September 24 - Doctor Who

Okay, I think I figured out what is bothering me about this season of Doctor Who. This may contain spoilers up to and including the episode "Time Heist," so if you're not caught up, you might want to stop reading. Fair warning.

One of the things that bothered me about the Amy Pond years was the fact that she wasn't really the Doctor's companion during a lot of it. She was this girl he would go pick up from time to time to go on an adventure and then he'd drop her back off on Earth and go do...who knows what. Couple this with the lack of investment in each other as characters and I found myself wondering why he kept going back for her specifically to go on adventures with him. It's like taking your weird Uncle Reginald with you when you go skydiving. Sure, you might have fun, but why not take your fun Aunt Charlene instead?

Now, when Clara joined the show (and the Doctor was still Matt Smith) there was better chemistry, so it made a little more sense to me that he would keep going back for her. And now, with Peter Capaldi, the chemistry is fun and odd and you get the idea he goes back for her for familiarity sake as much as anything else. But he pulls that off, effectively, if it was his choice to go that way with it. So it still irks me that he has to pick her up at the start of every episode and then drop her off at home again at the end, but I can deal with it. I know why he goes back for her.

But now we've introduced a boyfriend for Clara. Granted, the season still has a ways to go, so the boyfriend could turn out to be of importance later. But where the season stands now, the boyfriend pisses me off. Not the actor, not the character - he's really kind of cute and endearing. Not as much as Rory, but he seems like a decent guy. But the fact that the show runners felt it necessary to include a boyfriend for Clara pissed me off, initially because I wanted to yell at them that we, the audience, would watch the show even if there wasn't any romantic tension on it. Remember series 4? With Donna? And they were just best friends? And how amazing that was? Yeah, we'll still watch if there are no sex scenes. So why are they dedicating so much time to showing Clara's life on Earth? This is supposed to be a show about a time traveling alien and his amazing adventures with his friends. Why do we care if Clara is getting some?

And then today, it hit me. As I was watching "Time Heist," it hit me. At the beginning of the episode, when the Doctor is picking Clara up, he's trying to entice her to go with him to amazing places to see amazing things and she doesn't want to go because she has a date.

What?

Do you know how many millions of men and women all over the world would forego going on a date in a heartbeat if the Doctor offered them a chance to go traveling in the TARDIS? I would! I would forego a date with Tom Hiddleston to travel with the Doctor. I'd forego a date with Moby to travel with the Doctor. I'd forego a date with David Tennant to go traveling with the Doctor (unless the Doctor looked like David Tennant, in which case I'd go on a date thought time and space with my David Tennant Doctor). Again, going back to Donna, if there is one thing we learned from Donna, it is that when the Doctor invites you to go along, you go! Now! Without hesitation. Drop everything, jump in that ship, and take off to see things you would never otherwise get to see. How often does a madman in a box offer you the chance to see the whole of creation? And who would pass that up in favor of going on a date?

Okay, sure, there probably are those who would because the person they're going on the date with is THE ONE and they don't want to pass up that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity either. But if it was me, if I was the Doctor, and I invited someone to go with me who chose not to go in favor of staying on Earth in the hopes of getting a goodnight kiss from some other person, I'd find someone else to invite and never go back for that first person again.

Now, that's if this was real life. In the context of a television show, this is telling us that Clara only travelled with the Doctor because she thought he was cute when he was Matt Smith. And now that he's Peter Capaldi, she's not so keen on it. She's a woman who would rather have a romantic relationship than all of the adventures in the multiverse. What is this telling young women who watch the show? That travel is only fun if you're with someone you're attracted to? That relationships are only worth pursuing and/or maintaining if there's the chance of schmecking? I have very much enjoyed the character of Clara Oswald so far. She brought out things in Matt Smith as an actor that I didn't think he could do. She kept up with the Doctor and was never a wilting flower sort. She didn't get all moony over him as Matt Smith, even if she was supposed to think he was hot. Their flirtation was more subtle. A flirtation between equals. But now that the Doctor has said he's not her boyfriend and he's not going to flirt with her, she loses interest in all the other amazing things a relationship with the Doctor provides? Going on adventures with him has to fit in between teaching classes and going on dates? Since when did traveling with the Doctor get relegated to chore status, right below doing laundry but just above scrubbing the toilet?

I really hope I get to be the Doctor someday. I will have friend who travel with me through time and space and our friendships will be magical and completely platonic. My companions and I will recognize the amazing things we have to offer one another, and the relationships don't have to be muddied with all of that "will they/won't they?" nonsense. We won't. But our adventures will be...

Fantastic.

August 31 - Pittsburgh

Owen is drinking water. This brings me so much joy, I can't even tell you.

Today was quite possibly the most difficult day I've ever had. Saying goodbye to my Mom... I know millions of people have moved away from home, and thousands of them have left just for the sake of leaving, not because of a bad situation at home or anything like that. And I can't help but wonder if it is/was/has been as hard for them as it was for me. Yes, I was unhappy in my job, but I have such a close relationship with my mom, I have an amazing group of friends, I was living in a gorgeous apartment with lots of space in a very safe neighborhood, and Chicago is one of the most wonderful cities on the planet. Chicago has WXRT for crying out loud. There is no other radio station in the country like WXRT - where am I going to find my new music now? (The internet. I know.) I'm giving up a lot by moving to New York and as much potential lies ahead of me, it hurt to leave. Physically hurt. I left something great in the hopes I'll find something better. The outpouring of love and support and encouragement I have received from so many people is a little overwhelming - I think some of them think I am going to do better in New York than I do.

