“The Impossible Astronaut” originally aired while I was halfway across the country at college. My campus is extremely small (roughly 1,000 students) and there is only one TV available for common use. I checked it out about an hour before the episode was supposed to air and discovered it got BBC America. Even better, no one was using it! I would be able to watch the series 6 permire on a decent television screen!
Excitedly, I texted my Doctor Who-fan suitemates and told them of my amazing discovery. We could watch this momentous episode together! I settled back to watch the recap of series 5 that was playing before the premiere.
About 20 minutes before the episode started, I got a text back and found out that neither they nor any of my other friends were interested in coming to watch it with me. They were busy (with D&D I assume), and would watch it the following day, as a friend was going to have it on her laptop.
I was pretty disappointed but I sat there and watched that gut-wrenching, pants-wetting episode all on my own. I sat alone in that dark lobby with a circle of empty couches around me. I wept by myself when the Doctor died, and had no one to cling to when the Silents came on screen. I realized I was sadder about having to watch it alone than I realized.
A week or so later (they didn’t actually watch the episode for quite a few days after it aired) I heard my friends discussing the episode. None of them liked it very much. One mentioned that “The Doctor did a lot of the same things he always does.” They agreed that it was fairly sub-par.
…
What.
“The Impossible Astronaut” is brilliant. I’m not going to take the time to break it down and explain why. Most of you reading this know already (which makes me pretty happy, by the way!).
All in all,
They 1) wouldn’t come watch the season premiere with me and 2) thought it wasn’t really very good.
It’s only the first thing that really bugs me. I shouldn’t be that put out by it, I guess, but it’s not an isolated incident. The group of friends I’ve acquired at college really only aggravate me in countless ways—I can’t ever be myself around them for fear of offending someone or other, and I often get excluded from a lot of their events and information. (Additionally, they all seem to think they’re part of Lord of the Rings or epic heroes or secret royalty or something. I’m an unapologetic cynic so this drives me up the wall.)
So even though my options for company are slim at my school, thinking back on all this made me realize it might be time to take MBMBaM’s oft-given advice and turn my friends into other friends. I’m out!
