Collected Tidbits from the Trash Fire

So here is the thing about Dr. Who. It's bigger on the inside. You look at it right from the outset and go, 'Huh, there's only ten series so far. Let's try this thing out.'

(This is an especially easy mistake to make if you, like me, are American and can't easily access Classic Doctor Who.)

So then, you've finished. Capaldi has regenerated into Whittaker, and you're stuck waiting on the edge of your seat for series 11. So then you go, 'Hey, isn't this show meant to have a lot more Drs. Who in it?'

So you check the library, or the internet, or the void, or deep inside yourself, or Netflix, and you find out 'Oh, wow, there is a heck-ton more stuff to watch, huh?'

So then you start watching Classic Dr. Who. And it's good, even if they do have a special effects budget that would make Ebeneezer Scrooge blush. The fandom is a little bit weird because technically Classic Dr. Who and New Dr. Who are two different things, so technically they haven't had new material since the '80s. Possibly the turn of the century if the Eighth Dr. Who counts as 'Classic' which is... arguable?

Look at him he's beautiful. Also he canonically destroyed Gallifrey and ended the Time War, John Hurt who.

Anyway, there's also the whole 'Shalka' thing but I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway, this isn't quite the 'bigger on the inside' bit. Yet.

So you've finished Classic Dr. Who, or at least you've seen a lot of it. Maybe you've knitted your own Fourth Dr. Who scarf. I did. But you still want more. So you start looking around, and you find some new books.

And some audio adventures.

And even some comic books.

And all of this is enough. You have your Drs. Who, you have your companions, you have your TARDIS. What more could you need? How could you ever want for more?

You still. Want. More.

This is the point at which your family may start to get a little bit worried about you. You've already gotten into the extended universe of Dr. Who, but now you're pushing the boundaries further. You've begun to read about Bernice Summerfield and started to feel that River Song was a bit of a cheap knockoff. You're listening to the Gallifrey audios. You've started to write fanfiction about how Peri Brown didn't actually die, but is now reigning as Warrior Queen off Krontemp with her loyal and loving husband Brian Blessed. (That was maybe a spoiler but honestly nobody actually knows if she's alive or not).

This is also the point where you're beginning to get some idea of what the Time War was actually like. You may have also discovered the concept of "Dr. Nyarlathotep", which is the idea that all Time Lords (or at least the Dr. Who) are eldritch abominations. You can see where they're coming from. You still need more. Ever-more obscure media. Iris Wildthyme climbs out of a hole in the plotline and offers you a gin and tonic. You think you may have become a member of the Faction Paradox, but the universe has been reset, and it's possible you're only a memory anyway.

At this point, you've started having very strange thoughts about time, and it's entirely possible that you are willing to pay thousands of dollars for that one particular book which has been out of print for over a decade but describes the Time War in detail. And you think you've reached rock bottom. You think you're done. You aren't. I've watched the aborted, animated series reboot with Richard E. Grant as the Dr. Who (It's actually quite good if you're interested, animation's a bit shit but it's a great story. Scream of the Shalka.), and there are still depths which I have yet to plumb. There's a series of lower-quality episodes following former companion Dr. Liz Shaw in her time at PROBE. There's the "Unbound" series of audios. There's apparently Zygon porn. These are depths which I doubt I will reach anytime soon. There's still quite a lot to get through where I'm standing now, all of various quality.

Still, though, I am deep enough down the rabbit hole to know a thing or two. I've read books and seen episodes that flat-out contradict one another. Often, they're by the same author. I've read about the Time War and the Faction Paradox undoing or altering people's very pasts, making whole planets un-happen. Iris Wildthyme is a drunk, fourth-wall breaking, oversexed, self-confessed parody of the Dr. Who, travelling through time and space in a red London bus with a talking panda. Sometimes, I stare up at the sky, and I see the Mars that was home to the Ice Warriors, that was conquered by the Fendahl, that made astronauts into zombies, that once had 'snow-capped green hills', that was all of these things and none of these things at once, and I whisper, "Screw canonicity anyway."

There's not much else to say, really. I intended this post to be about the best ways to get into Dr. Who, but it's sort of turned into a warning instead. If you're careful, you can stop yourself if you want to. But why would you want to?

-6&7

PS: Now that I think about it, this also goes a ways towards explaining my whole 'canonicity is relative' tagline.