O Doctor, My Doctor

 

  When I was in high school in the ’90s, my friends tried to get me to watch this show they said was just awesome, little British show called Doctor Who.  Now, at the time, it just aired on PBS here and there over here in the states, alongside the assorted Monty Python reruns, Fawlty Towers, and Are You Being Served?   And I may have seen a bit of the Tom Baker era, nothing that I can really recall, but I’m sure I did.  It never stuck with me at the time, though I did watch the 1996 Fox tv movie with the only appearance of the 8th Doctor, and I thought it was pretty neat.  

 Cut to a few years later, and I again see another random Doctor Who episode on PBS, was the episode ‘The Stolen Earth’, didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me at the time, there was a lot going on there, Daleks, Davros, Torchwood, Rose, Sarah Jane, they were all there, didn’t know who they were at the time, but still, I was intrigued.  

A few more years pass, and then after another good friend’s insistance, and the availability of the program on Netflix, I start watching the 2005 relaunch of the series, and I’m instantly hooked.  Well I watch the first two episodes anyway, and I just let it stay at that, until earlier this year, when I really, really started watching it, and I got hooked, I fell in love with the characters, and the stories, and just everything in a way I haven’t since the Buffy the Vampire Slayer days.  The finale for series 2 when…well I don’t want to say, since I still know people who I’ve gotten into the show who just started watching, but suffice to say, there are feels I haven’t felt for a show since the Buffy season 2 finale.  

So, over the course of a few months, and plenty of flooding my facebook news feed with Doctor Who quotes, memes, etc to the delight and annoyance of people that follow me depending on their nerdyness level.  Also during that time, I got caught up in time for the second half of series 7 to start up, and got one of my roommates hooked on the show as well, which put a bit of a delay in my watching, but I figure it’s only courteous, if you get somebody else into a show, you don’t skip ahead..don’t be that guy.  

   I go through that whole story to say this, I’d read today that it’s official now that Matt Smith will be departing the role after this year’s Christmas special, so this is the first Doctor I’ve been able to see through the entire role, from the beginning, well since I got to that part on Netflix anyway.  And I remember when I finished up David Tennant’s great run, who’s still my Doctor by the way, and I didn’t want to like Matt Smith at first, but there were moments, the standing up to the Atraxi, the speech to the weeping angels, and of course the Pandorica speech from the end of series 5, I was 100% sold on Matt Smith as the role.  

While it wasn’t the same as any other Doctor that I’d seen thus far, he brought out a sense of sillyness to the role I hadn’t seen before, but it totally worked for me.  Not to mention, his Sonic Screwdriver is just a bit cooler looking in my book.  

    The seventh series just wrapped up, with one hell of a conclusion, and now the waiting game begins for the 50th Anniversary special, and the Christmas special, which is as we now know the end of Matt Smith’s run with the role.  It’s sad, but I’m also excited at the same time, to see who will be the next Doctor..no pun intended.  Ginger maybe? A woman? Karen Gillian..in a weird twist that I would be totally okay with, by the way..  But, If there’s one thing I’ve learned with watching the show, it’s that anything is possible.  And I can’t wait for the next adventure, Geronimo!