Story Telling

Ricky blogs about Doctor Who episode by episode, and I often comment. But at the end of a terrific season, it's time for a small entry here on this site.

You know, I really enjoyed it. Good stories told well. I love story telling. I love characters that are clear and interesting. I always enjoy the lonely Doctor and the friends he draws around him - and I love that here has been a whole series of Prime Time TV where the focus has been Friendship. Not romance, but friendship. And that, in the end, the cost of the friendship was sacrificial made it all the more valuable.

Stories make sense of life; they allow experience and emotion to collide into a narrative, and that narrative pushes things that sometimes defeat us into shapes we can comprehend, and comprehending take power over.

A smile of recognition, the words " I know what you mean", a certain (although often nameless) feeling of familiarity - these are the gifts the story-teller grants an audience, gifts with which to face life and the battles it brings, and sometimes to fight those battles a little more successfully.

This is of course one of the reasons why Jesus teaches in parables. It's why the Bible is recorded in narrative form so often.

It's why movies and TV shows and plays and operas and books and even video games work so powerfully: in stories we see ourselves. We are supposed to. In good stories, we see ourselves bettered, freed, lifted, taken on. And when we leave the story, the bettering, freeing, lifting, taking on - it stays with us. Fable only works if it comments on reality.

For me, this series of Doctor Who worked. Thanks to all involved.