I found myself thinking of two major analogies when I left. I keep reading that Adrien Brody gave up everything when he was filming The Pianist - his apartment, his car, his girlfriend, his cell phone - so he would know what it felt like to lose everything. I still have a lot of stuff, but I did just give up an amazing apartment, my home, my job, my security, the ability to ask my friends out for a drink on a moment's notice, my cat's piece of mind, access to great hugs. I may not know what it feels like to lose everything, but I feel like I know what it feels like to lose a lot now. It is not fun.

And the other one I was thinking of a lot today was David Tennant's regeneration into Matt Smith. He got to say goodbye to his companions, and then went back to the TARDIS alone and said, "I don't want to go," before turning into someone different. The regeneration had to happen - there was no stopping it - and while Tennant loved his time on the show, he needed to move on and work on other projects. I spent this week saying goodbye to all of my companions, and while I know I need to give New York a shot, the first thing I thought of when I got up this morning was, "I don't want to go." I'm about to regenerate into something new - Kitty the New Yorker. Or at least, Kitty the Transplant from Chicago. And I can only hope that my regeneration is more of a Smith into Capaldi thing, or an Eccleston into Tennant thing, than a Tennant into Smith thing. I don't think I could handle three years of crap before something good starts to happen.

But then it was also killing me to have Owen in the car with me, being totally silent, not wanting treats when I offered them. As stressful as this is for me, it is a decision I have been thinking about for years, and I've been planning for it for months. To Owen...today he was put in his carrier and put into the car, where he never goes except when he is being taken to the vet. No warning, no say-so. He just has to come along for the ride. I was worried about how he would take it and it looked to be just about as awful as I had feared. But I think even more awful would have been leaving him behind. At least this way, he still has his person.

But me, being the dorky cat mom that I am, noticed that my guitar playing seems to calm him down. So I brought my guitar into the hotel room where we have stopped in Pittsburgh for the night and I played four or five songs for him. And then I moved his food bowl closer to him and he ate a few bites. And then I brought his water dish closer to him (he has yet to set foot out of his carrier), and he has been drinking water. Maybe too much, but I'm not going to quibble. I would rather have him eating and hydrating than not. His eyes look brighter, and he is facing the rest of the room now, instead of burying his nose in the far corner of the carrier. He is more animated and alert, reacting to the sounds of people in the hallway with curiosity and fear instead of just terror. He'll be fine. And if he can be fine with this, I will be fine with this, too.

Thank you, everyone, for the kind words and the beautiful send-offs. Thank you for your generosity and enthusiasm. Thank you for encouraging me to follow my dreams, and for not calling me crazy for doing so. I will do my best to not let you down.

Chicago, I love you and miss you. No matter where I live, I will be a Chicagoan. Always. And because I know you have my back, I can go off and do this thing I've wanted to try for a really long time. That is pretty amazing in and of itself, and for that, I will be forever grateful.

July 15 - August 23

In anticipation of Doctor Who returning to the air on August 23, I've been rewatching some of the Matt Smith era episodes - season 6, specifically. I skipped over season 5 because I already remembered that I enjoyed very little of what I saw in that season. And now I know I can skip season 6 moving forward as well, with the notable exception of The Doctor's Wife, which is an absolutely brilliant episode and one of the only reasons I kept watching the show. Kept watching new episodes, anyway. I have a lot of classic episodes still to go and I'm enjoying them. 

Aside from the Doctor's dreadful hair by the end of season 6, I think I figured out what bothered me about the season. I think it was in season 6 that they decided they could do no wrong, so they could focus their energies on sound bites and screen captures instead of on stories and character development. There is a lot of talk about the Doctor reaching great heights and falling farther than he ever had before, but the execution of these events doesn't even come close to things experienced by previous Doctors. The Doctor drops off Amy and Rory and she lets him leave. At least four episodes start at some random point in time when the Doctor and his "companions" have not been together for some time, so much of the front end of the episode is spent in happy reunion. And many of the stories are so simple that viewers can either figure out what's going on in the first ten minutes (and then spend the rest of the episode wondering how the Doctor can be so thick as to not have figured it out yet), or the viewers spend the episode thinking it has to be more complicated than what it appears to be and they get to be disappointed when it isn't. There is a lot of time spent talking about things that are supposedly urgent, but very little sense of urgency when it comes to actually doing anything. The stakes for the season as a whole and each episode specifically just aren't high enough. And poor Rory is the only one who can be bothered to really invest himself in another character. 

I realize this all sounds harsh and a lot of you probably disagree with my assessment. I know a lot of people liked Matt Smith as the Doctor. A lot of people find him quirky. A lot of people think he was darker than the other Doctors. Having just re-watched season 6, I have to disagree with both of those assessments. I find him detached and self-involved (not in the good way), stuck in a series of lackluster stories. Again, with the notable exception of The Doctor's Wife, which is delicious in part because it has a glimmer of genuine emotion in it. But all of this is to say, while there was a bright spot (maybe two) in an otherwise dull three years of Doctor Who, I cannot wait for August 23 when Peter Capaldi takes over in the lead role. Because all in all, I love the Doctor. I have since I met him, standing in a doorway with a bride looking at the birth of our planet. He deserves better. And I have faith that Capaldi can bring it. 

Here's to August 23!

