I was looking through an old photo album today when I came across these four photographs that brought back a really vivid memory of my father.

You will have to excuse some of this, I was six at the time, so I only have a vague recollection of the actual event. All I remember with real clarity was the impact of my father’s words.

Complaints to the BBC

Just a few weeks earlier Doctor Who had just finished with the Second Doctor, Patrick Troughton, having been captured by the Time Lords and forced to regenerate. The series was to be off air for over six months. 

Mr Basu’s number one son was, in equal measure devastated, angry and feeling betrayed by the BBC. Despite my father’s antipathy towards the show (something he has never lost) my father helped me write a letter of complaint to them. I wish I had a copy of the letter. 

I don’t know if my father ever actually sent it or if the BBC ever replied. If they did my parents never said. To be fair he was probably hoping that after writing the letter I would eventually forget about the show.

Typically, life goes on, and in the eyes of a six-year-old, a couple of weeks can be a long time even when one is desolate about the absence of his greatest hero. And my father was doing his best to distract me with Star Trek, Aesops Fables and playing outside. How little he realised how he would set his son in a direction that would last the rest of his life.

Walking on the Moon

I remember this much about that fateful day. I had been playing outside in the street with my friends. My father called me in to watch the news, of all things. I was resistant and didn’t want to come inside. But he was insistent. 

Begrudgingly, I came inside to see what was going on. My father was going on about how history was being made and how I would remember the day for the rest of my life. He was setting up his camera to take pictures of the TV.

We watched the news about the first moon landing. We saw the pictures of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong first stepping out onto the moon surface. The six-year-old me thought it was happening on live TV although now I realise it must have been a recording. I got swept up by my father’s enthusiasm for the event.

My father was big on reading to me. Science magazines like Look and Learn as well as typical “Boy’s Own” adventure books like Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe and everything from Jules Verne we read so much that was well above the reading age of a six-year-old. So this day he was filling my head with the adventure of space exploration. 

Just Imagine Scratch and Sniff

I remember him saying, “Just imagine, those two men are stepping onto a new world. Somewhere no one has ever been before. And their Mummies and Daddies are sat here, they might even be in the next street watching their sons walking on the moon.”

I remember him getting a little frustrated with me because I got fascinated with what the astronauts would do if they got an itch or had to sneeze. I think he told me they were specially trained to not scratch and sniff. Obviously I didn’t believe him.

Flights of Fantasy

We then had a big conversation about what it took to get those two men there. We talked about the rocket, the lunar module and the army of scientists and engineers that made it all possible.

At the time I loved the adventure of it all but I was a bit disturbed by being that far away from my mum and dad and having to be trained not to scratch and sniff, two things that I considered the best of my skills. So I decided that being the scientist and doing the engineering was enough excitement for me. 

Within a few years, my bedroom was filled with Airfix kits and chemistry sets. By my teens a week wouldn’t go by without me setting fire to my eyebrows, dismantling the telephone or supergluing my hands to the dining room table.

And well before my O-levels, my father had to endure complex maths problems and philosophical discussions on the nature of space-time that neither of us properly understood. But I think the thing that irked my father most was the one thing that totally sold me the deal.

The Doctor is Back

January 1970, my father had bought (probably rented as was the fashion of the day) a colour TV over Christmas. My mother told me he had bought it because Doctor Who was coming back, much to my father’s irritation. He didn’t want to be seen to encourage me.

I wasn’t interested. The Doctor wasn’t going to be the Doctor anymore. I was prepared to watch the first episode just so we could write another letter of complaint to the BBC to bring back the cosmic hobo that was Pat Troughton. Apparently I had seen the first regeneration that put Pat Troughton into the role but the mind of this six-year-old couldn’t remember anyone other than Pat being the Doctor.

It didn’t even take the whole episode for me to be sold on Jon Pertwee being the new, colourful dandy Doctor. But over the course of his first season what firmly sold me into the show was the Doctor was an explorer, a scientist and an engineer that fixed problems by thinking. And he had a team that could have adventures together. And that they could explore faraway places but still be home for tea. And that you could wear fancy clothes that still let you scratch and sniff.

Framing is Key

My father was never one for fiction, fantasy or science fiction. He hated Doctor Who, at least until the 2005 revival, but even then he was not even a casual viewer. I knew my love of science, engineering, hypnosis, mind skills, adventure and exploration was inspired by the show. But until today I hadn’t realised my father framed the whole thing to happen in the impressionable mind of that six-year-old that was grumbling about watching history in the making instead of playing in the street with his friends.

It’s a shame I didn’t understand this sooner I would have loved to talk to him about it. It would have irritated him immensely.