New Who (May Contain Spoilers)

June 11, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I asked Carol, my secretary, to search reddit and gather the top 10 questions that people have about the revival of Doctor Who.

Certainly! Here are the top 10 questions new viewers might have about “Doctor Who,” focusing on the show’s revival after 2000, based on discussions from Reddit:

Who is the Doctor? – New viewers often want to understand the basic premise of the character known as the Doctor¹.
- When I started watching, The Doctor was about 6 or 700 years old. I don’t know how old they are now, but the last number I remember is 1103, I think? The reason they’re old is that they’re actually immortal. The Doctor is every story that’s ever been told, a running theme in my life. Since they can travel back and forth in time, The Doctor is acutely aware of what points in history have to happen, even if they’re tragedies, and what can be changed. They try very hard keep aliens from attacking our planet without changing the nature of that time and place…. to hilarious results because you can only control so much. The aliens are often complete villains, and the show is scary for young viewers because of it. However, it is quite a kick to go and see The Doctor defeat an alien by outsmarting it. The Doctor, in that way, reminds me of Sam Seaborn from “The West Wing.”
  - Toby: When did you write that last part? Sam: In the car. The Doctor’s plans often come together at the last minute, creating the worst possible screams when The Doctor is in danger and the dreaded words appear…. “in the next episode…”
  - Famous people in history are often involved in The Doctor’s plots and plans. They accidentally married Queen Elizabeth I.
  - The Doctor does not work alone. He is the head of a British intelligence agency like “The X Files.” However, they are basically “C Emeritus,” while the acting head of UNIT, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, serves as his modern day counterpart on the ground, ready to step in militarily if necessary. Any story that involves her is my favorite. I would love to be her assistant just to watch her banter with The Doctor, because it would be a great decision to revive Torchwood (an anagram of Doctor Who and a show about the day to day operations at UNIT), and have 14th Doctor drive Kate up the wall five days a week.
  - The Doctor is half Time Lord, half human. He has the heartbeat of a drummer because he has two hearts, and in fact, the musical theme starts with the rhythm of his heart. The rhythm of his heart IS the show.
What is regeneration, and why does the Doctor change appearance? – The concept of regeneration is unique to the series and can be puzzling for newcomers.
- Regeneration was introduced by the show because they wanted to be able to recast the actor if something happened to them. William Hartnell was not young when he took the role. Regeneration is a way to keep the show going even if the lead actor moves on. In the beginning, The Doctor only had 12 regenerations. Now they are immortal, but it would be too big a spoiler not to let you see the scene itself.
Do I need to watch the classic series to understand the new one? – There’s curiosity about the connection between the classic and modern series.
- Absolutely not. You can watch the show in either order, just watch the shows in order for both series. However, what tends to happen is that the confused people who are really interested want to go back and explore the lore. Classic Who runs on TV all the time if you have Pluto. You will quickly get into the culture and the fandom because it’s exciting to talk to fans. Some people have been watching it since the day Kennedy was shot.
What’s the significance of the TARDIS? – The Doctor’s time machine is iconic, and its importance is frequently questioned.
- The TARDIS is a sentient spaceship in a relationship with The Doctor. She always knows where they need to go, and they are a little bit in love with each other, when the TARDIS transferred into a human body for an episode (written by Neil Gaiman) and beautifully played by Helena Bonham Carter.
- Because it is alien technology, it looks like an old British police box, but when you step inside, it is huge. It also regenerates when The Doctor does, so it will look a little different every time the actor changes.
- The TARDIS is stolen.
- The Doctor trusts the TARDIS to take him where he needs to go, not where he wants.
- The reason that The TARDIS always looks like a police box is that all TARDIS have what’s called a chameleon circuit. On The Doctor’s, it’s broken. This leads to hilarious results, like a full on British Police box landing in the middle of the Oval Office next to Richard Nixon.
- Because of UNIT, you get to see a lot of cool spy stuff because it’s MI-6 and sometimes CIA. You also get to see an entire armory of Time Lord weapons. I think the TARDIS likes trying to avoid all of them. It’s her show.
Who are the companions, and why do they change? – The role of the Doctor’s companions and their turnover rate is a common inquiry.
- Because The Doctor has so much extensive scientific knowledge, companions were originally designed to be the eyes of the viewer… to understand The Doctor from a lay person’s point of view. They have all sorts of endings, from death to just wanting to go home. No two stories are the same. However, the ones that are living and want to go home usually end up working for UNIT.
What are the Daleks and why are they important? – As the Doctor’s arch-nemesis, new viewers are interested in learning more about them¹.
- The Daleks are The Doctor’s nemesis, because it’s personal. There are only two Time Lords left in the galaxy because time would have collapsed if he didn’t let The Daleks destroy his planet.
Can I start watching from any season? – With the show’s long history, viewers wonder where to begin².
- You will enjoy every episode, and a guide will tell you which episodes are standalone. However, the rest of it will not make sense to you because in the early days, there were a lot of references to previous episodes that few Americans watched unless PBS had it in your area. However, Doctor Who doesn’t talk down to the audience. If you want to know, look it up. There’s over 60 years of history.
What are the key episodes or arcs I should not miss? – Fans often share lists of must-watch episodes for those new to the show².
- The most unique episode is “Heaven Sent,” It was a monologue delivered beautifully by Peter Capaldi.
- The episode that makes me cry is “Vincent and The Doctor.” It explains mental illness by using aliens as a metaphor for depression. It’s masterful. There’s plenty of clips on YouTube, but go in blind. You will need two boxes of Kleenex if you don’t go into it knowing how it ends. I believe it’s one of the best two or three minutes ever filmed in the history of the BBC.
- My favorite episode next to “Vincent and The Doctor” is the 50th anniversary special The dialogue is so clever that you just want to watch it over to laugh again. Because of time travel, a few of The Doctors all got to be in the episode at once.
- In the end, I really can’t choose any more than this, because I’m a writer. There are things I like and don’t like about different aspects of the show. Few episodes are all or nothing for me. I criticize it lovingly, though, because I’m so eager for it to continue. I was relieved to hear the show runner say that their viewer numbers were beyond expectations, so they’re free to keep making it. The BBC has almost canceled New Who twice over the budget. No matter the budget, the storyline is so good it keeps me coming back. They don’t have to have this high a production value to have an enormous fan base. Doctor Who was originally put together with spit and rubber bands, or something like that.
How does the show balance standalone episodes with overarching plots? – The structure of the series and its storytelling approach is a point of interest.
- They do it by not telling you which ones are connected and which ones aren’t. You are waiting constantly to see what happened with what. It’s time travel. They can add and drop storylines at will.
What makes “Doctor Who” different from other sci-fi series? – Viewers are curious about what sets the show apart in the genre.
- No show that I know has kept a country together like Doctor Who. Doctor Who is a national treasure in the UK, so when you are tapping into Doctor Who, you are tapping into a fan base that goes back to 1963. Billions of people have seen an episode by now, because it spread to the other commonwealth countries and broke out into America. I think I speak for all of us when I say it’s frustrating that Disney and the show runners are dumbing it down to make the learning curve easier for new viewers. Most of us are neurodivergent. If we want to know something, we will take the 384 hours to find out. Doctor Who appeals to neurodivergent people because it’s a world where everyone fits in.
- No show has such a wide variety of topics because anything anywhere in time and space can be a conflict for The Doctor to solve. I really liked the Shakespeare episode, of course.
- There’s so much love and acceptance that it spills over into the fans, because we fight like cats and dogs, but we’d rather be doing that than not talking about Doctor Who. Again, we’re neurodivergent. We can all research for hours and we all have strong opinions. There’s no one way to be a Whovian because the number of fans is so large it’s unquantifiable.
- Generally, at first you’ll hate the new Doctor because you’re grieving the old one. By the end you’re ready to hate the new one again. Every actor brings something different to the role…. and the two most important regenerations to fans across the world, the first two questions you ask a Whovian, are:
  - Who is your Doctor?
  - Who was your first Doctor?
- You will remember both answers for the rest of your life.