March 3 - Old Friends

I sometimes go through self-imposed Doctor Who droughts, where I don't let myself watch any, no matter how tempting, for a certain amount of time. I'm not sure I can explain why. It's sort of a safety mechanism I've developed to help keep myself from getting too sad that I'm not (and likely never will be) on the show, I guess. A reminder that I have to live in this world where the Doctor and the TARDIS are fiction. Sad and pathetic, perhaps, but I'm okay with my droughts. 

And then I break the drought and watch an episode and it's like finding my old friends again. I know so many of the words by heart, but they still make me laugh. I know the stories by heart, and they still move me to tears. It's weird to watch them now that I've been to the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff and been on the TARDIS set - I'm watching thinking, "I've been there!" It almost makes me think I could really be there someday. 

Hi, Doctor. I've missed you, my friend. 

December 30 - An Ending

I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I thought the Doctor Who Christmas special wherein the regeneration happened was terrible. There are spoilers below, so if you haven't seen it, you might want to stop now.

Okay, yet again, the Doctor and his companion are not together at the start of the episode. Why the fuck not? If she's the companion, why doesn't she actually travel with the Doctor? Why doesn't Moffatt want the companions to actually be anywhere near the Doctor?

They come together not because he needs her help or wants her around, but because she needs someone to play the part of her boyfriend at Christmas dinner. But the Doctor doesn't do Christmas - this is well established. And she needs him to leave a planet surrounded by every villain the Doctor has ever faced so he can pretend to be her boyfriend. And he goes. What the fuck?

The whole nudity thing was completely unnecessary time-filler.

So then there's this big thing about signal being heard through the entire universe and for some reason, the Doctor has befriended the head of a Cyberman which can translate the signal and identify the planet...that the TARDIS can't. What's wrong with the TARDIS that it can't identify the signal or the planet?

And then we meet another woman who has some rather forced sexual tension with the Doctor while Clara is exposed to the Silents. Why are the Silents there? Why are they not killing the people in the temple mainframe? But this temple mainframe thing can put the Doctor onto the surface of the sort-of-unidentified planet (or mis-identified planet), but he's not allowed to take technology with him and they see through his holographic clothing to see his TARDIS key, but they can't see through his wig? Which, again, completely unnecessary time-filler to have him be actually bald but wearing a wig.

So he gets his TARDIS back on the surface of the planet and finds the crack in the wall, because we haven't been saturated with enough throw-backs to rather dull things that happened in the last few years, and the signal coming through the crack is the question, "Doctor Who?" which the Time Lords are asking because they want to be able to identify that they have found the Doctor and can therefore return to this universe. Oh, and the Doctor also seems to have forgotten everything that happened in the 50th anniversary special episode, as he protests the possibility of the existence of Gallifrey and other Time Lords existing. But the Doctor is now in the position of either saying his name, which will allow Time Lords to return and the Time War to resume, or he can leave the planet, which means all of the baddies surrounding it will burn the planet and the seemingly dozen people who live there in the town called Christmas where you can't lie. So what does the Doctor do?

Nothing.

He does nothing. He takes no action. He sends Clara away via the Rose Tyler fake-out, and then proceeds to give up and grow old in this town called Christmas. Because apparently, if he just dies there of natural causes, the possibility of burning up the planet is taken away? And why don't the baddies, who hate the Doctor anyway (as evidenced by the fact that they keep trying to break into Christmas town to kill him) just burn the planet as some point anyway? His method of "protecting" the planet is disabling the tech that comes to kill him. (And seriously, who equips a wooden Cyberman with a flame thrower? Did nobody see that potential conflict of "technology?") He's not actually scaring the baddies away. If they all banded together to burn the planet in the 300 or so years the Doctor is doing nothing, the whole thing could be taken care of in a matter of seconds.

But then poor Clara has to return, and be sent away again, and return again, so she can tell the crack in the wall that he is, in fact the Doctor and that's all they need to know, so they send him some extra regeneration energy (which is, apparently also now a nuclear weapon of sorts), and he decimates the surface of the planet himself, thereby somehow magically saving everyone and taking his own sweet time regenerating into Peter Capaldi. Who did have a really fun line at the end.

So basically, we got sixty minutes of plot holes, forced sentimentally that ultimately failed, the Doctor doing nothing but talking about how he's lost hope and is going to die, and one funny line from Peter Capaldi.

Thank goodness for Peter Capaldi.

And can we get someone other than Stephen Moffatt to write the big, important episodes from here on out so they have, you know, something going on?

November 23 - Happy Anniversary

Hello, Doctor,

You probably don't remember this, but the first time I met you, you were a skinny, rat-looking man standing in a doorway with a bride, looking at the creation of the Earth from rocks and dust and gas in the universe. How could I not fall in love with you?

We've been on many adventures, you and I. I am always in the role of observer, but I have treasured every moment we have spent together. And today, on the 50th anniversary of the first day you shared your amazing life with those of us on this tiny planet, I want to say thank you. When I am down, you are there to comfort me. When I am joyous, you are there to share the wonders of the universe with me. When you looked like David Tennant, you showed me what kind of energy and enthusiasm I want to bring to every role I play in my own career as an actor. You make me laugh. You make me weep. You give me hope and fill my imagination with impossible dreams. You taught me there is beauty in everything, and empathy for everyone. You taught me that everyone deserves a chance, everyone deserves to be helped, and that words are the most powerful tools we can use. You taught me that everyone is important, every life is beautiful. You taught me to keep loving, even in the face of tremendous loss. I know I've only known you a few short years (as measured here on the slow path), but I can barely remember a time when I didn't know you, and can't imagine a future time without you.

