Forum:Doctor Who

An outgrowth of the DW discussions scattered across Talk:Blue vs. Grey. I think we have enough geek power among our small band of regulars to overwhelm that discussion page; safer to do this elsewhere.

We were on the verge of discussing the relative merits of the various Doctors. I'm very new to the series; it's only been within the last year that people have told me I'd enjoy it, and I only started watching in February when Amazon made the adventures of the Ninth and Tenth Doctors and select adventures from the first seven available for free to Amazon Prime members. (Since then I've found a site that has every Doctor Who and spinoff episode for free, except the ones from the 60s that the archivists lost; and in those cases they have the partial reconstructions. [crossingthewhoniverse.com], for anyone who's interested.)

I watched Chris Eccleston's entire season in about three days and then poured through David Tennant's three and a half seasons in just under a month. Then I went back and started to work my way through the select episodes Amazon had made available of the classic Doctors. In a very short time I learned that Matt Smith's first season was available OnDemand, so I more or less abandoned the classic Doctors in favor of that, and I coincidentally wound up all caught up right before the show returned. Then they took their mid-season hiatus and I discovered the free site I mentioned above, and have been picking off episodes here and there.

William Hartnell is really only worth watching as a point of historical interest--by which I mean the history of the show; as a source of history education, a low-budget 60s TV show featuring post-imperially hungover Brits giving their impressions of foreign cultures is. . . suspect. "The Aztecs" was the only Hartnell episode available on Amazon, and it was boring. Now I've watched some of the more significant ones, like the very first episode where he abducts the two teachers and tries to kill the caveman; the one where he meets the Daleks for the first time; and the never-ending "Daleks' Master Plan." They're more interesting but still nothing special. Since so much of the show's continuity had yet to work itself out, it's often hard to imagine that he's the same Doctor as the more recent ones, and he had a selfish streak that makes the feeling even worse. At one point in the first Dalek episode, he and Susan and Ian have a chance to escape the Daleks' clutches, but Barbara is imprisoned by them. The Doctor's like "Fuck Barbara! I want to save my own skin!" and Ian and Susan pretty much have to force him to come with them.

Patrick Troughton's era suffered from the same technical difficulties but he was more in keeping with the Doctor we all know and love, personality wise. His last episode was the first time we learned he was a Time Lord, and his relationships with his companions are much stronger, especially Jamie. They lack the tiresome sexual tension that Russell T Davies was so fond of, especially during Tenant's years.

Actually I was watching a Jon Pertwee episode right before I came over here. I agree with TR's assessment that that was really the genesis of most of the show's modern elements. The whole Austin Powers look and feel is certainly dated, but I do like his era just the same.

Tom Baker I've actually never gotten around to watching. The longest-serving Doctor and the only one the old-timers ever ask for by name (and whom Tennant and Smith have both made references to in interviews suggesting he's the definitive classic Doctor to them as well) is the only one who's escaped my notice. I'll get to him sooner or later. I've seen short clips and while it's not fair to judge based on something like that I can't help thinking the goofiness will annoy me.

Peter Davison I've seen in "The Five Doctors," where the old-timers stole the show; "The Caves of Androzani," whose election as the most popular episode ever I just don't understand; and the skit he did with Tennant in '07 where the TARDIS crosses its own time stream. Based on that limited sample size my impression is that he's pretty vanilla.

I watched Colin Baker in "Trial of a Time Lord" and also watched a series of interviews from the DVD extras. I know he's the least popular Doctor and I thought I would dislike him, but I thought he gave a pretty good performance, especially considering his strained relationship with the headwriter, who kept forcing him to do things that he knew were stupid and that the fans would hate. Hard not to pity the bum rap he got. And I liked his performance.

Sylvester McCoy is intriguing. I've only seen a couple of episodes from the last season when they focused on that maladjusted girl he had for a companion. They had good chemistry (they really sold the scene where he has to destroy her faith in him by calling her "an emotional crrripple") but the writing was contrived and they kept forcing them into situations that made no sense. To think that the last episode of so venerable a franchise could have been the Master whisking people off to a planet ruled by intelligent cheetahs. Even the shitty TV movie was a fitter ending. Speaking of which. . ..

Paul McGann. . . not much to say about him. Of all the peformances of the Doctor I've seen (everyone but Tom Baker) his Doctor came off as the most likable, the most nonthreatening, the most pleasant to be around. He did a solid performance. The movie was really nothing to write home about. I didn't care about it one way or the other till I learned afterward that there's some old rule saying there can be only thirteen Doctors, at which point they'll either need to cancel the show forever or come up with a way to circumvent that rule and alienate the purists. Then I thought "Well that was a waste of an incarnation." But knowing what I know about the Seventh Doctor, it would be too much to imagine him doing the things in the Time War that we know the Doctor did. Better to have a more-or-less blank slate to hang all that on.

Chris Eccleston is my answer to the "Who's your Doctor?" question. I'm so glad he provided me with my introduction to the series. I loved the brooding intensity that would express itself now as uncontrollable fury, now as gloating over the destruction he's wrought (I saw it happen! I made it happen!!") now euphoria ("Everybody lives!") and now as guilt and regret.  Unlike Tennant, who played his Doctor inconsistently, with Eccleston it was believably all from the same core personality, whose true nature always shone through in the end.

David Tennant I like, and it's certainly easy to see how he became so iconic. In the first two seasons he usually was just a nice guy whose wealth of experience meant he could inadvertantly be pushed too far; but the later he went on, the more turgid and overblown his stories became. From that shitty Christmas special set on the Space Titanic on, every little detail took on so much significance that I kept thinking I would have to take a quiz after the episode. I'm glad he went out when he did, and his final episode was just magnificent story-telling, from the battle with the entire universe at stake where every ounce of character he had was put to the test, to the tear-jerking farewell tour where he helped out each of his companions. And then he regenerated into the incumbent. ..

Matt Smith's cartoony monologue was such a jarring contrast to the emotional impact of Tennant's final scene, made even worse by the fact that it was a monologue; Davies has admitted that it was probably unfair to make him give those ridiculous lines without another, more familiar actor to anchor him. Then it was a few months of fans thinking "What a dick!" before he came back with the most complete reboot since Troughton yielded the TARDIS to Pertwee. His first few episodes suffered from some bad writing, but even then he quickly put his stamp on the role and made it his own. And once he and Moffat hit their stride, the rest of Season Five was full of brilliant episodes with a finale that brought the whole season together so well that all the deficiencies early on, like Churchill being duped into helping the Daleks be reborn, turn into strengths in their own right. By the end of his first season I was fully supportive of his being the Doctor. Then he got the chance to play opposite Liz Sladen before she died, he taught the old grouch the true meaning of Christmas in so successful a Christmas Carol parody that it just makes you glad to be alive, and now this season. . . . I have a lot of problems with the way they've been doing a lot of it. But Smith is turning in great performances even in episodes I don't like, buoyed by great chemistry with Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and their daughter Alex Kingston when she's around. The strength of the casting has carried some weak stories all by itself, and it elevates strong stories, even one-off episodes like the van Gogh one, to classic status. And based on his performance with Sarah Jane I think he'll be able to strike a similar chemistry with just about any companion, should Gillan and Darvill decide to move on. I can see a real possibility of him becoming the most beloved Doctor yet.

I'm always eager to get other fans' thoughts on the subject.