As Doctor Who celebrates its 50th anniversary, the question must be asked: Who cares? The BBC promo Dr Who's 50th anniversary series 'The Day of the Doctor'. Courtesy BBC. Matt Smith and David Tennant both appear in the 50th anniversary special, The Name of the Doctor. THE fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who coincides with another anniversary, besides the obvious one of the Kennedy assassination. It also marks 50 years of Doctor Who scepticism. The show puzzles many. These people look at the program and see lousy special effects, monsters made out of foam and bubble wrap, and acting that verges on pantomime. No sleek spaceship interiors for Doctor Who, or zappy laser battles; this is a program built on quirk, its main character a pacificist who bounces around space and time in a blue box. Those who don't appreciate the show see it as childish, in that most childlike of genres, science fiction. Mini Doctor Who episode melts internet Going for the doctor Nine missing Dr Who episodes found This can leave fans feeling sheepish about their devotion, as Nick Griffiths described in his very funny 2007 memoir, Dalek I Loved You. "You certainly don't introduce yourself as a Doctor Who fan to anyone, or they are likely to start jogging to Latvia," he wrote. And while the 50th anniversary celebrations are revealing astonishing depths to Doctor Who fandom - spurred on by the BBC merchandise department - the institution that begot the show has not always held it in such high esteem. Indeed, for much of the program's history, the BBC has viewed Doctor Who as a problem child - and that attitude has sometimes come straight from the top. Michael Grade (pictured in 2004) was no fan of Doctor Who when he was BBC1 controller in the mid 1980s. Enter former BBC1 controller Michael Grade, long regarded as the Doctor's number one real-world enemy. Grade was the BBC boss in the mid 1980s, when Colin Baker was playing the Doctor, and he was no fan of the actor's portrayal, the show itself, or the science fiction genre. Grade ripped the show from its traditional half-hour early Saturday evening timeslot, to a 45-minute twice-weekly schedule. When that failed to lift the show's declining ratings, he forced it into an extended hiatus, and when that too failed to stop the slide, he sacked Baker from the role. Talking years after these incidents, Grade neatly articulated the views of those who had never liked or 'got' Doctor Who, when he told a journalist that he thought the show was "rubbish" and "pathetic." "I'd seen Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and ET, and then I had to watch these cardboard things clonking across the floor trying to scare kids!," he said in 2002. He described Baker's portrayal of the Doctor as "utterly unlikeable; absolutely God-awful in fact." Doctor Who limped on for three more truncated seasons after Baker's sacking, with Sylvester McCoy in the title role. The show's cancellation in 1989 was a matter of interest only to the most diehard fans. Colin Baker, the much-maligned sixth Doctor. But the "Grade years" and the cancellation were not the only signs of the BBC's ambivalence toward its quirky sci-fi offshoot. From its debut, the show's budget was kept minuscule, forcing the producers to make the fabled silk purse out of a sow's ear on many occasions. The Doctor's travelling vehicle, the TARDIS, was originally intended to change shape with each new environment in which it landed, but budget constraints meant the now-famous blue police box was made permanent. In the 1970s, budget cuts had a further impact on the storyline; too much money had been spent on creating alien planets, so the Doctor's new adventures were set solely on Earth, ingeniously explained by having the character exiled there by his own people. Around the same time, the BBC was destroying the film prints of earlier episodes, in the belief that they held neither commercial nor archival value. After all, this was a children's show, made at a time before the home video player had even been conceived. Dalek I Loved You by Nick Griffiths explores the joy and pain of being a Doctor Who fan. That "children's show" tag had dogged Doctor Who since its inception, but canny producers along the way had an each-way bet on that score. One of the Doctor's companions in the mid 1970s was a gorgeous primitive tribeswoman dressed in skimpy leather, a character developed - apparently - to "bring in the dads." But by the mid to late 1980s, producers had taken the show in an increasingly childish direction. To this day, the final few seasons of Doctor Who test the faith of many fans who would otherwise be diehards, in much the same way that The Phantom Menace