But over the hiatus I had also been undergoing a transformation. I am now a follower of the Doctor.
(The BBC's Doctor Who, that is)
Currently I'm catching up on the new series rapidly, just finished series 4--such an epic and emotional ride--and I already know that I will cry when 10 goes.
Oh, for those of you who have no clue about what Doctor Who is: it is a science fiction series that started in 1963, chronicling the adventures of the mysterious Time Lord known only as "The Doctor," and his many companions. The show has gone on for so long in part to the writers' invention of regeneration, allowing for a completely different actor to take over when the current one retires.
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| Doctor Who is so huge now it won the fan favorites cover! |
The effects can be cheesy at times, (and since it's TV, I can forgive it) and there are a lot of last-minute scrapes they get out of that make me go like, "woah, wait a minute, shouldn't you have died?" But I love it all the more for it. Some people also criticize it for its pseudoscientific explanations for everything, but as to that, I agree with Steve Moffatt, the current showrunner, that tales of the Doctor are more of a "dark fairy tale". The Doctor really is more of a mythic figure than anything else. I mean, come on, anything with time travel is basing the science on dubious conjecture at best.
I started off with the new series, as that's what's hot right now. It got off to a shaky start, but a few episodes in, I was reeled in far too deep to escape the captivating, imaginative stories and complex characters that made up this new series. Even with all the work I had to do I'd go on Doctor Who binges, watching several episodes several days in a row, and when I went a day without watching it I wanted so badly to watch it the next day, filling the times in between with thoughtful speculation about the characters and the "who"-niverse. I have not gotten like this about a TV show since... um....
...I don't usually get like this about TV shows. I tend to watch comedies, and they aren't exactly the cliffhanger-y, adventure-type stories.
So, why? I am an adult woman, and this is a "family" show.
I guess it's a family show because the most sex it has in it is thinly veiled innuendo, and the characters don't do more than hold hands or kiss (on-screen, anyway, tee-hee). There is a shit-ton of violence and death, though--which is a whole other thing that's a series of posts worth. But very little blood. In the US, it's hard to say if we would have called this a "family" show. Evangelicals sure wouldn't (violence and blasphemy!).
For starters, I am naturally drawn to stories that are mainly set in the "real world," but have incredible things happen, or incredible things lurking just behind that door. Harry Potter, magic realism and other "low fantasy" stories, dystopias and other soft science fiction (the future as present, I like to call it), even Sailor Moon and other superhero/magical girl stories kinda fit this description. Doctor Who also includes genre-bending and mind-bending stories. I love those things in my fiction, too. So, really, this is the kind of sci-fi TV I dig, a kind of combination of The X-Files (I enjoyed what little I have seen of that show), Monk, and James Bond with its constant changing of the lead actor (and leading ladies).
These stories tend to be imaginative and compelling. Some of my favorites include "The Empty Child," "The Girl in the Fireplace," "The Satan Pit," "Blink," "The Shakespeare Code," and "Fear Her," not just for the often genre-bending and excellent tension-building, but also the creative storylines and thematic depth that these stories have. It's not always the simple "good vs. evil" storyline, even though the antagonists are most often enemies who must be defeated somehow.
And that brings me to the other thing I love about Doctor Who: the characters. Without interesting characters, your stories are the equivalent of a pop-up book (and a cheap one, at that). And boy, is the Doctor interesting. He's a good guy, but even the good can be conflicted and complicated. Sometimes he has to choose between one person dying and another. Sometimes he chooses to kill when he could otherwise spare their lives. Often he puts his companions in danger--though to be fair, they generally know what they're signing up for. He's an enigmatic, tragic figure, having lost most of his own kind and always losing people he comes to care about. He's emblematic of how a long lifespan is not always so lovely.
