I was never really a fan of the Doctor Who series until the reboot of the franchise in 2005. Just like most of people born in the US, the show always had seemed entirely too “British” for me. You always had this old and relatively out of shape guy defending the earth from death and destruction armed with nothing but a blue telephone booth and a screwdriver. He dressed like a moron and usually talked like an individual that escaped from an asylum. He never used guns and rarely ever fought hand to hand. As a person raised on Captain Kirk and Han Solo as my Scifi inspirations, the early episodes of Doctor Who really failed to connect with me. I just didn’t get it. However all of that changed when they cast Christopher Eccleston as the titular character in the 2005 series.
Eccleston, the 9th incarnation of the Doctor, had a quirky and manic style that totally destroyed many of my preconceived notions of the show. He was more of a working class soccer hooligan than the stodgy British aristocrats that I associated with Doctor Who. He was goofy, intense, and sometimes downright scary. He had this pretty female “companion” named Rose, and she traveled with him everywhere that his TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimensions in Space) could go. The TARDIS was even cooler than the Enterprise because it wasn’t only a space ship, it could go anywhere in time as well. I pretty much fell in love with the show from that point on. And I continued to watch it even after Eccleston left the show and David Tennant, and then Matt Smith, took over the lead role. I learned that each new Doctor brought their own spin to the role and helped to add to the depth of the character.
Since the reboot I have not missed a single episode or holiday special. There are episodes that are as bad as the very worst Star Trek episodes. And then, there are episodes that have made me laugh out loud, made me too scared to turn out the lights when I am home alone, and made me cry like a ‘lil bitch as the characters I had grown to love moved on to other venues. It is now one of my favorite shows. And despite the of the revolving cast of Doctors and companions, I look forward to every episode with the same type of glee that I used to reserve only for Star Trek.
I love the real life messages that come from this outlandish series. In many cases the moral of the stories have messages that we don’t usually get in many American series. Messages that say that life isn’t always fair and doing good sometimes comes at a horrible price. However regardless of the odds, regardless of the price, we must always face adversity with courage and determination. And above all else, we must always believe that sometimes, just sometimes, it only takes one man to make a difference.