I had some down moments this year, all within the realm of "first world problems", of course, but all things are relative. Like so many with such ultimately trivial problems, I found solace in pop culture. For me, the year was bookended by two unexpected - but remarkably welcome - returns.
The first was on January 8th when David Bowie marked his 66th birthday by releasing his first new music in nearly ten years, while the other was the November return of Paul McGann to Doctor Who to help set the stage for the story marking the show's 50th birthday. What made me so damn happy about these things is not just that they happened but that they were both so good.
In Bowie's case, The Next Day turned out to be his best album since either Scary Monsters or Let's Dance (depending on which denomination of Bowie-ism one follows). The term "return to form" has to some degree been applied to most of Bowie's post-Tin Machine albums, but The Next Day is arguably the first to deserve that designation. That's not because the albums from 1993-2003 weren't good - some of them were excellent - but rather because this one is the first since the early-80s that finds Bowie remaking a genre of pop music in his own image.
In this case, that genre is "Bowie". Having proven - especially with Heathen and Reality - that Bowie was a genre worthy of respect, the man himself seemed excited to push it into new ground. The end result was as strong a collection of songs as he's had in years, work that evokes his 70s heydays (i.e. the albums/phases that some practitioners of Bowie-ism assert are the only ones worthy of attention) without sounding like retreads. It almost seems unfair to the album as a whole to pick favorites, but it goes with the territory to note that "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)", "I'd Rather Be High" and "You Feel So Lonely You Could Die" would be strong candidates for any Bowie compilation I'd put together.
In its 50 year history, over a dozen actors have played the lead role in Doctor Who on TV. Paul McGann, who starred in a mid-90s attempt to revive to show, was the 8th. Because it didn't lead to an ongoing series and the show's 2005 revival cast a new lead, McGann's first TV appearance as the Doctor was also his only TV appearance, making him the George Lazenby of Doctor Who. Despite the lack of screen time, McGann's portrayal of the Doctor remained popular with many fans, especially because he continued to play the role in a series of audio dramas, many of which aired on BBC radio.
Despite statements that no past Doctors aside from David Tennant and the ret-conned incarnation played by John Hurt would appear in the story to mark the show's 50th anniversary, rumors abounded that McGann would have some involvement, even though the man himself denied them (albeit with enough ambiguity to keep fan hopes alive). That hope came to fruition on November 14th when a short prequel episode entitled "Night of the Doctor" was released online. Though ostensibly designed to tie up a bit of the show's continuity - and turn some of that continuity on its head - "Night of the Doctor" is more significant as both a tightly-paced piece of drama about a man forced to make a difficult choice and a valedictory for the actor playing that man. In the course of six minutes or so, McGann showed that, while his screen time as the Doctor, was limited his portrayal certainly wasn't. Aided and abetted by a sharply written script by Steven Moffat, arguably his best in a couple years, McGann displayed the kind of balance between humor and verbal bite that characterizes most of my favorite Doctors.
Considering how much I enjoyed "Night of the Doctor", perhaps the most surprising thing is that neither the 50th anniversary story that followed nor last week's Christmas special, which depicted yet another change of Doctor, felt disappointing. When 2013 started, I wasn't sure it would be a great year to be a fan of Doctor Who or David Bowie, let alone both. Sometimes it's nice to be wrong.
