So, about two months ago, the DVDs of the new Doctor Who series that launched in Britain back in 2005 finally made it to the top of my Netflix queue. (Coincidentally that's about the date of my last post here on this journal. At least I think it's coincidental - it may be partly causal.)

I've been a huge Doctor Who fan since I stumbled across it on public television when I was about 9 years old. (The episode was "The Ark in Space".) I'm not sure why I didn't quite get around to watching the new discs until just recently. But I did, and now I'm completely hooked. Really. I watched the season finale of season 1 three times, and then went straight to the computer and ordered the season 1 and season 2 DVDs from Amazon.com. I'm currently forcing myself to ration my season 2 viewing to 1-2 episodes a week, because once I'm through, I won't have any new Doctor Who to watch until the season 3 DVDs come out. (Season 3 is going to start airing in Britain at the end of this month, so DVDs are a ways off.)

I'm just completely boggled by how good the show is. And this is where writing about it gets tricky, because...Okay, do you all remember that period a few years back when the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans were really annoying? (Yeah, I know - it's a nearly irresistible straight line, but don't go there.) When you couldn't go to a con or read the comments section on a blog or whatever without somebody going on and on about how Buffy was the best thing on television, that there was no other show like it, and it's all about girl-power, and the dialog is so clever, and Joss Whedon is a genius...and then they'd start singing bits of the musical, and you'd be like, "Whatever, I'm going to the dealer's room to see if they have the new M. John Harrison novel, because, yeah, it's a good show, but it's just a show about a chick who fights vampires." (To the Buffy fans out there - yeah, I'm catching up on my Buffy through Netflix, and I'm prepared to concede that y'all may have had a point, but I haven't fully drunk the kool-ade.)

And this is my problem, because when I start to talk about the new Doctor Who, I start going on and on about how it's the best thing on television, that it's totally redefined the "family viewing" category on British TV, that there's no other show like it, and it's all kinds of smart about sex and gender roles, and the dialog is soooo clever (and British to boot!), and Russell T. Davies is a genius, and Steven Moffatt, too...and then I shout something like, "It's totally sonic! I am sonic-ed up!" in a poor imitation of a Manchester accent, and laugh like it's the funniest thing *ever*, and you will all be like, "Whatever, have you read Susanna Clarke's short story collection?" Because, yeah, it's a good show, but it's just a show about an alien who travels around space and time in a blue box, usually accompanied by a hot chick.

So, yes, I'm trying to not be That Annoying Fan. However, until the novelty wears off, it's probably hopeless to expect that I won't talk or write about Doctor Who at all. So, I'll try to confine my blathering to things that I think are illuminating about the problems of writing good television or good science fiction in general, and keep to a minimum the fangirlish squeeing about the genius of Russel T. Davies and the hotness of Christopher Eccleston (the marvelous actor who played the Doctor in season 1 of the new series).

I think the thing that fascinates me the most about the new Doctor Who is how the creators (principally the aforementioned genius Russell T. Davies) managed to create a series that appeals to diehard fans of the old program, while still making something that is accessible to a general audience. (Manages to appeal to most diehard fans of the old series, I should say. One of the things you'll discover if you visit Outpost Gallifrey, the biggest Doctor Who fan site on the net, is that Doctor Who fans never agree on anything. You get one or two hard cases who insist that the series has been utter crap since 1973-but they still watch it faithfully, presumably for the satisfaction of going on the message boards afterwards to explain in detail why the most recent episode is utter tripe.)

What I keep wondering is how they got it right. The obvious answer is something like, "They preserved what was essential to the spirit of the show while feeling free to jettison anything that wouldn't work in the present context." Which I think is the answer, and it's obviously very important that the new Doctor Who is created by a bunch of rabid fans, who, despite their rabidness, have not treated the old show as an unchanging sacred text. But it's an answer that raises the question of how do you define "essential spirit"? Doctor Who is a program that is defined by change. The entire cast routinely changes over the course of a few years. Over the course of its history, the show has been conceived of as an educational program for children, an Earth-based defeat the alien invader of the week show, a serious science fiction show - among other things. What is essential to Doctor Who?

The first thing that springs to my mind is something that Christopher Eccleston mentions in an interview that appears on one of the DVDs from the season 1 box set: sense of wonder. The Doctor always approaches the alien with a sense of curiosity and "isn't this cool?", even if, more often than not, the alien is going to want to take over the world or something unpleasant. This is certainly very important to my enjoyment of the show. In fact, I think it's important to my enjoyment of science fiction television in general. The original Star Trek series had some of this quality - each successive entry in the Trek franchise seemed to have less of it. One of the reasons that I've not gotten very excited about shows like the new Battlestar Galactica or Heroes, even though people keep telling me that they're really great and I should watch them, is that they're not getting out there, meeting the alien, and seeing that It Is Cool. (To be fair, I don't think my fondness for Babylon 5 or Blake's 7 is rooted all that much in sense of wonder, so I won't say it's the only thing. But it's a big thing.)

There's a second thing that Russell Davies and the other creators of Doctor Who seem to have hit on as important that's more puzzling to me: Doctor Who as family television. In Britain, Doctor Who is a show that whole families watch together, kids and their parents. It's never really been that way in the US. In the US, the audience for Doctor Who has always been much like the audience for other science fiction television shows: adolescents and adults, until recently mostly male. I'm not sure that US television has any real family shows any more. Nobody was really sure that it would work in Britain any more until Doctor Who came back. It's an odd choice, in some ways - it puts some interesting constraints on the writers, who have to work under the assumption that a large proportion of the viewing audience are children. Though really, the constraints seem to be more a matter of form than of content - the show has managed to talk about topics ranging from genocide to bisexuality - it just has to do so with no swearing, minimal nudity, and no depictions of blood. I'm not sure I really understand how this "family show" business works, but it's often cited as a big part of the show's success in Britain.

The third thing that I think is really important is that Davies and the show's other writers really did a great job of finding ways to bring back characters or monsters from the old series and make them work for a new audience as well as for the fans. In some cases, like with the Autons used in the first episode of season 1, they just brought them back without even mentioning that the Doctor has met them before. (Good choice with the Autons - they're animated killer department store mannequins. Their effectiveness is all about being simultaneously mundane and creepy - the backstory doesn't really add anything to them.) What's trickier to explain is how they manage to bring back old monsters like the Daleks or former companions like Sarah Jane Smith, and convey that they have a significant history with the Doctor without spending huge amounts of time on infodump. They're just really good at creating situations that are dramatic on their own, but which are enhanced if you know the back story.

If I've got a complaint about the show, it's the relatively minor one that Russell Davies is clearly not a fanatic about scientific plausibility. Doctor Who has never been a hard science fiction show, but Davies will use the most rubbery of rubbery science to resolve the plot situation. He's good enough at making the resolution feel emotionally right that it doesn't ruin the show, but there is a bit near the end of the episode "New Earth" where I have to strategically turn my brain off for about a minute, because the Doctor cures a bunch of sick people by mixing the contents of several bags of intravenous solution and spraying it onto a small group of the afflicted, who then cure the others by *touching* them. Yes, it's *so lame*. But everything that goes before and after is totally cool. So what do you do?

For the most part, the show just keeps blowing my mind with how good it's being. I do wonder how long they can keep it up.