The Tenth Doctor
May. 9th, 2006 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustFour episodes in to the series, and already I have to concentrate to remember which is which; must be time to fix those thoughts on paper.
Two disclaimers, to begin with. The first I share with just about everyone else, it seems: I thought Christopher Ecclestone was terrific, and his playing of the Doctor was a large part of what made Doctor Who unmissable. He was always going to be a hard act to follow.
The second may be no more than a reflection of the times of my life when I was and wasn't watching Doctor Who: I watched it from the beginning, with William Hartnell's grandfather figure, through Patrick Troughton (still my own favourite, on the basis of vague but fond memories) and then intermittently during the tenures of Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. Since then, I might catch the odd episode, but whole Doctors have passed by unseen. Meanwhile, I have grown older, and the Doctor has grown younger - and it isn't David Tennant's fault, but he takes this to extremes.
It isn't just that I was so very much younger when my concept of the Doctor was formed, of course: he is a Time Lord, incredibly old and incredibly powerful. At the origin of the "companion" rôle is a recognition that this may be a little forbidding, and the audience had better be given someone younger to identify with, a kid sidekick, Robin to the Doctor's Batman. Naturally, we speculate about the relationship between the Doctor and his travelling companion(s), but this is a game played on the margins of the script; I don't want to see it acknowledged overtly (pre-slashed, as it were), I want to feel that I am piecing together a story which is hidden, unravelling a secret which is - however slightly - a guilty secret, a breaching of the barriers between two characters who are different in every way possible: age, background, species (and traditionally gender too, though I wouldn't insist on that one).
This worked fine with Rose and the Ninth Doctor: Christopher Ecclestone's dry, sardonic manner contrasted beautifully with Rose's exuberance, and made him seem older and her younger than the actual ages of the actors (no, I have no idea what those are). As has been said about someone else, "She gave him sex appeal, he gave her class" (OK, in this case she humanised him, but you get the drift). With the Tenth Doctor , there is too little contrast for my taste. Rose is young, enthusiastic, thrilled by the wonders of the universe; and the Doctor, too, is young, enthusiastic, enchanted by the novelty of every werewolf and clockwork robot. No longer the exile condemned to drift through eternity, he is a tourist out to see every sight there is. This is still great fun, but it doesn't - or at least, so far it hasn't - engage the emotions as the previous series did.
An example: Rose bets that she can provoke Queen Victoria into saying "We are not amused." She doesn't see the Queen as a real person, threatened by a real danger which she, Rose, shares - she sees her as some sort of challenge in a game. And the Doctor, after some initial reluctance, enters into the game. Differently scripted, Rose's reaction could have shown something about her playful approach, her light-heartedness, that youthful unawareness of her own vulnerability: in short, it could have said something about Rose. Shared by the Doctor, it admits that yes, this is all really just a bit of fun, no need to take it too seriously. But if I'm not supposed to take the werewolf seriously as a threat, what is the point of it?
In this respect, the next episode worked much better. Anthony Head was a creepily convincing bad guy, the demon headmaster himself, and was scary enough to cover for the feebleness of his allies, the army of dinner ladies (though I wondered whether the vampire bats that are really aliens might have played better if they had not followed immediately after the werewolf who was really an alien). Sarah Jane and K9 come from a period when I was not watching, so I had no emotional investment in their return, and I found it quite hard to believe that this intelligent and self-reliant woman had spent all these years keeping her life on hold until the Doctor came back for her. But I quite liked the suggestion that however fond the Doctor may be of his companions, we are short-lived creatures and, like anyone who keeps a pet, he always knows that he will outlive them. Given the emphasis on the Doctor's loneliness in episode four, it's worth pointing out that he habitually discards his pets long before their shorter life span becomes an issue: Sarah Jane was looking remarkably well all these years on. A companion may not be able to stay with the Doctor for the rest of his life, but she could stay for substantially more of hers than he allows her to. But, he reassures Rose, Rose is different - he won't be abandoning her.
So it's a bit of a surprise to see him, in the following episode, falling in love with Madame de Pompadour. Fortunately, Micky has decided to join the travellers, so Rose has a little friend of her own age to play with, while the grownups are flirting. For a moment it looks as if Madame de Pompadour is going to join the merry crew as well (exactly how much bigger is the TARDIS inside than out?), but the Doctor hasn't quite got the hang of this time travel business, and returns for her too late. Was this episode intended as a corrective to the previous one, to reassure us that the Doctor is not the heartless seducer with a girl in every decade that School Reunion might suggest? Or will it have consequences as the series continues? Will Micky's presence change the cosy twosome into a crowd, or will it restore some tension to a couple who had reached that irritating, giggling-together-all-the-time stage?
Only time will tell; which is why I wanted to put these thoughts on the line before they are lost in a flood of hindsight. Should developments make them appear completely misguided, please, be gentle with me.
Two disclaimers, to begin with. The first I share with just about everyone else, it seems: I thought Christopher Ecclestone was terrific, and his playing of the Doctor was a large part of what made Doctor Who unmissable. He was always going to be a hard act to follow.
The second may be no more than a reflection of the times of my life when I was and wasn't watching Doctor Who: I watched it from the beginning, with William Hartnell's grandfather figure, through Patrick Troughton (still my own favourite, on the basis of vague but fond memories) and then intermittently during the tenures of Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. Since then, I might catch the odd episode, but whole Doctors have passed by unseen. Meanwhile, I have grown older, and the Doctor has grown younger - and it isn't David Tennant's fault, but he takes this to extremes.
