The recent flood of “ten years ago today” posts about the relaunch of Doctor Who with Christopher Eccleston’s spectacular Ninth Doctor and Billie Piper’s Rose is kind of weirding me out. It’s not that I feel old thinking about how much time has passed, or nostalgic about the moment the show came back. It’s that I have no personal connection to that moment.

You may recall that although I was first introduced to the show through Rose, that didn’t actually happen until early 2008. I’m still three years out from my personal ten-year Doctor Who anniversary. So all those “remember when…?” and “where were you?” posts strike me as odd.

Yes, I remember seeing Rose for the first time, but I didn’t approach it as I’ve heard the fans who’d made it through the Wilderness Years did, with either breathless anticipation or trepidation. For me, it was a way to pass some time of an evening with a friend who was enthusiastic about something of which I’d barely heard.

I have fond memories of the way we watched the first five episodes together, but then our viewing fell by the wayside. I had enjoyed the stories, but wasn’t hooked (that didn’t happen until much later, when we got back to it with Dalek). To be honest, I can’t even pin down the dates to within better than about a year until I finally caught up with “live” viewing.

On 17 May 2008, after a few weeks’ whirlwind of binge watching Series Two, Three, and the first half of Series Four, I saw my first ever never-before-broadcast episode of Doctor Who on the same day as the rest of fandom: The Unicorn and the Wasp. It was a real milestone—it even felt so at the time—and I’m sure in another three years’ time I’ll be waxing nostalgic myself. For now, though, I simply feel nonplussed.

I know I’m not alone. There are plenty of fans out there who came to the show much later than I did—like the slew of folks who started with The Eleventh Hour. I imagine they are just as bemused as I, if not more so. Having just come through the fiftieth anniversary hoopla, here is more publicity about another important moment in the show’s history. Yet for some fans, the relative sparsity of fanfare could be off-putting.

I suppose it’s a fine line to walk. On the one hand, it’s hardly appropriate to go all-out on anniversary celebrations a year and a half after the last shindig. On the other, I can see how it might feel like a slight to what some new fans might feel is their version of the show.

I’d be interested to know how other neowhovians like me—especially those for whom this anniversary doesn’t coordinate with their own—feel about the gentle way in which the BBC’s Doctor Who branding juggernaut has chosen to mark the occasion. Should there have been more? Did they gauge it just right? Or was it not worth mentioning at all?

At any rate, there’s no denying it’s been a heckuva ten years. Here’s to the next ten!