I am a Dr. Who fan. It is without a doubt, one of the most important factors of my Who-life. I started watching in the early 70’s when Jon Pertwee was the Third Doctor. We used to get Whovian re-runs on PBS on Friday nights. I watched every episode I could manage… Cybermen, Daleks, Silurians… the Master. It was fantastic sci-fi and imagination fuel of the highest octane. The Fourth Doctor was my favorite after I started watching his episodes. I still think of the image of Tom Baker’s Doctor whenever I think of Dr. Who.
It was during the 1980’s that PBS went back to the beginning and aired the Dr. Who serials from the very start with William Hartnell as the Doctor. My favorite Doctor turned out to be the little clown Patrick Troughton who played the Second Doctor and really sealed the formula of a wild and wacky adventurer through time and space who could make me laugh and keep me on the edge of my seat and sometimes even make me cry.
The order I watched the Doctors was 3-4-1-2-3-4-5-6-7 until the series restarted in the new Millennium. Then I watched 9-10-11-8-and a couple of episodes of 12. I used a combination of BBC America when we still had cable TV, and then I bought DVD’s to to try to fill in the blanks of what I missed. When he went to the Marines, my oldest son bought me a Netflix account (shared with the whole family) and I have been using that to watch new episodes that I haven’t had a chance to see before… even some of the old Classic Dr. Who episodes that I had missed along the way. I fell in love all over again with Dr. Who. David Tennant and Matt Smith became my new favorite Doctors.
But then came February 1st, 2016. Contract disputes took all the BBC shows off Netflix. I panicked. I bought Hulu on January 30th. Dr. Who was there up until this morning. Apparently they no longer have Dr. Who either.
The world is darker place this morning. My travels through time and space with the Doctor and his companions has temporarily been stalled yet again.
I hear rumors that it will be renegotiated, the way the CBS/Time Warner dispute was that took Big Bang Theory away from me for a year. But I have no faith in the possible curbing of corporate greed and the effects it has on my imaginary life. I mourn for now, and pray to the Doctor, hoping for relief.
Catch a Falling Star 