- Time now for a major confession.
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- I, Good Ol' Larry B., am an addict.
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- No, it's not drugs. Nor booze. We're not even talking
work, fame, good times, bad times, or money.
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- I'm addicted to a television show by the name of "Doctor
Who."
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- It's a British series that runs in the U.S. on BBC America
and the Sci-Fi Channel. The current version of the show is in its fourth
season. Previous iterations appeared from the early '60s to 1996.
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- I knew about The Doctor, as the hero is called, but didn't
become a fan until a couple of years ago. One night, Gwen the Beautiful
was flipping through channels and there it was - The Doctor's vehicle,
an old British police phone booth, soaring and spinning through space and
time, controlled by well, by a madman, you could say.
-
- I mean, here's a dude over 900 years old, saving civilizations
and getting into trouble wherever and whenever in the universe he goes
and loving every single minute of it.
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- Laughing in delight at the fact that whatever is happening
is, in fact, happening.
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- Eagerly throwing himself into all he does, whether it's
the best of possible activities or the worst.
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- Celebrating the defeats as well as the victories.
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- And doing everything his own strange way because he's
the sole living representative of the smartest and wisest alien species
in the universe.
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- Intelligence, wisdom and experience are The Doctor's
primary weapons. Supplemented by a little gizmo called the "sonic
screwdriver" which the writers have cleverly made into the ultimate
tool and weapon, capable of getting my hero out of any jam the rest of
his attributes can't handle.
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- There, I said it: "My hero."
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- He became my hero that night Gwen made the mistake of
stopping too long on BBC America. Since then I've watched every episode
that's aired, and not just once or twice.
-
- Searching for insider knowledge, I've been a regular
visitor to the various Doctor Who web sites.
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- Pursuing episodes I've heard about but missed, I've investigated
the gray-area sites where you can watch or download any number of films
and TV shows.
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- Giving in to my pack rat tendencies, I've even bought
all the DVD collections of the series, even those going all the way back
to the '60s.
-
- And last week, my addiction caused me to go full-scale
insane and buy a big-screen, high-definition, projection TV.
-
- It didn't hurt as much as it could have. I found a slightly
used one for sale for about one-third of the retail price. But still, I
didn't care this much about the quality of the picture I was watching when
I was a television producer.
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- Kinda scary, that fact.
-
- So scary that I sat down and thought very hard about
why I love the show as I do, more even than my former Most-Loved-TV-Series,
the classic Bob Culp/Bill Cosby "I Spy."
-
- And the answer came to me. Not from the Wind. Not in
a dream. Not courtesy of a ghostly presence. Instead, I used my own knowledge
and wisdom and experience.
-
- And realized that I identified with this alien superbeing.
Completely.
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- Not just because of the qualities I've already mentioned,
but because of something The Doctor and I share that I don't share with
most human beings.
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- Unlike most humans, The Doctor can't possibly be subject
to peer pressure. Because he has no peers.
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- Also unlike most humans, the fact that he's a perpetual
outsider doesn't bother him. Oh, he's got his lonely moments, sure, but
they don't last all that long. Because The Doctor can't even imagine what
being one of the gang would be like.
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- You can't miss something when you don't know what it
is.
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- The Doctor, as I see him, is the perfect example of someone
with a condition doctors call Asperger's syndrome. It's a mild form of
autism.
-
- People with Asperger's can think and feel and communicate,
often at a very high level, but when it comes to social interactions, they
- we - just don't get it.
-
- We're clueless about what other people need from one
another because we don't need it. Parties? Confidants? Hangin' out? Alien
concepts. For the most part, Asperger's people need someone else for only
two things:
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- To tell us what other people need so we can give all
we can.
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- And to love.
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- There, Gwen, I confessed! Now, can I watch the new "Doctor
Who" DVD?
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- Now, can I please have that hug?
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- Copyright C 2008 by Larry Brody. All rights reserved.
-
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- Author Larry Brody's weekly column, LIVE! FROM PARADISE!
appears on his website, www.larrybrody.com. He has written thousands of
hours of network television, and is the author of "Television Writing
from the Inside Out" and "Turning Points in Television."
Brody is Creative Director of The Cloud Creek Institute for the Arts, the
world's first in-residence media colony. More about his activities can
be seen on www.tvwriter.com and www.cloudcreek.org. He welcomes your comments
and feedback at <mailto:LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org>LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org.
Brody, his wife and their dogs, cats, horses and chickens live in Marion
County, Arkansas. The other residents of the mythical town of Paradise
reside in his imagination.
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