My family was really into Doctor Who in 2014...maybe in 2015 as well?
I'm not very good at sustained fandom. I love something whole-heartedly. Then I move onto the next thing and lose the love for the old thing.
I really took the 11th Doctor's speech to heart when he said, We are all different people all through our lives and that's okay, that's good you've got to keep moving so long as you remember all the people that you used to be.
But I adjusted it in my head to say something like, You've got to keep moving to new fandoms as long as you sometimes remember the old fandoms.
Anyway. So...Yeah. I lost the Doctor Who love.
A few months ago, Tim saw it was on the HBOMAX app, and we started talking about watching it. We were both interested in watching the first female doctor, but I couldn't decide if it was okay to start back into it with her episodes or whether we needed to watch the 12th Doctor episodes we had missed. (I had seen one season but Tim had missed all of them).
I guess the dilemma was just too strong, and since I wasn't feeling the Doctor Who love anymore, we kept choosing other shows instead.
Then one day we were going to start watching the Mandalorian, but suddenly I wanted to watch Doctor Who and suggested that.
I was just thinking it was a random, mysterious desire. BUT no. I think I know what it was. We had finished watching The Flight Attendant with Michelle Gomez. I really liked her in that, and I think I had hoped she would still be playing Missy on Doctor Who. We were also planning to soon watch her in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. See? I really wasn't ready to let her go.
It turns out there was no more Gomez in Doctor Who. The Master regenerated into Sacha Dhawan. But that's cool. I liked him.
BUT....not as much as I liked the 13th Doctor.
Jodi Whittaker has now replaced all my Michelle Gomez love...and all the old faded, lingering love I had for David Tennant and Matt Smith.
Although it took me awhile to get there.
Well, actually it was just two episodes.
We watched the Christmas episode first; the one with Peter Capaldi. I felt like my past 2014 self was a stranger. I couldn't understand how that me liked a show like this.
I had the same dislike/disinterest when we watched the first 13th Doctor episode.
With "The Ghost Monument", I was still feeling kind of blah about the whole thing...but I guess I was warming up a little.
Then by the end of "Rosa", I was back in love....and even more so with the spider episode.
Well, no...I don't mean I had more love for the spider episode than the Rosa Parks episode. That would be a bit messed up.
I just mean the more and more I watched, the more the old fandom love grew.
I ended up sad a couple of weeks later when we had only one episode left.
And when we sat down to watch it, we realized we didn't even have that episode. The last episode hasn't been added to HBOMAX yet. So I feel like I didn't even have a chance to say good-bye.
What's horrible is I mourned Doctor Who through the third season of Cobra Kai! I've been eagerly waiting for Cobra Kai, and it ended up being a rebound show. That kind of sucked.
The way I am...you'd think by the time we got to the end of Coba Kai, I'd be like Doctor Who...Who? And I'd instead be all into William Zabka...or something like that.
I did like the third season of Coba Kai...a lot. But my heart was still with Doctor Who.
So much so....that I suggested to Tim that we next watch Broadchurch.
Broadchurch is like a really depressing spin-off of Doctor Who.
The child of the 13th Doctor is murdered and the 10th Doctor plus the second regeneration of the Queen of England are trying to solve the crime. And Rory is a minister in the town!
It's a good show, but I'm not sure it was the best thing to fill the Doctor Who hole in my heart. It's kind of horrible seeing the 13th Doctor going through the worst thing any human can go through.
Eventually, there will be more episodes of Doctor Who, and we can watch that.
But by that time, I probably won't care enough to want to. I'll probably keep choosing to watch other things instead. Then when we finally do watch it, I'll probably wonder why I had ever liked it. And then I'll like it again. And then I'll love it again.
After all that, I'll next have to go through the stages of I don't want a new Doctor. I'm not going to like this Doctor. Okay. I kind of like this Doctor. I love this Doctor.....
And so on and so forth.
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