8 Things Non-Fans Don't Understand About Doctor Who
You can trust him, he's the Doctor.
Doctor Who has been a staple of British TV since the early '60s, and in that long tenure we've seen the show undergo countless changes both on-screen and off.
Even after being effectively cancelled in 1989, the Doctor's fans endured, and were rewarded in spades with the 2005 revival, something that brought an entirely new generation into the fold.
The show's fandom has earned a reputation as one of the most fiercely loyal and avid in existence, but that doesn't mean that Doctor Who isn't without its detractors.
Some haven't seen the show and don't care to, and some have watched a little only to decide that it isn't for them, and while that certainly isn't a crime, it does usually lead to a serious under-appreciation of one of the largest and most intricately detailed sci-fi franchises ever conceived.
As a fan of the show, you've probably dealt with at least one of these misconceptions about Doctor Who, and you'll know the frustration that comes with trying to explain exactly what a Time Lord is to someone who isn't overly receptive, so here are 8 of the things that non-fans just don't get about Doctor Who.
8. It's About Much More Than Travel Through Time And Space
Yes, the general premise of the show is that the Doctor and his companions travel around, righting wrongs and helping people across all of time and space. But that's such a broad explanation, isn't it?
Doctor Who has explored countless themes in its lifetime on the air. Love, friendship, humanity, morality and existentialism to name a few, but no theme pops up more than that of loss. The Last of the Time Lords is (mostly) alone in the Universe, and while each incarnation of the Doctor lives with it in their own particular way, the unavoidable truth is that, at its core, Doctor Who is about the loneliest hero in all of space and time.
That's not to mention the Doctor's companions. There was the apparently unbreakable bond with Rose that was broken by the distance between universes, the hot-cold, never-in-the-right-place-or-time love between the Time Lord and River Song, and the marriage of companions Amy and Rory, who gave us a love story that spanned millennia.
It's not easy to put into words the remarkable spectrum of topics that Who covers, and those who don't watch the show really don't understand that it's more than just fighting aliens in space.