End of the Road, for Now

With all the Oscars stuff, I didn’t get a chance to post this earlier, but I did want to talk about showrunner David Jenkins’s announcement that Our Flag Means Death isn’t going to be picked up by another streamer. When the news hit, it felt like hearing about the cancellation all over again, and I didn’t quite know what to do with myself.

As I was trying to process my feelings about it, to take in the news that it’s really not coming back, I found myself flashing on a scene that wasn’t from Our Flag Means Death at all. Instead, I was thinking about a moment from the Doctor Who episode “The Doctor’s Wife.” In this episode, the living consciousness of the TARDIS is pulled out of the ship and put inside a human body. The TARDIS and the Eleventh Doctor have an adventure together, but by the end, the human body is breaking down and the TARDIS is about to be returned to the ship. As she starts to fade, this is what she says:

TARDIS: I've been looking for a word. A big, complicated word, but so sad. I've found it now.

DOCTOR: What word?

TARDIS: Alive. I'm alive.

DOCTOR: Alive isn't sad.

TARDIS: It's sad when it's over. I'll always be here, but this is when we talked.

This is a thought that brings me both sadness and comfort. The show will still be here. Other fans and I will always have these 18 episodes, that incredible acting, those hilarious moments, that wonderful romance, and the behind-the-scenes gems Samba Schutte posts on his socials. We'll always have that, and the show will continue to live on in new ways through fic and fanart. We'll always have that moment when we watched “you wear fine things well,” “The Chain,” “This Woman's Work,” and “you wrote me a lovely letter!” for the first time.

But this is when we talked.

It's going to be sad going forward, knowing that any conversation from here on out will only be from our end. The show has said all it's able to say and won't get another chance to reply. Even though the love will never disappear, we'll always wish we could've had more time.

“Alive” is sad when it's over.

But this show was so alive. In just 18 short(!) episodes, it packed in so much love, so much joy, so much pain, so much silliness, so much acceptance, so much longing, so much discovery, so much bravery. So much family.

So if I may, I'll end on the TARDIS's final words to the Doctor:

TARDIS: There's something I didn't get to say to you.

DOCTOR: Goodbye?

TARDIS: No. I just wanted to say hello. Hello, Doctor. It's so very, very nice to meet you.

Hello, Our Flag Means Death. It's so very, very nice to meet you.