There is no getting around the fact that this last year-plus has been rough on everyone. Some folks have lost loved ones and/or livelihoods, others have seen entire ways of life shift and change, and all of us have just been under constant mental stress even if we can count ourselves among the “lucky ones” these days.

That’s why I have opted out of watching certain things that I might have previously chosen to watch to challenge myself. It’s not that I don’t want an intellectual challenge; I’ve done more language learning in the past year than almost any other time of my life. But right now I need an escape, not something that’s going to force me to take a hard look at myself.

None of that is to say that there is not work that needs to be done (I know that as a white American, for example, I have internalized plenty of racist ideology that needs confronting), or that I will never return to it. However, every person has to decide for themself when and how to do that work, and for me—for now—that is not while watching visual media. Instead, much like the folks on the Verity! podcast this year, I’ve decided lately that if I’m going to watch something, it should be just plain enjoyable, for pity’s sake.

Because my brain is also still craving newness, rather than familiarity, I have been largely ignoring Doctor Who of late. But I thought it might be nice at least to look through the list of episodes and see if anything tripped my trigger. So below are some of the adventures I can imagine myself picking up off the shelf to watch if something new was not an option.

• The Time Meddler (First Doctor)
• The Mind Robber (Second Doctor)
• The Time Warrior (Third Doctor)
• The Ribos Operation (Fourth Doctor)
• The Stones of Blood (Fourth Doctor)
• City of Death (Fourth Dotor)
• The Mark of the Rani (Sixth Doctor)
• Remembrance of the Daleks (Seventh Doctor)
• The Unicorn and the Wasp (Tenth Doctor)
• Thin Ice (Twelfth Doctor)

I started out thinking I should pick one from each Doctor’s era, and I could do that, but the farther along I got in the list, the more I realized that my tastes just don’t run that way (at least not today). That realization was amplified as I moved into the modern era. I surprised myself by not finding more than two episodes in the last fifteen years that popped off the page as something I could cope with right now.

And that’s the crux of the issue: I just can’t cope with certain themes or emotions at the moment, at least not with the anticipation of them that foreknowledge of the entire episode brings. Discovery viewing is much more my speed right now than revisiting known stories.

I imagine that some day I’ll feel like returning to the tried and true, but for now, escapism lies somewhere besides Doctor Who for me. And that’s okay, because I know some day I’ll be back (“Yes, I shall come back.”), and there will be joy in it for me again.