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sevNote: I've not seen any of the current season of Doctor Who. No spoilers, please! And, this post is minorly-spoilery for the whole of Tennant's run.
So, Tennant's Doctor. I know, I know, he's been old hat for awhile now and everybody's squeeing over Matt Smith, who's adorable and all, but since I don't have cable and do require captions I'm not *watching* MS's second season yet, so instead I'm chewing on how I feel about Tennant's Doctor. Again. Through the lens of the only Doctors I've watched in any quantity: Baker, Eccleston, Tennant, and Smith. This post is, as I said, 'chewing' -- no actual conclusions here. Nor organization, or for that matter much proofreading. Reader beware.
One thing about the Doctor (in all incarnations) that strikes me over and over, from different angles, is that there are two very different Doctors. He's an alien, inhuman, fallible, arrogant asshat. He's also lovable, human(e), powerful, friendly and magical. He's a hero and a thief. He's a better champion for the human race than humans are, but in the end, he's not one of us.
Matt Smith's Doctor, like Tom Baker's, manages to be both at once. My first experience with Doctor Who was with Baker. I was powerfully turned off by the arrogant asshat; if somebody had told me he was an *alien* I might have actually stuck around and watched. But as a human being, I found him wholly unlikeable. Watching Smith do the same kind of mixture, being both in one breath, makes the adult-me, who watches TV with my brain turned on, happy. He can be mean and we *love* him for it. He plays the arrogant jerk and we play along because he really *is* that good. By the time Matt Smith came around, I had enough context that I'd totally bought into both halves of the Doctor's persona. Back in the Baker days, I hadn't, and it threw me out of the story with my confusion and hurt feelings. (I was eight years old when Baker *left* the show. Too young to handle an actual three-dimensional Doctor, I think).
Christopher Eccleston's Doctor layered the arrogant jerk with the loveable friend, one on top of the other, layer after layer. It's a lot like being both at the same time, only subtler. No surprise; Eccleston's a subtler, more-skilled actor than Smith or Baker.
And Tennant's Doctor? To me, he's the most human of the bunch. He didn't wear both the asshat and the hero at the same time -- he'd swap back and forth. It made his intimacy with Rose almost believable. It made Donna's observation that he *needed* a companion to keep him down-to-earth totally believable. It made his devaluation of Martha all the more infuriating (though I place that in the hands of the writers).
That back-and-forth meant that his last few episodes, he could put away his human-ish bits and be the arrogant Time Lord with a bare veneer of humanity pasted on. And I felt free to hate him. I'd been seriously mourning the end of his run -- despite my sadness at how Donna's story was ended, and how despite my anger at how Martha's whole story was handled. Some of that was superficial, er, hormonal, er, well, those *eyes*, that *smile*, that *voice* ... (ahem). But it was also that Tennant's Doctor was somebody I felt like would fit in my life, at least while he was being The Nice Guy Doctor. I could project myself into his story in ways I just couldn't with other Doctors. And that was ending, and I knew it, and I was sad.
And then came the last few specials. We see the Doctor reject a potential companion -- and he's a jerk about it, letting her get caught by human authorities (and then subverting human justice; it's like the worst of both worlds). By the end of Waters of Mars I was absolutely ready to let go, and the last minute or two of the episode fails to wring any sympathy out of me. I remember thinking, "oh, you realize you've gone too far? You're feeling some guilt, some trepidation? GOOD. You DESERVE that. STEW in it. It's nothing like what you just put that human woman through, and she's five times the hero you are."
They probably did that on purpose. :)
The other weird thing about Tennant's code-switching (personality-switching?) was it made it hard for me to separate the actor from the character. When Tennant was the Friendly Doctor, he seemed a lot like himself. The actor's a geeky Doctor Who fan, and his enthusiasm for the show is mirrored in his Doctor's enthusiasm for humanity. He's really serious about his craft (omigod, he gives good commentary. I watched every scrap of commentary and special feature on those DVDs.) Tennant dated a series of mostly-blond mostly-young mostly-actresses, half of whom had been on-set with him, and the potential for exploitative power dynamics kind of made my skin crawl for Rose and Martha (and for the actresses who played them).
So, yeah, in the course of a very few episodes, I went from sorry to see him go to more-than-ready to see him go. Though periodically I do remember that grin, those eyes, that voice and I squee a little and sigh a little.
