Season 9 of Doctor Who just started, and while there’s currently no end for the 12th Doctor in sight, I can’t help but already worry about the day he finally leaves. I never, ever want the reign of Peter Capaldi to end, but change is the nature of Doctor Who, and it’s all the more meaningful because of it. How can a show last for 50 years? Because it doesn’t just overcome change, it’s woven with it, and reflects on the inevitability and requirement for change in every human life as it powers through. I know Peter Capaldi has to leave, or the show wouldn’t be Doctor Who any more. But still, with all my heart, I don’t want him to.
None of us are any strangers to regeneration. I haven’t been around long enough to have done it eleven times, but I’ve certainly done it before. I did it with 9, and 10, and 11. Every time, I made it through. Each were extremely sad, and while I earnestly cried for all of them, 10’s departure weighed heaviest on my heart. I walked around for weeks with the absence encamped in the back of my brain, knowing he was gone and things would never be the way they used to be. This is a television show we’re talking about. To have that much power, it’s got to be scarily good.
There are always DVDs to cling to – a major difference in experiencing loss in real life versus on a TV show. It definitely helps. Past Doctors are never really gone. Take it from the 1st: One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.
It doesn’t any make it less hard to watch your Doctor leave.
Doctor Who will fill the void. They’ll fill it with something just as beautiful and terrifying – something that never could have happened without letting go. It will be worth it. Nothing is stable in life or fiction, and Doctor Who touches hearts so deeply because it knows that. Things change – permanently. Nothing ever stops changing, and because of that, nothing ever stops. The perpetual regeneration of Doctor Who is what causes it to matter, and what makes it the rare story that will last forever. Throughout all of time and space.
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Different people know Chris Hardwick for different things. Recently he’s been touring his stand-up show, Funcomfortable, scheduling sporadic dates around the country between his collective of other jobs and appearances. Two nights ago I saw him in Dallas at The Majestic Theater, a historic building a block away from my office downtown. This location is also a crosswalk away from my parking garage, with a line marking seen outdoors that guides pedestrians safely. With the help of the decorative crosswalk, I actually noticed its path. If you’re looking for contractors who do decorative crosswalks, click here. It’s a pretty special place for me because it’s also where my dance studio in the suburbs held their recitals each year. I spent a whole day flouncing throughout the building, onstage and off, every May until I was 19. The opener, April Richardson, was excited to be on a stage where she’d previously seen Morrisey perform. Can I say that by extension Chris Hardwick has shared a stage with me?
The show was really good. Not only extremely funny, but also really interesting. I’ve been listening to The Nerdist Podcast since the beginning. That’s over five years and 700 episodes. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to Chris Hardwick’s voice and getting to know his podcasting persona. I always assumed it was very similar to his onstage persona, if only because the voice he uses is strikingly similar. A lot of people don’t like listening to Chris Hardwick on stage because of the way he talks. He has a very loud and projected way of speaking that seems, at the best, very excitable, and the worst, over the top and fake. I thought the same thing the first time I ever heard him, as the host of G4’s Web Soup (The Soup’s nerdy little brother – which was absolutely, unbiasedly better than Tosh.0). He’s not Joel McHale and he’s not trying to be, but the difference in Joel’s laid back delivery and Chris’ high-strung speech can be jarring, like a punch in the vocal chords, if you’re not used to it.
What I hadn’t realized is that this is his real voice, his every day voice. If you listen to The Nerdist Podcast you’ll hear him speaking in the exact same way, sustaining it throughout a normal hour-long conversation. It does take some getting used to. For me, it’s been five years, so I sometimes forget there’s a bit of an acclimation period.
Because of this, I was taken a little aback when I realized that there’s still a difference in the everyday Chris and the performing Chris. While the voice stays the same, there’s a level of stage presence that’s significantly heightened. Of course there is. He’s performing, right? I don’t know why I wouldn’t have expected that. Stand-up shows are basically scripted, especially with someone who works on and performs the material as often as he does. No one’s gone into the theater looking for a conversation. They’re looking for a show, and this one’s been measured out and calculated for maximum results. I really appreciated seeing Chris Hardwick through this sort of filter. It revealed a level of talent that was certainly always there, but I had never gotten to see in person. The fact that he sustained it, solo, for such a long amount of time, felt incredibly impressive.
The last time I saw Chris Hardwick live he had just filmed his hour-long special and was starting to build up a new set. Instead of trying out new jokes traditionally, he brought out his notebook of ideas to see what the audience laughed at. It was really cool getting to be a part of that process. I never really understood how well he puts it all together until I saw a full show.
There were other differences in my podcast-perception and show-perception of Chris that I was surprised by. Some of that has to do with the much wider audience he has than just folks who listen along weekly with his life. Not everyone had the same basis for what to expect. I already knew quite a few of the stories he told. At first I didn’t get why he was telling them, because it hadn’t dawned on me that a majority of the theater probably hadn’t heard them before. He talked a for while about his ex-girlfriend. Nerdist listeners have been there since they got together, through the two year relationship, and when they broke up. I still follow her on Instagram. While most stand-up bits are detached from their audiences, I felt like I had a window into where the stories were coming from. As I laughed along with the other guests beside me, my brain was spinning a little extra. I had to reconcile what I already knew with the snarky aftermath I was now allowed to look in on.
The show itself was funny and engaging and seamless. My favorite parts included a bit involving the name Emily and closing the show with some pretty impressive dance moves (another shock) during a rendition of Dead Or Alive (a song I appreciate more than I probably should, thanks to strong emotional ties to the Rock Of Ages stage musical and the week Richie Sambora spent as The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson’s house band).
Overall, I was really impressed. I’m already devoted, I wasn’t a hard audience member to win over. But it was very honestly funny, with a rhythm that was easy to fall into and want to not end. If I had come into the show as a casual fan I would have felt the same way. However, I’m not, and because of that, the show meant just a little bit more.
A homemade knitted Dalek in one hand and a Sonic Screwdriver in the other, with a mix of Blue Curacao and vodka they’re calling The TARDIS in the cup holder – I’m thinking, This better be good. I curled my hair for this.
I went to The Angelika in Dallas for the series 9 premiere of Doctor Who. Of course it was good. With Peter Capaldi as The Doctor they’ll never do wrong. It was a free showing thanks to bigfanboy.com and the fact they were streaming directly from BBC America. I’ve never watched Doctor Who on BBC America before, so I wasn’t expecting commercials. I’m fundamentally against inserting commercials into BBC shows that weren’t meant to be split up, and in a full, dark theater packed with viewers transfixed on the narrative’s every move, it was abundantly clear why. Doctor Who, when it’s good, has a flow that’s a crime to break (although I’ve started to feel like most Steven Moffat scripts could cut the first twenty minutes and immediately improve by at least 15 percent). We all sat together, snapped out of our collective trance, and began analyzing the structure of each ad’s marketing strategy instead. The interruption of the storyline for commercials was a jarring reminder of the intrusion of commercial interests into the pure enjoyment of the show. It made me wonder about the impact on both the viewers’ experience and the network’s paycheck.
We cheered at the good parts. The Twelfth Doctor is a rockstar, and he got the applause he deserves. There’s always something transcendent about watching something important for the first time with a huge group of people. It just about made up for splitting up the time with suspension-breaking commercials.
