( *spoilers*)

Things I’ve learned from Doctor Who (in no particular order):

The Doctor

• lies
• is definitely a madman with a box
• is the stuff of legends
• is what monsters have nightmares about
• can be the man that stops the monsters
• is out of his mind
• is compassionate
• is always unarmed, but never afraid

Advice

• If you see an angel statue: Don’t blink! Blink and you are dead!
• Count the shadows; if you have two, you are going to die.
• Stay away from people wearing gas masks (you are not their mommy)
• You don’t want to listen to reason.
• Always turn left!
• Very important advice taken from the (Twelfth) Doctor: Don’t be lasagna!

Information

• Fear is a superpower.
• Bananas are good (always bring a banana to a party – also, good source of potassium!)
• Monsters are real.
• The British Royal Family are werewolves.
• Time is a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff…
• Bow-ties are cool.
• Captain Jack Harkness = sex
• Everybody’s important.
• We’re all stories in the end.
• Survival is a choice.
• The human race survives
• The earth is defended.
• People never really stop loving books.
• Loving the Doctor is like loving the stars themselves.
• What matters the most is the here and now.
• Premonition is not weird, it’s remembering in the wrong direction.
• Fear of the dark is not irrational.
• Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely.
• We always have a choice.
• Love is not an emotion, love is a promise…
• Everything has its time. And everything ends. (Nothing lasts forever.)
• Surprisingly there is always hope.
• Good men don’t need rules.
• Taking hope away from someone can make them dangerous.
• Everyone wants to see Captain Jack Harkness naked.
• We all carry our prisons with us.
• Violence doesn’t end violence, it extends it
• If a fixed point is altered, time will disintegrate.
• Lying is a vital survival skill. And a terrible habit.
• An eye for an eye, it’s never the way.
• Everybody dreams. They dream about where they are going.
• To live in peace you have to be prepared to forgive.
• Time is not the boss of you
• Being unarmed doesn’t mean you are powerless.
• The bad things don’t always spoil the good things.
• Living a long life isn’t always a good thing.
• Be careful what you wish for.
• Man is not made to be controlled by machines.
• Small, beautiful events can be vital.
• Everyone’s unique.
• Pears are squishy!
• The cruelest kind of warfare is love.

Also be afraid of pretty much everything:

Bluetooth, Bubble wrap, cars, children, children’s drawings, Christmas presents, Christmas trees, clocks, computers, cracks on the wall, department stores, diet pills, eye-patches, gas, gas masks, libraries, mannequins, politicians, reality shows, scarecrows, school cafeteria food, school teachers, shadows, snowmen, stone statues, tally marks, TVs, water, Wi-Fi…

Direct Quotes From Doctor Who:

Rose Tyler: You don’t just give up. You don’t just let things happen. You make a stand! You say no! You have the guts to do what’s right, even when everyone else just runs away!

The Doctor: Yes, you have got to decide that you’re going to live. Survival is just a choice. Choose it now.

Reinette: One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel.

The Doctor: I’m a Time Lord… you don’t understand the implications. I’m not a human being; I walk in eternity.

The Doctor: I am and always will be the optimist. The hoper of far-flung hopes and the dreamer of improbable dreams.

The Doctor: There’s something that doesn’t make sense. Let’s go and poke it with a stick.

Clara: Is this a story, or did this really happen?
The Doctor: Everything ever told really happened. Stories are where memories go when they’re forgotten.

Wilfred: Sometimes I see this look on her face, like she’s so sad and can’t remember why.

The Doctor (about Donna): They will never forget her, while she can never remember. And for one moment… one shining moment… she was the most important woman in the whole wide universe.

The Doctor: But you never take the time to imagine the impossible. That maybe you survive.

Clara: Where are we going?
The Doctor: Into darkness.

River Song: When you love the Doctor, it’s like loving the stars themselves.

The Doctor: This is who I am, right here, right now, all right? All that counts is here and now, and this is me!

The Doctor: You can’t see me, can you? You look at me and you can’t see me. Do you have any idea what that’s like? I’m not on the phone. I’m right here. Standing in front of you. Please. Just… Just see me.

River Song: I hate you sometimes!
The Doctor: Oh, I know!
River Song: Mr. Lux, with me. Anita, if he dies, I’ll kill him!

The Doctor: It’s the oldest story in the universe. This one or any other. Boy and girl fall in love, get separated by events – war, politics, accidents in time. She’s thrown out of the hex or he’s thrown into it. Since then they’ve been yearning for each other across time and space. Across dimensions. This isn’t a ghost story, it’s a love story.

The Doctor: People talk about premonition as if it’s something weird. It’s just remembering in the wrong direction.

The Doctor: What if I don’t die? What if I refuse?

The Doctor: Hello. I’m the Doctor. Basically: Run!

The Doctor: Hi honey, I’m home.
River: And what sort of time do you call this?
Madame Kovarian: The death of time. The end of time. The end of us all.

