goblin cartoons

After watching the Doctor Who Easter special, “Planet of the Dead,” something buzzing around in the back of my head leaped out and said, “Aha!” I’ve consciously realized one of the things I love about the new Doctor Who show. It’s not just science fantasy that’s rooted in the mundane, it’s science fantasy that celebrates and glorifies the mundane.

The new Doctor Who celebrates and glorifies shopworkers, office temps, waitresses, people who live in council housing, broken families, squabbling families, chops and gravy, chips and Christmas dinners. The Doctor’s companions are invariably hardworking middle or lower class people who make valuable companions and universe-saving heroes because they’re hardworking middle or lower class. (Lady Christina de Souza in “Planet of the Dead” is a notable exception. Captain Jack Harkness is another one.) While the Doctor leads a life of neverending wandering and adventure, he joyfully celebrates the mundane lives of ordinary people (like his bit about people who are “nothing special” in “Father’s Day”). In Doctor Who, people are special because they’re ordinary, not despite it.

While the TARDIS has an ordinary, mundane exterior and a wondrous, fantastic interior, Doctor Who has a wondrous, fantastic exterior wrapped around a common, mundane core. And I love the show for it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 12th, 2009 at 10:08 am and is filed under TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.