The thing the newest episodes of Doctor who didn't get was that it was never about the shiny CGI or the Doctor's dramatic monologues or The Master or the romances or the Daleks. I mean, look at the first episode of NuWho. Terrible CGI with a rude Doctor and a girl from a council estate who woke up with messy hair. What must they see, when they watch that episode? Because when I first watched it, in my living room, the front room of a terraced house with mould in all the walls and rot in the floorboards, just seven years old, I saw something Different. Different to anything I'd ever seen before. My mum showed it to me, and when we got the The Empty Child I had to go outside and eat scrambled eggs on the stairs up to the garden by the mud kitchen because I was too scared. Because Doctor Who was never about being woke but it was about being political because "just this once everybody lives" and a girl with "no A-levels, no job, no future" saving this brilliant, mad, terrifying man from some god-awful CGI blob and do they understand why we loved it so much? Because it wasn't nostalgia or even well-written stories, it was because it was fun. They met Agatha Christie and fought a giant wasp. They ate chips. They were just normal people, and it felt so innately human, and you know what I may not like the latest seasons of Doctor Who but I understand why people do because it went back to being silly, didn't it? It went back to being fun. My favourite thing about Doctor Who was watching the way it toed the line between ridiculous and campy and fun and horrific and terrifying and existential and beautiful and thoughtful and caring but the 11/12th doctor was too dark for me and the 13th was too unsure and 14/15 were too over-the-top but they all have their merits, the reasons people love them, and the episodes which stick in my mind are the funny and hopeful and serious all at once, and do they understand that? Because that's why I love it so much, it wasn't perfect but it was ours, and fuck I love this show more than I can put into words and yes, maybe it is an old dog, but sometimes you just need a new trainer to teach new tricks. Doctor Who means so much to so many, and Torchwood does, and The Sarah Jane Adventures, and I've spent countless hours watching Sarah Jane save the world and watching Ianto Jones make coffee and watching the Doctor run, and run he did, because the Doctor is the man who grabbed the hand of a random girl in the basement of a random shop and told her to run and how many times have I been that girl, have we been that girl, have we wanted to run alongside him and his ridiculous coat and wanted to stand by the TARDIS console, and I may not like the newer seasons but people do because at the end of the day he's still the one we want to run with and what the new seasons got wrong is that as long as he's the Doctor and as long as there's someone with him we'll always love it, they don't need the CGI or the "binary, binary, non-binary", they just need the Doctor. Because we love the Doctor. And we love the show! We love the running and tacky writing and bullshit plotlines, because they felt like they were cared for and everyone involved loved it. What matters to us is that it's loved, and the Doctor is too. Because we love it so much.