Now, I'm not particularly subtle about this in my life, but I LOVE Doctor Who! On facebook my religion is listed as Whovian. I have loved it for as long as I can remember and continue to love it still, and am getting increasingly fed up of having to defend myself.
I was listening to 'Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf' today, which is a brilliant,
Sorry, slight intermission there. Fire drill, the guys then locked me out of my room, and the security dude (most useless person I've encountered thus far) just looked at me with a blank expression and asked what I wanted him to do about it. Which is a fair point I suppose, after all, he could have thought that I was asking for a tent and sleeping bags to brave the bitter cold. Or even a lot of rope and a grapple hook to scale the walls of Old House and fall in through the window!
So... back to Doctor Who. 'Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf' is by Tony Hadoke and is basically him saying how much he loves it and why (with a few satirical swipes thrown in for good measure), and it's really awesome listening. It opens with:
"I was born to be a Doctor Who fan. I wasn't a strapping youth, I wasn't born with a macho gene, I wasn't born with the confidence gene... I needed a hero." He spoke of how the Doctor was always there when he needed him, that his mother would soften the blow of bad news by presenting him with a new Doctor Who novel, and that the Doctor was the one role model he could count on. He spoke of how he got bullied and how his tormentors said he must be gay to like Doctor Who
"Yes, I must be gay to watch a man save often scantily clad attractive young women from monsters, whereas [his bully] watched 22 handsome and sweaty men run around a pitch in shorts, hugging and kissing each other in celebration."
Genius! I suppose I really love this show as I'm listening to it days after having to defend my own admiration for this glorious, anarchic, witty, and (in David Tennant's case) incredibly good looking hero of mine. My conversation was something along the lines of them saying it's childish, and why do I like it, do I know all the stupid little trivial things like all the actors who have played the Doctor, and is this why I'm still single? And then me saying, well what TV do you watch? He was a corrie fan. And why does he watch it? Because it's interesting. And does he know the names of the actors who play the characters? Does he know the characters' histories and story lines? He did. So why is his escapism any more valid than mine? Why is it acceptable to be wrapped up in the lives of teenage mums and an unnaturally high crime rate, and not in the adventures of a Time Lord? The only difference between the two is that one is sci-fi and famous for its fan base, the other is a soap.
The actors to have played the Doctor (that count) are William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davidson, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant and soon to be Matt Smith. I'm not ashamed of this knowledge, I'm proud of it. Doctor Who is my escapism because it's fabulous escapism. It's complex, it's imaginative, it's scary and exiting, it's intricate and carries on well beyond the tv show, it's human, and most of all, it's fun. At the hearts (hearts! Geddit??) of it all there is this one, slightly awkward genius who doesn't quite fit in anywhere, who just has a laugh.
My first memory of being scared of Doctor Who was in 'The Two Doctors' by Robert Holmes, one of the greatest writers ever(!). In this sequence that genuinely had me behind the couch the Doctor (Colin Baker) had been stabbed by Shockeye of the Quanzine Grid, who was an Androgum. The Doctor had run away, but had fallen and left some blood on the step, Chessene, of the Franzine Grid, who was a Androgum TA (Technically Augmented) by Dastari (a super genius, also anagram of A TARDIS) so that she would no longer have the cannibalistic tendencies of an Androgum became the scariest character in the universe (I hadn't met Davros yet, and she is way scarier than the Master). Knowing that somewhere the Doctor was being chased around a field by a mad alien with a sword, I saw Chessene spot the blood on the steps, fall to the ground, sniff it, scrape it onto her hand.... and then lick it.
To this day one of the creepiest/scariest things I have ever seen on TV. I was seven years old when Doctor Who entered my living room, and I have been hooked since. (Though I kind of got my Doctors in the wrong order, I was reliant upon the schedule of repeats UKTV Gold had.)
The Doctor became my best friend and my role model. I was an odd, introvert and lonesome youth (I'm and odd, introvert and lonesome adult.... I say adult, don't mistake grown up with maturity), I hated school and the bureaucracy and hierarchy of it (though I wasn't quite that eloquent until well into my double digits) and here was a character that I sort of empathised with. I know that I'm not a genius and that I'm not going to change the world. I know that I'm never going to step into a blue box with a strange madman and see things far beyond my own tiny imagination (any innuendo you found in that sentence was your own dirty mind, not mine!). However I am allowed, however often I feel like it, to snuggle up with a some hot chocolate in my Doctor Who mug, put on my Dalek slippers, take a yoghurt out of my TARDIS fridge, pack away my Doctor Who Monsters jigsaw and Space Travels book (with a pop-up TARDIS!!!), and watch this character on tv. I can watch him fight Morbius, or the Slitheen. I can see Bok explode in all his paper mache glory, or Adric go boom in Earthshock. I'm allowed to do that, and enjoy that just as much as you want to watch Jedward.
My escapism is just as good as yours, if not better. I'd rather die trying to stick something down a Sontaran's probic vent (innuendo belongs to you) than waiting for the X Factor to cast my vote.
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