Doctor Who: Sniffling on Doomsday

Though I do sometimes get emotional watching films and TV shows, I usually manage to hold it together in company. I might have a lump in my throat and glassy eyes, but unless the person in the room with me is watching me rather than the telly, they’d never know.

Last night, though, I lost my composure completely during Doctor Who’s season finale, Doomsday. If you haven’t seen it and are spoilerphobic, skip the next paragraph.

In a nutshell, Rose, the Doctor’s companion for the past 27 episodes, is separated from him, trapped in a parallel world. They part by the magic of a little rip between the worlds, through which they have a couple of minutes to say goodbye to each other for good. The Doctor is in the TARDIS; Rose is on a beach in Norway. She’s a blubbering mess as she tells him, for the first time, that she loves him.

At this point, the music wells up and the pressure of my emotions can no longer be contained. I’m talking uncontrolled sobbing. I reach for a tissue and catch my breath. It’s sure to go down in history as a defining moment in my TV-watching career. No other show has had this effect on me, and for that reason alone I’m in awe of it.

The new Doctor Who has taken its fair share of critical punches - mostly, it seems, from people who want it to be serious, hard sci-fi, rather than whimsical, magical fantasy. But for my money it’s a bold, inventive, funny, touching and involving series, full of wonder and surprise.

It takes itself seriously enough for me to care about the characters (as demonstrated above), but definitely, and defiantly, isn’t afraid to take wild flights of fancy, almost daring my belief to snap… which it never does.

The feeling I’ve been left with at the end of this second season is elation. My thanks go out to everyone involved. Saturday nights won’t be the same until series three starts next year, when we’ll hopefully get to hear the Face of Boe’s four-word secret.

I bet it’s “I’ve lost my hat”.