Strange Love for the Doctor

(Or, How I learned to Stop Worrying and Watch Doctor Who)*

I am a huge fan of Doctor Who.

Maybe not that big a revelation. My nerd proclivities are fairly well known, so me announcing that I am an enthusiast for the good Doctor isn’t exactly a jaw-dropping shock to those people who are paying attention. But I have to tell you, it completely took me by surprise.

I consider myself a fairly full-rounded specimen of Nerdo Sapiens. My field of interests is broad, and tends to touch on most of the standard minutiae.  The problem is that I am also a bit of a self-loathing closet case about it. I love what I love, but I sometimes have a hard time talking about it. And I have a VERY hard time listening to other people talk about it.

I was in a large chain bookstore a year or two ago, buying the latest Dungeons & Dragons manual. I found the product I wanted, brought it to the counter, and was feeling smugly proud of myself for my shopping efficiency. Then I noticed the clerk at the register eyeing the manual. Then he looked at me. Then back at the book. Then back at me, this time with what my lovely wife refers to as “Precious Moments eyes”, and I knew two things. First, this man had suddenly smelled the familiar scent of a fellow nerd. Second, I was going to have to talk to this asshole about his dwarf wizard for the next fifteen minutes.

I don’t know WHY that bothers me. Perhaps it’s a muscle reflex from high school or something. Whenever someone starts nerding out too loudly near me, I feel a rush of panicky adrenaline, and have to suppress the urge to scream out, “Shut the fuck up! They’re going to beat us up and stuff us into a locker!”

Anyway, despite my black-belt in Geek Fu Dork, I have never had any use for Doctor Who. I am acquainted with people who ADORE him, and gleefully consume all of the associated media with a unique sort of zeal. But I’ve always sort of thought of those people as the nerd equivalent of foot fetishists. I don’t GET it, but I’m certainly not going to judge them for it.

I was familiar enough with the trappings of the genre, anyway. I could identify a Dalek (those are the killer robots who look like pepper shakers). I could pick the doctor out of a lineup of sci-fi and fantasy heroes, in a “Where’s Waldo” search for the guy with the huge scarf. I knew what the Tardis looked like, even though as someone raised on the vague fighter-jet designs of an X-Wing fighter and the sleek coolness of Doc Emmet Brown’s Delorean, I found the idea of travelling through time and space in a police box to be “quaint” at best, and “goddamned goofy” at worst. But I still refused to immerse myself fully.

Maybe I knew the wrong people. Most of the hardcore Whovians I had known in high school were, and I know how hypocritical this comes off, complete dorks. They had horrible taste in music, preferred the Call of Cthulu RPG to Dungeons & Dragons, and seemed to exemplify what I would later hear Margaret Cho refer to as “this whole creepy connection between Star Trek, leather sex, and the Renaissance Fair.” They meant well, but they were not my people.

So I took a pass on Doctor Who, and truthfully, it wasn’t like there was a dearth of other things to keep my attention. I figured I would just be one of those people who weren’t into Doctor Who. And I figured I could live with that.

Then my wife started watching Torchwood.

It was her sister who pushed her into it. Cyndi is not a sci-fi fan, really. So when she told Jenny that she had started watching Torchwood and really liked it, Jenny found her interest piqued. I knew of Torchwood in theory, in the same way that my nerd brain absorbs awareness of various pieces of geek culture ephemera by means of internet osmosis. What I had come away with was that it was a Doctor Who spin-off, starring a bisexual alien. Most of the people who seemed really jazzed up about it seemed to be primarily obsessed with the fact that it was a show where boys often kissed boys and girls often kissed girls. While I am all for people kissing whomever they choose, that premise isn’t quite enough to convince me to watch. (I can’t sit through an entire episode of The Real L Word, and I actually know one of the cast members in real life.)

But we only have the one TV, so when Jenny watches a show, I end up watching it, too – at least peripherally. And early on, I wasn’t finding that much to distract me from whatever else I was doing while it played in the background. The hero, Captain Jack Harkness, did indeed like to kiss the fellas as well as the ladies. And he seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time standing on rooftops, like a bisexual, British Batman.  I was thoroughly underwhelmed.

But then, about midway through the first season of the show (or the first “series”, as the BBC seems to prefer), I found myself watching Torchwood with my eyes glued to the screen. I COULD NOT STOP. It was a good show. It was a really good show. It was a FREAKING AWESOME show. And I was hooked.

Jenny and I blasted through the three extant seasons of Torchwood in a matter of weeks, and then started to nervously twitch, not sure where the next fix would come from, and dreading the withdrawal we would surely suffer if Captain Jack didn’t stroll across our field of vision and make out with somebody.

Suddenly, watching Doctor Who seemed like a viable option. Like sci-fi methadone. My wonderful friend Jermaine “Lord Retail” Exum**, had been yelling at me consistently since he found out I was watching Torchwood without having watched any Doctor Who. The word “heresy” was bandied about.

I consulted my most reputable nerd-brethren, and determined that the safest and smartest place for a Doctor Who virgin like myself to start would be with the 2005 relaunch of the franchise, featuring Chris Eccleston as the Doctor, and Billie Piper as his plucky assistant. After the first episode, I realized I liked Doctor Who. After three episodes I realized I liked Doctor Who a lot. By midway through the first season, I came to understand that I loved Doctor Who. By the time David Tennant had taken the reigns as the Doctor, I had abandoned myself to the inescapable knowledge that Doctor Who was my favorite TV show of all time, and it brought me nothing but joy, and I wanted to ride around in the Tardis and save the universe and maybe get to hug Rose Tyler, please.

Jenny and I are now three quarters of the way through the fourth season of the show. Netflix has one more season available for streaming, plus two movies, and then I’m not quite sure what the hell I am going to do. Probably weep openly  until I can afford to buy the sixth season on DVD. Certain parts of the viewing experience are very interesting to me. Despite having NO prior exposure to the Doctor, apparently I have enough nerdiness in my racial memory to mark out like a little bitch for the classic Doctor Who elements. When the Cybermen or the Daleks show up, I get irrationally excited. When Sarah Jane Smith makes a guest appearance, and brings along K-9, I am glad to see them again, despite the fact that I am seeing them for the first time.  I’m not sure how this works. I seem to have drunk deeply enough of the Kool-Aid to appreciate things I should have no logical reason to appreciate.

Jenny does put a slight damper on this euphoria, by the way, with her insistence on finding the Daleks adorable. They are NOT adorable, Jennifer! They are ruthless genocide machines and the scourge of the galaxy!

Anyway, you guys were right and I was wrong. Doctor Who is awesome, and I don’t know what took me so long.

I’m still not watching Dark Shadows, though. I need to draw a line somewhere.

Hugs and Kisses,

(The)Travis

*I know this is the worst blog title ever.

** When in Greensboro, NC, be sure to visit ACME COMICS, for all of your comic needs. Tell them Travis sent you.