Doctor Who

So my husband and I started re-watching Doctor Who, and as someone who watched it as my comfort show for my depression I’ve never watched it happily before so I thought I’d record my happy analytical thoughts of this timeless masterpiece of a show.

Ecceleston was the first Doctor of the reboot, 9th in the canon and although he was only the Doctor for 13 episodes he did a magnificent job of getting someone (me) who had never seen a shred of Doctor Who to fall in love with this show. The self contained Bad Wolf arc is so well structured and well written that it really took the show to the next level.

I think that the first few seasons of the new series of Doctor Who contain some of the best written episodes of television, for any genre including season 1 The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, this 2 part arc was beautiful for a lot of reasons; the first being the story itself and how it evokes brilliance from the main characters. Taking place in London during an air raid in World War 2 the Doctor is once again plunged into the devastation of war, but this time everyone he comes into contact with gets to live, a rare occurrence at best. These 2 episodes really show the Doctors pain and trauma specifically associated with war and death. This is also a shining moment for Rose when she tries to comfort a young girl named Nancy that the world doesn’t end with this war, that they win and the world will return to normalcy someday, it's a beautiful moment and I think that it shows the hope and happiness that the Doctor has shared with her and this scene is one of the very many reasons Rose is my favorite companion. Another reason that these episodes are so brilliant is because it's our first introduction to Jack Harkness, I think that the addition of his character into the rest of the season was welcome and necessary. With such dark and heavy content in these two episodes Jack, and his dynamic with the Doctor gave us an appropriate level of comic relief that was needed for such a dark episode. If the idea of getting into Doctor Who now seems daunting, I highly recommend starting at these 2 episodes and finishing season 1, that would cut the first season down to 5 episodes.

Another important thing to talk about while rewatching Who is the regenerations, now I am someone who got into the show specifically for David Tennant, I powered through the first season just to get to him, but here's the thing Christopher Ecceleston was so good I needed grieving time before I could watch Tennent the first time, the only thing that kept me going straight through was Rose. Rewatching the Christmas Invasion I really love Billie Piper’s acting, she is so brilliant. Rose has to watch the Doctor be inactive for much of the episode, you really watch her grieve the loss of HER Doctor, and what I find interesting about regenerations is that they seem to tie together with their previous companion, whether this is canon or not I like the idea of Rose being in love with the Doctor so when he regenerated it was as someone more age appropriate for her. We also see Rose have to come into her own and use everything she learned from being with the Doctor while thinking that he’s dead, or that he’s just given up and it's kind of wonderful to see, not that she wasn’t always brilliant and strong but because seeing anyone act selflessly on the face of grief is amazing to watch. And then, of course, the Doctor wakes up and we get to see the surly, sarcastic David Tennent really step into the role of the Doctor and all you can really think is, this is why you should always hire fans as actors, because they pour their whole soul into it and its unmistakable how much they love what their doing.