did for fans of the Star Wars films. We have a term for it now: jumping the shark. But in the 1980s, there was no cultural reference point to fall back on; just a deepening suspicion that a once-cherished show was failing to entertain. Even the uber-fan Nick Griffiths, as he relates in his memoir, comes to realise that the show he loves is not growing up with him. In the mid 1980s he finally concedes that Doctor Who has "truly lost its way." Paul McGann portrayed the Doctor in the 1996 telemovie - and more recently in an online mini-episode that ties in with the upcoming 50th anniversary special. The wilderness years - that period between the 1989 cancellation and the Doctor's return in 2005 - left fandom strictly in the hands of the diehards - or if you prefer, the tragics - who kept the Doctor's story alive in magazines, comics, novels and audio adventures. A 1996 telemovie was not successful in restarting the franchise. Who knows why? Perhaps its heavy American vibe - complete with Eric Roberts (Julia's brother) playing the Doctor's nemesis, the Master - irked viewers. Or perhaps it needed a more radical rethink to work for modern audiences. Writer Russell T Davies, who brought Doctor Who back to TV screens in 2005, provided that radical rethink. It's worth comparing here how other cultural institutions have been revived for contemporary audiences. The latest reboot of Star Trek retained Leonard Nimoy's characterisation of Spock and the aesthetic of the original, but junked some of that franchise's more ponderous leanings. The James Bond films - which celebrated their own 50th anniversary in 2012 - were relaunched with Casino Royale in 2006 with Daniel Craig in the title role. This new Bond still had the licence to kill bad guys and the penchant for bedding beautiful women, but he was capable of falling in love... and he didn't give a damn if his martinis were shaken or stirred. The character of Q and the silly gadgets, which had previously seemed so intrinsic to the Bond formula, were deleted (although a very different Q did make a return in Skyfall). An institution reborn: Daniel Craig as James Bond in Casino Royale. Further afield, Cirque du Soleil revolutionised the idea of the circus for a modern audience, by again keeping some traditional elements but resting others. The Cirque du Soleil producers kept the big top and acrobats, gave clowning a new twist, and dispensed with the animal acts. In those three examples, Star Trek, James Bond and Cirque du Soleil, new life was breathed into an old form by creators who were judicious in terms of the traditions they followed, and those they consigned to history. With the new Doctor Who, Russell T Davies kept the blue box and some of the monsters from the original series (including the Daleks), but junked the childish elements of the former series, and its poor special effects. He also moved the story on, by making the Doctor the last of his race, the Timelords, the sole survivor of a cataclysmic war. The rebooted series unleashed some of the creative possibilities that had always been lurking in the show's premise, but which had never previously been exploited by the writers. Christopher Eccleston brought Doctor Who back to the screen in 2005, but stayed just for one year. What if, as a time traveller, the Doctor encountered people in out-of-sequence ways? What if the experience of travelling with the Doctor messed up the lives of his friends and companions? What if a companion fell in love with him, or if the Doctor fell in love himself? The series started exploring all of these possibilities. It was like the show's premise had been finally, properly realised - in full colour, with believable special effects, no matter how fantastic the plot became. For the viewers, there was no more imagining; no more filling in the gaps. The Daleks were finally seen to be flying, trumping that hitherto limiting idea that they couldn't ascend stairs. Although to be fair, this was first seen in the cliffhanger to an episode in 1988 - but by then, the show's audience was in serious decline. Of course, it was a battle for Davies to get the show revived, and not everybody was convinced it would work. Michael Grade, the program's nemesis, was back at the BBC as chairman. Interestingly, his time away from the BBC very nearly matches Doctor Who's own wilderness years. The intervening period had not changed his opinion. In a 2005 documentary, BBC's Head of Drama, Jane Tranter, revealed that Grade had been "completely opposed" to reviving the show. "He thought this was a really bad idea," she said. But by the end of the first season of the new series, Grade had been converted - sort of. In a letter to the BBC