In my last post I cited Season 8 of Doctor Who as a geek low of 2014. In this post I will be talking about how it was a geek high. Is that being contrary and on the fence? Possibly. However, some things are easy to right off, and others are easy to praise. I love Doctor Who, but I’m not going to be an apologist for it if there’s things I don’t like or things I think have been done poorly. I’m no ‘classicist’ Who fanboy either. Yes, there is more classic Who that I like than new-Who, and I have more affection for it, but there is just more old-Who than the modern-Who, and I grew up with old-Who so it has the warmth of nostalgia for me. I’m definitely not a new-Who hater. It took me a while to warm to Eccleston, but I loved Tennant, and while I thought Smith to be the closest to a ‘classic Doctor’, season 6 and 7 cooled my affections for the show. A show I have loved for over XX years. The perception filters back…
Doctor Who was a big inspiration for me as a kid. Yet, it was a difficult relationship. I fell for it in its final two years in the 80s–when the public largely saw it as a joke and the BBC saw it as an embarrassment. In the weekend years of no new Doctor Who, for me it was easier to come out as gay than a who fan. When it was cancelled I had already started exploring the older Doctor Who stories on video. I didn’t always like what I watched, but Doctor Who was dead, so I always managed to find something in a story to enjoy. I’m well practiced at digging through the rough for something that might sparkle. I’ve recently been rewatching season 5 and enjoying it much more than I remembered the first time around. I’ll do a post on it at some point. I may find myself rewatching season 8 in the future and finding more to enjoy about it and find my appreciation was a victim of my expectations. Thankfully, I’ve said all, well, much of the negative stuff about season 8 and it’s now time to power on with Doctor Who season 8 being a geek high of 2014.