"Run, You Clever Boy, And Remember"

Thank you, BBCA. Most sincerely, thanks.

For those of you who have been long term fans of the series, I don't have to reference the title quote. A series of individual episodes ended with it, before tying it all up with a big bow and sending the show off in a new direction. Or, ahem, dimension.

I was a hit and miss fan of sorts over the years. Too many episodes missed, too many needing the continuity of previous and future episodes to string them together into a whole which made sense. But I was given a great gift over the holidays. It all makes sense now, and makes me care to keep watching, rather than just sometimes when it's convenient and/or I'm otherwise bored.

The gift? a "Doctor Who" marathon, stretching from X-mas eve to New Years day. While they weren't presented in exact order, by the time they all appeared in my DVR program list they were sorted into sequence. I'm guessing there were about 80 of them, not an exact count because I started watching those presented first, then deleting while the others accumulated. However, they were watched in such a close time frame that the pieces connected. Stuff started to make sense. With even the most hazy hindsight from years of maybe-watching, I knew when a chance comment was really important, a brief encounter turned into a regular character for a season or more.

That's no mean feat.

While not all episodes were included in the marathon, they always included the beginning and ending of each main character as well as several episodes to fill out their personalities and relationships. If a species was going to reappear some years later, their introduction was also filled in so we knew why they were friends or not.

If you've missed me lately, that's where I've been, glued to the set and tying it into a whole. In this case, the whole is way much bigger than the sum of its parts, for each part is much bigger for taking meaning from the whole.  (Yeah, I can see you scratching your head there.)

I still have this season's episodes to review. I did watch them all when presented, but now have the background to color in around the edges. I don't expect to waste my time in review. I'm also so close to the end now that I'm starting take time to prune the freeze kill from the back yard branches, design new jewelry, organize a few more things in the house, take pictures, and work it all in around Steve's medical appointments. And no, he still hasn't seen the right Doc to properly treat his back pain, though we do have an actual name for it finally: spinal stenosis.

But even when the TV is off, I haven't left the show. I seem to be dreaming new plots for Dr. Who. Maybe that's the real way the TARDIS travels.