A sci-fi superfan who watched box sets of Doctor Who on repeat has received a “beautiful” themed funeral complete with a Tardis coffin and the show’s theme tune being played on a loop as his family prepare to gather to watch the annual Christmas special without him for the first time.
Steel worker and father-of-two Rob Wilkinson from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, died aged 50 on July 9 two years after he was diagnosed with brain cancer, a condition which had left him with seizures and short-term memory loss.
Doctor Who “was Christmas” for the lifelong superfan and “meant everything” to him – and his two children, now in their 20s, grew up watching the show alongside him.
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In his final days Rob would watch box sets of the BBC show, which launched in 1963, on repeat with his family, who said his “amazing” funeral in August was a send-off he “would have thought was fantastic”.
The service featured a custom-made coffin shaped like The Doctor’s police box, a bespoke Tardis-themed scatter tube for his ashes and the show’s title song played on repeat for about half an hour, while many mourners donned blue Doctor Who ties which featured the show’s logo.
A fan of all things science fiction, Rob was cremated alongside several items of sentimental value, including a replica light sabre from Star Wars, before his ashes were scattered off the coast of Cumbria into the Irish Sea.
Paula Roebuck, 55, said her brother Rob was diagnosed with brain cancer in January 2021 after her sibling suffered with seizures and collapsed several times at work and an MRI scan revealed a tumour “the size of a walnut”.
Paula said her family “had Rob for another two years” before he suffered a “major” seizure in January 2023 as the tumour “spread all around his head” before he died in July.
The family will be gathering together to watch the Doctor Who 60th anniversary shows beginning on November 25, in a moment Paula said will be “emotional” but “will feel like he is there with us” as he never missed a Christmas special.
“The funeral was amazing and when everyone saw the coffin and they saw the Tardis, they were all saying it was so beautiful and we couldn’t have sent him off any better,” Paula, who runs a vape stall at the Rotherham Market, told PA Real Life.
“He would have loved the funeral and would have thought it was fantastic.
“Doctor Who meant everything to him, it was Christmas.
“Watching Doctor Who especially brought all the memories back, it brought his memories back, just like a time traveller.”
Rob’s two children Gemma and Kyle Wilkinson, aged 23 and 25 respectively, “grew up” watching the show with their father along with his other sister Helen Parkin, 45.
“They grew up watching Doctor Who with Rob, we all did,” Paula said.
“It was year in, year out and it was very special.”
Paula said she was with her family members in a funeral parlour looking through a catalogue of coffins when they came across the Tardis-shaped casket and felt as though it was “meant to be”.
“We were looking through the booklet and we saw the Tardis and we thought, ‘that is the one’,” she said.
The funeral on August 3 also featured a bespoke scatter tube with a Tardis print following Rob’s cremation, Doctor Who-themed ties which family members wore and the speaker for the service read from cards with images of the Tardis printed on the back.
“We also had the Doctor Who theme song, the one from the David Tennant era because that was his favourite doctor, and that played on a loop for about half an hour,” she said.
Rob’s love for Doctor Who began when he was a child at the time when “we first had a television”.
She said Rob had “every box set of Doctor Who from the beginning to end” which they would watch together “all the way through” during his final days.
“We used to watch Doctor Who all the time and we used to watch it on Christmas Day every year,” she said.
“He was a big sci-fi fan and he loved Star Wars as well – he was buried with a light sabre.”
Paula said Rob first suffered with seizures and collapsed several times in January 2021 which prompted him to get an MRI scan.
“They told us the devastating news that it was a brain tumour, a grade four glioblastoma, so it was pretty wild and it was aggressive,” she said.
“It had really grown and was about the size of a walnut.”
She said Rob underwent surgery to remove the tumour followed by chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment for six months but a scan in August 2021 revealed the tumour was still growing.
“He just felt like ‘what was the point’, he had the operation, the tumour was still growing and he had a secondary one growing at the back of his head, so he stopped all treatment,” she said.
“The tumour affected his brain and it was really, really bad, it wasn’t good.
“We worked towards keeping him comfortable and as pain-free as possible.”
She said that in April 2022, they climbed Mam Tor, a 517 metre-tall hill in Derbyshire, because “it was bucket-list time”, adding Rob was “determined to do it” and it was “absolutely exhilarating”.
In January 2023, Paula said Rob suffered with a “major seizure” and he was “pumped full of steroids” but added that the treatment “didn’t work very well” and he was “really struggling”.
“He lost his memory, he lost his eyesight, he lost his hearing, he lost his speech,” she explained.
“The tumour was growing again and spreading all over his head, and the secondary tumour was growing onto his spinal cord.”
Rob succumbed to the disease in July and died at home surrounded by his family members.
Paula said she will be getting her family members together on November 25 to watch the first of three Doctor Who special episodes to mark the show’s 60th anniversary, adding she believes Rob would “want us to watch it together”.
“We’ll be watching the 60th anniversary all together and the same for the Christmas special this year,” she said.
“It will be emotional but it’s happy, we’re sad about what he got and how it turned out because we’ve lost him, but we have to be happy because we have so many good memories and so many lovely years we’ve had together.
“Us arranging to watch Doctor Who together, yes he’s not going to be here, but he’ll be here in spirit.
“He’ll want us to watch it together and spend that time together remembering him.”
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