I’ve been out sick for a couple of days, but I’m back to find that By Strategy posted this List Of Doctor Who Episodes Where Emotion Saves The Day (Spoilers). (By the way, the spoilers include the recently aired Christmas special.) Strategy says that these indicate lazy writing. I don’t think so.

To me they look like Moffat is making a point, and he wouldn’t be the first showrunner to pick a point and make it over and over again. Just look. The point is: emotion is a good thing.

If you pay attention, you’ll catch him also making the point that it’s not good to let emotions run amok. I should probably make a list, but one immediate example is the Doctor’s fury in A Good Man Goes to War, what Vastra has to say about it and where it leads.

Moffat comes from a culture where people stuff their feelings and praise intellect. I come from a culture where, arguably, the reverse is the case. I think Moffat’s trying to show how these extremes are not good, that we need to value our aspects and balance them.

What do you think?

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Last night, I asked /r/gallifrey this:

When have you found the Doctor himself to be scariest? For me, it’s when he confronts Colonel Runaway Manton. It feels like he might do anything.

What about you?

I got some interesting answers. Bone chilling, even. My favorite response didn’t actually answer the question, but rather explained just why these moments are so scary. Right on.

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In one of the specials recently aired on BBC America, someone mentioned that if the Doctor asked him where they should go, he would not have an answer, not knowing what’s available. On the menu, as it were. I’ve noticed myself that the Doctor asks it of each new companion but they don’t ever have an answer. I may not know what exists to choose from, but I know what I’d ask for. Here’s my list of possibilities, so far:

• I want to meet the kindest people and the silliest people and the most artistic people.
• I want to see what hydrogen breathers do for sports and recreation.
• I want to see the biggest waterfall ever. Doesn’t necessarily have to be water.
• I want to watch the most beautiful peace in the universe being forged at the end of bitter war.
• I want to meet people made of crystal.
• I want to learn a handcraft developed by people who have fewer fingers than I do.
• I want to visit a restaurant staffed by non-human chefs who nevertheless have expert knowledge on what we can and cannot eat, whose alien frame of reference will introduce me to flavors I cannot at all imagine, without poisoning me.
• I want to safely witness a supernova.
• I want to visit free-floating colonies in space, some human and some not and some with mixtures of races.
• I want to meditate with sentient trees.
• I want to see the insides of hollow planets.
• I want to follow a flock of migratory deep-space lifeforms.
• I want to teach rock-paper-scissors to alien children.
• I want to teach the chicken dance to giant spiders.
• I want to learn religious ceremonies of people whose concept of religion might be impossible for an ape like me to grasp.
• I want to meet every kind of people that people might be.

I can’t imagine everything, but I can imagine a start. As long as there’s a start, one thing leads to another. As Bilbo Baggins once said, it’s a dangerous business, going out your front door. He warns that the door leads to the path, the path to the gate, the gate to the road, and on and on. I have always felt that to be true, which is why I never settle down, but only pause for a bit, in a place for a time. It goes on and on.

Imagine it. All of time and space. All you need is a start.

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