My ill-planned phone call to Doctor Who

When it comes to Doctor Who, my generation was amazingly fortunate. Not only did we discover the series when Tom Baker was still front and center, but rising interest in the show in the early 1980s even prompted some very special re-runs of the original William Hartnell years.

Around the time that Peter Davidson was getting comfortable with his new Doctor Who costume, BBC aired An Unearthly Child — the very first Doctor Who storyline ever. It was a great bookend to the new Doctor Who series and the perfect reminder about the changing nature of the character. While I missed Tom Baker, it put things into perspective.

When Davidson was making the promotional rounds for Doctor Who, he found himself on a children's show answering live questions from the audience — as well as questions via telephone (I think he was a guest on Swap Shop but could be wrong.) I decided to call and almost dropped the phone when they told me they were patching me through to talk to the new Doctor, himself.

It was around this time I realized I didn't have a question. Or a clue. So I followed my first stupid instinct and hung up the phone. At the time it seemed like a better plan than running the risk of embarrassing other Americans by broadcasting my panic on British television.

Don't be too hard on me. I was only 10, and the closest I'd ever come to dealing with a "celebrity" at that point was having bumped into Barbara Woodhouse on a class field trip to Beaulieu.