Six happiness

Doctor Who.

Some of this is nostalgia--I got into Who around age 11, which is the age to do it. With Tom Baker who, for all his later excesses, when he was good was so damn wonderful.

But there's something that makes the show continue to shine for bright youngsters of any age--even the ones who never grew up. In many ways it's a series that defies all the "rules," even my own.

That's why there has never been a Doctor that hasn't had at least one good story--even the ones ill-served by their script editor (Colin Baker) or an exhausted funds-cut production team (Sylvester McCoy).

...well, there never has been if you don't count Paul McGann. Which I don't, frankly.

...and unfortunately, you can't say there hasn't been a season without at least one good story. Because if you say that, then I say "Trial of a Time Lord," and you go away feeling silly. None of us wants that.

DW has fans that should put Trekkies to shame. The difference, to me, is this: With maybe one or two exceptions, Trek fans just waited around for someone to revive their favorite so they could give them their money again.

Doctor Who fans supported our favorite through "the wilderness years." Some of us even became professional writers and television producers so that when the time came for a revival--after one or two false starts--we could do it. And "we" did. "We" took that sucker over.

I put that "we" in quotes because I don't want to seem like I'm taking anything away from writer and producer Russell T. Davies and his team, who did such a fantastic job. Davies was fan enough to know what the fans wanted Doctor Who to be and he couldn't help writing it.

But he was also writer enough to know not to listen to what fans wanted Doctor Who to be. And he wasn't afraid of honest emotion, something only seen sparingly in the series' first 26 years (That's not really a criticism, more an observation).

Like many a Doctor Who fan, Davies had actually thought about the effects the Doctor's companions had on him, and vice-versa. And he moved them from being props--sometimes affecting, sometimes unwieldy, but props nonetheless--to being real.



Especially because a sense of humor stops it being too wet, I'm thinking of the scene this past season when the Doctor thinks Donna is leaving him and gets all soppy...till he realizes she only means to visit with her family and then come back. Perfect.

And I haven't even gotten into the long list of supporting characters--the lovely Captain Jack, for example.

I've said this before, but even if I hadn't loved most of what Davies has done, I'd be so damn happy that he managed to make Doctor Who a show that children are talking about in the schoolyard again.

Happy and a little jealous--where was he when 98% of my elementary school playmates had no idea what I was talking about? (Of course, not being in the UK, it's not like that would've made a huge difference...)

He's managed to keep it new for those for whom it's new, but keep it the series we loved for those of us who already loved it. I feel like making a breathlessly enthusiastic statement, so I will: He's brought the generations together.

Of course, Doctor Who fans have our brain-dead contingent too--the difference there is that we know what to do with ours. We mock them, mercilessly, to within an inch of their lives.

I believe the many years DW spent with (let's not beat around the bush) crappy special effects made for an exceptional level of imagination both on the part of those who made it, and we who watched it.

I've said this before, too, it's easy for those X-Files punks with their state-of-the-art SFX, we had to work for it, you know...

And Doctor Who fans have 30-plus years of content to draw upon, not just televised but all the assorted prose fictions (licensed "New Adventures" and otherwise), cinema films, audios, and so on to come to terms with.

This has forced us, if only for our own sanity, have had to come to the most sensible conclusion possible on the question of what is "canon:" What we like, is. What we don’t isn't.

(I'm aware some fans still twist themselves into pretzels trying to "prove" that their version really-and-truly-is the correct one. That's why I used the phrase, "if only for our own sanity.")

Also, Doctor Who--the new one, especially, but always at its best--is just filled with a wonderful joy of life. It's like a puppy dog pressing its nose against a window at times--and I mean that as a good thing.