I adore Doctor Who. And by adore, I mean, you know adore. I wear my "Blink" t-shirt regularly. I can quote whole long soliloquies from the show. I have cried during every Doctor Regeneration I've seen (I am, admittedly, a bit behind on the Classic series). I refuse to watch the Matt Smith Regeneration until I'm in a less emotional space (which will be sometime next January after lunch). When I want to tell someone that I love them I say "I ♥♥ you like I love Doctor Who."
I know, right?
I started the series with the Christopher Eccleston reboot. And it was pretty good. A little kitschy, but certainly enjoyable. I watched the first season shortly after I finished Battlestar Galactica, which just destroyed me on an emotional level, and a little goofiness was in order.
But, oh, the David Tennant series.
I was bound to love it from the moment he stepped onto screen. David Tennant is brown-eyed, skinny, and Scottish. With great hair. And he was playing a brilliant time-traveler with a superhero complex.
Yeah. Bound to love him.
This is to say nothing of the fact that I thought Russell T. Davies an excellent story-teller. And that you got all of the shining genuis of Steven Moffat without any of the downfalls (a dearth of intelligent female characters, no real consequences in any of his universes, too-clever-by-half syndrome). But what I love(d) most about the David Tennant series was his ability to make me feel something, whether it was goofy joy or anger and holyfuckingshitripmyheartoutofmychest sadness.
It feels weird to be talking about a television show as beautiful in the same series where I'll be talking about Hamlet, Auden, Faure's Requiem Mass (Spoilers, Sweetie). As though comparing a British sci-fi television show with which I have a total fangirl relationship to capital A Art somehow diminishes either of them.
As I've been writing these posts, I've been ruminating on what, for me, moves something from the realm of "loveliness" or "brilliantly crafted" to something beautiful. How is it possible for me to put a four minute segment of Who the same category and a painting by Matisse?
During the course of the week I consume a not insignificant amount of emotional material. Thursday I read a case of a woman whose boyfriend beat her (literally) senseless and then attempted to set her on fire. Then I came home and read Graham Greene's The End of the Affair and listened to some Bach cello suites.
This was not an unusual day for me.
When you live on the edge of the bell curve, high dynamic range of emotionalism and consume highly emotional content day in and out, it takes a little more to push you over the edge, to really pack an emotional wallop that sticks with you over the course of time. During any given week a novel, a Lorde song, a comment made in passing may all move me, but it's the things I remember at the end of a few years, that still impact me when I see or hear them again that are allowed to move out of the "impactful" group and into the "beautiful" group.
There were two moments from the David Tennant run on Who that I considered for this post although (again, Spoilers, Sweetie) this won't be his only appearance. They both come from the same season and have, I suppose the same theme, which is 10's love for Rose.
I am a total sucker for a good star-crossed lovers story and how more star-crossed can you be than an un-aging spacetime traveler who falls in love with a human woman? This clip comes from the last four-ish minutes of the episode "Doomsday," which I have only watched in its entirety once (I can't stand to sit through an hour f television when I know the ending is going to murder me emotionally). I have, however, twice in the past four years, used this four minutes as a break glass in case of emotional emergency. When I'm too emotionally exhausted to deal with said emotions, I've cued up these last four minutes and allowed the catharsis of them to help me deal with my own shit. (Full disclosure, I couldn't even watch the whole video for this post because right now it's too much.)
I'm not the only person who has this emotional reaction to Who or even the only person to have this emotional reaction to this episode of Who. A friend of mine refuses to watch it because "it reminds [her] of every horrible, gut-wrenching, heart-shredding breakup" she's ever had.
In the end, isn't that what art, what beauty is supposed to do? To reach inside of us and tear out our guts and show them to us? To squeeze our heart and our lungs until we feel like we might die and remind us this is what it means to be human?
At least, that's what I've always thought it was supposed to do. That's why, with very little embarrassment, I can leave 10 and Rose here, amid Matisse and Auden and Faure.
Allons-y.
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