Dr. Testosterone

My cohorts were surprised a couple weeks ago when they found out I had been watching Doctor Who. It was revealed accidentally, though I wasn't purposely keeping it a secret. It just wasn't something that had come up since, generally, McSoss is a Who-free zone. Well, those times have changed. At least for now.

I started watching Doctor Who at the Christopher Eccleston season to see what it was actually about. I've been slamming it for so long without ever seeing an episode, I thought I may as well know something about my enemy. Turns out the Doctor isn't my enemy at all. I'm 11 episodes into Eccleston (Season 1?) and well... I like it.

The first thing I noticed was that Doctor Who doesn't give one fuck that its a low budget product. If you told me the first episode of the season was actually a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode from 1988, I wouldn't have blinked. It was in fact from 2005, but between the music, sets and effects, this shit was 80s low budget sci-fi mania! But that all plays a big part in the charm of the show. It understands that if you're going to show a world filled with crazy aliens (not just standard Star Trek-type head gear), gigantic space stations, and other worldly locales, a little bit of tongue-in-cheekiness goes a long way.

Now, that doesn't mean you get completely swept away. The show's self-awareness carries you only so far. Sometimes a plunger sticking out of a robot, is still just a plunger.

As for the comic above, our good friend Darcy did tell me Christopher Eccleston is the most American of the Doctors – much more likely to get involved in fisticuffs than to use his brain like David Tennant or Matt Smith eventually do. Eccleston has grown on me so much (previously I had only seen him in 28 Days Later and The Leftovers) I'll be sad when the switch to Tennant happens, even though he's known as the high water mark for Doctors. Eccleston really masters the switch between silly and serious.

So yeah, I guess I'm a Doctor Who fan now. Who'd have thought? (see what I did there?)

-Gint

Ps Billie Piper isn't bad to look at either.