Thank you for sharing your life with me. Even if you never look like me, and even if you never pop by my place to pick me up for a ride, I take tremendous comfort in knowing you exist. I hope you are still traveling long after I am gone, because the universe needs a man like you.

Happy birthday, Doctor. Happy anniversary, Doctor. Thank you for the brilliance you have brought into my life.

She that thou knowest thine,
Kitty

November 11 - Spoilers

I remember when Terminator 2 came out, one of my friends got to see the film before he saw any trailers or ads for it, so he didn't know that Arnold was the good guy this time around. I apologize for spoiling that bit just now for any of you who haven't seen Terminator 2 yet but seriously, the movie is how old? And you've not seen it yet? I'm guessing you don't plan to. And besides, the blog post is titled "Spoilers." I consider that fair warning.

Anyway, my friend got to see Terminator 2 not knowing that Arnold was the good guy, so he got to experience the terror of "oh god, he's back" right alongside the characters in the film. I thought to myself, "What a lovely way to see a movie - the same way the characters do, with no foreknowledge of what is coming." And ever since then, I've had this ongoing internal battle over whether to watch trailers and advertisements and whatnot beforehand.

On the one hand, it's fun to see what's in store. It's fun to get a glimpse of Middle Earth before the next Hobbit movie comes out. It's cool to see what your favorite actors look like dressed as characters you grew up with. And trailers are a very useful marketing tool - if we didn't see the trailer for some film we'd never heard of, how would we know if we wanted to spent thirteen dollars to see it in 3D or if the eleven dollar 2D version will suffice?

But a large portion of the joy of watching something new, or reading something new, is allowing the story to take you on this unexpected journey. Being surprised by plot twists or character introductions. Building the world of the story piece by piece. If you know what all of the pieces are going in, you spend more time waiting for the next reveal than enjoying what is happening in front of you right now. At least, that is my experience with spoilers. And the real kicker here is that sometimes, the stunts they show in trailers are from footage left on the cutting room floor, so you can spend an entire film waiting for one specific moment you loved from the trailer that never actually happens in the film. And you leave frustrated and disappointed by what was otherwise a lovely movie.

So the 50th anniversary Doctor Who episode is "airing" around the world on November 23rd. Which means the interweb is inundated at the moment with trailers and sneak peeks and photos from the set and whatnot. And I am trying my hardest to not look at any of it. I don't want to know the plot before I show up to the theater that afternoon. I don't want to know how the three versions of the Doctor will interact. In many ways, I think it's bad enough that I know three versions of the Doctor will be in the episode and I don't want to spoil it any further by knowing anything else about it before I see it. I want to be surprised. I want to experience the episode in the moment. I want to watch the plot unfold before my eyes, not spend the whole episode waiting for a specific explosion or line or plot point. I honestly don't want to know until I get there.

So what do you think of spoilers and trailers and inside looks and sneak peeks? Do they enhance your viewing experience or ruin it? I know why they exist; I'm not debating that. I just sometimes wish they were easier to avoid under certain circumstances.

August 29 - An Explanation

I woke up in my bed to the sound of my alarm, my cat gently nuzzling my arm. I stretched and yawned, preparing myself to face whatever this Friday had to bring. A quick look at my phone, though, showed me it was Thursday, not Friday. I was sure it was Friday. This had been a particularly long week, and I was looking forward to it being over, so I knew it was Friday. Another look at my phone confirmed it was, in fact, Thursday. As my hand reached up to rub my tired eyes, I felt a small amulet around my neck…

It started with a noise.

A completely strange noise, yet oddly familiar. What was that noise? Where was it coming from? It was a sort of whooshing noise, with a whale cry and loud thump at the end of it. I was groggy and half-asleep still, and thought it must be my neighbors watching something on the television with the volume turned up too high. But then other noises followed – running, scuffling, shouting in the street. Not the usual shouting from the angry homeless man who likes to rage at God at three o’clock in the morning, but a different kind of shouting. Purposeful. Coherent. British.

I stumbled to my open living room window, intent on telling whoever was making this noise to button it. Instead, I saw large, muscular reptilian creature holding a tall, skinny man in a suit over his head in what was soon to be a body slam onto the curb. The skinny man held aloft a small glowing sphere, keeping it as far from the creature’s reach as possible. As if by magic, his eyes caught mine and he yelled, “Take this!” and hurled the glowing sphere toward my open window. I caught it and he yelled, “Run!” as the muscular creature dropped him on the sidewalk and headed for my apartment building’s front door.

“Oh shit,” I thought. I slipped on the nearest pair of shoes I could find, grabbed my keys, and ran for the back door, forever grateful that I had recently moved into an apartment that had both a front and a back door. I heard the creature rampaging up the front stairs as I bolted down the back and out the door. No sooner had I emerged onto the dark city street than a hand grabbed mine and again yelled, “Run!” We were off down the alley.

It wasn’t a long run, which was fortunate as the shoes I put on were not built for cross country sports. Also because what I saw before me made my knees buckle and I skidded and crashed to the ground. “Come on, get inside,” shouted the skinny man as he helped me to my feet and into the large blue box.

“It can’t be…” I stammered.

“It is,” he replied with a knowing smile.

