Doctor Who Christmas 2013

I started watching Doctor Who a few years back, picking up with the new version starting with Nine (Christopher Eccleston). I had not seen any of the older episodes (though I am starting to do that now). I enjoyed it from the beginning and quickly caught up to the current episodes.

I remember when Nine changed to Ten. I wasn't used to the whole regeneration thing since I was new to Doctor Who. It took me a few episodes to get into David Tennant. I was rather stuck on Eccleston. But once I adjusted, I rather enjoyed Ten. (My husband and I have started rewatching from the beginning of the new series and I have to admit that I wasn't quite as fond of Eccleston this time around--I guess I really did adjust quite well to the new doctors.)

Remembering how I felt during the Nine/Ten change, I was a little hesitant to watch the episodes of the Ten/Eleven change. I really liked Tennant and he had more seasons so I was quite invested in him as the doctor. I finally broke down and watched my first Matt Smith episode. Wow. He had me from the very beginning and the whole fish fingers and custard part just really cemented it. With Amy and Rory, it just seemed like a perfect match. When Amy and Rory left, I still enjoyed Matt Smith but it wasn't quite the same. It seems like the dynamic of the three of them was really what worked so well. But even without them, he was still fantastic and his final episode really showed that. His eyes when he was an old man were just so expressive. What an amazing doctor Matt Smith made. (I'm not sure yet how I feel about Twelve. Obviously he's only had a tiny bit of screen time but we'll see how he goes and I will withhold any judgments until I give him a proper chance.)

Anyway, all of this is really to say that the speech that Matt Smith gives right before he regenerates is something that completely resonated with me and that helped resolve some of the things that have been going on in my head about my own life. Let me see if I can find a transcript so I can quote it here. Okay, thank you Reddit! Here it is:

It all just disappears doesn't it? Everything you are, gone in a moment like breath on a mirror. Any moment now, he’s coming, The Doctor -- and I always will be. But times change and so must I. We all change, when you think about it. We are all different people all through our lives and that's okay, that's good. You've got to keep moving so long as you remember all the people that you used to be. I will not forget one line of this, not one day, I swear. I will always remember when The Doctor was me.

It's the part about us changing and being different people through our lives. I have to admit that I've been struggling about my decision to leave academia behind me and embrace my new role as mother and freelance copy editor. There are days when I am just exhausted at the end and as much as I love my son I think about how nice it would be to be back in a library or classroom, focusing on research or discussing a story we've all read. I was exhausted then, too, but it was a different type of exhaustion. I also think about how I never felt I had a break then (always had work to do or that should be done or grading and could never rest without feeling guilty), and I have that with Luke as well, obviously, just in a different way.

But that part of my life--grad school and academia--seem so far removed from me sometimes. It truly does feel like it was a separate life and I was a completely different person then. I think that's the part that I've been having a hard time reconciling. It's not that I want to return to that life. As frustrating and exhausting as raising a child can be, my current life is great overall and I wouldn't give up Luke to go back to academia (and I still agree that, for me, I couldn't do both with any measure of success in either). But I do sometimes miss that person that I was. And it feels strange to think about how different my life was back then. Was that really me? Am I really the same person?

And this speech from Doctor Who clarified things so much. Yes, that was really me. No, I am not the same person, but that is okay. We all change and become different people. That is life and there is nothing bad about that. But it's good to remember who I used to be because that has helped shape who I am now. So I will not forget who I used to be. And how appropriate that who I used to be is also a doctor--a doctor of philosophy (PhD).

Thank you, Matt Smith, for being such a remarkable Doctor. Thank you for giving life to this character and to those lines in your final speech. Thank you for helping me reconcile my old self and my new self. Goodbye, Raggedy Man.