things I've written that I'm most proud of. http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/author/jack/the-50/