World Enough and Time

30 Days of Doctor Who: Question 30: The moment you fell in love with Doctor Who.



Not a moment, exactly, but an episode.

I'd already come to love the Doctor himself because of his wonderful speech to Rose in Rose, which I've already quoted here:

Do you know like we were saying? About the Earth revolving? It's like when you're a kid. The first time they tell you that the world's turning and you just can't quite believe it 'cause everything looks like it's standing still. I can feel it. [He takes Rose's hand.] The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at 1,000 miles an hour and the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour, and I can feel it. We're falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go... That's who I am.

I fell in love with the show, above and beyond just loving the protagonist, with the episode Dalek. I'd heard about Daleks, of course, but I'd never seen them before. And I was under the impression still that Doctor Who was a show full of silly monsters and improbably situations - the first few episodes I saw here did nothing to make me change my mind.

The: Dalek. Nuances. Shades of meaning. Ideas beyond cliches. Characterization of heroes, bystanders, villains, and monsters. A plot which changed the main characters, and changed the situation, and changed the tenor of the show.

Doctor Who does not always live up to the potential I saw in that episode, but it had met the mark more often than I dared to expect.

30 Days of Doctor Who: Question 28: Favourite character who appears in one episode.

Jenny, the Doctor's daughter.



From episode 4x06, "The Doctor's Daughter", of course. I loved that episode. I loved Jenny, and thought it was great to see Nigel Terry. I loved the way Donna related to both Jenny and the Doctor, and tried to reconcile them, and to find out about the Doctor's past. I loved Jenny's personality, her talents, and her fate. I loved it that Martha was in the episode, too, and did her part towards creating the peace.

I love it that Jenny is out there somewhere in the universe, having her Time Lord adventures.

I've always hoped we'll see her again.

30 Days of Doctor Who: Question 26: Favourite companion's family member.



Jackie Tyler.

I can't think of anything I didn't like about Jackie. Some favourite Jackie moments:

- trying to help Rose in "The Parting of the Ways" by consoling her
- slapping the Doctor in "Aliens of London"
- believing in the ghosts in "Army of Ghosts"
- flirting with the Doctor in "Rose"

30 Days of Doctor Who: Question 24: Favourite accessory of the Doctor.

The Doctor has so many wonderful things. The TARDIS goes without saying; so does the sonic screwdriver. I don't want to say anything so obvious.

So I will choose that wonderful, wonderful notebook he had to make notes and to doodle in: The Journal of Impossible Things from episode 3.8, "Human Nature":

30 Days of Doctor Who: Question 21: Favourite setting..

Dr. Henry Van Statten's underground hoard of artifacts from series 1, episode 6, "Dalek".

I loved that episode. I thought Dr. Henry Van Statten was one of the better villains, and I loved the idea of his mysterious American underground bunker of high-tech memorabilia, oddities an aliens.



I really, really wanted Dr. Henry Van Statten and his collection to crop up in an episode of Torchwood, or even just to be mentioned, but it never happened.

30 Days of Doctor Who: Question 18: Favourite Amy moment.

I'm not a great fan of Amy Pond; despite a great start and a few magnificent scenes, she doesn't have the emotional impact on me that Rose, Jack, Martha and Donna did, and I put it down to Steven Moffat's writing.

Her best moment was in her first episode, where the young Amy waited for the Doctor to come back. And waited. And waited.

30 Days of Doctor Who: Question 16: Favourite Martha moment.

Every Martha moment is a favourite moment. I love her intelligence, her humour, her persistence, her courage, her loving spirit, and, most of all, her curiosity. The way she relates to everyone, and really listens to people when they speak to her. So my favourite "Martha" moments are pretty much whenever she talks to anyone.

I'm taking three choices here:

1. I love our last glimpse of Martha, in "The End of Time", as an adventurer with a gun, running for her life (and no doubt the safety of the universe) with her husband Mickey.
   
   
   - - -
   
   
2. From "Gridlock": I love it that Marthe pushes through the Doctor's façade and gets him to talk about himself - especially when it's a lie and a fantasy:
   
   
   The Doctor: How about another planet?
   Martha Jones: Can we go to yours?
   The Doctor: Nah, there's plenty of other places.
   Martha Jones: Come on, though. I mean "Planet of the Time Lords". That's gotta be worth a look. What's it like?
   The Doctor: It's beautiful, yeah... The sky's burnt orange, with the citadel enclosed in a mighty glass dome, shining under the twin suns. Beyond that, the mountains go on forever. Slopes of deep red grass, capped with snow.
   Martha Jones: Can we go there?
   [pause]
   The Doctor: Nah, where's the fun for me? I don't want to go home.
   
   
   
   
   - - -
   
   
3. Not a scene in Doctor Who at all, but in Torchood: I love Marthe's conversation with Gwen Cooper about sex with Captain Jack:
   
   
   Gwen Cooper: Um, so, you know Jack pretty well, then?
   Martha Jones: Oh, we were only together for a few days, but it was pretty intense.
   Gwen Cooper: You mean...
   Martha Jones: Oh, God, no, no! No! Not that sort of intense! No, nothing like that.
   [they laugh]
   Martha Jones: Why, are you and him...
   Gwen Cooper: No! No! Not at all!
   Martha Jones: We must be the only two people on the planet.
   Gwen Cooper: I know. What are we doing wrong?
   
   
   I love it that she liked Jack, and appreciated him, both in the sense of finding him intersting and attractive, and seeing him as a fell-companion whose life with the Doctor hadn't entirely run smooth.
   
   

30 Days of Doctor Who: Question 14: Favourite Doctor moment.

Don't I even get Top Ten here...? No, to be fair, this whole meme is a sort of "Top Thirty" and I'll get to say more. So... top favourite Doctor moment?

I'll pick the moment that to me defined the Doctor, made sense of him, and clarified what he was all about. The scene was meant to do this: it was in the first episode of the first (new) series, "Rose", and it's the moment in which the Doctor describes himself and his perspective to Rose:

Do you know like we were saying? About the Earth revolving? It's like when you're a kid. The first time they tell you that the world's turning and you just can't quite believe it 'cause everything looks like it's standing still. I can feel it. [He takes Rose's hand.] The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at 1,000 miles an hour and the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour, and I can feel it. We're falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go... [He lets go of Rose's hand] ...

...That's who I am.

That was the moment that made me believe.

30 Days of Doctor Who: Question 12: A scene or moment that made you giggle.

I don't giggle. I laugh. Okay, sometimes I guffaw. But I don't giggle.

A scene that makes me laugh... "Boom Town". I find the whole episode delightfully funny ("innuendo squad"?) but I particularly love the scene in which the Doctor takes Margaret Blaine out for dinner, and she tries to poison him, and he tries to stop her...

30 Days of Doctor Who: Question 10: An episode that made you cry.

So many.

But I think the best of them was episode 2x13, "Doomsday".



"And I suppose... if it's my last chance to say it... Rose Tyler.."