Clara: Listen. This is just a dream. But very clever people can hear dreams. So please just listen. I know you’re afraid, but being afraid is all right. Because didn’t anybody ever tell you? Fear is a superpower. Fear can make you faster, and cleverer, and stronger. And one day, you’re gonna come back to this barn, and on that day, you’re going to be very afraid indeed. But that’s okay. Because if you’re very wise and very strong, fear doesn’t have to make you cruel or cowardly. Fear can make you kind. … It doesn’t matter if there’s nothing under the bed, or in the dark, so long as you know it’s okay to be afraid of it. So listen. If you listen to nothing else, listen to this: you’re always going to be afraid, even if you learn to hide it. Fear is like… a companion. A constant companion, always there. But that’s okay. Because fear can bring us together. Fear can bring you home. I’m gonna leave you something just so you’ll always remember. Fear makes companions of us all.

The Doctor: We always have a choice.

The Doctor: But times change, and so must I.

The Doctor: I’m OCD. What’s their excuse?

The Doctor: …love is not an emotion. Love is a promise…

Sarah Jane Smith: The universe has to move forward. Pain and loss, they define us as much as happiness or love. Whether it’s a world or a relationship, everything has its time. And everything ends.

Clara: You told me the name you chose was a promise. What was the promise?
Tenth Doctor: Never cruel or cowardly.
War Doctor: Never give up. Never give in.

The Doctor: My experience is that there is, you know, surprisingly always hope.

The Doctor: Who’s she?
Kazran Sardick: Nobody important.
The Doctor: Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. You know that in nine hundred years of time and space and I’ve never met anybody who wasn’t important before.

Ood Sigma: This song is ending. But the story never ends.

Captain Jack Harkness: Am I naked in front of millions of viewers?
Zu-Zana, Trine-e: Absolutely.
Captain Jack Harkness: Ladies, your viewing figures just went up.

The House: Fear me. I have killed hundreds of Timelords.
The Doctor: Fear me. I’ve killed all of them.

The Doctor: I’m not running away. But this is one corner of one country, in one continent, on one planet that’s a corner of a galaxy that’s a corner of a universe that is forever growing and shrinking and creating and destroying, and never remaining the same for a single millisecond. And there is so much, so much to see, Amy. Because it goes so fast. I’m not running away from things, I am running to them. Before they flare and fade forever.

Kahler Jex: We all carry our prisons with us.

The Doctor: Violence doesn’t end violence, it extends it.

Lily Arwell: What’s happening?
The Doctor: No idea. Do what I do. Hold tight and pretend it’s a plan.

The Doctor: River, no one can help me. A fixed point has been altered. Time is disintegrating.
River: I can’t let you die!
The Doctor: I have to die!
River: Shut up! I can’t let you die without knowing you are loved — by so many and so much — and by no one more than me.
The Doctor: River, you and I, we know what this means: We are Ground Zero of an explosion that will engulf all reality. Billions on billions will suffer and die.
River: I’ll suffer if I have to kill you.
The Doctor: More than every living thing in the universe?
River: Yes.

Tim Latimer: He’s like fire and ice and rage. He’s like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun. He’s ancient and forever. He burns at the centre of time and can see the turn of the universe. And… he’s wonderful.

Curator: Well… um… big question, but, to me Van Gogh is the finest painter of them all. Certainly the most popular, great painter of all time. The most beloved, his command of colour most magnificent. He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world, no one had ever done it before. Perhaps no one ever will again. To my mind, that strange, wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world’s greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived.

The Doctor: We all change, when you think about it. We’re all different people all through our lives. And that’s okay, that’s good, you’ve got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be. I will not forget one line of this. Not one day. I swear. I will always remember when the Doctor was me.

The Doctor: An eye for an eye. It’s never the way. Now you show your son how wrong you were. How there’s another way. You make him the best of humanity. In the way you couldn’t be.

The Doctor to Rose: I’m burning up a sun just to say goodbye.

River Song:
Demons run when a good man goes to war.
Night will fall and drown the sun
when a good man goes to war.
Friendship dies and true love lies
Night will fall and the dark will rise
when a good man goes to war.
Demons run but count the cost
the battle’s won but the child is lost.

Clara: You will not insult my memory, there will be no revenge. I will die, and no one else here or anywhere will suffer.

The Doctor: You need to get yourself a better dictionary. When you do, look up “genocide”. You’ll see a little picture of me there, and the caption’ll read “Over my dead body.”

OHILA: Anyone can hide from an enemy, Doctor. No-one from a friend.

Elton Pope: When you’re a kid, they tell you it’s all… Grow up, get a job, get married, get a house, have a kid, and that’s it. But the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. It’s so much darker. And so much madder. And so much better.

The Doctor: There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea’s asleep, and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger, somewhere there’s injustice, and somewhere else the tea’s getting cold. Come on, Ace. We’ve got work to do.

The Doctor: The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.

The Doctor: I’m old enough to know that longer life isn’t always a better one. In the end you just get tired; tired of struggle, tired of losing everyone that matters to you, tired of watching everything you love turn to dust.

River Song: Happy ever after doesn’t mean forever. It just means time. A little time.

