Lamentations on Doctor Who

I am not the biggest nerd-girl in the world, but I’m no slouch. I love Doctor Who and I have spread the infectious joy that is the BBC show to my children.

I’ve been watching the show since I was younger. Back when I thought it was just a quirky British show that came on PBS, one of the thirteen channels I could access from the television in my teenage bedroom because only the living room TV got cable. Before I knew what it meant to the world, before the internet informed me to the vastness that was the Doctor Who fandom.

I say all this to preface my current beef.

I love the new Doctor. I was an early adopter of Peter Capaldi, the few and the proud. I heard many complaints after the announcement of the new Doctor. People were crying about Matt Smith leaving and how #11 was their Doctor and to those I turn up my nose because they are the bandwagon riders, the late to join the cavalcade that is Doctor Who.

Peter Capaldi represented a return to the Doctor as I knew him. He’s a Timelord, thousands of years old, he should show some of his road wear, the maturity that comes with having been everywhere in time and live to tell about it. So I love love love number Twelve.

He does it for me the way #10 did and #9, except for one thing. He is missing the intensity and frankly not living up to his potential. I have only watched the first 5 episodes of this season, with one in my queue, so I have hope that it’s a symptom of the Doctor’s newness, and not a representative sample of the overall suckiness of Moffat turning the Doctor into the Clown of Gallifrey.