Geek Highs & Lows of 2014: Doctor Who series 8 (part 2)

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.

Geek Highs & Lows of 2014: Doctor Who season 8 (part 1)

Doctor Who season 8 had a lot to live up to after the high of the year long 50^th birthday celebrations, that extra Doctor rug-pull, the tease of Time Lords, and those eyebrows seen in that fantastic ‘No, sir, all thirteen’ scene on Gallifrey. There were lots of expectations for year 51, or season 34, or season 8, or whatever you want to call the latest run of Doctor Who. And all with the usual uncertainty that comes with a regeneration to kick things off…

This is one blog in a reflective series of posts on my geeky year of 2014—the highs and lows. This is one entry that embodies both highs and lows. I really enjoyed this series… and yet, there’s a but coming… on reflection I don’t know if there’s a single episode I enjoyed enough to want to own on disc or rewatch. I then think to myself, no, that’s a bit harsh, maybe it’s too fresh in the memory for a rewatch, but I can’t avoid the fact that it felt like disposable TV. I didn’t watch it when it was live as I had in the Tennant years, and I didn’t rush to watch it on the digibox. It’s like a glossy magazine compared with a book. Pretty and entertaining but not something with any depth or substance or that I cherish.