Doctor Who: Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways...

[fajrdrako]

So I got up this morning to my usual routine: out of bed, shower, uncover the birds.... And then settled down with a cup of coffee, a bowl of oatmeal, and the last two episodes of season 1 Doctor Who.

It was wonderful. I went up to see maaseru in a sniffly/happy state. "Was it sad?" she asked. "Intense," said I.

Later on, she referred casually to me being in a state of "fannish pon farr". I do love having friends who understand.

So: I have a little more perspective on the show now. It seemed to me that the 'hero's journey' of season 1 is actually Rose's story, not the Doctor's story, and it's all a coming of age story - one in which she achieves godhood, then goes full circle to selfhood. It's all Rose's adventure. The Doctor's too, but he is adventure, and godhood, and humanity, and all sorts of things wrapped into one. Perhaps they are two of my favourite Tarot cards - Rose as the Fool on her life's journey, with the Doctor as the magician who transforms everything and sets things right - as well as tearing things apart. There's some lovely transcendentalism here.

More to the point, it occurs to me that Doctor Who is what I always wanted John Constantine to be - and what he was, in the beginning, when Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman shaped him, before Jamie Delano got his hands on him and made him a loser.

Even Mickey comes through as a hero in The Parting of the Ways. And Jackie, too. There were many ways in which that episode surprised me - and for someone who complains that they aren't surprised enough in popular literature, I've been getting a lot of stunning surprises lately.

And of course, I love the mushy bits.