Today is the 60th anniversary of the premier of Doctor Who on the BBC in 1963. I… am overwhelmed with other projects which is why this blog is languishing, I’ve even got half-drafts on all manner of Dr Who topics I want to get out during the 60th anniversary celebrations.
Buuuuut I don’t have anything ready for today. Still, I couldn’t just let it slip by without saying something, and since I’ve already shared some of my favourite quotes from the whole franchise, I’ll just do bit more of that.
In 2005, after a 16 year hiatus, the series returned with the episode “Rose” by Russell T Davies. The eponymous Rose is a regular person who has a brief encounter with this mysterious fellow calling himself “the Doctor”. After pressing him to explain himself, to answer who he really is, he stops for a moment, and delivers this speech (masterfully performed by Christopher Eccleston):
Do you know like we were saying about the Earth revolving? It’s like when you were a kid. The first time they tell you the world’s turning and you just can’t quite believe it because everything looks like it’s standing still. I can feel it. The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling round the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We’re falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go… That’s who I am.
This little moment really captures a lot of the aura of mystery and awe of both Doctor Who and, to me, the universe (and astrophysics and cosmology and physics generally).
That’s why I love it.
Haggis & Hash Browns 