Doctor Obsession

I have not talked about Asperger's in a while, except everything is Asperger's with me, because it forms a lot of the basic background of me.  It is the essence of how I react to the world, remove it and my entire outlook and the way that I interact with things would be different, but everything that I added to myself would be the same.

This evening, I was reminded of one or two things that I was/am obsessive about.  The obsessions come on never really gradually, but more like the opposite.  I will be exposed to something for years or hardly ever, but then one day I will be neck deep in it and no one can get me out of it, no matter what they do.  Sometimes, I will snap out of it and then it will be as if I was never interested in it, but often this never happens.  

Very often in the past, it had to do with Television.  I would watch a TV program and then I would have to watch them all, and I would watch reruns so that I could be sure that I had seen them all.  When my work schedule caused me to stop watching prime time television, I discovered that the habit was kicked and when the opportunity to start watching again, I elected not to.  When I moved I did not have one and when people offered me one for fre,e I declined.

But, it was not always the case.  My friend watched Doctor Who for years and I was never interested so, I never watched it.  Then one day, years after, some time in high school I started watching it compulsively.  This was some time ago, back when they were still making new episodes of the old type.  This was also the early years of the VCR, Video Cassette Recorder, I knew how to program it and I went very deep and very hard into Doctor Who.  

As I said, I had a friend that had been watching episodes for years at this point and in a very short time, about two years, I had eclipsed his knowledge on the subject.  I was recording full episodes every Saturday night on PBS right after Nova, how I wish that I was watching Nova as well hosted by Carl Sagan.  I watched complete episodes that would normally stretch over a month or two of weekly half hour episodes.  How I wish that I had money to spend back then and bought multiple tapes instead of one tape used over and over again, because a lot of these episodes are now lost.  But I watched them.

I saw the first episode with the Dalecks, and the first episode with the Cybermen and countless others.  I saw the first colour episode, minted in 1972, but for a couple of years after that, it remained the only one.  By-the-way, that first colour episode involved plastic maniquins that moved and shot people with their hands, precisely like in the first episode of the new series.  

I swear that I have seen almost episode of the first Doctor, except the second one, I have seen only one episode of the second Doctor, the last one and one other, all the episodes of the third, fourth and fifth doctor, including the one that was unfinished because of a labour dispute, I saw this one on YouTube this year.  I have seen the majority of the Sixth Doctor and all of the Seventh.  The movie a couple of times and every episode of the new series, some at least three times.  I watched the cartoon series too.  

So when I say I get obsessed about something, I really do get obsessed with it.  Like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, first edition, I had every book, really, in one form or another.  I own every Exalted book too, first and second edition.

So . . . I watched the 50th anniversary Doctor Who special . . . And caught all the references to the first episode . . ..