Way Past Strange

This is technically a post inspired by something in a recent bit of Doctor Who material, but it can be nice and non-spoilerific if you haven't been watching the show. (Although, if that's the case, go do something about that: it's really good.) All you need to know is that, in the prequel to a recent episode (obviously, don't watch that video if you haven't been watching the show), the Doctor speaks the following line, when asked whether he is strange:

"Oh dear, I'm way past strange. I think I'm probably incredible."

On hearing it initially, I thought this was a great line, in the hilarious/awesome fashion. As I've continued to think about it over the past several days, I think it's also very interesting, on an essentially linguistic level. Most recently, I think it's actually very deep.

The first part of that needs fairly little unpacking: it's self-evidently hilarious and awesome. The second part is about the way he's using the word "incredible," which I think includes two different meanings. First is the etymological meaning: in- meaning "not," credible meaning "believable," so overall, "unbelievable." In context, that's a plausible intensified version of strangeness: so strange as to be unbelievable. The second meaning, of course, is the modern colloquial one, with "incredible" meaning "amazing" or "awesome" or "fantastic." That's a fun little double meaning; he's using a word that, viewed etymologically, is a perfectly sensible conclusion to "I'm way past strange, I think I'm probably..." but that also packs in the notion of being, you know, incredible.

The third part comes out of that second (and more common) meaning of incredible. In this sentence, the Doctor is kind of suggesting that Incredible, with the standard connotation of awesome/amazing/fantastic, is located Way Past Strange. If you want to be incredible, in other words, you should start by being strange, and then keep going. Obviously the claim isn't that everything that's way past strange is incredible; much of what you find if you go to Strange and then keep on going is Terrible and Horrifying and Demented. But some of it is Incredible, and if you want to find Incredible, that's how you get there. You go way past Strange. After all, if you don't even get to Strange, you'll probably only find Ordinary, and you definitely can't find Incredible amidst all the Ordinary.

The implicit words of wisdom in this comment, then, are that the way to become Incredible is to go way past being Strange. Trust him on this, he's the Doctor.