Dr.... who?

Why didn't I watch this earlier?!  A shout-out to Maggie for her advice on approaching the show.  I'm glad you started me off with Matt Smith because that gave me a chance to fall in love with him before I met David Tennant.  I introduced my friend to "Dr. Who" and we're both hooked!  We just might spend our entire four-day on that!  It was interesting, however, that you introduced me to David Tennant through the "Blink" episode – not that I regret it – great episode.  But he hardly has a part in that episode.  Love him in it, all the same.  I just wondered if you had any particular reason for that.

My big conundrum is whether or not I should take it home to my family.  My youngest sister is twelve years old.  Being the youngest, she's been introduced to some strange things at perhaps an unprecedented age.  "Emergency!", "Adam 12", "Star Trek", "Star Wars", "Lord of the Rings", "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", and on goes the list.  These shows and movies aren't that bad, really, but she got to watch them much younger than I did.  It's not jealousy I'm feeling – it's anxiety.  When I called home, I told my family that I had a new obsession that I wanted to surprise them with when I got home, but now I can't help but wonder if I should bring it home with me at all.  Most of the episodes don't contain a lick of anything "inappropriate" (btw, I've come to hate that word), but they're action packed and someone dies in every episode.  Sometimes the people who die are insignificant, but that's not the point.  The very word "insignificant" is terrible, and that's what I'm worried about.  I'm not worried that my sister will be bothered by what she sees, I'm worried that she won't be.  I'm concerned that she might be rather desensitized to some things that she shouldn't be.

The Doctor is generally a very moral character, for those of you who don't know him.  He values life beyond all else, often even risking his own life and convenience to give the villain a second chance.  Death is rarely something used disgustingly.  There's a lot of "Theology of the Body", as some I know would say.  Lots of people sacrifice themselves for others – sometimes to the death, sometimes not.  That's kind of the whole premise of the show, bravery in the face of treachery.

So I'm not concerned on moral grounds about sharing it with people.  I don't care if death bothers my sister.  It should.  It bothers me.  My friend and I both cringed through the first whole episode we watched together (which had an unusual number of deaths).  If the show bothers my sister, she probably just won't watch it, and that's perfectly fine.  The way I understand my sister, she's at a point where she won't watch stuff that bothers her – which is a perfectly good state of mind, and hopefully we all go through it at some point.  So what scares me about the possibility of bringing my new interest home with me is that she will watch it with me, and that death won't bother her; or if it does, it won't for long.

There's also the need for my family to like it, of course.  Whenever you introduce people you like to something you like, you hope and pray they get along; and it's a little sad when the people you like don't get as enthusiastic as you.  So far, all our recent "family obsessions" have been stuff that my parents were already familiar with.  Look over the list above – all stuff that came around during their youth (or before) and early adult years (for the most part).  But this is something new, something modern, something of my generation that I have to convince my parents to like.

Consider "The Princess Bride".  We would never, ever, ever, ever watch that movie if it came out today (not to mention that it'd probably be a whole lot more immoral, but forgetting that for the moment...).  But because the movie came out when my parents were kids, and it's funny, and it's somewhat infamous among a certain crowd of their generation, my siblings and I were allowed to watch it.  Find a comparable "modern" movie and no one in my family would even think to watch it.  We probably wouldn't even think to watch the "this generation" equivalent of "Back to the Future".  Things gain a certain amount of forgiveness with age.  It's immoral consequences are somewhat irrelevant because it's damage was done and now it's just there, as sort of a museum piece.

But that's just a long rampage.  I'm sure most of my family will like "Dr. Who".  There's just the uncertainty of human unpredictability which always exists.  ...Not sure that's an English sentence.  Is it possible to get across my meaning without the double negative?  Is it a double negative?  ...Well, you know what I mean.

~Meggy

For those who do know the Doctor, here's just a fun video that, if you haven't already seen, you have to see!

 

(Must watch in full screen!)