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A favourite family show in our house is BBC's Doctor Who. (The rebooted version, not the sixties original. Only because that's the only one we've had the opportunity to watch.)
We've been Whovians for a few years now, but we're not exactly "caught up." My husband and oldest son watched the first ten seasons when they were on Netflix a few years ago. When the show was taken down, I bought the first ten seasons on disc and we've been watching them as a family during our weekend T.V. time. Last night, we finished season seven.
For those who are unfamiliar with the premise of the show, the Doctor is the last Time Lord with a time machine/spaceship that looks like a 1950s police call box known as the T.A.R.D.I.S. The Doctor travels around in time and space with humans to provide companionship and the balance he needs and remind him why he keeps trying. His particular superpowers include the ability to regenerate into a completely new body instead of dying (thus, Matt Smith, the Doctor in Season 7, is the Eleventh Doctor). Each iteration of himself is not only a different body but also a slightly different personality, with their own catchphrases and fashion sense.
If you ask any Whovian who their favourite doctor is, they will most definitely have an opinion. For me, it was David Tennant (but I have never seen any of the original episodes or the latest doctor, played by Jodie Whittaker, the first woman Doctor, who is now in her third season).
But Matt Smith runs a close second. Why? He's so optimistic.
And the writers gave him so many good lines. :-)
To be fair, they give all the doctors good lines. The very nature of the Doctor (who at the end of Season 7 is over 1,100 years old) is that he has seen a lot, had to make some hard decisions for the good of the universe, lives with the consequences of those decisions, and still values all life, but especially sees the value and uniqueness of human beings, his favourite species.
"There's no such thing as an ordinary human," said the Tenth Doctor, played by David Tennant.
That optimism is present throughout the series, but especially through seasons 5-7 in Matt Smith's iteration. And with the number of times the Doctor has saved the universe, it's amazing how the writers keep finding new ways to up the stakes in each successive season.
Why does that matter right now?
We're in the middle of one of the weirdest crises humanity has ever had to face. It's both a health crisis and a financial one. Everyone has opinions about the best way to move forward, and most of them conflict. And the grief and anxiety surrounding the sudden change in our lives is revealing our characters on levels perhaps never experienced before.
It does no good to push aside the darkness within us or around us. Like the Doctor, we need to face it head on, embrace it, and use it to remind us of what we are fighting for and why it matters.
When it comes down to it, we have to remember that the people we're fighting with are also the people we're fighting for.
How does that change the way we fight?
And what story will be told about how we won the war?
I started this post thinking I would leave you only with words of wisdom from the Eleventh Doctor. But as I searched for the quote I needed to finish this off, it is in the Twelfth Doctor's words (played by Peter Capaldi), the iteration of the Doctor as a man who is grumpy and old and looking for a reason to fight and live again, that I found what I was looking for.
"I fought in a bigger war than you will ever know. I did worse things than you could ever imagine, and when I close my eyes, I hear more screams than anyone would be able to count.
"And do you know what you do with all that pain? You hold it tight until it burns your hand. And you say this: no one else will ever have to live like this. No one else will ever have to feel this pain. Not on my watch."
(I haven't seen this episode yet, but this scene from it brought me to tears. I recommend watching it.)
As we all struggle forward through the morass of 2020, I hope we take the Doctor's wisdom to heart. Because it's not in winning that we win. It's in loving, and learning from our pain, and saying "We're going to be better from here on out so no one else will have to live like this."
This is our time, friends. This is the war we will be remembered by, and the story that will be told about our generation is how we win it. Make it a good one, eh?
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