It isn't just that I was so very much younger when my concept of the Doctor was formed, of course: he is a Time Lord, incredibly old and incredibly powerful. At the origin of the "companion" rôle is a recognition that this may be a little forbidding, and the audience had better be given someone younger to identify with, a kid sidekick, Robin to the Doctor's Batman. Naturally, we speculate about the relationship between the Doctor and his travelling companion(s), but this is a game played on the margins of the script; I don't want to see it acknowledged overtly (pre-slashed, as it were), I want to feel that I am piecing together a story which is hidden, unravelling a secret which is - however slightly - a guilty secret, a breaching of the barriers between two characters who are different in every way possible: age, background, species (and traditionally gender too, though I wouldn't insist on that one).
This worked fine with Rose and the Ninth Doctor: Christopher Ecclestone's dry, sardonic manner contrasted beautifully with Rose's exuberance, and made him seem older and her younger than the actual ages of the actors (no, I have no idea what those are). As has been said about someone else, "She gave him sex appeal, he gave her class" (OK, in this case she humanised him, but you get the drift). With the Tenth Doctor , there is too little contrast for my taste. Rose is young, enthusiastic, thrilled by the wonders of the universe; and the Doctor, too, is young, enthusiastic, enchanted by the novelty of every werewolf and clockwork robot. No longer the exile condemned to drift through eternity, he is a tourist out to see every sight there is. This is still great fun, but it doesn't - or at least, so far it hasn't - engage the emotions as the previous series did.
An example: Rose bets that she can provoke Queen Victoria into saying "We are not amused." She doesn't see the Queen as a real person, threatened by a real danger which she, Rose, shares - she sees her as some sort of challenge in a game. And the Doctor, after some initial reluctance, enters into the game. Differently scripted, Rose's reaction could have shown something about her playful approach, her light-heartedness, that youthful unawareness of her own vulnerability: in short, it could have said something about Rose. Shared by the Doctor, it admits that yes, this is all really just a bit of fun, no need to take it too seriously. But if I'm not supposed to take the werewolf seriously as a threat, what is the point of it?
In this respect, the next episode worked much better. Anthony Head was a creepily convincing bad guy, the demon headmaster himself, and was scary enough to cover for the feebleness of his allies, the army of dinner ladies (though I wondered whether the vampire bats that are really aliens might have played better if they had not followed immediately after the werewolf who was really an alien). Sarah Jane and K9 come from a period when I was not watching, so I had no emotional investment in their return, and I found it quite hard to believe that this intelligent and self-reliant woman had spent all these years keeping her life on hold until the Doctor came back for her. But I quite liked the suggestion that however fond the Doctor may be of his companions, we are short-lived creatures and, like anyone who keeps a pet, he always knows that he will outlive them. Given the emphasis on the Doctor's loneliness in episode four, it's worth pointing out that he habitually discards his pets long before their shorter life span becomes an issue: Sarah Jane was looking remarkably well all these years on. A companion may not be able to stay with the Doctor for the rest of his life, but she could stay for substantially more of hers than he allows her to. But, he reassures Rose, Rose is different - he won't be abandoning her.
So it's a bit of a surprise to see him, in the following episode, falling in love with Madame de Pompadour. Fortunately, Micky has decided to join the travellers, so Rose has a little friend of her own age to play with, while the grownups are flirting. For a moment it looks as if Madame de Pompadour is going to join the merry crew as well (exactly how much bigger is the TARDIS inside than out?), but the Doctor hasn't quite got the hang of this time travel business, and returns for her too late. Was this episode intended as a corrective to the previous one, to reassure us that the Doctor is not the heartless seducer with a girl in every decade that School Reunion might suggest? Or will it have consequences as the series continues? Will Micky's presence change the cosy twosome into a crowd, or will it restore some tension to a couple who had reached that irritating, giggling-together-all-the-time stage?
Only time will tell; which is why I wanted to put these thoughts on the line before they are lost in a flood of hindsight. Should developments make them appear completely misguided, please, be gentle with me.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 09:31 am (UTC)I think that the relationship between the Doctor and Rose in the first two episodes, where they were so full of themselves and so pleased with everything ("irritating giggling-together-all-the-time" - definitely) was intentional and so upfront because Rose was going to be hit with the revelation that she wasn't the first girl to go travelling with him and very probably won't be the last. And his relationship with Madame De Pompadour added to that. I think that the rest of the series will be working on this (especially considering that a lot of what we're getting in this series, as well as the Doctor as a God/Angel stuff is the fact that he is incredibly lonely.)
I did find the Sarah Jane stuff very moving, she is pretty much the earliest Companion that I remember ('My' Doctor is very definitely Tom Baker) and I think that the episode showed that she is a strong woman and did make a life for herself but, as she said, what is life on one planet going forward one day at a time compared to what she had with the Doctor. I think she may have been more strongly affected by the Doctor leaving her because she absolutely did not want to go and the Doctor did not want her to leave either - he got summoned to Gallifrey and was not allowed to take non-Time Lords with him. There was the suggestion that he would come back for her after he was finished there but he never did. I think part of her anger with him was the fact that he just left her hanging there and she never knew what happened to him. Every other companion (with the exception, I think, of Susan) has parted ways with the Doctor voluntarily and so this one character, who was one of the best, if not THE best, companion the Doctor has ever had, was perhaps the best choice to return.
All that said, I am SO looking forward to next week and the return of the Cybermen! Yay!
no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 03:37 pm (UTC)Rose and the Doctor as a couple of giggling kids has been both disconcerting and endearing. But I think
I'm with you on Troughton. Not only was he my favourite, but I think I, unconsciously, modelled myself on him.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 04:19 pm (UTC)Ecclestone yes; Tennant no - for me. But yes, I think