For today I chose the tiniest moment - a gesture so brief that if you looked away you'd miss it.
It happens in The End of Time part 2, in one of Wilf and the Doctor's main scenes together. They're stranded aboard a creaky tub of a spaceship, as the Master runs rampant on the Earth below. The Doctor is fiddling with wires and gadgets, trying to get the power going again, and his concentration is disrupted by Wilf, who sits down beside him and starts talking.
And then a very small but crucial thing happens. The Doctor sighs, mildly irritated at the interruption. He takes off his glasses, turns his mind away from saving the world, and gives his full attention to the old man sitting beside him.
In the wider context of the episode, this small moment is seemingly insignificant. The stakes are high. The Master has possessed the human race, perhaps permanently, and the Doctor himself is reeling from his decision on Mars, still in the middle of a struggle for his own soul. More crucial things are going on than Wilf's delight at realising his lifelong dream of travelling to space.
But the Doctor gives Wilf his undivided attention. And then they trade some of the most beautiful lines in Doctor Who:
"Nine hundred years... We must look like insects to you."
"I think you look like giants."
And that's why the Doctor doesn't become the Master. Why the Tenth Doctor is able to end his life well, after all his mistakes. He keeps in touch with the best of him - the human race. The people who keep him aware of the small details upon which everything rests. The people who give him hope. The human race needs the Doctor to save the world, obviously, but equally he needs them. They remind him that although saving the world is important, human dignity and small kindnesses are even more essential.
That's what I love about Doctor Who, even more than the time travel and the monsters and the thrills - I love the humanism, the hope, the dignity. The reminder that an ordinary person really is the most important thing in the universe.
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