some favourite Dr Who episodes at our house

After writing my post last night, I thought, what a plethora of sad news I've been writing about since Christmas.
So I thought I'd share with you something fun that has happened at our house:  The Doctor has taken over.  With the exception of my husband, who falls asleep during most tv shows, we all have favourite Dr Who episodes. 
This came about because our daughter, Holly-Anne, who you will remember from this post a few years ago, has developed a serious crush on Matt Smith as the current incarnation of Dr Who. 

This week, we have watched/listened to " The Pandorica Opens" and "The Big Bang" many, many times.  "I have to watch this every day!" she says, when asked why we are watching it for the 12th time in a weekend.  It's Spring Break for us, so this has meant that last weekend, "The Pandorica Opens" and " The Big Bang" played over and over for a whole day.  We finally,  after many hours of listening to these same two episodes, insisted she watch something else.  So she put on the episode before it, "The Lodger".  Now, "The Lodger" happens to contain a soccer game.  Graham is a tiny ball of soccer fever, at age 6.  We are even playing Monopoly because my in-laws sent us a version of Monopoly from England that featured the current English Premier League teams (in 2002) as the properties we could buy.  So for the past two days when it hasn't been"The Pandorica Opens" and " The Big Bang", it has been  "The Lodger".  (This just finished playing recently this evening.)  We turned on the tv to find Space Channel playing the very first Dr Who episode of the recent series, the one featuring Rose and The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston).  This one, "Rose", with the mannequins, is my youngest's oldest favourite, that we also have had to watch over and over, through the past year.  He also made us watch
"The Empty Child" and  "The Doctor Dances" , and  "Midnight"
over and over.  There is something about Dr Who episodes that makes them stand up very well under repeat viewings.

Along the way of watching Dr Who in this household, we have had to discuss so many things the show brings up:  time travel, history, how the doctor comes back, where Rose currently is (in a different dimension sealed off from ours), why the doctor never dies, extraterrestrial life, who Van Gogh was, how important memory is (Amy recreates the world because she has such a powerful memory, stronger than even the Doctor guesses). We've met Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria, the Titanic, Romans in early Britain, how dangerous angel statues really are (I like to scare the children too), and all through the 5 glorious years of Dr Who so far, seen so many examples of love, and faith, triumph.    We've seen Rose try to save her father from his early death, and how it nearly wipes the world out.  Loss, and grief, are part of Dr Who too.  He can't save his family, or his world that was destroyed in the Time Wars, even though he is a time lord.  We've met his mother, and we've met another Time Lord who went mad - the Master.  Dangerous, these time lords are.  It might be only science fiction, but I think it's the best kind of science fiction.

And, we've met the Angels.  The stone angels, the lonely assassins.  Those are my favourite episodes:  Season 3/ 10, "Blink", and  Season 5: "The Time of the Angels" and "Flesh and Stone", a two-part series.  Here is a link to a page about the Weeping Angels on the BBC Dr Who site.
  I love "Blink" because it is about so much.  There are the names - Sally Sparrow, Kathy and Larry Nightingale.  There are the angels who steal your life energy, but at the same time send you backwards, where love is still found - Kathy marries the first man she happens to meet in Wales, and Billy marries her daughter, if I'm not mistaken (one thing with the Doctor is you have to be on your toes and listen to every piece of dialogue - it all matters.  Another reason I love this show.  No wasted space or energy.)  There is the old creepy house, and the statues that you can't look away from, or they move.
Now tell me, haven't you had the feeling sometimes that things were moving at the corner of your eyes?  That things were happening just there, where you couldn't see, and if you turned your head fast enough, you could see it?  I have, though thankfully not often!  There's also movies, and seeing her friend's brother accidentally naked, and a grown over garden, and statues that move.
I love this episode because the ordinary is taken, and turned inside out.   Sally and Larry fall in love because when the angels threaten them, at the very last moment Larry throws himself over Sally to protect her.  It's romantic.  At it's heart, Dr Who is a romantic show, in the old fashioned sense that gallantry and rescue in the face of danger and braving terror for knowledge and adventure are romantic.  All the companions are allowed to be heroines, to have strengths and sensitivity and make errors and cry, and be open.  How could I not let my children watch this show?  They've seen me cry over and over during "The Parting of the Ways", when Rose looks into the heart of the Tardis,

and we see the power of time, space and knowledge pour through her as she is momentarily like a Goddess, like a Time Lord, looking into all of time and space simultaneously.  I love the powerful imagination let loose in this series, and the story telling  is glorious adventures in time and space.

Here is another link to the "10 Scariest Moments in Dr Who".  Do you agree?  Do you have a favourite Dr Who episode that you return to again and again?