Last week, while absorbed in the thought that the majestic, aristocratic, nuanced, heart-rending Peter Capaldi is most certainly the best Doctor ever**, I was struck by the extraordinary thought that the modern Doctors are symbols of the modern liturgical history of the Catholic Church.

I’m not joking. (Well, not much). Look:

Christopher Eccleston = the interim rite of 1964. Both very short-lived.

David Tennant = the rite of 1967. A new ordo, designed to appeal to masses of people who knew little to nothing about its predecessors, without completely alienating those who did know something about said predecessors. Full of lots of whizzbang new aliens and love affairs/overhead projectors and altar girls, though, where it was well-written/said reverently, not without a certain appeal. And it was certainly still valid.

Matt Whatshisname = the Reform of the Reform. The sudden realisation that the thing is getting out of hand and needs to be fixed, without wanting to admit that it was the experimentation that broke it in the first place. As memorable as the actor’s surname, which is sad, because he/it represented a dramatic improvement on the recent past and gave hope to many.

Peter Capaldi = the glorious return to tradition!  But it is a living tradition; not a sad reproduction of the past, but a wonderful bringing of the past into the present and a revivification of both. (Kind of the way classic European polyphony in Mass beats 1970s hymns in every possible way, but it’s nice that they don’t have to be sung by castrati anymore.)

Now, if they could just get rid of Clara (who is really just Lois Lane in a maddening, horrible disguise), it would be perfect.

***

The perennially single amongst us spend a lot of time wondering why we’re perennially single. Sometimes we blame our faces or our bodies for it. Sometimes we blame men for it. Sometimes we blame absent third parties for it (such as Society, or Sexism, or Feminism, or some weird combination of all three.)

Today, I must confess that, in a moment of hopefully-never-repeated revelation, I saw that the real reason I am still single is almost certainly because the instant I feel the faintest twinge of hopeful interest in a guy, a great cloud of stupidity descends upon me, numbing my brain and rendering me incapable, not only of interesting or memorable speech, but simply of speech in the first place. If I can force a sentence out of my mouth, it is invariably garbled and as stupid as the descending cloud, and only once I’ve run away can I fully absorb the horror of the complete loss of intelligence, social grace, and normal human interaction which once again covered me with its own inexorable self.

Why is this so? And isn’t this only supposed to be what happens to men when they are in their youth and in love for the first time? And how can I get rid of it? Worse still – what if I can’t get rid of it? What if it’s too late? I mean, even if I do suddenly learn to talk, it’s not as though I look like I’m in my twenties anymore. Worse still, what if it’s the deliberate work of God or nature, to make sure that I’m never wanted or to prevent the enfeeblement of the human race with further stammering editions of myself?

***

The drone makes a boy feel like a man. (If you don’t believe me, you’re not watching them closely enough.) And, perhaps, this is part of why it does so.

**indisputable and irrefutable