BEDA 4: Forgot I Was Doing BEDA

...And it probably won't be the last time.

Well, hello gang. Today was overwhelmingly uneventful, as has been most of my week (and month, and summer). I spent a lot of today rewatching the second season of Doctor Who, which was the first season I started with, so it's mildly sentimental. It's reminded me a lot of why I fell in love with this show in the first place, and rewatching my first season gives me an entirely new perspective. I've found tidbits I didn't notice before, and certain things have more significance now that I've seen all the New!Who episodes. I appreciate Rose, Mickey, and the Tenth Doctor even more than I did initially (and I already loved them a whole lot).

There was one line in particular from the episode School Reunion, said by Sarah Jane Smith, that particularly resonated -- one that I didn't even notice the first time I watched it. But I think it sums up a lot of what this show comes to represent:

"Pain and loss, they define us as much as happiness or love. Whether it's a world, or a relationship... Everything has its time. And everything ends."

In context, this is Sarah Jane's reaction to the possibility that The Doctor could use a key to the origins of the universe to rewrite history and time, to recreate the entire universe, to stop the Time War and bring back everyone he had ever lost -- and in one line, she redirects him back to reality, to the knowledge that the good and the bad in the world have to coexist to balance each other, that we wouldn't have one without the other, and that they're necessary to survive. I just think it's a poignant remark, and it also speaks to the fact that even though The Doctor is admittedly one of the highest powers in the universe, the one who always saves the day -- the sound wisdom of a human is never lowly to him. Just as the show's ideology so often promotes, the title Time Lord in no way proposes that he is superior to humans or any other being. He treats everyone as equals, recognizing that even the most common of beings, and even in fact the most deplorable, have something to offer the world.