I Don’t Care How You Feel About the Royals If You’re Tracking With Me

February 5, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If you’re tracking with me, I feel that The Firm is in a crisis right now, because King Charles hasn’t been King for all that long and he’s been diagnosed with cancer. I’ve already posted about this on Facebook, but I have way more international fans here than I do there. I want input from English fans, and I know I have at least one. She’s not impressed with the royals, so I don’t know if she’d comment or not. I’m not impressed with The Firm because they’re important people. I’m interested in their family dynamics because I read the ghostwritten autobiography that Harry wrote in collaboration with whomever (sorry, not going to look that up) was an intimate portrait that is every bit as important as anything Richard the Lionhearted ever said…. not that it was so good (it was) but records of the royal family have proven to be eternal so far.

Plus, I loved where I could pick out the parts in which I sounded like him, as if it’d borrowed style from me without ever surfing here. It was great. Even if I don’t have everything about Harry’s personal style (I do believe he wrote parts of it because the ghostwriter had to know what Harry wanted to say, I have the style of one of the most famous ghostwriters in the world.

But there’s just something so universal and so specific about this particular situation.

Losing one parent is devastating. Losing both is losing your anchor to the world. For a moment, you don’t even know who you are in both cases. Actually, not a moment. About three years. The first year, you walk around in a fog of grief, finding your diary in the freezer and constantly forgetting said parent is dead and it shocks you all over again.

Nora Ephron gives the example of not being able to throw away her husband’s shoes, because she thought he might need them.

The fog of grief is universal. One of the things that Bryn pointed out is that there’s a possibility that both boys could lose their dad almost as quickly as they lost their mother, because unless you catch it early, there’s only a 20% chance you’ll survive it, anyway.

So, while William is grieving, he’s going to have to constantly reassure the public that the monarchy is stable… even though it’s not. But I’m not saying they’re hiding anything. I am saying that grief is so consuming that William is going to constantly have to stuff down his emotions just to get through the day. But the monarchy still won’t be unstable by the nature of anything that William would do, just by the nature of the quick change.

