When I was in highschool in the early 1980s, the local PBS station began showing Doctor Who. The D&D goobers at my school were super excited. I had never seen it. My first exposure to it was some tall geek at school walking the halls with his Doctor Who scarf. I asked my friend Brian what was the deal with Doctor Who. He said, and I paraphrase as I can’t remember his exact words, “it’s stupid and gay”.

Upon closer examination, but not close enough to actually watch an episode,  I concluded that yes, it was gay. How can you look at a picture like this one and not conclude “gay”? At least when you are 16.

Now, keep in mind that I played D&D and all that stuff too. But I was part of a small group of friends who had been given the Gift of Shame, and we kept our gaming pretty quiet. We didn’t advertise our nerd tendencies. We were all reasonably attractive kids, so there was a possibility that girl might actually have some interest in one of us. This was way before the nerds took over the world and comic conventions hired models to dress up as sexy versions of super heroes to walk around creating nerd boners. Believe me, I went to a few “cons”, and I never saw a female that didn’t look like a Horta. And to dig myself out of the sexist hole I seem to be digging myself into, let me just admit that the dudes at the gaming and/or comic cons I attended mostly looked like the banjo kid from Deliverance. There’s nothing stranger (OK, maybe there is) than going to convention of comic book and gaming people and not looking the part. Cons are their domain, not yours (unless you are one of them). So if you go, and you look, act, and speak like a normal human, just chill. You are not in control there, and that’s OK. Just smile at the big fat green Orion Dancing Girl from Star Trek who is about explode out of her outfit. She’s not interested in you at all. You are not one of her people.

But I digress..

Well,  flash forward thirty-something years. My 13-year old  nephew told me a few weeks ago he was digging Dr. Who.

Now, I love this kid. He is about #2 in my list of favorite humanoids, second only to my wife. He’s a smart kid, who’s into science, and nature, and stuff like that. And I’m now 49 years of age, so I decided I would revisit Doctor Who, educating myself as to the show’s lore and mythos (see — good D&D words!), that I might watch a few episodes with the kid and enjoy them.

I watched a number of episodes, ranging from the first season to some of the more recent ones. Here are a few thoughts and observations based on my limited watching…

• It’s not gay. It’s just British. It is easy to confuse the two.
• I like it. Even though the effects are pretty cheesy in most of the seasons, it has some pretty cool concepts.
• I like it that the Doctor isn’t a jock. He doesn’t fight, he doesn’t use a gun. He outwits his opponents.
• The aliens and people from other times all have British accents.
• The aliens who look like giant salt shakers with a plunger and cheese grater for arms and a vibrator for an eye are also cool.
• The three guys who have played the Doctor in the new seasons are all younger and more hipsterish looking than the previous incarnations. I guess this makes the show my palatable to a modern audience. Can’t have any “old” people on there, can we.
• The premise of the show involves both space and time travel, so it allows the writers to do damned near anything they want.
• I think they stole the idea for Sid and Marty Croft’s “Lost Saucer” from Dr. Who.
• When watching this show, don’t think about it too hard. Don’t worry about why someone would design an alien cyborg that only has one easy-to-damage eye. Don’t worry about shit like that. Just roll with it. Plunger for a hand? Yeah — ughhh — just ignore it.

So I’ll probably watch a few more of these shows. They are entertaining. The early ones are a bit slow-moving and hard to get through, I’ll admit, but not too bad.