The Doctor

Last week I made a reference to Doctor Who.  It's about time I shared some of my feelings about this absolutely incredible television series.

The short version.

Quick summary of Doctor Who:  That one on the far right is named The Doctor.  That's it, just The Doctor.  Not Doctor Smith or Doctor Watson, just The Doctor.  He's an alien.  His race is called the Time Lords.  They live a very, very long time and, when they're about to die, can regenerate.  When they regenerate, they gain an entirely new body, new personality, but keep all the memories.  Each Time Lord can only regenerate about 13 times in their life before dying.  So, all of the people in the following image are The Doctor:

These are all The Doctor

So is this guy:

John Hurt as The Doctor

 And this guy, Peter Capaldi, is the latest, but we don't yet have any episodes with him actually in them, except right at the end...

Not sure how I feel about the power pose...

So, clear enough so far?  He's a really, really old alien (something like 1300 years old at current), and he changes his face every couple hundred years or so.




So, what's so interesting about that?  Well, The Doctor is quite the interesting character.  He's brilliant, absolutely brilliant, but also sincerely compassionate, fair, kind, fun, and generally a good person.  One character once described him this way:

Powerful, incredible, and wonderful.

And one time, he described himself like this:

The next line is, "that is who I am."

To boot, he is a time traveler.  He travels time in a machine called the TARDIS (it stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space) that has taken the form of an old police telephone box.  Time travel is complicated, and his adventures are complicated and dangerous and exciting.

Kinda got away from me...

But all of this is not the reason I like Doctor Who.  I love it because of what The Doctor stands for.  He is a Doctor, after all.  He is a living embodiment of trying to heal, of trying to do what is right, to never give up, never give in, never be cowardly, and never stop caring.

--The Doctor

He doesn't travel with a weapon of any kind.  The only thing he really carries around?  A screwdriver, but a sonic one instead of the normal kind.  That actually makes it significantly less intimidating, but remarkably more useful.

Jack Harkness: Who has a sonic screwdriver?
The Doctor: I do!
Jack: Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks, "Ooh, this could be a little more sonic."?
The Doctor: What, you've never been bored?  Never had a long night?  Never had a lot of cabinets to put up?

 

And he doesn't give up on anyone.  All life is sacred to him.  All things have to die eventually, sure.  Death is just a part of life.  But all life, wherever possible, should be protected.

He was in a war once, and it changed him a lot.  As far as he knows his entire species was likely wiped out, and it was entirely his fault.  As a result he's an advocate for peace to a fault.  Just because something looks scary doesn't mean it's bad or evil or really scary.  It just means it's different.  The Doctor is very accepting.

There are many, many lessons from Doctor Who...

Not my list, but a darn good one.

I could rant about it all day.  It's not perfect.  There are parts that I would skip if I were you.  The parallels to life lessons, the gospel (try modeling your life after "the Great Physician" and see if you don't feel a bit like a Doctor), and just good fun are many.  This is one of the few shows that I really, sincerely enjoy.

And, let's face it, I really just want to get through medical school, walk up to a patient and say, "Hello, I'm the Doctor."