Last night, I went to the cinema with my dad and sister to see the 50th-anniversary episode of the British television show Doctor Who.

I’d only seen about a dozen episodes in total, and was going mostly for my sister, who wore her Doctor Who T-shirt and carried her sonic screwdriver and cheered at all the right times.

Even as the homages and references and plot points jumped over my head and skated every which way around me, I couldn’t help but feel the momentousness of it all.

We all have stories and characters we love. We move in close to them, pressing in as we would around a fire, hands and faces turned toward the warmth.