Have I ever mentioned that I love Doctor Who? Like more than almost anything? Other than Liam Aiken and pumpkin spice lattes? Because I do. I do love it more than almost everything other than Liam Aiken and pumpkin spice lattes. And moleskin notebooks and Precise V5 pens.
But lately I’ve noticed a change in my attitude towards people around me that I believe is a direct effect of my constant reviewing of Season 5 in the past two months. I mean, on the one hand, it’s brilliantly written and Amy Pond is AWESOME and Matt Smith is HOT. But on the other hand, it’s so subtly beautiful and full of love.
Take this quote for example from the episode Vincent and the Doctor. “The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant. And we definitely added to his pile of good things.”
I absolutely love that quote. Matt Smith is consoling Karen Gillan after she realizes that their showing Vincent Van Gogh how much everyone in the future loved his paintings didn’t stop him from committing suicide. I think it’s such a beautiful statement, and I can honestly say it’s started to change the way I look at the world.
It’s so true, though. And I think we can extrapolate further to assume that these piles of “good things” and “bad things” can also refer to personality traits. Sure, a lot of people have bigger piles of bad things, but those don’t make the good things unimportant. And recognizing has lots of implications. Like take Sean for example. In regards to our relationship, there are definitely more bad things. But those don’t necessarily spoil the good things, like him always being online when I needed someone to talk to and the way my heart lit up when he said something nice. Those good things didn’t soften the bad, but they weren’t completely spoiled, either. Do you have any idea how much that helps??
But on a bigger scale, Doctor Who has also made me view the world as a whole in a much better light. Here’s a quote from the Doctor during The Hungry Earth- “We can land this, together. If you are the best you can be. You are decent, brilliant people. Nobody dies today. Understand?” And then, later, in the episode Cold Blood, when that stupid Ambrose ruins everything, the Doctor still supports the human race. “One person let us down. But there’s a whole race of dazzling, peaceful human beings up there.”
This has been a theme throughout the Doctor Who series. The Doctor absolutely adores humanity, and it’s the reason he spends so much time on Earth. No matter what horrible things they end up doing, the Doctor never loses his faith in them, not completely.
Can you imagine how much more we could, as a species, get done if we all thought like the Doctor? If we all truly believed that together, we can make a difference? That together, we can be the extraordinary people the Doctor sees us as?
Humanity is not broken, it never has been broken. We’re just having growing pains. If everyone stopped believing that they’re better than everyone else and started looking to compromise over argumentation, think of how incredible we can be. We are decent, brilliant people. And we shouldn’t let a couple of bad eggs ruin that for us. Making Republican jokes just makes you arrogant and elitist. Making snide remarks about the liberal agenda just makes you close minded. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. We are all human. We are all broken. We are all flawed. But we are all the same.
So instead of focusing on our differences, why can’t we focus on our similarities, and go from there? There will always be things we’ll disagree about, but those things shouldn’t make our similarities unimportant.
Let’s add to the pile of good things in this world instead of moping about the bad. “An eye for an eye. It’s never the way. Now you show your son how wrong you were. How there’s another way. You make him the best of humanity… in the way you couldn’t be.”- The Doctor to Ambrose at the end of Cold Blood.
My first Doctor was actually Jon Pertwee, in ‘The Time Warrior’ (which is also the first appearance of Sarah Jane Smith). I was extremely young at the time, but was really fortunate to catch a very early PBS rebroadcast, in the US, as it was one of the very few pre-Tom Baker episodes to reach the states, at the time.
I agree with everything you’ve said. The Doctor represents hope, and mercy, and standing up for what you believe in, and finding non-violent solutions, and humanity growing and evolving towards something like nobility, as a species.
The Doctor fixes things. Like any other doctor, he makes the human body better–he does so by repairing/strengthening/defending the Body of Humanity, as a whole, one precious piece, and one precious moment, at a time.
Triage is always necessary. Sometimes he has to lie to the patient.
Sometimes he has to cut.
Sometimes, the operation’s a complete success, and the patient dies anyway, and the only thing that can be done is to diagnose what went wrong, and use that death, that failure, that weakness, that cataclysm; to try to save the next poor bastard; and the Doctor represents all of those things, too–and he represents what those things cost, and the strength it takes to pay, and the absolutely vital necessity of running away, and the courage it takes to keep running, to let others see you run, so that they know it’s ok for them to run, and so they know that you’re still out there, still running, still flying; to never, ever, stick around long enough to pay that bill in full, because the price is always far too much for any one person to ever pay, willing or not.
The Doctor is Father, and Mother, and (mostly) Grandfather. He’s worse than everybody’s aunt. He’s an arrogant, unreasonable, insane, megalomaniac, intellectual tyrant; and he’s a god incarnate, a saver (and destroyer) of worlds; He’s a real, honest-to-goodness hero, and a genius who’s brilliance shines across the galaxy, and he’s The Oncoming Storm (and not just for the Daleks).
He’s a trickster, a goblin, a demon, a magician; the most dangerous thing in the Universe.
He might just show up one day, out of the blue, and tear down your whole entire world.
He does that because it must be done, even though he knows–precisely–how it feels.
He knows how many will be hurt, and how badly; and he does it because someone has to, and if not him, then either someone else would have to do it, would have to bear the weight of it–or no one would–and that would be even worse.
And he’s good. Really good, and truly kind. In the dirtiest, low-down, shifty, nitty-gritty, uncompromising, undeluded, unblinking, un-self-aggrandising, stark naked way.
It was humans who taught him how to be that way, did you know? Back in his very first incarnation, when it would have been ever so simple, and straight-forward, and righteous, to simply crush a dumb, brutish, unimportant and in-the-way caveman’s skull with a rock.
He’s that ever-so-rare hero who manages to be more interesting (and more dangerous, and destructive, and subversive, and, sometimes, irresponsible) than the villain. And he’s a gigantic nerd! He’s the definition of adorkable!
I try to be very careful about keeping my fantasy life separate from my reality, but I, truly, deeply, love the Doctor, in a very personal, very profound way–heart and soul, body and mind. He’s important, because he isn’t real, and he absolutely deserves that love.
He’s earned it!
Never doubted him, never will.