As the world continues to struggle in the grip of COVID-19, and the US—the country with by far the highest incidence of the virus, and perhaps the poorest response—starts to decide just because it’s tired of this whole stay-at-home thing that surely it must be over now, I sit in front of my computer asking myself to think about Doctor Who. What’s wrong with this picture?

Actually, nothing. Because what the world really needs right now is a little bit of hope. Anything and everything we can find to give us a spark of joy, to keep us from buckling under the intense pressure of our collective trauma, to inspire us to do good for each other and ourselves is important. So if watching, thinking about, even arguing about Doctor Who with friends near and far can do that for any one of us, then so much the better.

For my part, though, I’m currently not finding Our Show to be the best source of that joy. Maybe it’s because I don’t have anyone else with whom to bounce new (or even old) ideas off of, or maybe it’s simply that I’ve already seen every episode that’s still extant at least three times. Even the ones I don’t know as well can’t be said to be unfamiliar, so there’s no delight in discovery there anymore.

But I love that people involved with making the show are still putting out new content to try to keep fandom engaged. I love that some folks can have fun doing 30-day Facebook challenges about favorite/least favorite parts of the show. And I love that we’re all assuming that some day the show will be back on the air to delight us all again.

Meanwhile, I am finding that I need to engage in other distractions to keep myself from going mad. (Don’t ask me about the various Asian dramas I’ve been serially binging/obsessing about over the past several months unless you really want an earful.) There’s a certain thrill of discovery there that is missing for me in Doctor Who these days.

This is a particularly sad time for a Neowhovian to realize she’s lost that “neo” shine, but I know that spark of interest will return some day. Once there’s new content to analyze or friends with whom to chat about the things we do and don’t like about various aspects of Who, I’m sure I’ll start to feel the love again. For now, though, I’m just glad I’ve found something to tide me over.

I hope you have, too.