director-general, Grade congratulated the producers on their good work. He included a post script: "Never dreamed I would ever write this. I must be going soft! David Tennant's portrayal of the Doctor was widely liked by viewers; he's seen here with companion Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman). No he wasn't. What convinced him was ratings. The first episode of the revived series, starring Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and Billie Piper as the new companion Rose, drew 10.8 million viewers in Britain. Respectable figures were sustained throughout the season's 13 episodes. But those figures were surpassed in the following years, when David Tennant took the role of the Doctor. Charismatic, well dressed and sporting some remarkably hipster hair, his portrayal achieved the unthinkable: eclipsing Tom Baker's Doctor as the definitive version of the character in the eyes of many fans. Ratings jumped to new highs: the 2007 Christmas special Voyage of the Damned attracted 13.1 million viewers. More than 12 million people tuned in for his final episodes on Christmas Day 2009 and New Year's Day, 2010. Tennant's tenure also brought something even more unlikely to the worlds of Doctor Who: cool cachet. Like the Batman TV show in the 1960s, the big names lined up as guest stars, including Kylie Minogue (in the aforementioned Christmas 2007 special), Catherine Tate, Richard E Grant and Derek Jacobi. For perhaps the first time in the show's history, fans of the show could discuss their interest without necessarily seeming like the sort of person who would go to a science fiction convention. Tennant himself said the key to the revived show's success was that it was pitched at a mainstream audience, rather than a fan-based audience. Doctor Who celebrates its 50th anniversary in the warm glow of that mainstream acceptance, although it could be argued that the glow has dimmed a bit since Tennant's day. David Tennant and Kylie Minogue in the 2007 Christmas special, Voyage of the Damned. Pictures: AP Photo / BBC Source: AP Tennant's successor Matt Smith has played the role for three years (and will hand over to Peter Capaldi at the end of this year's Christmas special), and while that time has seen some spectacular ratings successes (the 2010 Christmas special attracted 12 million BBC viewers), in general the ratings highs are not as high as they once were. Ratings in the Tennant era went from 6 million-lows to 9 million highs; while the ratings troughs in the Smith era are similar, the peaks have softened, more generally in the 8 million mark. It seems churlish to suggest, at the time of Doctor Who's 50th anniversary, but many fans are starting to wonder if the show is again jumping the shark. Steven Moffat took over the running of the show from Russell T Davies at the same time as Smith took over from Tennant, and he bears the brunt of much fan dissatisfaction with the direction of the show. Among other complaints, fans and more casual viewers alike have decried the increasing complexity of the show; the crucial plot points delivered in blink-and-you-miss-it jump-cuts; and the inclusion of plot devices that are more fantasy than science fiction. A recent episode featured a scattered group of the Doctor's friends communing via a telepathic "conference call." One fan puts it succinctly - and savagely - on a YouTube rant titled "Steven Moffat is ruining Doctor Who." Matt Smith, the current Doctor, is the youngest actor to ever play the role. For his part, Moffat seems unperturbed by the fans-turned-haters, telling Buzzfeed that he is already mapping out Peter Capaldi's first season as the Doctor - the revived show's eighth. The next season is plotted out. I always end up complaining about it, but it's quite fun," he said. I'm just making up nonsensical adventures, what's wrong with that? Whether Moffat and new Doctor Peter Capaldi continue to build the audience for Doctor Who of course remains to be seen, but one thing seems assured: with its massive publicity build-up and heavy nostalgia hook, this weekend's 50th anniversary special The Name of the Doctor looks set to perform well in the ratings. And after that - well, who knows? Will Doctor Who continue to regenerate, like its main character, constantly finding a fresh face and fresh audience? Fifty years of history suggests that it can. Matt Smith and David Tennant interviewed behind the scenes of the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary special, The Name of the Doctor, can be seen on ABC1 at 7.30pm on Sunday, November 24. It will be followed at 8.50pm by An Adventure in Space and Time, a one-off special recreating how the series came to be made in 1963.