This post is for nerds in the know, obviously. 

Matt Smith, of fish fingers and custard notoriety, was not my favorite doctor. Tom Baker is probably still my favorite doctor because he was my first, reminds me of being a kid, and gets the nostalgia points, but David Tennant probably ties him for sheer enjoyment.

My husband is agnostic on doctors—if pressed, he will say Tennant, but mostly for reasons that are tangential to the reasons that I list Baker—the enjoyment of watching our kid watch the show at that time. He is unequivocal on his favorite companion, however. He would stare at Amy Pond for days if left to it. Thus, he credits Matt Smith episodes as among his favorites.

The kid is the outlier here. His favorite? Paul McGann. Right. The guy who got one movie and one short film.

And a bunch of audio dramas, the kid will quickly correct you. At one point, the kid was tasked with walking a couple miles home from high school a couple times a week, and apparently those are what kept him company.  (I always wondered what took him so long.)

But really, the kid should know who the best Doctor is. He is the resident expert, and has been for years. One of my favorite stories about him finding his tribe happened in 2013, right as Matt Smith was wrapping up his tenure on the show.

That was the summer I took him from our home in Virginia to DragonCon in Atlanta. I had never been to a con before and had no idea what to expect or how to function. And this thing was pretty huge—spanning something like four hotels downtown. I think it took me most of a day to get that map figured out, and figuring out the hotel interiors was another layer of befuddlement. But it all went fairly well. 

The kid sucked it all in like a sponge.  And once we hit the first Doctor Who panel, he was in heaven.  We were sitting in the way-back of a ballroom, against the wall, on the floor, when he asked if he could scoot up and find a chair.  I was busy looking at the map, so I said fine, but be good and don’t bug anyone. Next thing I knew, this familiar voice pipes up with, “So, in The Brain of Morbius, who are we supposed to believe all those other faces are?” 

Oh, he triggered an outpouring of positive reinforcement like you would not believe.  And he engaged and challenged and even knew when to shut up and hand over the microphone. A total pro, at age 10. We then did pretty much the entire Doctor Who track for the next two days. Another high point was a panel with Sylvester McCoy and with Peter Davison — at which the kid asked equally intelligent and impressive questions. It was quite nice. And Sylvester McCoy, who had a busted leg, took the kid for a ride around the ballroom on his scooter. We have a lovely photo.

The funniest part was when we went back the next year, and the kid piped up in another panel, and the moderator went, “Hey, aren’t you that kid from last year? Where ya been?!” The kid is now 22 and has one more year of his creative writing major ahead of him. Will he end up writing for the show? It is still going, after all. I can think of worse outcomes!