MONDO EXTRAS

XII : )

You've been sweet, and patient, and I've been unimaginably lucky. This LINDA we've built, and the way it continues on, makes me very proud. I've become a lifer, I know that. But I want to say something awesome. I want the big finish, and I feel like that is impossible without having more stories to tell you. When you saw the TARDIS coming down the pike toward Donna, and you drew in your breath along with a million other people, I was there, saying "Doctor." The show is the fixed point for a lot of things. I've seen Glaswegians fall in love with Scottish Vixens, and women battle illness and draw strength from this LINDA we've built, and I've watched you people argue the most bizarre nitpicks of all time, and I was amazed, and I never stopped being amazed. But what is it about this show, this show in particular, that does this? Is it just the history? Everybody can tell you the Doctor they remember from childhood; list their Top Five Companions. Is it the Wild Magic of the Doctor himself, the way you never know quite what you're going to get, but that you know it's going to be fun? That you never waste time when you love this show? I still don't know, but it's cool.

One thing I think it is not, though, is the Companion setup. I don't like to think that the show, this weird phenomenon that's twice as old as yours truly, comes down to escapism, to the romance of neglecting and avoiding and running away from life. I mean, I realize that it's more than that -- I can't seem to shut the hell up about all the other things it is -- but the thing about stories, like dreams, is that they're all you. In Jungian terms, the Companion is the Ego and the Doctor is the Self and the TARDIS is the Ego-Self Axis, and if you ask me why, as an atheist, I'm so obsessed with writing and reading about religion, that's the pat answer that I won't give you, because it's too small. It's a collection of trees that can't actually express the forest. But I think in human development there's something that leads us on, some gift of the world, that gives us guidance toward becoming whole. I think there's something, a Doctor, that wants us to look in those dark corners and tease the mysteries out and become strong enough to see things the way they are, without all the magic and hope and fear and ugliness that we project on them, because when we do that, we're abusing ourselves, because the world inside our head is where we actually live, and the best we can hope for is to work until it matches the world outside our heads as closely as possible. So I've never found it weird or particularly interesting to cast Doctor Who as either a meditative experience of the divine or as a description of individuation, the process of growing up. Those are all just a bunch of words for fairy tales, which are all just versions of the Quest, and the Quest never ends. You shouldn't go around kicking trees when you're in the middle of the forest, because if you miss the forest, you're screwed, because it's a...really awesome forest.