Doctor Who Is Dead To Me

by Gorman Moloko

Start making your signs, comrades. I'm not sure where the protest will be but start making those signs because we're marching on this one. We are marching. This is going to make our blockade of J. Michael Straczynski's house over the Claudia Christian firing seem like an episode of Romper Room. I've got my black arm band on and it's staying on, possibly for the next ten years.

Becaus they've gone and named the new Doctor and it looks, on first blush, like a potential disaster of world wide proportions. I know that hurricanes and earthquakes and tsunami's can be nasty and what not but this is serious.

Matt Smith, seen above, is the gentleman who will be replacing my beloved David Tennant on Doctor Who, as announced by the BBC today. Shockwaves are being felt all over the planet. At twenty-six years old, he is the youngest actor ever to play the role, as one look at him will tell you. Looking like he's cultivating a sort of forced rogue look, it seems as if he just walked off the set of the film Twilight or is lobbying for a role as one of Harry Potter's classmates at Hogwarts. Watch out Teen Beat, you've got another fresh face to plaster all over your garish tabloid covers.

Why is this such a travesty, some of you might ask? A few of you who have contacted me already, those who refuse to let go of this notion that my affection for Mr. Tennant is something other than a man's natural appreciation of another man's shining talent and endearing charm, have truly got it all wrong. Just because I don't constantly write about my countless trysts with various supermodels, like some people around here, doesn't mean I'm not as fervently hetero as anyone. You folks are just barking up the wrong tree there, I'm sorry to say. I've had more women than all of you combined, actually. Many of them Canadian.

No, it's my admiration of David as an actor and what he's done with this role that has me metaphorically falling at his feet in praise. Think of his smoldering passion in episodes like Family of Blood or Blink. Think of his swaggering, swashbuckling dauntlessness in The Christmas Invasion. Remember his tenderness in The Girl in the Fireplace. He has been an astonishingly good Doctor. Charming, intelligent, devilishly irresistable at times.

And he will be missed. Sorely, desperately, longingly missed. It simply doesn't matter how many action figures of his you own. The emptyness is there always and it's the size of the space between galaxies; cold, lifeless and neverending.

So what about this boy band wannabe, this teen idol in waiting who's been handed one of the most culturally important roles in the history of human art? Well, we shall see if he can handle the role, of course. It's not him I blame for the potential travesty of choosing the lead role in such a historically significant television show by market-testing at the nearest girl's only junior high school. It's the trend of turning the show into yet another item targeted at the Young Adult demographic, the Mall Crowd. People like myself, apparently, dedicated, informed, passionate, adult science fiction fans, are no longer part of the target audience. We don't buy enough product, perhaps. We don't count.

And that is what is really at the core of what pisses me off about all of this. Not just that we're losing the services of such a fine gentlemen in Monseiur Tennant, because we all know that's one superstar who will land on his feet, but that we're trending towards the teeny bopper mentality here. Selling it out just that much more. We die in small increments and perhaps this is what is happening to Doctor Who. I know I don't like it one bit. The protests are just the beginning. It way very well come to pass that I will boycott the show altogether. It's that serious.

I don't know, maybe I'm too old and too bitter. Maybe I haven't ever gotten over the shift away from the episodic format.

Or maybe I'm right. One thing is certain, however.

Time will tell.

Peace.

Gorman Moloko
Boston, Massachusetts
January 2009

Coming Soon: A collection of my farewell sonnets to David.

Gotta go now. I'm crying again.