The Doctor: You gave me hope and then you took it away. That’s enough to make anyone dangerous. God knows what it will do to me.

The Doctor: If you are so desperate to stay alive, why don’t you live a little?

The Doctor: I don’t believe that man was made to be controlled by machines. Machines can make laws, but they cannot preserve justice. Only human beings can do that.

Elton Pope: We forget because we must.

The Doctor: Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones. But you still have to choose.

The Doctor: Every war ever fought, right there in front of you. Because it’s always the same. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who’s going to die! You don’t know whose children are going to scream and burn! How many hearts will be broken! How many lives shattered! How much blood will spill until everybody does until what they were always going to have to do from the very beginning. Sit down and talk!

The Doctor: Books. People never really stop loving books.

Danny: Wi-fi. You have iPads in the afterlife.
Seb: iPads. We have Steve Jobs.

Clara Oswald: Don’t give up. Not ever. Not for one single day. Be safe, if you can be. But always be amazing.

The Doctor: Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way.

Me: I’ve been watching the stars die. It was beautiful.
The Doctor: No, it was sad.
Me: No. It was both. But that’s not something you would understand, is it? You don’t like endings. She died, Doctor. Clara died billions of years ago.
The Doctor: You killed her.
Me: No.
The Doctor: You let it happen.
Me: No, I didn’t. Neither did you. She did. She died for who she was and who she loved. She fell where she stood. It was sad. And it was beautiful. And it is over. We have no right to change who she was.

The Doctor: I walked away from the last Great Time War. I marked the passing of the Time Lords. I saw the birth of the universe and I watched as time ran out, moment by moment, until nothing remained. No time. No space. Just me. I walked in universes where the laws of physics were devised by the mind of a mad man. I’ve watched universes freeze and creations burn. I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. I have lost things you will never understand. And I know things. Secrets that must never be told. Knowledge that must never be spoken.

The Doctor: A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but is by no means the most interesting.

The Doctor: I forgive you. After all you’ve done, I forgive you.

The Doctor: I don’t need a sword. Because I am the Doctor. And this is my spoon.

The Doctor: But nobody wins for long.

The Doctor: Courage isn’t just a matter of not being frightened, you know. It’s being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway.

The Doctor: Oh there’s always something worth living for…

The Doctor: No. We don’t walk away. But when we’re holding on to something precious, we run. We run and run fast as we can. And we don’t stop running until we are out from under the shadow.

Rose Tyler: Everything must come to dust. All things, everything dies.

The Doctor: You are unique in the universe.

The Doctor: She can’t hear you. I’m so sorry. It’s one-way.
Rory: She can always hear me, Doctor. Always. Wherever she is and she always knows that I am coming for her, do you understand me? Always.

Caecilius: A new day. Even the longest night must end.

Clara Oswald: Run. Run, you clever boy… and remember me.

River Song: There’s always a way out.

The Doctor: Immortality isn’t living forever. That’s not what it feels like. Immortality is everybody else dying.

Nardole: He’s very brave and he’s very silly and I think, for a time, he’s going to be very sad. But I promise, in the end, he’ll be all right. I’ll make sure of it.

The Doctor: Things end. That’s all. Everything ends. And it’s always sad. But everything begins again too, and that’s always happy. Be happy. I’ll look after everything else.

Idris: I’ve been looking for a word. A big, complicated word but so sad. I’ve found it now.
The Doctor: What word?
Idris: “Alive.” I’m alive.
The Doctor: Alive isn’t sad.
Idris: It’s sad when it’s over.

Emma: What’s wrong?
Clara: I just saw something I wish I hadn’t.
Emma: What did you see?
Clara: That everything ends.
Emma: No, not everything. Not love. Not always.

Nardole: You are completely out of your mind!
The Doctor: How is that news to anyone?

Rory Williams (to Amy): To save you, I could do anything.

The Master (to Missy): You see, Missy, this is where we’ve always been going. This is our perfect ending. We shoot ourselves in the back.

The Doctor: Do you know how many of you I could fill? I would shatter you. My testimony would shatter all of you. A life this long, do you understand what it is? It’s a battlefield, like this one, and it’s empty. Because everyone else has fallen.

Sabetha: The man who loves me cannot betray me.

Madame Vastra: Anger is always the shortest distance to a mistake.

The Doctor: I never know why. I only know who.

Rory Williams (to Amy Pond): I don’t care that you got old. I care that we didn’t grow old together.

Miss Evangelista: I have the two qualities you require to see absolute truth: I am brilliant. And unloved.

The Doctor: Laugh hard, run fast, be kind.

The Doctor: That’s the trouble with hope. It’s hard to resist.

The Doctor: Come on. I’ll take you home.
Young Davros: Who’s side are you on? Are you the enemy?
The Doctor: I’m not sure that any of that matters. Friends, enemies. So long as there’s mercy. Always mercy.

Related Links:

• YouTube Playlist – My selection
• Uncyclopedia: Steven Moffat – Even Oscar Wilde thinks he is evil…