Apples

 "Can I have an apple? All I can think about. Apples. I love apples. Maybe I'm having a craving. That's new. Never had cravings before"

One of our families most watched episode of Doctor Who is the 'The Eleventh Hour' this is the introductory episode for the Eleventh Doctor played by Matt Smith. The Doctor has just regenerated and finds himself very hungry with new taste buds.  The first person our newly regenerated Doctor meets is a seven year old Amelia Pond and for the first fifteen minutes of the episode they try to find something that the Doctor likes the taste of, much spitting and throwing of food ensues...much to the delight of my 9 year old son.  I have to be honest I was quite disappointed when this scene finished, it is so perfectly written with brilliant comedic moments and a perfect introduction to this new Doctor who appears to be all flailing arms and legs.  

With regards to the apple, he doesn't like it, Amelia tells him that she didn't like apples either until her mum put a smiley face on for her, she does this for the Doctor and he puts it in his pocket and promises to eat it later...

Loss

Photo copyright Lisa Hazlegreaves

So today I am back on the blogging waggon and I thought loss seemed appropriate after losing one of our beloved kitties yesterday to the grim reaper.   There is such a lot of loss in Doctor Who, the Doctor himself has suffered the most, and you can sense the great sadness within him.  The friends, companions and family, the species, the planets he has had to watch perish over his many years.   The greatest and also saddest thing about Doctor Who is the brilliant idea of regeneration.  I’m not sure whether those initial creators of Who fifty years ago planned the regeneration from day one as a way of the show never ending, when your actor gets bored, has had enough or becomes tired of the role what a perfect storyline to allow the show to continue.  A new actor can come in, he doesn’t have to pretend to be the previous reincarnation, he can be written as a whole new version of himself.  Inspired. 

Currently we are on our eleventh regeneration and although I have some Classic Who DVD’s I don’t have any Classic regeneration episodes so these are not fresh in my memory and not something I can discuss with confidence.    As I’ve already said in previous posts the joy of Who now for me is the sharing of it with my children and this is why the past two regenerations have left their mark so deep on my heart.  To be honest it was Tennants leaving that hurt.  We all knew it was coming, but still it hurt badly.  The fact that for the first time ever The Doctor on knowing he was going to regenerate said that line, the saddest line in the universe “I don’t want to go” was enough to have me crying hysterically onto small child’s head who was cuddled up beside me trying to be brave.  Now I will admit I am a bit of a softie, since having children I do tend to cry at adverts and the like.  I certainly can never EVER watch Comic Relief or Children in Need, I realised this about five years ago when I had been watching Comic Relief for four hours straight.  It was about 11.30pm and having just been laughing hard at a comedian doing something ridiculous another of the films came on, the heart wrenching films of loss and hardship suffered by others all over our world.  Within seconds I wasn’t just sniffing I was really crying hard, noises coming out of me that sounded animal.  I became so upset so quickly because this was a build up of four hours of self inflicted torture.  I had been watching for four hours, laughing for twenty minutes then watching one of the films and getting upset, so with every film I got more and more upset until quite frankly at that second I stood up from my sofa and shouted “that’s enough” and switched off the TV.  I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are certain things that my family know will make Mum cry, Comic Relief, articles on the news about children dying or being hurt, mothers and father dying trying to save their children, car crashes, earthquakes, tsunamis...basically anything on the news and Doctor Who.  Not an episode goes by where I don’t shed a tear and such is my love of Who, I don’t even have to have watched the full episode, I can be searching the channels and come across a Doctor Who repeat on a channel with five minutes to go and be in tears instantly because I am immediately drawn into the story the emotional world that has been created for me.  One rather embarrassing example of my uncontrollable Who emotions was when we went on the TARDIS Set Tour at the BBC.  There we were sitting on a coach with forty other excited Whovians when they put the DVD on.  It was the episode The Doctors Wife, now on the way there we watched half of it, we had our tour (if you want to read more about that check out my post titled Excitement) we got back on the coach buzzing from the experience, they started the DVD from where they left off.  Huge smile on everyone’s face, I mean come on, we had just been on THE TARDIS...by the time I got off that coach I was bubbling my eyes out, not even the fact that there were thirty six other people on the coach that I didn’t know could stop the big fat  tear drops falling off my chin.  The kids just laugh at me and Father pats me on the shoulder in a ‘there, there’ fashion and usually says ‘come on pet’  

In Doctor Who there is so much sadness, I often find myself shouting at the TV (only when watching DVD’s, talking is NOT allowed during the airing of a new series) “you can’t save everyone Doctor” or “don’t be sad Doctor”  you just know that he has seen so much, lost so much and he has never hardened to this.  We could take a leaf out of his book, we could all learn something from his suffering and the way he deals with it.  Loss is a recurring theme in Who and we are told that series seven in episode five the Doctor will lose Amy and Rory, his current companions, and we have been made aware that this will be heart wrenching.  I may need to visit my own Doctor prior to this airing for some sort of valium to see me through, there is only so much loss a woman can take.