Doctor Who is the best show ever made. Here’s why.

62 years of trying to be nice, always being kind.

The world is full of darkness. So much is going wrong. Experts agree that America has succumbed to right-wing authoritarianism; call it fascism or something else, these are extraordinarily difficult times.

This post is a break from all of that. At least kind of.

In this piece, I will try and convince you that Doctor Who is the best TV show ever made, explain to you why it matters, and why it’s particularly important in our current context. In a time when cruelty and fear dominate headlines, it’s worth celebrating a show that insists on the power of kindness, intellect, and hope.

Bear with me. Let’s go.

First, a primer: what is Doctor Who?

You’ve probably heard of Doctor Who, but you might not have watched much or any of it. That’s okay.

The core of every story is this: there is a problem, somewhere in time and space. There might be vampires in Venice in 1580; a plot afoot to steal the Mona Lisa in modern-day Paris in order to fund time travel experiments; a society of pacifists on a far-away planet locked in a generations-long war with warlike, genocidal racists. The Doctor, a strange traveler who…