Well, I haven’t looked into it too closely, but I keep hearing that the New Who is officially over. Like putting a beloved pet down, the sadness which grips me is not one of regret, per se. Every time I’ve poked my head back in to see what was going on with the show, I would just have to look away.
But I had left far earlier than most of my friends. There is a humor in that I was there earlier too. I was watching classic Dr. Who reruns long before any one of my cohorts had ever dreamed of a Tardis; I still remember at a tender age, in a game of make believe, trying to explain to my fellow children that I wanted to be a Time Lord, and subsequently, failing to explain in any adequate manner what a Time Lord was.
Then the 2000s came, and my special little interest went mainstream, for a spell. I was elated to find that other people loved the thing I loved, for once. Even in writing this, the nostalgia hits hard. How can I tell you about waiting twenty minutes for the buffer to load far enough ahead so that you could watch the video without it stopping, or the anticipation riding the school bus home knowing that a new episode had dropped?
Then something changed. As technology got better, streaming got streamlined, the quality of the show, and of all shows in general, nosedived. I am excoriated, or politely told to shove it, when I say that things went downhill with the Eleventh doctor. None of my friends agreed.
Thing is, Matt Smith is amazing. His talent could almost keep you distracted from the fact that the story was wrong. That’s the best way I can put it. I don’t know another way to say what exactly was wrong other than that the story didn’t satisfy. Criticism is hard, and most professional critics aren’t even very good at it. I kept watching the show, feeling my disappointment growing with every episode.
I forced my way through Matt Smith’s run, but when he passed the torch to Peter Capaldi and I tried to watch the first episode, whatever magic had kept me on until then was, whatever credit I had given the show up to that point was, whatever fumes of fond memories had kept me coming back were, spent. About halfway through, I just closed the laptop. I was done.
Now and again, I like to watch Dr. Who reruns, but I rarely revisit the New Who anymore, which I find strange. Classic Who still has the power to draw me in, but I cannot give myself over anymore to the New Who. I cannot rewatch Christopher Eccleston or David Tennant. They feel tied to a time I just cannot return to, while the older, far more dated, Who is still alive. Maybe, one day, the New Who will be old enough to be enjoyed again.
Tale Told 