You
never forget your first Doctor. That’s the saying, anyway. There
are many shirts and galleries of art that repeat the phrase, though I
am unclear who said it first. Of course, it’s entirely true. You
don’t forget your first Doctor. You can’t. You travel the
universe, past and future, whirling and bouncing through time in his
blue TARDIS box. You run with him. You laugh with him. You cry with
him. You can’t ever quite tell what your Doctor will teach you, how
wonderful or painful the lesson will be, or how much bigger that
lesson will turn out to be on the inside than it first appeared.
The
first real Whovian I knew—well the first to identify his fandom and
wear it proudly—was my best friend (and frequent Needless Things
guest star) Beau Brown. The subject of the show came up, as all
manner of nerdy things did, in the course of our meandering
discussions. But Beau didn’t talk about Doctor Who like he talked
about other shows. There was a reverence in his voice when he spoke
of The Doctor, a reverence that my friend with no particular faith to
speak of did not seem to hold toward the other luminaries of his pop
culture pantheon. The Doctor was special, is special. He was a thing
apart. I remember noticing that early on, but it was not so
fascinating to me that I felt a compulsion to seek this show out and
find out why this Doctor mattered so much. I can be very dense at
times.
And
then came the Dragon*Con where Beau dressed up as the Tenth Doctor
and he did so brilliantly. He had the look, the perfect costume, and
this was before the Tenth Doctor had come to America, at least
officially. Beau was, in his own words, a walking spoiler. Ah,
spoilers! A word I would come to love when River Song said it, but
that’s jumping ahead in the tale (as River Song is wont to do). I
did not know this Doctor, and few people I saw did, but those who
recognized the costume went nuts for it. And that swagger! That
handsome braggadocio and well-earned arrogance that Beau poured into
the role—he became someone else entirely, he carried a spark of
magic that was truly enchanting to watch. He ran around like a
madman, whether chased or chasing I could not tell. And I ran after
him, and wherever he was known, smiles erupted and cameras flashed.
And still I did not watch Doctor Who, fool that I was.
I
was not there when Beau later crashed a senior prom during an Anime
Comics Expo, waltzing about in character and remarking upon how
delightfully human the whole ritual of prom was. I can only imagine
how confused some of those students must have been, just as everyone
is confused when The Doctor arrives. I suspect that seeing that
surreal encounter might have enticed me to watch the show, but I only
heard about it in retrospect and hearing about The Doctor just isn’t
the same.
One
night, all that changed. Beau told me to stay late after an evening
hanging out. He said I had to see this two-part episode that he
absolutely knew I would love. This time, invited directly, I stayed.
I watched the Tenth Doctor in “The Impossible Planet” and “The
Satan Pit” and in those hours the Tenth Doctor became MY Doctor. He
was handsome and insufferably clever, haughty enough to wrestle with
a hivemind horde of Lovecraftian tentacled horrors and the very Devil
himself and somehow emerged the Time Lord victorious. He had no
weapons and stood alone when he shouted his faith into the teeth of
cosmic evil, not faith in some god or good, but in a person, in a
very human person that he had chosen to love and take with him on his
madcap adventures through space and time.
How
marvelous that this lonely alien man-god, this eternal wanderer,
would choose someone so… ordinary as Rose! It was a miracle! It was
a reminder that great things, amazing things, sometimes just happen
to everyday people, perhaps even people like me.
You
can’t predict it. You can’t build your life around the hope of
that blue box appearing out of thin air and a dashing stranger
bounding into your life to turn everything topsy-turvy. But you could
imagine it. You could start looking around for what magical moments
do fall into your life when you least expect them.
The
brief crossover special “Time Crash” further reinforced my
understanding of The Doctor and his importance. It was only a few
minutes of fanservice, a conversation of crossed timelines between
the Tenth and the Fifth, in which the two Doctors bantered about
brainy spectacles and good running sneakers and the interior
decoration of the TARDIS. But then came that one achingly poignant
line, delivered intimately and warmly by my Doctor with love for long
ago: “You were my Doctor.” I got it. I felt the generational
legacy and the passing of the torch. I saw how much that meant.
If
only the magic of The Doctor were the sum of his legacy in my life,
it would be sufficient—grand, really. But he is so much more than
that, and not all his lessons are so cheerful.
For
a being so timeless, so immortal, one constant remains true across
all his adventures. Every so often, The Doctor dies and a new Doctor
takes his place. I knew this before I watched a single episode. My
Doctor couldn’t exactly be a Tenth without nine predecessors. I
just didn’t know how much it would hurt when one life ended and a
new regeneration began.
I did not like the Eleventh Doctor. My dislike was not entirely rational. I found him more arrogant than his predecessor, but generally I’m fond of well-earned arrogance. No, my dislike ran much deeper. This Doctor killed MY Doctor. This Doctor ended that story before I had finished with it, because in truth, I could have watched the Tenth Doctor forever.