(To reiterate: I've not seen any of the current season of Doctor Who. No spoilers, please!)
So, Tennant's Doctor. I know, I know, he's been old hat for awhile now and everybody's squeeing over Matt Smith, who's adorable and all, but since I don't have cable and do require captions I'm not *watching* MS's second season yet, so instead I'm chewing on how I feel about Tennant's Doctor. Again. Through the lens of the only Doctors I've watched in any quantity: Baker, Eccleston, Tennant, and Smith. This post is, as I said, 'chewing' -- no actual conclusions here. Nor organization, or for that matter much proofreading. Reader beware.
One thing about the Doctor (in all incarnations) that strikes me over and over, from different angles, is that there are two very different Doctors. He's an alien, inhuman, fallible, arrogant asshat. He's also lovable, human(e), powerful, friendly and magical. He's a hero and a thief. He's a better champion for the human race than humans are, but in the end, he's not one of us.
Matt Smith's Doctor, like Tom Baker's, manages to be both at once. My first experience with Doctor Who was with Baker. I was powerfully turned off by the arrogant asshat; if somebody had told me he was an *alien* I might have actually stuck around and watched. But as a human being, I found him wholly unlikeable. Watching Smith do the same kind of mixture, being both in one breath, makes the adult-me, who watches TV with my brain turned on, happy. He can be mean and we *love* him for it. He plays the arrogant jerk and we play along because he really *is* that good. By the time Matt Smith came around, I had enough context that I'd totally bought into both halves of the Doctor's persona. Back in the Baker days, I hadn't, and it threw me out of the story with my confusion and hurt feelings. (I was eight years old when Baker *left* the show. Too young to handle an actual three-dimensional Doctor, I think).
Christopher Eccleston's Doctor layered the arrogant jerk with the loveable friend, one on top of the other, layer after layer. It's a lot like being both at the same time, only subtler. No surprise; Eccleston's a subtler, more-skilled actor than Smith or Baker.
And Tennant's Doctor? To me, he's the most human of the bunch. He didn't wear both the asshat and the hero at the same time -- he'd swap back and forth. It made his intimacy with Rose almost believable. It made Donna's observation that he *needed* a companion to keep him down-to-earth totally believable. It made his devaluation of Martha all the more infuriating (though I place that in the hands of the writers).
That back-and-forth meant that his last few episodes, he could put away his human-ish bits and be the arrogant Time Lord with a bare veneer of humanity pasted on. And I felt free to hate him. I'd been seriously mourning the end of his run -- despite my sadness at how Donna's story was ended, and how despite my anger at how Martha's whole story was handled. Some of that was superficial, er, hormonal, er, well, those *eyes*, that *smile*, that *voice* ... (ahem). But it was also that Tennant's Doctor was somebody I felt like would fit in my life, at least while he was being The Nice Guy Doctor. I could project myself into his story in ways I just couldn't with other Doctors. And that was ending, and I knew it, and I was sad.
And then came the last few specials. We see the Doctor reject a potential companion -- and he's a jerk about it, letting her get caught by human authorities (and then subverting human justice; it's like the worst of both worlds). By the end of Waters of Mars I was absolutely ready to let go, and the last minute or two of the episode fails to wring any sympathy out of me. I remember thinking, "oh, you realize you've gone too far? You're feeling some guilt, some trepidation? GOOD. You DESERVE that. STEW in it. It's nothing like what you just put that human woman through, and she's five times the hero you are."
They probably did that on purpose. :)
The other weird thing about Tennant's code-switching (personality-switching?) was it made it hard for me to separate the actor from the character. When Tennant was the Friendly Doctor, he seemed a lot like himself. The actor's a geeky Doctor Who fan, and his enthusiasm for the show is mirrored in his Doctor's enthusiasm for humanity. He's really serious about his craft (omigod, he gives good commentary. I watched every scrap of commentary and special feature on those DVDs.) Tennant dated a series of mostly-blond mostly-young mostly-actresses, half of whom had been on-set with him, and the potential for exploitative power dynamics kind of made my skin crawl for Rose and Martha (and for the actresses who played them).
So, yeah, in the course of a very few episodes, I went from sorry to see him go to more-than-ready to see him go. Though periodically I do remember that grin, those eyes, that voice and I squee a little and sigh a little.
(To reiterate: I've not seen any of the current season of Doctor Who. No spoilers, please!)