What keeps you watching Doctor Who?

TV At the turn of the year a friend online asked me this question and bless them I replied with three paragraphs worth. Unfortunately it wasn't an easy answer. Revolution of the Daleks was not good. Apart from the tired main story, however fabulous it was to see Captain Jack back in vision, his participation was not integral and so ultimately wasted. Here's what I wrote:

"Jodie's incredible when she's allowed to be but she's being under-utilised and in general I don't know what Chris Chibnall is trying to do with it in a way which wasn't the case with previous showrunners. I haven't rewatched an episode since The Woman Who Fell To Earth and one of the reasons I stopped writing reviews was because there's barely anything to say about it. It feels like a mid-table football team keeping afloat while remembering the glory days.

"I don't watch Doctor Who all the time in the way that I perhaps used to. I'll return to things when they're rereleased and I'm still a completist in that way but its the major franchises, MARVEL, Star Wars and Star Trek which make me excited in a way that the RTD era and early Moffat eras used to. There's no comparison in dramatic terms between last night's Who and the Agents of SHIELD which turned up on Disney+ yesterday, and that was a timeloop bottle episode.

"But thankfully even if TV Who feels like its motion going, its part of an echo system of content which includes the novels, comics, BDs and especially Big Finish which is doing some incredibly exciting stuff lately now that they have all the toys. Time Lord Victorious has been a triumph. If anything keeps me as a fan, the special thing, it's that and being part of a sort of community that shares a very particular and peculiar frame of reference."

All of which ignores my excitement at the Doctor's new secret origin and the storytelling potential that brings across the franchise, on and off television.  She now has her own era similar to Star Wars' The High Republic or Star Trek's Enterprise, a whole set of adventures set before the time we already know.  What keeps you watching Doctor Who?  How could I not?