I've never understood Doctor Who. (Spoiler alert?)

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The title says it all. I just finished watching the Christmas special (starring Katherine Jenkins & Michael Gambon) and, well, pretty much from the start I was just absolutely lost. Gambon was watching who I think was his past self as a small boy in a recording on a projector, and Doctor Who randomly appears during the the recording. The Doctor and the boy draw a flying shark into the boy's room (a world where fish fly) which tries to kill them. Straight to the next scene, they are outside and the shark is dying in the boy's arms.

Next they are in a room full of people frozen in cryogenic chambers; Katherine Jenkins is in one of them. They walk away, then come back and Jenkins is outside the chamber singing to the dying shark which is somehow now in this room. Jenkins goes back in the chamber, and every Christmas Eve I think, she comes out. There is a number on the chamber, which goes down every time she comes out. She falls in love with the boy who is growing up. The doctor and the (now) man continue to see her every Christmas Eve and they travel around the world.

Fast foward many years, and Amy Pond (the current doctor's companion) is in a space ship that is flying through the world of flying fish and they are in danger somehow. Katherine Jenkins comes out of the chamber for the very last time (the number is on 0001) which means she will die, but to save the space ship she starts singing, and then everything is okay. It ends with her and Michael Gambon in a sleigh being pulled by the flying shark.

So uh, yeah... WTF?? Now I know this may sound very silly but this really is what it seemed like to me. I am intelligent (in certain areas) and I love Sci-Fi, but I have actually never understood Doctor Who, no matter how many times I've tried to watch it over the past 5 years. There's so much going on, David Tennant ran all over the place explaining things super fast and pressing buttons while everything was exploding around him, and with Matt Smith it is no different.

Is this to do with my Asperger's really struggling to process it, or what? I have no idea how any of the kids who love it can understand it; I sure can't!

Also I know some of you will comment about the old Doctor Who before my time ("You whippersnappers don't no nothing about real TV" right?) Was that DW as mindboggling and complex?

Hello. While I haven't seen this years Christmas special IMO Doctor Who is an easy show to jump into. The Doctor is an alien and takes different companions (usually from all I've seen a human person) into his TARDIS (time machine) and they travel together on adventures. Sure there are slight references to things and IMO strangely the Dylexs keep popping up as do other enemies but that's how shows are the bad guy keeps returning to be thwarted by the hero (The Doctor) in this case. I've been watching the series since June. I think it's awesome!! ! Don't try to think to far into it IMO. it's an alien taking a companion on adventures in his time machine. (Sure you can get more indepth understanding time lords and the past stuff The Doctor talks about) but it's mainly the above. Oh and BTW if you're wondering he can't meddle in time itself with stuff that is destined to happen (Real life case he couldn't stop JFK for example) That unfolded and the world fell around it so that'd be impossible to change. I love Sci-fi.

I saw that, it was not the best episode (i would say that silence in the library takes that honor), and i admit that the show can be quite fast passed at times but i don't think it is hard to fallow, the X-files there's a show that is hard to fallow.

Well, kid... I never really tried to understand it. I watched some of the older (but not oldest) ones as a teenager and they were so silly and corny that we kind of watched them just for that quality, because they were funny. They were somehow also very intense, which is remarkable, but that's science fiction... intense, confusing, and silly. I like it.

For what it's worth, your description of the Christmas episode does make it sound very confusing, but I can't tell you from watching it, since here in Southern California we most likely won't see the Christmas episode for another month or so. That's fairly confusing as well. It's not as if they can't make a few more copies of it...

These days I just ignore the randomness of the whole thing and enjoy it! Anyway compared to some of the previous Christmas specials it was much better

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I have HFA, ADHD, OCD & Tourette syndrome. I love animals, especially my bunnies and hamster. I skate in a roller derby team (but I'll try not to bite )

The old DW wasn't very complex or mind-boggling at all. It was pretty much standard serial TV. Nothing about the stories were particularly groundbreaking or challenging.

The new DW tends to be arch--it wants you to think it's more clever than it really it is. It's still very shallow in terms of story-telling and characters. The character of the Doctor always lacked dimension and depth and that was one of the things I disliked about the old show--but Russell T Davis' Doctor just had the veneer of dimension and depth,and that was truly grating. Davis was very contentious and dismissive towards the sci fi elements of DW, and his model for the new DW was the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, so you see where that went wrong. Moffatt, who's doing the new new DW, isn't much better--he's a horror writer and not a real sci fi writer, so he relies on hyperbole and emotional reaction rather than actual storytelling. The new DW wanted it to be so much deeper than the old DW, but ended up doing just an expensive fanfic version of DW instead.

So, no, it's not your failing. You just see through DW's crappiness. Just yourself some credit for not being a sucker.