How I became a Whovian

Sadly, over this past month  I have been way too busy to update this blog. (not unless I wanted to lose even more sleep anyway)

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.

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.

The companions are great, too. Each is awesome in his/her (usually her) own way.  I got almost as attached to Rose as the Doctor did, Martha was pretty cool, too (though the unrequited love thing was not really necessary), and I love Donna and her no-nonsense attitude with the Doctor. Each companion has grown and changed in his/her own way, and so has their relationship with the Doctor. Through most of the stories in Doctor Who are usually self-contained, there does seem to be underlying character and relationship arcs that develop as the season progresses--this makes Doctor Who so much more than about aliens and time travel, but also about how these companions--and the Doctor--change as a result of these adventures.

 It's kind of odd that most of his companions are female--though I guess no matter which gender his companions tended to be there would still be some patriarchal connotation, because apparently traveling with the Doctor can give you a big leg up if you look in the right places. Female companions do give the show a gender balance, as there are usually only two main characters. But where are the companions of color, besides Martha, Doctor? I know you only tend to pick them up in Britain, which doesn't have a whole lot, but there's plenty of them in London!

Even though I have only watched four whole seasons of Doctor Who (out of what, 35? 36? 40?), I already have enough thoughts on it to start my own fan blog. (I could write a post about each companion, deconstruct the Doctor's character over the ages, and go more in detail about my favorite episodes, for example). This is how much I love this show, after watching so little of it. Doctor Who has its flaws, for sure, in the form of storytelling shortcuts,  the limitations of television as a storytelling medium, and residual patriarchal and imperialist occurrences. All the same, it's still just fun.

I can't get enough of this show, and will continue to follow his adventures into 2013 and beyond.