Agent of Change

Spoiler warning

In 1977, movies didn’t open in thousands of screens. They’d play in big cities, and then, eventually they’d get to the smaller ones. I lived near Canton, IL, which had two movie theaters, and older one with a balcony and everything, and a newer, smaller one across the town square that was more like a box with seats in it. We had to wait on movies to come there, so we usually got things a month or two after it was released and if we DID get a new movie the first week, it was usually a stinker that bigger theaters didn’t want.

So, when Star Wars came out, we didn’t get it until late July.

By then, I had read the comic adaptation and the novelization.

I had had the movie spoiled. And I didn’t care. I knew the story, I knew the twists, but it was so well made and I was so excited that I was there for the experience and the spectacle.

We are now so crazed about avoiding spoilers that people asking that the movie not be spoiled takes us a third of the Facestab page.

I’ll see the movie in a couple of weeks when the theaters aren’t full. I am sure someone will spoil things. I won’t care. The point of the journey is not the arrival.

Nothing’s sad ’til it’s over. Then everything is.

Doctor Who’s season finale had, as it always does, moments that made me reflect upon my own life. Good writing does that, and I often take lines from TV shows, movies, novels, comics, etc… and extrapolate them into my own life, what I am going through and fit them into how I see and exploain the world.

SPOILERS AHOY!

The Doctor has broken the rules (duh) and has taken his companion Clara out of reality in the moment before her death and is attempting to make it so that death, which has happened, does not happen. In the previous episode, he was trapped and had to basically solve a puzzle, and fight his way through a McGuffin in order to get to where he could do such a thing. And, in order to do so, it took time. Lots of time. Over 2 billions years. Yeah, I know, but it’s Science Fantasy.

And when he is struggling through another plot puzzle to save Clara, his companion, she finds out what he had gone through to save her:

Clara gives her such a stare – turns back to the Doctor.

CLARA

(Turning to the Doctor)

Four and a half billion years…

THE DOCTOR

If she says so.

CLARA

Why would you even do that? I was

dead already! I was dead and gone,

Doctor, and you were in hell.

Why would you do that to yourself??

On the Doctor. He just looks faintly perplexed – a frown of

almost childish puzzlement. Like he doesn’t understand why

anyone would ask that question.

THE DOCTOR

I had a duty of care.

That. That right there. The whole idea encapsulated there. He didn’t understand why should would ask the question.

He had a duty of care.

THAT is what friendship means to me. I don’t toss the word around lightly or give it away on whims to people I’ve known at work for a week or two. It is a deeper connection, a belief that this other person has meaning to you and you take on a duty of care.

“People walk around today calling everyone their best friend. The term doesn’t have any real meaning anymore. Mere acquaintances are lavished with hugs and kisses upon a second or at most third meeting, birthday cards get passed around offices so everybody can scribble a snippet of sentimentality for a colleague they barely met, and everyone just loves everyone. As a result when you tell somebody you love them today, it isn’t much heard. “ – David E. Kelley

And this, the long way about, is why I don’t make friends easily. It’s not that I am broken, as I have thought all of these years. It’s that I take it seriously and why I tell the people I call my friends that they matter to me.