Who, Dat?

I live with a Doctor Who fanatic. We're talking serious fandom here. She peruses the chat boards, buys the T-shirts, has two (count them, 2) Tardis coffee mugs. She even quit playing D&D, which I happen to know she loves, to be home for each and every new episode of the current half-season, which ended, uh, Saturday, I think, on a big ol' cliffhanger. Before BBC America was broadcasting the episodes at the same time as the regular BBC was showing them in the UK, she'd get on BitTorrent and download those suckers (and delete them after watching; she's a law-abiding citizen). And, I believe we have every season since they started remaking the show with Christopher Eccleson stashed around here somewhere on DVD. Not an episode can be broadcast into this house without a Big Discussion on What All This Means (since the episodes are terribly convoluted, refer back to each other and stuff that happened in previous seasons, and often lay groundwork for stuff that will happen in future eps, which is mightily confusing if you're me.) In short, she takes this show extremely seriously.

Me? I just watch the thing.

I mean, I like the show. It's cool. Guy flies through space and time in a magical box that has certain Issues once in a while but on the whole can do just about anything. Guy lands on planets that are often severely messed up in one way or another and goes about fixing them, or at least solving their single most monumental problem (alien invasion, parasites, ground-devouring critters, artificial flesh taking over as doppelgangers, that sort of thing.) Guy meets presidents, prime ministers, Popes. Guy gets into and out of lots of trouble. What's not to like?

Here's the thing. I feel outclassed. It's practically a church service at our place, complete with low lights, sacred recliners and cell phones with which to Twitter through episodes. I'm relegated to the couch (the TV version of the crying room for little kids, maybe?) where I'm afraid to breathe, practically. Because Joan is so obviously into this show and not on planet Earth that my saying the wrong thing might just, I dunno, break the spell or something. And then what? Well, then I've ruined it for everybody, like the guy who hid razor blades in Halloween candy.

There's a kind of weird dread that comes over me when I know a new episode is imminent. It's

hard to be in the same room with that much Serious Fandom. I get very intimidated. No matter how much I like the show, I can never in a million years hope to equal that kind of rah-rah kick-alien-butt sort of passion. I sometimes wish there were such a thing as a Doctor Who bar, kind of like a sports bar if you get my meaning, where us casual fans could drop in, watch the show and, I dunno, eat barbecued hot wings. (Scantily clad waitresses are totally optional.) Somewhere where the atmosphere would be less intense. Because, ya know, it's been on the air for 43 seasons and burned through 10 different actors and killed I don't know how many Daleks, but look, folks, it's only a TV show.

Oops. There, I said it. I have to go hide now.