“But…but…that’s a television show. It’s not real.” I could feel tears of joy and confusion and fear and anger welling up behind my eyes. Somebody had to be playing a trick on me. There was no possible way I was standing in the control room of a spaceship disguised as a police box with a tall, skinny man in a suit who had just told me to run. “Who put you up to this?”

“Up to what?”

“This. Who put you up to this, and where did they get one of these that is actually bigger on the inside?”

“It is actually bigger on the inside. It’s the chameleon circuit…”

“I know your chameleon circuit is broken. Everybody knows your chameleon circuit is broken. What I want to know is which of my friends thought it would be a fun joke to wake me up in the middle of the night to stage something like this, and how did they make the alley look so much like the alley with this thing inside it?”

“Oh, you’re a feisty one aren’t you?”

“No, really, where did they get the drops to hide the rest of the set?” I went for the door to take a look around and see how this marvelously cruel practical joke had been staged.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he warned.

“Why not?” I opened the door to the sharp teeth and hammer hands of the large, muscular reptilian creature.

“That’s why.”

I shut the door again and promptly fell on my butt, sobbing because I couldn’t not anymore.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey there. You’re okay. You’re safe in here. The assembled hoardes…”

“…of Ghengis Khan couldn’t get through those doors, and believe me they’ve tried.” We finished his sentence together. I had heard it a million times before, and here I was saying it along with him.

“Are you really him?” I asked.

“Oh yes.”

“But you don’t look like him. I mean, not the him I’m used to.”

“Well, they had to get an actor to play me on television, didn’t they? I’m rather busy most days.”

“So how much of it is real?”

“All of it. Well, most of it. Well, some of it. They have to employ a bit of a creative license from time to time, and some names have been changed to protect the innocent, and that bit that was leaked on the internet about me hating pears is completely false – it’s rhubarb I’m not a big fan of – but beyond that, I’d say it’s mostly pretty accurate.”

“And that thing outside?”

“Nasty fellow. Do you have the object I threw to you?”

I produced the glowing sphere from my tightly clenched fist. I hadn’t realized I was holding it so tightly that my fingernails cut small half-moons into my palm. “What is it?”

“That, my darling girl, could fix all of the Earth’s energy problems.” He rolled it around between his thumb and forefinger and looked at it with the reverence one might show a holy relic of old. “It is a dwarf sun from the Fizzigypsun System, encased in Midnight diamond. All of the power of a sun – the solar energy, wind energy, hydroelectric energy that can be produced from the natural nuclear reactor that is a sun’s core – in the palm of your hand. You could terraform a new planet with that thing, or plug it into your electrical grid here on Earth and voila! Free, clean renewable energy for everyone! Nice catch, by the way.”

“So what does Mr. WWF out there want with it?”

“There are two sides to every nuclear reaction. He prefers the side that goes boom, and I’m not about to let him blow up a planet of innocents.”

“How are we going to get rid of him?” I asked.

“Already done. Take a look outside.” The skinny man’s eyes twinkled in a way no human eyes can. The anticipation of seeing something familiar through a new pair of eyes had him as excited as a child on Christmas morning.

I walked back to the door and opened it slowly. A brilliant, lavender light met my eyes, momentarily blinding me as I stepped from the relative dark of the blue box onto what could only be foreign ground. The smell of lilacs danced on the breeze, which was cool yet comforting. Blades of soft blue jasmine grass brushed at my ankles, tickling me ever so slightly. A brilliant orange sun hung in the lavender sky, and in the distance, I could see mountains unlike any I had seen before.

“This is Fizzigypsun Six,” said the skinny man as he stepped out of the blue box. “The dwarf sun you are holding belongs here. It was taken by the Schlanglinial to be used as a weapon against the Fizzigyps, and you have helped me return it to its rightful place in the Universe.” He took my hand and squeezed it gently. “Come on,” he said as we walked toward the distant Fizzigypsun mountains.

Within just a few moments, we were greeted by a small fuzzy creature with six legs, four arms, and giant anime eyes. The skinny man introduced us, and then handed over the sphere. The fuzzy creature thanked us, bowed deeply, and then threw back its head and shouted a rainbow into the air that fell down upon us in a gentle mist of flower petals. The skinny man took my hand once more and gently led me back to the blue box.

“Thank you,” I squeaked out, once again holding back tears of joy and astonishment.

“Thank you,” replied the skinny man. “You were brilliant.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Oh, but you did. If you hadn’t come to your window, the Fizzigyps might have never gotten their sun back. You saved a whole planet, a whole species.”

“I just heard a noise…”

“You were brilliant. And now, you’re home.”

“Home?”

“Yup. Right outside your apartment, just moments before I landed, so your front steps should be in order.”

“Okay, but with time travel, doesn’t that mean you’re going to show up again in a minute and the whole thing will happen all over again?”

“No. When we returned the dwarf sun to the Fizzigyps, we returned it moments after it was taken. My chase with the Schlanglinial all over the Universe never happened.”

“So what happens to me, then?”

“When you step out of those doors, the paradox of you traveling back on your own timeline will collapse in on itself and this version of you will cease to exist. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“But I don’t want to stop existing. I don’t want to forget what I saw and the way the air smelled on Fizzigypsun Six! You can’t take me on a journey through time and space and then take it all away from me again!” I protested as hot tears of anger and disappointment began to spill down my face. “And what about the rest of reality, as my paradox falls in on itself?”