I did not like the Eleventh Doctor. My dislike was not entirely rational. I found him more arrogant than his predecessor, but generally I’m fond of well-earned arrogance. No, my dislike ran much deeper. This Doctor killed MY Doctor. This Doctor ended that story before I had finished with it, because in truth, I could have watched the Tenth Doctor forever.
But
that’s not how The Doctor works. Just when you know him, just when
you become comfortable with who that man is, he changes. He
regenerates and someone new walks off with his life, someone with a
new face, new quirks, new flavors of madness and glee and pain and
wonder. He changes, because that’s life and every story must have
an ending or else fade away to a whimper of unresolved plots. The
Doctor does not whimper. He boldly goes, the original bold goer
across the cosmos.
I
never suspected that The Doctor was teaching me how to grieve, and
more importantly, how to recover from grief. He is an insidious
teacher. I was so angry at my Doctor for leaving me, but in time I
learned to see the charms of his successor. The Eleventh is sillier,
for one thing. He has a greater sense of whimsy. He is a fairy tale
transposed into science fiction effortlessly, daring anyone to call
him out for being a fairy godfather with a magic wand upon a set full
of aliens and lasers and time machines. He is still not my Doctor,
but he is The Doctor, and I can respect that.
Next
month, another regeneration will come, and the whole cycle will begin
again. But before then, very soon, I will receive an incomparable
gift. My Doctor is coming back. Give me a day like this. Give me this
one. Just this once, everybody lives! Even my Doctor lives,
long-thought gone and mourned. Because that’s my Doctor, turning up
when he’s least expected and most needed.
Somewhere
in all there, I went back. I became the time traveler sampling
adventures from earlier incarnations and earlier sagas. I looked past
the bubble wrap and tinfoil as a child might to glimpse the
astonishing earnestness of it all. Like The Doctor, the show’s
creators did remarkable and impossible things with no particularly
large budget or fancy special effects, but a great deal of heart and
fun and an invitation to every viewer that if you just believed, if
you just dared to see through the silliness, something magical
happened.
Like
all mythologies, some of The Doctor’s tales have been lost to time.
And sometimes what was lost is found, as though The Doctor himself
were delivering the gift of himself, haphazardly and with utter
disregard for linear chronology. He’s like that, in every Doctor,
in every tale. I think you cannot be a time traveler for so long and
retain any reverence for time’s usual flow.
Sometimes
The Doctor loves. My Doctor loved and lost with Rose, and politely
spurned love with her successor, Martha. Only in his final arc did he
realize that what he needed most of all was a true and faithful
friend. There is definitely a lesson in that. But no matter who he
is, he always has companions and he is always alone.
This
is a powerful truth that everyone who is insufferably clever learns:
you can surround yourself with very nice and very caring people and
still know on some level, that they don’t get you and never will.
There is dignity in being alone in the midst of loved ones, and still
being present with them, even when they don’t get you and
especially when they can’t. It’s one of those things that very
clever people have to do to get by, because when you are alone—when
you are really and truly alone—it changes you. You become grimmer.
You become bitter and cold and hollow. The magic is not so magical
without someone to share it with. The journey loses its luster when
only your footfalls sound in the dark.
The
Doctor needs people. For all his brilliance, for all his bravado and
bluster, he needs people. He needs them to stop him sometimes,
because he is also terrible and cruel, a destroyer of lives and
peoples and whole species sometimes. He is the Great Exterminator.
The fury of the Time Lord is awesome in its chilling finality and the
absolute scope of destruction. He always gives enemies a chance, he
always hopes that even his direst foes will find some grace and forgo
their path of ruin. Sometimes they do. Sometimes miracles happen. But
often they don’t and his justice has no mercy in it. I learned more
about justice and wrath in my Doctor’s eerie glacial calm than any
other teacher. This was me. This was all I aspired to be, not a
masked vigilante or a paladin in shining mail, but this terrible and
sad figure who did what was necessary even if part of him had to die
to do it.
Mostly,
though, The Doctor reminded me that everyone needs people because
people are wonderful. People are fantastic! People are the reason to
go on. They give us the transcendent joy of sharing adventures and
stories and running toward those infinitely precious moments that
slip through the fingers like falling rain.
I
learned to love many of The Doctor’s companions, especially my
Doctor’s companions. There was something sad and stately to see my
Doctor faced with Sarah Jane, a friend of another life now so much
older and him vastly older still, but timelessly young in his Time
Lord way. I ached to see both of their pain at the gulf of time that
now separated them and brutal irony that time not only could separate
The Doctor from anyone he loved, but must do so because every story
ends.
I
loved Martha’s faithfulness to The Doctor despite him not returning
her affections. She was there as long as he needed her, smart and
talented enough save his life on their first outing. Yet she also had
the bravery to walk away, to choose her own path and be the hero that
The Doctor had inspired her to be. Similarly, Mickey’s
transformation from a goofball comedy sidekick into a stalwart
defender who stayed behind in a parallel Earth to fight an army of
Cybermen, showed just how radically a companion could change for the
better with The Doctor’s inspiration to lead the way.
