I Love Doctor Who

Classic Doctor Who

One of the things I’ve never understood about KTEH, Silicon Valley’s public television station, is how they never show classic Doctor Who. I’d think the demographics out here would be perfect for it. Alas, it’s been years since I’ve seen Tom Baker or Peter Davison (Children in Need special excepted) as the Doctor.

Until now! iTunes has a ton of old episodes, including a bunch I’ve never seen before. I’m trying to decide which ones to watch first…

Two Great Things

io9 is reporting that Neil Gaiman might write a Doctor Who episode in the next couple of years. I don’t know if I can say please enough times or what mountains need to be moved in order to make that happen but PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE BBC, hire Neil Gaiman to write for Doctor Who. Please. He’s a fan. He’d do a good job.

Star Trek or Doctor Who?

Doctor Who, Doctor Who! Um, I mean, go help this nice person figure out what kind of people like Star Trek and who likes Doctor Who and how they shape your views of the world.

Neil Gaiman & Dr Who

One of the reasons I like Neil Gaiman is because he’s also an unrepentant Dr Who fan. Although, Tom Baker is the Doctor as far as I’m concerned.

Pretend This Entry Doesn’t Exist*

I watched the season 2 finale of Doctor Who last night. Rose leaves. She has to leave, it’s that or spend eternity in Hell. But it’s sad. Not crying sad, but put you into a deep funk sad. It’s immediately sad because The Doctor and Rose love each other and they shouldn’t be separated. It’s just not fair. But it’s also sad because… well, it’s kind of hard to explain. But let me try.

In the very first scene of the very first episode of the new series, you meet Rose, a nineteen year old girl with a mundane life. (It’s wonderfully shot, by the way. You learn a lot in a very short amount of time, and it’s beautiful too.) Then some mannequins start attacking her and The Doctor grabs her hand and says, “Run.” (Run from what? The mannequins or her life or both?) They spend two television seasons together, doing exciting things, things that almost always matter, never anything mundane like laundry or the dishes. At the beginning, he leads her. By the end, they’re a team, with them working together and saving each other. She never wants to leave, and he doesn’t want her to (though he knows enough to understand that wanting doesn’t necessarily mean much). It’s magical.

But a lot about this season is what happens when that magic ends: what happens when you leave? The Doctor’s had a lot of companions** over the years. In the first episode of the new series that I saw — the one with Evil Giles — we also see Sarah Jane, an old companion, one who was left behind. How do you adjust? How do you avoid making your life about the Glory Days, and continue to live it? In a way that’s not mundane? How do you keep the magic without the magician? Sarah Jane’s managed, though she doesn’t seem to realize it.

And now the magic ends for Rose. And it’s sad, because after the magic who wants to do the friggin’ laundry?***

* My rule about whether or not to post something is generally: if I’m trying to work through something, it doesn’t belong in public. However, this is borderline, and I don’t really have a journal anymore to write it down in. So, enjoy.

** They’re not all women (in fact they’re about half women, half men), and this is the first that I remember that it’s been more than a mentor-apprentice relationship. Nyssa was my favorite when I was a kid. I really need to see if I can dig up some of those old episodes somewhere.

*** There’s something about Season 5 Buffy in there too, about growing up and taking on those responsibilities even if you don’t want to. And maybe a little Season 6 too.

Updated to Add: That ended up being a lot less personal than I thought it was going to be. I was thinking all this stuff about how one of the main challenges of being a happy adult is figuring out how to balance the magic — the exciting stuff that means something — with the mundane — all the crap that has to get done that you’d really rather not do. And how *hard* that is sometimes, and how easy it is to let the mundane overrun your life. How hard it can be to be competent at something, too. If you let yourself dwell on that, you can get depressed fast.

The episode starts out with a shot of Rose on a beach saying, “This is the story of how I died.” And yeah, it is the story of how she died — but it’s also, more, the story about how she was born. About how she started to learn to be an adult, her own person. How to make that balance. Change isn’t easy; the episode is sad also because it’s hard to let go of who you used to be.