The skinny man approached me slowly, and gently took me in his arms. “Take this,” he said as he placed a small amulet around my neck. “This will keep the paradox limited to you, so the rest of reality will be unharmed. You will meld back into your past self, and you won’t miss what you never knew happened.”

“I don’t want to go. I’ve wished for so long that you were real and now you’re here and I have to forget about you.”

He held me for a moment longer. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He wiped away my tears and looked at me with those brilliant alien eyes, reflecting my sorrow and regret and loss and disappointment.

“Take me with you,” I pleaded softly.

“I can’t. Not this time,” he replied, stepping back to arm’s length. “This is how it has to go.”

He walked me to the door, and held my hand as I stepped through. “You were brilliant,” he said with a smile as my hand fell away from his. “Absolutely brilliant.

I woke up in my bed to the sound of my alarm, my cat gently nuzzling my arm. I stretched and yawned, preparing myself to face whatever this Friday had to bring. A quick look at my phone, though, showed me it was Thursday, not Friday. I was sure it was Friday, and as my hand reached up to rub my tired eyes, I felt a small amulet around my neck…

August 4 - Huzzah!

So we've all been waiting with baited breath to find out who is going to play the twelfth incarnation of our beloved Doctor. Okay, maybe not all of us, but I was scared. Honestly scared. What if he was worse than Matt Smith? What if it was another unknown with little acting experience? What if it was someone who they hired to essentially do a Matt Smith impression? Part of me did not want to know who it was going to be. Part of me wanted to avoid the announcement day and stay offline until his reveal in the 50th anniversary special in November. 

But I couldn't. 

I pulled up the Daily Telegraph website and kept refreshing the live blog until it announced...Peter Capaldi. In all honesty, I could not be happier. 

Capaldi has experience in a wide variety of roles. He's older than some of the others who were rumored to be under consideration, which I think is a good direction to go in, following a string of younger (or at least younger-looking) Doctors that goes back quite a ways. I think the Doctor needs to be played by someone with experience and maturity, but also with fire and energy, and I think Peter Capaldi brings all of those things to the table as he takes on this role. My best guy friend is concerned with how they'll explain his appearances in "Fires of Pompeii" and "Torchwood: Children of Earth," but I think time-wise, those are both far enough removed from this regeneration that they shouldn't matter too much. And on the up side, his previous appearances in the Whoniverse give him a familiarity with it. 

I am so excited for Peter Capaldi to take on this role. I can't wait to see what he will do with it. Congratulations to a brilliant actor on landing the role of a lifetime!

July 2 - Stuff

I had perhaps the best dream I have ever had last night, and I woke up angry at the fact that I have to walk around and function in this world instead of in my dream world. Honestly, there are times when given a choice, I would rather live in my dreams. Last night was one of those times.

In my dream, I was working with David Tennant. We were shooting a television show (I think) that might have been a sort of cop drama, or it might have been Doctor Who where I was the Doctor and he was my companion, I'm not sure. At one point, I think I saw myself in a mirror wearing my Tenth Doctor suit, though it was somewhat worse for wear, losing color in odd patches on the trousers. Oddly enough, what we were filming wasn't nearly as important to me as how well we worked together. We just clicked. All of the amazing stuff that can happen on stage when you're perfectly in tune with your scene partner and you forget that you had to memorize these lines at one point because it just feels perfectly natural to say them happened in this dream. I felt that "on." If one of us went a little off script, the other one was right there, playing along, making a brilliant scene. I kept up with him brilliantly, though I did feel a little bit like we were confusing or befuddling some of the other actors around us, and that some of the crew had no idea what was going on, but there were going to follow us and keep rolling no matter what because they knew they were capturing magic. It was also the first night in a long time where I didn't wake up twenty minutes before my alarm was scheduled to go off, so when my alarm did go off, it startled me out of my dream and pissed me off. So I'm a little grumpy today.

But then I remember that in this world, I have an amazing, adorable, brilliant-beyond-brilliant niece who turns four today, and if I lived in my dreams, I wouldn't get to see her as much or give her hugs. So happy birthday to my favorite four year old. I'll trade David Tennant dreams for a squeeze from you any day.

June 15 - Um...

I have nothing wise or pithy to say today. But I do get to wear my Tenth Doctor suit tonight, so there's that.

Happy Saturday!

April 18 - Forty-Two

There is a man who turns forty-two today. Actually, I'm sure there are many men (and women) who turn forty-two today, but there is one in particular that I would like to talk about. I've never met him, but his existence holds special significance for me, as does the number forty-two, so I feel like I'm on a bit of a geek overload today.

This particular man gets to spend his forty second birthday filming the fiftieth anniversary episode of Doctor Who. If there is a geek Nirvana, that would be it.

Like I said, I've never met this man, and am therefore acutely aware of the fact that his significance to me could be considered really weird and creepy. This is partially why I'm posting about him here on my blog which he will likely never see as opposed to jumping on the Tumblr bandwagon or whatever. I don't want to come off as some crazy stalker fan with crazy expectations of meeting him someday or anything like that. I just want to try to put into words what his art means to me.

Because it is that - his art - that means the most to me. Don't get me wrong - by all accounts, he's a really nice guy and given the opportunity, I'd love to chat with him. Everyone I know who has met him says he is absolutely lovely. Whenever I see him interviewed, he is charming and intelligent and witty and fun. He seems like the sort who knows how lucky he is to do what he does and it seems like he treasures every moment of it. He also comes across as very well-balanced. He does not have his own Facebook or Twitter accounts, and he does not talk much about his personal life with the press. It seems to me like he has learned how to be an actor in the public eye without losing his right to privacy as a human being.

