The Doctor Who 50th anniversary special is one of those that just gets better with repeat viewings. You’re able to get past the ‘OH MY GOD, THEY ARE SO ADORABLE TOGETHER!’ and ‘DID YOU SEE CAPALDI’S EYES’ moments and focus on what’s really going on.

In a sense, Doctor Who has long been about self and memory and what really makes a person who he or she is. With each regeneration, the Doctor is the same person, and yet wholly different. But in the end, still very much the same person in a different wrapping. Sorta like his sonic screwdriver.

I have a personal joke with myself when I have trouble figuring out how to handle a particular problem or situation. “What would I do if I were me?” I ask myself. Often out loud.

Yes, I get strange looks when I do that.

But, basically, Doctor Who said that to himself (not in so many words) in the special and got the answer he needed.

What the Self actually is – well, that’s the question, isn’t it?

The theme was repeated in so many ways, over and over, throughout the special. The multiple Doctors. The idea that the way we’ve been numbering them is all wrong because Hurt is really 9, which means Eccleston is 10, Tennant 11 and Smith 12. And Capaldi is 13. Does that mean the end that Smith’s Doctor has seen really is the end? And is just one regeneration away?

Then there’s the matter of the shape-shifting Zygons. We watched as Queen Elizabeth I fought with her alien doppelganger. As a group of British government scientist-types stared down their alien imitators. And then, when the aliens and humans couldn’t remember who was human and who was alien, and suddenly found common ground.

We giggled as fans when Tom Baker showed up as the curator and played a game of words with Matt Smith about whether they were the same person or not.

We are the only ones who know our Self. And yet we know little about that Self.