It remains to be seen whether Harry and William will end up needing each other or not. There may be too much bad blood…. that sometimes gets worse when both parents die. Sometimes it doesn’t. Most of the time tragedy drives people apart, and both boys have PTSD. How could they not? The trauma for Harry was twofold. Grieving because he’d lost is mother privately, and in front of an audience so big you cannot take it in. His trigger is the flash of a camera.

And that was before he went to war.

They’ve both been to war after the tragedy of losing their mother in a horrific accident. Both boys have had more days now with trauma than without, because it stays with you your whole life whether you open up about it or not.

Losing a parent fundamentally changes you, because there are parts of you that belonged to them. In my experience, this presents in two ways. The first is how much they’ve changed you. The second is how much time you were spending with them. What are you going to do to fill it? In the beginning, there is nothing that will fill that space because there’s nothing interesting enough to stop you from dwelling on it constantly, especially in the first few months. It is shocking whether you’ve known long in advance or lost them in a moment.

Especially when people get old enough where you realize it was just time, you’re still shocked because it’s the loss of not being able to drop by or call. You try because you forget, dialing or driving by, and remember on the way or right before you’re about to hit the icon for “call.” You might have a lot of car accidents during this time because your brain will blip out at inconvenient moments….. very much like they tell you not to drive under the influence. Your attention is every bit as scrambled as the rest of you.

Because again, you’re rewiring your nerves to the point where you will no longer recognize who you used to be before. Both in the liberation of not needing their approval because you can’t have it anyway, and the absolute abyss-deep process to get back up to the new normal.

People who seem functional are the ones hiding it well. They’re not getting over it any faster than anyone else. As time goes by, there is an expectation that you’ll get back to your old self, and it’s much too fast for my liking. First of all, there is no old self. I am not software you can roll back after a traumatic event.

No one is. Whether you know it or not is whether they want to open up to you, because most of being in public is just armor. They’re dying inside, trying to compartmentalize while their brains are spinning out like a tornado with memories. You spend a lot of time trying to hold back tears- even more pretending that you’re not crying all the time when you’re not with people.

Just because people don’t see grief doesn’t mean it isn’t happening to all of us. Losing a parent is in some ways universal, in some ways as individual as a fingerprint. What is universal is that it takes a long ass time, not just when the casseroles stop. People don’t check in after about six months, in my experience. This is not malice, it’s because they think you’re okay again now.

But the reality is just like the moment when Elizabeth realized that she was going to be queen. It’s just as jarring for the monarchy as it is in everyone else.

But most people don’t see their own grief writ as large as a change in the monarchy, and don’t take it seriously. They begin to act as if, rather than really focusing on what matters- their mental health. They feel fine, of course. They’re not being snappish because they’re overwhelmed with grief, they’re stressed at work (when before it was nothing). They’re doing things they wouldn’t normally do, like my own example (finding my journal in the freezer). Even that is written off as forgetfulness, even when they haven’t been like that in their whole lives.

You absolutely lose your mind for a little bit, no matter what your relationship with your parents was like. This is because it’s losing your tether, your protectors. You’re your own parent now, and therefore an “adultier adult” just by the nature of hierarchy. You’re the new generation, the changing monarchy in which you have to resurrect yourself, whether you use the analogy of the Christ or the phoenix.

You will definitely feel mocked in some cases.

One woman compared my grief over my mother to her grief over her cat. I was offended, but I’m sure she meant well. I don’t know what her relationship with her cat was like. I’m just not the kind of pet owner that would compare losing a mother to losing a pet. The worst part about you feeling mocked is that you know everyone means well, so you just have to let it roll off when those comments are impossible to forget……

I showed someone my ichthus necklace that has my mother’s fingerprint pattern in the middle. He asked where I got it and I said “the funeral home.” He said, “well… that’s really creepy.” Where else would I get something like that if I couldn’t ask her for it and the funeral home thought to do it when I didn’t?

That was a comment I’m still not over, and it affected my life in a big way because I never talked to him again.

I couldn’t look at him anymore, because I was so hurt every single time and it wasn’t worth working through it because he’d never been the most respectful person I’d ever met. It was just the last in a string of one-liners that were “jokes.”

It was not something I liked tolerating at the best of times, and this was when I couldn’t even see straight. Grief that deep is heavy and exhausting. You don’t learn to live with it all at once because you can’t. You’re basically in a shock blanket at first.

It comes over time, when there are fewer and fewer moments where you deny yourself happiness because of what they won’t get or what you promised that didn’t come true. You don’t heal from grief so much as sit with it until it doesn’t hurt anymore.

By thinking about it, over time you remember more and more good memories. It makes thinking about their death less draining and more about the things that make you smile. At first, I could only picture the open casket at her funeral, and it’s still the first picture that comes to my mind when I think of her because it’s etched in a way that my other pictures aren’t.

(I don’t mean I literally took a picture. Gross.)

If there is an open casket at King Charles’ funeral, there will be billions of pictures of it. In the newspaper. Can’t hide from it.

So specific.

So unique.

Like grief.