A few years ago I had only vaguely heard about Doctor Who. Never seen anything from the show, never learned what it was about. I might have believed it was some kind of medical show, but a good one as a lot of people online kept raving on about it.
It was not until a friend of mine said that I really had to check it out that I actually felt like I needed to do so. I then downloaded (yeah, I know) the first episode of the new series. I spent some time figuring out if I should watch the old series first, but was told that I didn’t need to. And that it would in fact be rather difficult to watch the old show, as much of it has been lost. Yes, Doctor Who did in fact start in 1963, and stopped in 1989. But then the new series came in 2005, and it was the first episode from this series I got a hold of and watched.
As soon as the episode was finished, I got online and ordered the Series 1 box-set. I couldn’t wait for it to arrive though, so over the course of the next few days I downloaded and watched all the episodes from Series 1. But let me tell you a bit about what Doctor Who actually is, in case you haven’t actually watched it.
The show is quite simple really. You follow a man who calls himself “The Doctor”. Well, he is in fact an alien, of the humanoid race who called themselves the Time Lords. He flies around in his spaceship, called the TARDIS. This stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Meaning, this ship can move through space and time. So the Doctor moves throughout history, always getting into some kind of trouble which he have to fix. And since he has this fascination and love for our Earth, he usually ends up here. And that also means he often has a companion with him, from Earth.
So, why is this show so good? Sounds like some decent sci-fi, but what makes it so much better than almost every other tv-series? Heart, that is what. TV-series usually don’t do a good job with emotions I think. Sad things tend to seem flat and silly, dramatic things turn into soap opera and don’t get me started on love. But somehow Doctor Who manages to be genuinely funny, sad, scary and whatever else that fits. In order to achieve this you need great writing and great actors, both of which you can find (usually) in any of the episodes. Sure, some episodes aren’t as good as others, but mostly they deliver. And this is after all a show that is actually for young adults. How they managed to make it this good is almost beyond me. And I can’t really tell you how good it is in this portion of this post, because I will have to delve quite heavily into spoilers. And I don’t want to spoil this gem of a show for anyone who haven’t seen it yet. So let me instead list a few things, that aren’t spoilers, that made me fall in love with this show. Then I am going to move into Spoiler Street, 4242 Spoiler City.
The sense of adventure and freedom, the charisma and mystery of a 900+ year old alien protagonist, the morally grey depiction of the universe, the jumping around in time, showing the scale of the universe and of course, the Doctors smile.
I guess it is impossible to understand why I love this show so much without actually watching an episode, so watch the first episode of the 2005 series please. Right now. Then watch all of it, and come back here for some spoilerific things about why this is the best sci-fi tv-show. Oh, and don’t read the spoiler-filled thingy before watching the show. It is really best to actually see it all for the first time in the show, not have my badly worded sentences ruin plot-points and other awesome things. Which is why I am going to add the spoiler-thingy as a separate post. Allons-y!
” recently, which is fucking awesome! Almost done, then I am going to start on the next one. Then I have a shitload of other books I need to read.
