Miah Week 5 - The Insurgence of Nostalgia in Television

 The Insurgence of Nostalgia in Television

        This blog post contains spoilers for season thirteen of Doctor Who. It also includes a mention of vomit around five paragraphs in, so if you have severe emetophobia or something similar of the sort, please close this page. If neither of these warnings concern you, feel free to keep reading.

        If you don't know what Doctor Who is, you're welcome to click out of this blog post and start watching it at any time. I'm not explaining the entirety of the UK's pop culture to you.

        Now that the spoiler warning is out of the way, I can go out and say it: they brought back David Tennant. Arguably one of the most iconic Doctors of all time, Tennant's run as the tenth reincarnation of the Doctor spanned three seasons, from 2005 to 2010 (not including the 50th anniversary special in 2013). Just recently, the finale of season thirteen aired, and Jodie Whittaker imploded into glowing dust just in time for the new Doctor to form in her place.

        If you know how Doctor Who works, you know that every regeneration of the Doctor is different. In the same vein, you know that David Tennant appearing again, saying "Wait, I know these teeth," and then yelling at a cliffside isn't normal. The Doctor's body, face, and personality should be different each time—So why is the one from seventeen years ago suddenly back? And, more importantly, why does he remember his teeth before every other aspect of himself?

        There's a multitude of reasons for this. In this blog post, I'll be ignoring the question about the teeth (still unclear on that one) and focusing on a particular reason for Tennant's return: the nostalgia.

        Nostalgia, as most of you know, is the brain's response to stimulus that reminds people of a (usually) pleasant experience from the past. Commonly-used nostalgic terms are "the good old days", "in my youth", and "that one time in middle school when I drew a dog so ugly that I almost threw up from laughing at it." (Please don't think too hard about that last one.) Nowadays, with television sets everywhere, nostalgia is almost always talked about in reference to a beloved TV show. Because of its prominence in media, nostalgia is also a marketing strategy for a lot of entertainment; think of the Star Wars franchise. Those people haven't made a movie with a different plotline in 20 years, but die-hard fans still sit down to watch every release. Why? It reminds them of the old Star Wars content. In fact, it's very easily proven that using old characters and assets from the older movies is an active promotional effort by Lucasfilm. That doesn't make it an underhanded or dirty strategy, though; commercialized nostalgia isn't necessarily weaponized nostalgia.

        By casting David Tennant as the Doctor again, I feel that BBC is doing just that. Tennant has been openly enthusiastic about his time on the series, so having him back in the show is something he probably readily agreed to. Doctor Who is nearing its 60th anniversary, and what better way to celebrate that than plucking a Scotsman from the throes of London and making him interact with people in tinfoil suits again?

        A lot. A lot of better ways. But it makes me nostalgic, and I can't exactly knock a marketing ploy that does what it's supposed to. Needless to say, I'll definitely be tuning in to the 2023 season of Doctor Who, whether it's low quality or not. You either die a Brooklyn 99 enjoyer or live long enough to see yourself become a Star Wars fanatic, I guess.

        Thanks for reading. I'm gonna go look for that T.A.R.D.I.S. I 3D-printed in the sixth grade now.