The Showdown

My discovery of Doctor Who in the sixth grade was one of the greatest things that could've happened to me in a time when I had few people to look up to and had a little understanding of the vast world around me. It was a British Sci-Fi series that blew open the closing casket that was my mind, It was just amazing. I had found it on Netflix while I was just surfing through random sections, it was a strange show for me to watch at around thirteen, at least to me it is. I would only imagine someone running into a show like Doctor Who either due to someone older than them pointing it out to them, or just discovering it like I did, just randomly. This show was the beginning of an adventure that would cost me a “few sick” days from school and hours of my time that could've been spent doing something productive.

This first season of Doctor Who, this is the newer version of the 2000s not the original, was filled with the end of the earth and some weird flesh woman; as well as the discovery of multiple threats across the Universe, it was so freakin’ awesome to see a single man in a black leather coat do unbelievable things, he could do anything he please at any instant. Of course I can't forget to mention his companion Rose Tyler, who just decided to jump into his interdimensional time machine for the sake of doing it. All of this was occuring during a time when I could hardly cope with moving into a new home and going to a completely different school, where I had to get new friends and learn about a new environment I was not entirely accustomed to. However the part that meant most to me was yet to come, in a future season that was only hours away on a slowly degrading couch.

When I had reached about season 2 and 3 I was taken away by the amazing new Doctor, I'm not sure what regeneration, but the new actor David Tennant. He was an absolutely powerful actor, who transformed the Doctor into a person that I had looked up to. On the episode of the Christmas Invasion, when a massive spaceship comes to Earth and threatens to wipe I believe a third of the human population, he gets up out of nowhere and confronts the horrid aliens threatening humanity. He was so confident, and ready to challenge them first, not with violence, but with the power of words. He did not jump to attacks as his first instinct, but stared down the leader of this young group of marauders, and told the leader to leave. Then, they completely ignored his words, and jumped to destroy The Doctor. He was quick to take a sword from an alien guard and challenge the leader to a duel. I didn't have it fully laid out and understood then, but after watching this episode again a couple of weeks ago, I realized how amazing it was to know that I didn't have to stare down my foes and put them through detriment, that I could stand on my two legs through the mere usage of words. I never knew the held so much power, of course he didn't win because of words until the end when the Prime Minister, a middle aged woman primed to take vengeance for her lost friends while on board the spaceship. After she ordered the the destruction of the ship, The Doctor whispered into her secretary's ear and said: "Doesn't she look tired?". This drove her insane, and made her rethink her decision.

Still my main fascination with the show, that I didn't truly understand until now- again, was the aspect of reinvention. How someone could simply just be in a chaotic state in life and then be refreshed. After The Doctor had reached the end of his life or was killed in some way, he was able to regenerate to then become a new person. This is what had happened between seasons one and two. He was now the Doctor played by David Tennant, he was someone who didn't let certain actions pass by, he was all powerful yet merciful. For me, I marked my "regenerations" based on whenever I had gotten a new phone. I imagined that it was like my sonic screwdriver, something that had changed along with the body of the Doctor after every regeneration. It was something crazy, but I had only been able to get a new phone whenever there was money, and that was rare. So every couple of three or four years, I would prepare for a new version of me to come to fruition. Would I be confident or powerless? That was up to the phone, but maybe not. It was nice to think that every adventure that I crossed along my path to "regeneration", was a step closer to becoming someone that I could admire, some who could face situations with little hesitation and was ready to look at danger like a sleeping kitten- with pure delight.