Rose
was lovely enough in her simplicity, proof that The Doctor did not
require his friends to be remarkable people. He knew that all people
are remarkable given the right opportunity, the right moment to
shine. By contrast, Captain Jack was an over-the-top heartthrob
almost on par with my Doctor. Almost. Watching those two banter gave
me shivers. That much pretty just shouldn’t be allowed on the same
screen. But I loved it.
River
Song, whose story ended first before it began, a fellow time traveler
met out of sequence, painfully reminded me that love cannot be
counted upon to happen when it is convenient or even necessarily in
the proper order. Love, like time, is so very wibbly-wobbly, so
capriciously fragile and beautiful and necessary. Love needs no
tense. It just is, and even The Doctor can’t change that.
Finally,
there was Donna. Donna the great friend, the funniest of them all,
the one who burst The Doctor’s bubble over and over every time his
ego grew too much to bear. I loved that he loved her for that. We all
need bubble-bursters in our lives who are deft enough and kind enough
to do so without wounding our souls. I think perhaps that such
friends make the difference between kind genius and cruel genius. Ego
feeds itself, hungrily and greedily, and it does not relinquish its
hold once it sinks in its claws. It takes someone brave enough to
exorcise that demon with wit and laughter and bold words. Such
friends are rare and precious. They are to be valued and loved
whenever we are lucky enough to find them.
Throughout
all his travels and adventures, The Doctor taught me how to love
better, to cherish friends more, and how to seize the moment when
great moments come. They always do, if you’re looking for them. He
showed me that life must be run forward—always forward and never
back—and that journeys with no destinations pass through many
waypoints that matter and change the people who visit them. But it
was that darkest lesson that mattered most, how to grieve and how to
embrace those melancholy miracles when people you love suddenly and
spectacularly change.
Grieving
for a television character seems a silly thing to do, a small thing
really. But it is one of those experiences that proved undeniably
bigger on the inside than I ever suspected.
The
Doctor prepared me to have my father go away. My daddy was never a
particularly happy man in my childhood despite how often he made
everyone around him laugh, but he was always astonishingly and
insufferably clever. He took me on adventures and expeditions, grew
my mind, and challenged me with all the dizzying and spectacular
things he knew. Long before I knew The Doctor, his very real echo
held me and loved me and guided me.
One
day, not so very long ago, my father fell in love, madly and truly.
In a burst of incandescent bliss, he changed. Even his face was
different for the smile now etched in near perpetuity upon it. His
personality shifted, molded by happiness, spurring him on to other
continents, other adventures that I could only hear about and read
about and marvel at from afar. My father vanished, replaced by a new
man who walked off to a new life, who loved me and still wanted to
share stories and teachings and very deliberately stayed in touch,
despite being so unreachably far away.
I
grieved.
I
hated myself for every corner of bitterness that wanted my old and
familiar father back where I could see him and hold him and know who
he was. Yet I could not, I would not, begrudge him this new and
better life he had long deserved. I could not be angry with my new
father. In our own way, we are all Time Lords. We all change every
day, but sometimes we change so much that we die and live again and
it is glorious.
The
Doctor prepared me to love my new father. To my utter and bewildered
surprise, my dashing stranger jumped from his blue box into my life
and gave me the gift of accepting change. Even hard change.
Especially hard change. He can do that, you know. Because he is The
Doctor and my Doctor goes where he is needed.
Allons-y!
Always
and forever.
—Michael
A. Goodwin, 11/8/2013
The
next two weeks here on Needless Things will be dedicated to Doctor
Who. I have Guest Posts, Toy Reviews, and more on the way. The site
will be jam-packed – relatively – with content. Please share
these links wherever you can and spread the word. And if you’re so
inclined, throw a few dollars at the Needless Things family. I have
to send you to the podcast homepage because Blogger doesn't want this
sort of thing. Just check out the widget on the bottom right
here.This
is all out of pocket for me, so anything I receive during this time
will got to site costs, hosting, and possibly new merchandise if I
get really ambitious.
Also,
you can buy the Limited Edition NeedlessThingsSite.com Luchador vs.
Owlbear t-shirts here.
I can’t say they’re selling fast, but once this style is gone,
they’re gone forever.
And I do intend on being famous one day, so wouldn’t it be cool to
have the first shirt I ever designed?
Remember
to check in every weekday between now and the 23rd for
new, original content.
Finally,
be sure and come out to the HUGE 50th Anniversary Party
that TimeGate, Earth Station Who, the folks behind The Forgotten
Doctor, and (others) are throwing at the Holiday Inn Select; the
same location where TimeGate is held each and every year. There will
be panels, games, Whovian carousing, and a LIVE recording of Earth
Station Who immediately after “The Day of the Doctor” airs. You
will literally never have another opportunity to attend a party like
this!
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