Lord, I need You

it's so much more than that.

It’s the Doctor giddy and excited in an alien market, lit up by the wonderful strangeness of it all. His excitement to show a new companion the whimsy and diversity of the universe again, like he is rediscovering it with her.

It's Clara on her first proper trip out, immediately finding a lost little girl while she herself is lost and out of her depth, and choosing to be steady for someone else.

It's Clara and Merry hiding behind the TARDIS because it won't let Clara in yet.

It's Clara promising Merry won't mess up the song. Won't disappoint people. Giving this child reassurance when she's had the weight of an entire society placed on her shoulders. It's Clara treating her like a scared kid instead of a sacred object. Not a ritual. Not a symbol. A child.

It's Clara, without even realizing it, offering up the memories and words of her own mother to this little girl. In a society where memories are currency, where they're sacred. Where they're offered to god as a sacrifice, she gives this small, scared child her mothers words.

It's the Doctor running the second he sees Merry in danger. It's Clara misreading it, thinking he's walking away, begging him to help, thinking it's her fault the child is in danger. It's him stopping her cold.

It's “Listen. There's one thing you need to know about travelling with me. Well, one thing apart from the blue box and the two hearts. We don't walk away.”

It's the Doctor telling a child her life is worth more than martyrdom. That being chosen does not mean being devoured. That sacrifice is not automatically noble.

It's when Merry hesitates and asks, “So if I don’t, then everyone else…,” and the Doctor answering, “Will be fine.”

It's when she asks how, and he says, “There’s always a way.”

It's “Cross my hearts.”

And then, yes, then it's a speech.

But it's not just a speech. It's the Doctor offering up his own history. It's him listing centuries of memories, the loneliness, the wars, the people he has lost, and letting it all surface. It's the tear on his face. It's the crack in his voice. It's how the performance drops and you can see how old he is.

It's bargaining. It's grief. It's someone who has carried too much for too long deciding he will carry a little more if it saves someone else.

It's the little girl he and Clara saved singing to aid him.

It's Clara remembering "We don't walk away." It's her getting on that shuttle and flying it alone across space to reach him. It's her choosing to give up the most important thing she has, a single leaf, a memory of a day that almost killed her father but led him to her mother, an ordinary object that represents an entire unrealized future.

That is what breaks the cycle. Not just his memories. Hers.

So it's not just the speech.

my unruly ass:

cleaning or wipe your bare feet

breaking off a piece of bread and handing it to someone

putting the weight of a basket on your hip or head

eating nuts or berries while hunched over close to the ground

seeing something startling just out of your line of sight and very quickly stepping or leaping on to a larger object to get a better view

cupping your hands into running water to wash your face

the unanimous protection of a baby or child in a public space where women are present

Touching someone’s face with the back of your hand to see if they have a fever

Stopping to watch animals moving in groups (geese, fish, horses, butterflies, bees)

huddling together for warmth when it’s cold

marveling at sunlight through leaves

wonderment at the brightness of a full moon

A very tiny percentage of creators go on to be famous, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t remember little things you did for years and years. Who came up with most of the world’s most famous jump rope rhymes? Who coined some of the famous idioms we use in daily speech? Who made up ‘Jingle Bells, Batman Smells?” Somehow, all of these things stuck and spread around.

When I was a small child, I saw a high school put on a production of the musical HONK. In one song, the mother duck describes various dangers that her baby should avoid in the water, including fishing line, which could strangle him. A member of the ensemble played the role of fishing line, doing a maniacal laugh and over-the-top strangling motions, and I found it hilarious– and to this day, that’s an example I often think of when talking about how ensemble members can still stand out in theatre. The guy who played the role might not even remember that he did that, but I do.

I took Suzuki violin lessons as a kid. The teacher made up lyrics to some of the songs, and she let her students make some up, too. Now whenever I hear the instrumental of one of those pieces, I always remember these ridiculous lyrics about a skunk that we sang in violin class. I don’t even know which student invented them!

In middle school, I found a video about atoms parodying Bill Nye made by some kids for a school product. It probably had less than 1,000 views, but I think of quotes from that video all the time. They had a parody of “We Will Rock You” with the chorus, “Protons, neutrons, electrons” that I think about a lot.

THE PRINCESS DIARIES 2 (2004) Dir. Garry Marshall

This woman joined the BBC in 1960 and was so good at sound editing for classical music that she could literally see where the trombones were on a vinyl record. Like she’d just look at the grooves and be like, “There they are.” People thought she was doing actual magic. She basically said, “Yeah, I am,” and walked into the BBC Radiophonic Workshop like it was her birthright.

She didn’t wait to be assigned to the Workshop like everyone else. She just said, “I want this,” and got it. By 1962 she was creating entire soundscapes and electronic music for hundreds of BBC radio and television productions.

Then in 1963 she casually created the Doctor Who theme—one of the first pieces of music ever made entirely with electronics. It completely changed the landscape of TV sound design. She took Ron Grainer’s notes and turned them into something nobody had ever heard before using tape loops and pure experimentalism. When he listened to it, he literally said, “Did I write this?” And she, ICONICALLY, replied, “Most of it.”

He wanted to credit her. The BBC said no.

She was a woman in a deeply male-dominated space. And not just “wow, there aren’t many women here,” but like explicitly—officially—“women don’t get creative credit here.” Engineering was seen as men’s work. Sound design was men’s work. Women were allowed to assist, to type memos, to splice tape if a man told them where. But they weren’t allowed to author. They weren’t allowed to be the genius in the room.

So they handed all the glory to Ron Grainer.

She wasn’t paid royalties. She didn’t get a credit. She didn’t even get her name on-screen. Not for fifty. actual. years.

Delia also composed music for other BBC programmes, including the Blue Veils and Golden Sands, The Doctor Who story Inferno even reused some of her music that had originally been made for other productions—because that’s how good her work was. It got recycled because nothing else came close.

She hated the remixes of the theme they did after 1980 because they kept sanding down the weirdness, the dissonance, the edge—everything she had fought to put into it. 

So yeah. Delia Derbyshire is my Roman Empire. Every time I hear the Doctor Who theme, I think about her physically slicing tape by hand and looping it to build something no one had ever heard before—and I just sit there like: 🫡🫡🫡🫡🫡