Doctor Who Thoughts ...
In cautious anticipation of the new Doctor Who Christmas Special approaching, I've been ramping up a lot of old episode watching. Kate is having me rent the Eccleston and Tennant episodes from Netflix so that she can start catching up (She sort of adroitly mentioned that, from what she'd seen, she thinks the Eccleston episodes are better on average than the Tennant ones, about which I'd have to agree. Mind you, I'm bound to ruin the Eccleston finale for her by explaining who all of the guest voices are - "And THAT robot is Davina McCall! And THOSE robots are Trinny and Susannah! I watch too much British TV).

Meanwhile, I've been watching the Jon Pertwee episodes, never having really seen them before except in one or two occasional chapters. Not ever having before given this Doctor much of a chance, I'm sort of ashamed, because I'm enjoying the hell out of his interpretation and the stories he's playing at - I'm only up to Inferno at this point, but they're terrific, very 1970's, with that claustrophobic feeling of inevitable dystopia that made the acts of heroism so tragically optimistic in those types of stories. I have a fondness for them.

I'm always amped about new Doctor casting, which we're getting with the Christmas Special on account of both Tennant AND Russel Davies leaving the show. And to be honest, I'm much more excited about Davies leaving the show, because he's made it kind of hard for me to watch.

I mean, I'll give him this much; I obviously care about the show. When an episode of the new Doctor Who missteps - and they misstep about two episodes out of every three, and about half of every good episode anyway - I'm left howling. For the rare bon petit which every two-and-a-half hours of viewing grants me, I'm willing to have my every high expectation utterly foiled and gassed to a sputtering death, and then set my standards even higher for the next go-round. For all his faults, Davies has that much right. He knows how to create addicts, and he knows you do that by making the highs outweigh the lows.

The problem is, like with any addiction, regret sets in alongside sobreity. Absence makes the heart go flounder, as it were, I find that my enjoyment of the show diminishes the longer I'm made to go without it, all its overwhelming thematic issues become ... well, truly overwhelming. I delete all but an episode or two.

Here's what ends up bothering me most about the series as it stands today: Davies' message is obstensibly this - humanity is great. In flaming letters ten feet high, we are told that humanity is terrific, human beings are amazing, we have all this potential and all this sticktuitiveness and this overpowering sense of can-do and we just can't be kept down. The whole reason that the Doctor - a near-immortal, incredibly brilliant alien being who has the entirety of time and space at his fingertips - returns to Earth time and time again is because we're so cool. He mentions it at least once every other episode, and usually much more than that. God, does Doctor Who think we're great.

But in execution? In execution, the human beings on the show ... don't do much. Yes, there is Mickey, my favorite character, who goes from petulant chav schmuck to The Swellest Guy In Two Universes, and there's Martha Jones who becomes a black ops superdoctor, and Sarah Jane Smith becomes crusading reporter against alien domination. But when the Doctor and these just so awesome, great, fantastic, amazing, incomparable human beings get together, what do they talk about? They talk about how awesome the Doctor is.

My unofficial drinking game for Doctor Who is "Every time a female character talks about how the Doctor is so great and uses a shitty metaphor like 'he is the fire between the stars' or something stupid like that, slowly imbibe a thimblefull of watered-down scotch. On a full stomach. Of crackers and bread." You'll be naked drunk and roaring mad in twenty minutes. It is UNSTOPPABLE, nine out of ten character-building conversations in the show are about how wonderful the Doctor is, how humanity needs him, how we chant as a single planet in order to prove we still believe in Time Lords, and then the tenth conversation is "Gosh, humans are the best."

It rings false, which is why I have this impossible dream entitled "What I'd goddamn do in a new Doctor Who series." What I would do is this: You know how Doctor Who can ressurect himself after he dies, and he's allowed to do that twelve times? And how this will be his eleventh (of thirteen) incarnations? I say blow through the next two incarnations in the Christmas episode. Let's get to the 13th Doctor, let's get to the one who can't die any more, the one who - like us wonderful, terrific, super-beautiful human beings with all of our stiff upper lips and protestant work ethic and all that - is fuckin' mortal. Take the risk, I say, if we're so great as a race then let's make the Doctor that much more like us. Let's make him less super-human and more generally human.

I'd love to see a Doctor who didn't have that safety net of getting to reincarnate himself when his noble sacrifice is necessarily called for. I'd like to see the risk factor go up. I think it would make the show more exciting and more, frankly, honest to its precept that being a mere mortal human being is all that great. Let Doctor Who cling to a fragile hold on life once in a while, it'll make for a stronger overall story and a better relationship with his human companions.

Also, I'd like him to be black, thank you.