Why Do I Love It?

I found this on my hard drive today. I wrote it a few months ago, but for some reason I decided it wasn't good enough to post. A few months later and it looks much better than it did at the time, so here you go.

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There's a question I've been asked quite a few times by various people, and my standard answer has always been a shrug and an answer of, “I just… do.” But lately I’ve been pondering the question, and decided that I could do much better at answering it than a simple shrug. The epic question?

“Why do you like Doctor Who so much?”

You saw it coming, didn’t you?

As anybody who knows me (well, who knows me online or is in my immediate family) knows, I am an absolute Doctor Who fanatic. But what draws me to the show? Why do I like it so much? Why can’t I quit watching it? To answer that question, we must first go back to the beginning. No, not the show’s beginning in 1963, nor my beginning in 1988, nor the beginning of the new incarnation of the show in 2005. My beginning in the Doctor Who world was in 2006, though I credit late 2007 with really getting me into the show.

One evening in 2006, I was rather reluctantly sitting in the living room at my grandmother’s house, attempting to not feel so awkward and conspicuous with several relatives all sitting around talking. My uncle had the TV on the Sci-Fi channel, and a show called Doctor Who (what a silly name, I thought) was on. Though I knew nothing about the show, I found myself watching it covertly to give me something to focus on rather than the awkward gathering of relatives I’ve seen 3 times in my life. The episode was titled “Fear Her”, and from what I could gather, there was a guy called the Doctor and a girl called Rose, and they faced aliens. Now I love science fiction, and I thought the episode was pretty good. But I thought little of the show after that, and went along my business.

Fast forward to 2007. One day I walked into the living room from cleaning my bedroom, to find my dad watching Doctor Who. Remembering that I had seen that one episode and liked it, I stuck around to watch even though the episode was half over. The episode was “The Sound of Drums” (found that out later) and I watched as the Doctor was tormented and the world enslaved by the person I gathered was the Doctor’s worst enemy, the Master. I decided to tune in the next week because I hate leaving stories half finished on an evil cliffhanger, and it was that episode that solidified Doctor Who as “my kind of show.” The main thing that I saw that endeared me to the show was the kind of man the Doctor was. After all the atrocities, after how awfully he’d been treated during that year (and during his entire existence, from what I could gather) by the Master, the first thing he did when he was free was pull the Master into a hug and tell him, “I forgive you.” I didn’t understand much of the episodes, but I did understand that much, and I knew that I loved the Doctor for that.

About a month later, the first season from episode 3 on was aired in a marathon, which we taped and watched as a family. It didn’t take me long to realize that I really, truly loved this show. Since then, I’ve seen every episode (except for “Blink”, which was so wonderfully terrifying the first time that I don’t want to watch it again and spoil it) at least 3 times, and one episode a whopping 15 times. So, that is my history… but you don’t want history, you want answers.

Now is the time to admit that I don’t really have anything concrete.

I’ve been thinking on this subject heavily for about a month. In order to find an answer, I set out to write a “literary analysis” of sorts about each episode, thinking that I would, in that process, figure out exactly what it is about Doctor Who that attracts me so.

That worked really well… not. In my pursuit, I found that there is nothing, literally nothing, stylistically or creatively that makes the show more worthy of my devotion than any other show of the same genre. I did note an attention to little details, but that is hardly unique. The premise, people and aliens traveling together to explore the galaxy, has little originality. Even the time travel aspect has been done before. There is nothing stylistically unique about this show. So, since an analysis is out, we have to turn to other, less concrete aspects to find our answers. And in explaining the less concrete aspects, I have to delve into the inner recesses of myself, and lay bare that which I am loathe to admit.

The big connection for me when I began to watch the first season, was the fact that Rose was 19 years old. I was 19 at the time, and I envied her, wishing like any silly fangirl that it was me dashing about London hand in hand with an alien, saving the world. But it wasn’t until an episode titled “World War III” that I began do realize something, and the season closer, “Parting of the Ways” completely solidified it in my mind. In that episode, a tearful Rose exclaims that, “It was a better life. And I don't mean all the travelling, seeing aliens and spaceships and things, that don't matter. The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life. You know, he showed you too. You don't just give up. You don't just let things happen. You make a stand. You say no! You have the guts to do what's right when everyone else just runs away!” And I knew… that was right. That it was a better life, and that I never would have fit into it. I was too scared.

I spent 19 years of my life being safe. I’m still safe. I’m afraid of things. But it took an alien in a blue box to show me how to live. And no, I don’t mean living as in do this, don’t do that, or morality; I take those from the law and God, respectively. I mean living as in whether you hide away scared, or get out there and do it. In the past year, I’ve tried my best to try things that scare me, or that I never would have considered doing despite the fact that others are doing it quite safely in front of me. I’ve walked on a log suspended 10 feet above the ground. I’ve ridden a bicycle down stairs. I’ve slid down a 30-foot fireman’s pole. I’ve stood up to be voted vice president of my region for Explorers. I wanted to go parasailing (it was canceled due to weather). All small things that you may scoff at me for being afraid of, but I was, I was terrified. And I did every one of them, because of what I learned from the Doctor.

So whatever else Doctor Who may be, as entertaining as it is, as deeply as I get engrossed in the Doctor’s story, it’s that little lesson that I learned in season 1 that I feel has really endeared it to me. That, and the sheer exuberance with which the Doctor views the universe, the way he loves it when he finds something he didn’t know before. The way he cares for people, his declaration that ordinary humans are the most important beings in the universe, the way he can forgive his oldest enemies and offer them second chances, the way he, as his name suggests, makes people better.

He made me better. And when a fictional character can do that to you... I dunno. I guess that makes them a bit special.