Doctor Who: No context, all feeling

I've greatly enjoyed the Ncuti Gatwa era of Doctor Who - it's been thrilling, entertaining, sad and alive, and I think I've enjoyed it for two vital reasons.

The first is the most basic - I've been watching most of it with the kids, and while I'm probably still the most enthusiastic person in the room when that immortal theme songs kicks in at the start of another adventure in time and space, the final scene of the latest episode got an excited 'WHAT THE HECK!' from the five year old and that was everything. Especially because she has absolutely no idea who Rose was.

And the second reason for my enjoyment of the adventures in the Disney era is that I've cut myself off from almost all the discourse around it, and have no idea about any of the real-world context surrounding the episodes, and can only judge them on my own reactions and feelings.

All the noise around the production and direction of the show is just so tiring, and old. I've been recently reading a bunch of DWB magazines from the late 1980s, and it's the same shit there, all the fretting over ratings, and viewers unable to watch anything without intolerable amounts of context.

It's still happening today, but it's been surprisingly easy to just avoid it all. My social media activity is very close to zero these days, and none of the nerd news sites are readable anymore, so I just didn't engage with any of it.

I did sample one old favourite Who critic, but they were obsessed with the status of the show in the real world, and kept going on about the ratings and a probable hiatus, and didn't really have much constructive to say about the actual story, so I drifted away from that too. I know nothing of the obvious metaphors in the Intergalactic Song Context, and I really don't need to hear any more about how fans were angry that a show that is constantly changing has changed again. 

It's immensely freeing. All I have to go on is what's on screen, and how it makes me feel, and it makes me feel pretty fucking good.

I would come back and read all these hot takes in another 30 years time, but they'll be gone, because nothing digital lasts. I might still have the DWBs though, so I won't ever forget how confusing Ghost Light was for everybody.