B024 OxCon 2016 (Oxford Comic Con)

Firstly, your podcast is fantastic. I’ll certainly continue listening in future.
Also, it’s wonderful to hear that you enjoyed my talk. I wish I had addressed the resolution of the Doctor’s hero’s journey in Human Nature and The Family of Blood (and to a lesser extent after the Human-Time Lord metacrisis in Journey’s End). Certainly, those episodes are so beloved because they’re pauses in the otherwise immutable cycle of the monomyth. These episodes necessarily depict the Doctor taking on human flaws and emotions, thus rendering him more relatable to a human audience. The Doctor’s abilities also change, sometimes liberating him from the limitations of his quasi immortality (i.e. aging more slowly than his companions, thereby being condemned to a life of perpetual solitude). Furthermore, the Doctor’s human avatars’ ability to save people demonstrates that we’re also capable of meaningfully impacting our world. In this way, episodes that humanize the Doctor combat nihilism.
Thanks for continuing to discuss this point. I’ll certainly incorporate it into future revisions of my paper.