"You mean you're deliberately choosing to go on the run from your own people, in a rackety old TARDIS?"
"Why not? After all, that's how it all started."
Doctor Who is the (nearly) perennial science fiction show which has so engrained itself into the consciousness of the United Kingdom and beyond, on the days that it can bother calling itself science fiction. Since November 23rd, 1963, the Doctor and company have sailed through space and time, combating evil, righting wrongs, and being extraordinarily silly. The Doctor is a Time Lord, an alien race with two hearts and not a brain between them, fled from decadence in a stolen time machine (the TARDIS - Time And Relative Dimension In Space) to vworp from adventure to adventure. Sometimes he is a homeless wanderer, sometimes he is a champion of justice, and sometimes he is a lonely god, but he is always the smartest and most charming man in the room. He is joined by a companion, an outsider to his life and our eyes into the workings of a madman's mind - typically, a young Earth girl with a scream that can shatter glass and the assets to keep the fathers entertained. Together, the Doctor and his friends battle against vicious monsters and insane tyrants, from the likes of the murderous Daleks, soulless Cybermen, and the wicked Master, to those of the Freudian Vervoids, the unconvincing Nimons, and the inspired Slitheen. He does it with style, with gravitas, and with a lot of technobabble. Yes, it sounds inane, but it is much bigger on the inside.
There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything we believe in. Things which bear a strange resemblance to men in rubber suits. They must be fought!
This year, 2013, is Doctor Who's 50th anniversary - making it the longest running science fiction show in televisual history. (Eat that, Star Trek.) Suitably enough, this year brings with it some vastly exciting things for us fans (I will never, ever say "Whovian"); it all began with the cliffhanger of Series 7's finale, The Name of the Doctor, where it is revealed that our dear Doctor is not all that he seems, and that he is hiding one terrifically large, John Hurt-shaped secret. We now approach the 50th anniversary itself, which will bring with it answers, revelations, bowties, and a meeting between the much beloved Doctors Ten and Eleven. From there, we wait a long, lonely month for Christmas day, where the brilliant Matt Smith, the Eleventh Doctor himself, will meet his end. With his demise, we welcome our new Twelfth Doctor with (surprisingly) open arms - Peter Capaldi, perhaps best known as Malcom Tucker in the flurry of obscenities often mistaken for a television show The Thick of It. It is a good year to love Who, as it is every year - save 1989 to 2005.
Basically?
Run!