But his acting... I am drawn to him particularly because of the energy he pours into every project he does. Sometimes it's a bit much (like in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), but even when he is not stellar (which he is most of the time), he is fearless. He is present. He is invested. And he is so good in so many things. His Hamlet is brilliant. I've never seen him creepier than in Secret Smile. I think everyone who saw The Decoy Bride fell in love with him just a little bit. When some of my girl friends saw him for the first time in Fright Night, they said they completely understood my love and admiration for this man. There is even a silent short film called Traffic Warden where he's helping this woman get her goldfish back into water wherein he is so charming and delightful. At a time when being disconnected and apathetic is trendy, it is refreshing and brilliant to watch an actor who is invested, who is involved, who actually loves doing what he gets to do on a daily basis. And this brilliance is magnified by the fact that he happens to be a nice person who others enjoy working with at the same time. He did not have to choose between being nice and being talented - he has managed to do both. For that, I applaud him. Because of that, I look to him as an inspiration for who I want to be as a performer and what sort of career I would like to have.

(Side note: I'm not crazy person who wants to be him, but I am inspired by him to find my voice as a performer and mold my career into something I can be proud of from all viewpoints.)

So today, on his forty second birthday, when much of the internet is saying that he is now officially the answer to life, the universe, and everything, I would just like to say thank you. Thank you, David Tennant, for... Just thank you. I hope I get to work with you someday, and if I ever have that opportunity, I hope I am able to keep up. If I don't, I hope you get to see my Hamlet someday and I hope it makes you smile.

Happy birthday, David Tennant, and here is to many, many more.

April 1 - He's Back!

Rabbit rabbit!

Happy April Fool's Day!

Okay, though, this blog is not a joke. I'm not trying to fool anyone, I'm not messing with you, this is one I started composing in my head last night that just happens to be published on April 1. I promise, I am not kidding. Though there may be spoilers, so if you want to stop reading now, I'll completely understand.

My Doctor is back.

I'm caught up on Doctor Who - I finally watched the Christmas episode and I saw the first episode of the second half of Series 7 and I have to say, I breathed a giant sigh of relief. I feel (almost) like my Doctor is back. So much of what I have been missing about the show has returned. So much, in fact, that I'm willing to overlook a few silly things that kind of bother me, but whatever. I'll get to that in a minute.

Kidding, I'll get to that part right now. I don't like the new TARDIS control room. Yes, it is a bit of a throwback to, say, the 4th Doctor days, looking more industrial/art deco, but it has removed any and all traces of the TARDIS as a living thing. I would have hoped that after The Doctor's Wife, we would be more in tune with the TARDIS as a living thing, but I guess not. Oh well. I'm also not a fan of the Doctor's new coat. I don't think this Doctor has the panache to pull off a coat of that length and twirliness. And as much as I thought his catch phrase of "Geronimo" was silly and forced, I think his seemingly new catch phrase of "Shut up" is worse. "Shut up" is the mark of a slow mind that is easily flustered. "Shut up" is what you say when you've lost (either the argument or your temper) and can't think of a better way out of the situation. The Doctor is better than that. He's too clever for that.

BUT...and I cannot stress enough how big of a but this is...the Doctor loves Clara. He's not IN love with her (not yet, anyway) the way he was with Rose, but he loves her. He cares about her. He chose her. He was more invested in Clara by the halfway point of the Christmas episode than he ever was in Amy. I don't know if it is the writing or if Matt Smith grew as an actor, but the love in his face when he looked at Clara was absolutely gorgeous. That, just that, is what I have been missing for the past two and a half seasons. I don't really care why they decided he should become a hermit after losing the Ponds (who he totally could go find if he gave a shit about them), and I really don't mind the spiral staircase that seemed to twirl both ways as it led up into the clouds, and I am willing to look past the still somewhat simplistic resolutions to the storylines because the Doctor cares about something. He has connected to his companion. I think Doctor Who has lasted as long as it has because even though it is about an alien, it has been a show about the characters - the difficult decisions they have to make, the joys they share together, the wonder with which they get to see the universe. Bringing back a companion with whom the Doctor connects brings us back to stories about characters. When he connects to his companion, we connect to him, and the whole world of the show is open to us.

I really enjoy Clara, too. I'm interested to see where they're going with her - what is she? Is she Kenny from South Park in a much prettier package? Is it going to be some weird Doctor Who/Orphan Black crossover like my friend thought when he saw the trailer for one immediately after the other? But most of all, I like her because she is curious, she is smart, she is clever, she is sassy and sexy without being slutty, and she can keep up with the Doctor. Really keep up with him, not just shoot little insulting comebacks at him.

So for the first time since David Tennant gave up the role, I am looking forward to new episodes of Doctor Who. My show is back. And baseball is back. Though I'm guessing the Cubs will be a disappointment again this year, but at least I can see potential in Doctor Who again, so there's that.

My Doctor is back.

February 12 - Series Seven

I'm telling you right now, this blog post is going to be supremely geeky. I am also telling you right now that this blog post will contain spoilers for Series 7 of Doctor Who. I presume most of you who like Doctor Who will have seen these episodes already (up to and including "The Angels Take Manhattan" but not the Christmas episode as I have still not seen that one), but if you haven't and you plan to, stop reading right now and come back tomorrow.

