13 Doctors

Didn’t you always want someone to believe in you? Didn’t you always want someone to see in you what you couldn’t see in yourself, and point it out to you?

“You’re Brilliant.”

Isn’t it a fantastically seductive idea, to be chosen?

Allons-y … here we go!

The science Fiction TV show “Doctor Who” has been on TV since sometime in the mid-1950s. I don’t remember the exact date; I wasn’t even born yet.  When my sisters and I discovered “Doctor Who” the show was already on its 2^nd or third “Doctor”, but I remember, that first Doctor very well. He travelled with a girl and a boy about 5 years old each. It was not the time machine: officially called the T.A.R.D.I.S (time and relative dimensions in space), bigger on the inside than it was on the outside; it was not the charm of the white, frizzy haired old man who played that first Doctor (it couldn’t be, after all, whenever an actor left the Doctor would regenerate and look completely different); it was something about the children or more accurately the companions.

My sisters and I were companions of “The Doctor” from a very young age. Our father used to read to us all manner of science fiction and fantasy. He read us “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien, many stories by Edgar Allen Poe, Jules Verne’s “2000 leagues under the Sea” and gave us our first exposure to the delights of Dungeons and Dragons (that was when we learned that petting the puppy often made skeletons attack you for not paying attention). In light of all that it should be no surprise that when Emily and Chris and I found a show about a Time Lord from Galifrey who asked ordinary kids (or later adults (somehow the shows companions seemed to age along with us)) to travel with him through time and space, we were instantly hooked.

Through our lives we have all had our different interests. Chris, inexplicably, used to love to embroider “Holly Hobby” onto things. She had a French Provincial Bedroom set (white with gold trim in case you don’t know). I never understood her obsession with pink frilly feminine things, but I understood that she would be right beside me to watch “The Doctor” when he came on. Emily, being the youngest, could not find an interest that someone else had not already claimed, or I didn’t know her well enough to understand her obsession. In adult life I was shocked to find out that she is a dyed in the wool atheist. How did that happen? She is also a vegetarian and has been since she ran over an opossum. She has not eaten meat since that day. I don’t have to understand; I love her, she is my sister. I do understand that as soon as “Doctor Who” came on she would be there. We always watched “The Doctor” together.

I have in the past mused over why “Doctor Who” is such a long lived love. We all still watch the show, and now my sister’s children watch it with the same regularity that we did. I think it has to do, not so much with the Doctor, but with his relationships with his companions. He believes in them. He often saves the planet, or the universe, or time and reality, but he never does it without help from his companions. His companions are people just like us.  He sees in his companions abilities that might go overlooked or undervalued. He sees thinks like: hope, compassion, intelligence, curiosity. He sees the value in non-violent solutions to difficult problems, and sees the world as a beautiful place to spite all the danger. We three girls, we loved him, and we still do. I like to life, like his blue police box: bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.