Doctor Who and the Splendor of the New Year

Around the world, everyone is celebrating the new year. But for the Doctor, the new year is already old.

New Year’s Day is an exciting time. It is a point in time where everyone has a new beginning, where it is the year where we can make those changes to ourselves that we often want to. And while the vast majority, if not all, of those resolutions will fall by the wayside in short order, it is still a chance for a new beginning.

Yet, in Doctor Who, 2016 is just another year. After all, the Doctor has seen just about any point in time he would want to. While New Year’s Day may have the promise of a better future just across the horizon, for the Doctor, it is simply Friday. Been there, done that.

It makes me wonder what the Doctor thinks of our various celebrations at times like these. It is another sign of that optimistic human spirit that the Doctor admires when it comes to humanity, but it is just a day. Because this is the arbitrary moment in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun that humanity decided to recognize, does it really have any significance beyond that which we, as a species, put on it?

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Perhaps that is why New Year’s Day, or Eve, has never been that important on Doctor Who. Unlike Christmas, or other holidays across the Whoniverse, New Year’s just does not have a great deal of focus. For a program that is about travelling through time and space, that changeover from one year to the next would seem as though it would be a draw for the Doctor.

Naturally, that interest would likely depend on the Doctor. The Tenth and Eleventh Doctors would likely have more interest in the celebrations, not just because they were more personable incarnations, but due to the esteem that they hold mankind. The Twelfth Doctor, while still regarding humanity highly, would likely be a lot more sarcastic about the festivities, and would fly off to parts unknown at the first opportunity.

Next: Series Ten could be Peter Capaldi's last

Today, we celebrate the end of 2015, and look forward to 2016 in hopes that it will be better. For the Doctor, it is just another day, and unless Daleks or other creatures are involved, likely one that he would not notice.