Fair warning? Fair warning.

Okay.

I know this is going to be a wildly unpopular opinion, but I was disappointed in Series 7 and I was glad to see the Ponds exit, even though it was a really stupid exit. Really stupid. The Doctor has problems landing the TARDIS in New York because there are too many time disturbances, so when Amy and Rory are zapped away by the Weeping Angels, he can't come get them, so he'll never see them again. Question: why don't they leave New York and go somewhere that has fewer time disturbances so he can pick them up there? Question: How come he has had no problems landing in Cardiff which is on top of a GIANT RIFT IN THE SPACE TIME CONTINUUM, but New York is a bit sketchy? Question: How did the angel take Rory and Amy with the Doctor and River Song looking directly at it? Question: If the angel can zap Rory and Amy with the Doctor and River looking at it, why didn't it zap the Doctor and River, too? How did they get away from it? Question: If you're going to point out the fact that New York is the city that never sleeps, how do you work it so that the Statue of Liberty can get from the island on which it resides to a hotel in downtown Manhattan before anyone looks at it to freeze it in place? Question: If the Doctor can land the TARDIS in a graveyard that is just across the river from Manhattan, why is it so freaking sad that Amy and Rory get zapped to an older New York? I mean, seriously. It's set up so they don't even have to get back to England for him to be able to land there; they just have to get to Jersey. That's walking distance. If the New York City skyline is visible in the background of the graveyard where the TARDIS is parked, and they can get into New York to do the things they have to do in the episode while the TARDIS is parked in the graveyard, there is absolutely no reason why this should be goodbye forever. None. It was a stupid, lazy exit.

Now, maybe there are those who want it to be a stupid, lazy exit so that the characters of Amy and Rory can come back in some future episode. I was glad to be rid of them. I liked Rory - he kept the show going for me in a lot of ways in a way that the lack of chemistry between Amy and the Doctor didn't. And I know, I know, there are those who are going to say the Doctor and Amy had great chemistry. Well, let's look at the episode with all of the little black boxes for a minute, shall we? I was enjoying that episode for a while - it had intrigue, mystery, some big plot (I like the idea of a slow invasion) - but then it all got wrapped up so quickly with a little quick fix that it felt rather anti-climactic to me. I think it could have easily been a two-part episode with some nefarious plan that required some tricky resolution, but they just had to wait for the hologram to go away and reverse the energy signal. Really? That's it? Also, how did the hologram shoot lasers at them? But anyway. At one point in this episode, the little boxes open and become attuned to the closest human heart so they can make it stop beating, killing loads and loads of humans all at the same time. The Doctor is affected by one such box. Which, first off, neither of his hearts is a human heart and if the boxes didn't affect birds or fish or squirrels, why did they stop one of his hearts? And as neither heart is human but they somehow stopped one of them anyway, why didn't they stop both of them, sparking his regeneration? But putting all of that aside, the Doctor is sitting there in the middle of a pretty severe cardiac episode and Amy rolls her eyes at his pain. She ROLLS HER EYES. There is a specific shot of her rolling her eyes at him. Does she not care that half of his circulatory system has shut down? Does she not care that he is in pain? It happened in a previous episode that one heart stopped and the companion at the time (Martha Jones, a medical student) did everything that she could to get it beating again immediately. Whereas Amy rolls her eyes. And waits through two or three minutes of screen time (which probably translates to ten minutes of real life time) before doing anything about it. Which amounted to noticing that she was passing a portable defibrillator while walking down the hall and using it on him once he finally collapsed. This is chemistry?

This is what was lacking in the entire Pond run for me. I never felt like the Doctor and Amy truly cared about each other. I never felt like Amy truly cared for Rory, either, despite the writers doing their best to make sure we knew she would pick Rory over the Doctor any day. There was a deleted scene wherein the Doctor told Amy that he brought her with him because he wanted to see the universe anew through her eyes, which (for me) implied that he could have taken anyone. There was nothing special about Amy. In the episode with all of the little black boxes, he said he wasn't running from anything (which previous incarnations of the Doctor said they were running from things, so I wonder when that changed), but instead he was running to Amy because she was the first face his new face saw. Which (for me) implies that this is a companionship of convenience, not of mutual respect, admiration, attraction, etc. He keeps bringing her along places because she is there. Which also explains why it was so easy for him to ditch her at the end of every episode, so at the beginning of each new episode, we have to waste all of this time with him getting her from somewhere, them rehashing what has happened since they were last together, before we can get to the story. If they just stuck together from one episode to the next, maybe we could have spent more time on an interesting resolution to the situation at hand instead. (I also think they could have done without the bookend voice overs in every episode this season, but that's another issue.)

I hope the writers allow the Doctor to become invested in his new companion on some level. I don't care what level - he can fall in love, he can feel like a protective father figure, he can find a new best friend. But I didn't see any of that happen with Amy, and I didn't see Amy invest in the Doctor, either, which made the whole tone of the show feel very...non-committal. I want to be invested in the characters I watch. I want to watch dedicated actors being dedicated to their craft. If I want to watch apathetic people bumbling around together, I'll turn on some reality TV. I want my Doctor back. A Doctor who cares about something. Preferably his companion. And I want stories that make me think and analyze what's going on, that don't have giant plot holes in them.

I hope they change things with this new companion. I love the Doctor too much to let him go, but it's killing me to watch him not live up to his potential. He's the freaking Doctor, for crying out loud. He's better than this.