The Doctor Who Homepage
 Dr. Siobahn Morgan created the Doctor Who Homepage way back in 1993. The simple, retro, university-hosted web site is still chugging along 15 years later.
We caught up with the University of Northern Iowa astronomy professor for a chat about the old days of the Web, Doctor Who, and the nature of fandom... Hey Siobahn, I checked and your site was originally added to the Yahoo! Directory back in August 1994 by the man who is now the CEO of Yahoo! Obviously someone with good taste! So you started the site in 1993? Yes, I ran across some access_log files that are dated '93. I had for many years thought it was '94, but now I've just made myself a little bit older. I think the files said I had 5 hits in May 1993. Wow! When did you first get on the Internet? What was your first experience? I started using the Internet in graduate school (Astronomy—University of Washington, in Seattle) back in Autumn of 1985. We were encouraged to do a lot of stuff on e-mail on an old VAX. What was the Web like back then? The Web was pretty hard to use for anyone that wasn't comfortable using FTP or Gopher before the advent of browsers. I was pretty okay doing stuff like FTP and gopher, and using Unix commands, mainly due to the climate of my university. There was of course a great deal of patience in the old days. Once the first browsers started coming out in the early '90s, things got a bit more interesting and of course not all text driven. However, there were very few resources out there, only a handful of websites. Was it mostly academic/university related material? Well, people may have had stuff originally posted that was academic, but many (like me) would spend their free time putting up their passions, like "Doctor Who" or "Star Trek"—the stuff that is usually associated with science-fiction fans. Were you posting the information on newsgroups? Or on web sites? I was mainly taking stuff from newsgroups (with the poster's permission and credit) and adding it to my site. One of the things that made my site rather heavily trafficked in the old days was the presence of the Doctor Who FTP archive, which was passed on to me when the original maintainer had to remove it from their university site. Ah, that brings up something we wanted to ask you—has your uni.edu domain been constant since it was added to Yahoo! in 1994? Yes it has—I've gone through three different machines, but I've been able to keep it at the same domain name since its creation. And the university has no quibble with it? Well, this is not really a Unix environment, so not too many people understand how to run it. When I was hired back in 1991, I was given funds to buy equipment and I purchased a Sun workstation with a massive 250 MB hard drive and 12 MB of RAM. At the time, it was maybe only one of six on campus—the others were in Computer Science. Many fan sites sprouted in the mid '90s—lots of them on university servers. Most all of them have fallen by the wayside. Why is yours still around? I got tenure? Actually, that's probably the best reason. That, and I've been able to retain the same domain name. I am continually annoyed by three-year-old sites that have fallen out of existence—nothing stays the same on the Internet. When did traffic start ramping up? The first really big surge happened in 1996 after the Paul McGann TV movie. When the series returned in 2005 things picked up again. How much time do you estimate you spend on the site these days? I try to keep my time on it to weekends and holidays, so I'll add an item only at those times. It really depends upon my other commitments. In the summer I can update it more. On those occasions where there is a breaking news item, I'll spend the time to add a small item with links to the page. So maybe only an average of a few minutes each week. Your academic duties take priority? Oh yes, that's what I get paid for. And of course, that's who owns nitro9.earth.uni.edu. Gotta keep the bosses happy. Are you currently working on any papers/studies? And how many classes do you teach in a given semester? I have a rather strange schedule. I'm a professor of astronomy, but I'm also the associate dean of the college, as well as the coordinator for the general education program. So I don't have a full teaching load. I do currently have 2 regular classes, as well as a full online class, and more committee meetings than any sane person should have to attend. I also am working on some research on the modeling of pulsating stars—it isn't very "cutting edge" but I crank out a publication or two a year. I'm part of the "old fashioned" astronomy group. Happy little pulsating stars! Actually they are huge, but they are happy none the less. So which came first, your interest in science or science fiction? I've always been a strong math person and was originally a computer science major as an undergraduate. At the time (early '80s) there were too many students and not enough classes, so I was having a hard time getting the courses I needed at the Univ of Minnesota. I was always reading sci-fi from high school, so I suspect the sci-fi came the forefront more than the science. Eventually I "discovered" astronomy, switched majors and got my BS in that. So I was more of a sci-fi fan before an actual scientist. When did your love of Doctor Who start? I've been a fan of most things British before I first saw Doctor Who. When the Tom Baker episodes were syndicated in the late '70s, I saw them from the beginning and was hooked on them. What is it about Doctor Who that you enjoy so much? I think the old Doctor Who stories had a cleverness about them. The special effects were rather boring and cheap, really low-tech, but the intensity of the performances, particularly from Tom Baker and many of the guest stars, really pulled a viewer in. Some could even call it a bit of a "cult of personality." I think there is also a bit of an eliteness amongst the fans, especially those that date back to the '70s because of how exclusive it was—very few people knew about Doctor Who, most had never heard of it. Everyone just thought of Star Trek as the greatest sci-fi creation, and the fans of Doctor Who would just sit back and say, "Yeah, but our show didn't get canceled after three seasons like Star Trek did". I don't know—how can you dissect the mind of a nerd? What's been the most surprising thing that's happened in your years running the site? Easily the most amazing thing that happened was when a fan from Australia sent me a video clip that he recorded from his television. The clip was a promo for an episode of Doctor Who on some Australian station and it included "If you would like to learn more about Doctor Who, just go to this web site: nitro9.earth.uni.edu" That really surprised me. This was before the BBC had really put any time into their official site. Does nitro9 (the name of the server that hosts the site) have some Doctor Who significance that I'm missing? Yes, it is named after the explosive that the character "Ace" used. She was a companion for the 7th Doctor in the mid to late '80s. I've always liked that character and thought that would just be a cool name for a server. At the time most of the VAX system here were named after characters in "Top Gun," so there was really no argument against it. Has nitro9 outlasted Maverick and Iceman? I think Iceman still exists, but you'd have a hard time finding someone who could login and use any of the VMS commands. Ha! Wow Siobahn, you're a true testament to the enduring power of fandom.
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