"He's like fire and ice and rage. He's like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun. He's ancient and forever. He burns at the centre of time and can see the turn of the universe. And... he's wonderful."
This one may be short, but it makes up for it with awesomeness. It sums up the paradoxes of the Doctor: that he is terrifying, alien, distant, strange, and unknowable. Yet, he is wonderful. He is glorious. The Doctor's humanity is defined by his inhumanity, his moments of fear by his moments of joy. No character on television encapsulates the range of "humanness" like Doctor Who does. Moffat once called the Doctor "an Angel who wishes to be human." And in a way, we're all aspiring to humanity: we have entire disciplines like religion and philosophy devoted to arguing over the best way to be human. The Doctor is all those contradictions of human nature embodied. All right, enough of the crazy sky-high philosophizing. It's also a pile of ridiculously cool imagery, and coming at the end of an episode where we realized just how incredibly normal and human the Doctor could be, the monologue delivers all the more.
Rebecca Kulik lives in Iowa, reads an obsence amount, watches way too much television, and occasionally studies for her BA in History. Come by her personal pop culture blog at tyrannyofthepetticoat.wordpress.com and her reading blog at journalofimaginarypeople.wordpress.com.
