Whovian Chatter

This is Ghost, and I welcome you to another session of

WHOVIAN CHATTER




If I calibrated the TARDIS correctly this should be a week after my Intro to Doctor Who and... oh... it's been 2 months??Well... that's not that bad.



Since the introduction to the show is over, from here on out expect spoilers.At least some spoilers because I don't want to ruin the whole thing I just want to be able to talk about this show in full without tiptoeing around the eggshells on the ground.



As you may recall from my previous session, The Doctor has the ability to regenerate and has done so 10 times leaving us with 11 great actors having portrayed The Doctor.Even Colin Baker, who carries the reputation of being the "worst Doctor"and is often looked at with disdain from Classic Doctor Who fans still did a very good job and I feel that he shouldn't be criticized quite as much as he was.The Doctor has never been portrayed by a bad actor period.The ideas, and writing that the actor has had to get around has been varied and ridiculous at times but each actor has been a great one.



For the sake of you who don't know I'll go down the list from First to Eleventh (pictured RIGHT TO LEFT in the picture below)

William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, and Matt Smith

And yes it would be silly of me not to point out how the oldest actor to play the Doctor portrayed the youngest version of him, and the youngest actor to play the Doctor is playing his oldest version to date.



But I'm not here to talk about the Classic Doctors today.Despite having watched the 8th Doctor's only incarnation, the made for TV movie Doctor Who, multiple times I'm going to save him for a later date.Hartnell through McCoy I haven't seen enough of to make true comment about them that I feel they deserve which is something I am currently planning to rectify.Today we will be discussing the Doctors that most current fans have seen, know, and love as well as my personal history and feelings on these three men's performances.So...



THE 9TH DOCTOR - CHRISTOPHER ECCLESTON



With a brand new series of Doctor Who on our television sets obviously came a brand new Doctor on the scene, Christopher Eccleston.The 9th was definitely a unique entity amongst his other incarnations in both overall attitude and outfit.Every other version of the Doctor has some sort of suit with various eccentricities added to the suit be it a stick of celery, a long scarf, or a bow tie, however the 9th looks more like a, as Captain Jack most eloquently put it, "U-Boat Captain."9 sports a long black leather trench coat and a black t-shirt.His most defining characteristic trait is because of the biggest plot convenien...er. I mean the most ambiguous bull...*cough cough* I mean the utterly devastating Time War.The Time War was used as the reason which The Doctor was gone from television for such a long period of time.It was the war between the Time Lords and the Daleks across all of time and space for the universe.In the end only The Doctor could stop the war by personally causing both the Daleks and his own people to effectively become extinct with The Doctor being the last Time Lord in existence and the Daleks having only a few stragglers scattered through time.



Due to this behavior, a large portion of the Doctor's "quirk" is that of a war veteran come home from a losing war and never quite the same because of it.He carries the psychological scar with him at all times and will occasionally just sit and stare into the camera as others he meet brings up his people; still hurt by what they had become and what he had to do to save the universe.He is doing his best to keep moving forward with his very own catchphrase "Fantastic!"



Unfortunately, 9 is widely regarded as a poor Doctor.He's not given the bad reputation that Colin Baker had been given but usually words "the 9th Doctor" are preceded by the words "I didn't really like."When you ask people why they generally can't answer with anything definitive."He just doesn't feel like The Doctor" is about as close to an actual answer that I can find out of people and that's wishy-washy at best.

I even fell to the pratfall of not really enjoying the 9th Doctor when I first watched his season, but upon a second viewing loved the performance.Why?



Well the first problem I see with his tenure as the Doctor is that while the overall writing is good it was very uneven at times; a problem that can hit anything in it's "first" season.What do I mean by this?Well throughout the whole of the series, there are more serious episodes, more lighthearted episodes, and a varying mix in between.There's something out there for everyone but 9's season seemed to want to include elements of everything in each episode more rather than let them breathe in the overall tone of the episode.For example episode 2 is all about the death of the planet Earth and the conspiracy going on behind everything on the ship, yet the villain is a flap of skin with eyes and a mouth.Or even better seen in Aliens of London.The whole of London is on lock down and people are gathering together to solve a serious alien threat and this happens...



Doctor who has always had it's comedic moments but they seemed to either be not trying at all, or trying far too hard to make sure there was something to laugh at during serious moments (funny how often not trying and trying too hard is very difficult to tell the difference)



The other thing that I do understand is how people say"he's just not the Doctor."I get where that's coming from.From not only an in-show perspective, and from a television production perspective, Doctor Who has been through a lot of trials and tribulations.This Doctor has seen the actions he had to take against his own people, and is the child of a company who at one time hated the thought of starting Doctor Who back up so badly that they made the TV Movie a pain to produce.This Doctor has given up his ways, is carrying tons of emotional baggage, and honestly served the purpose both to us and to himself that he was there to perform.He had lost faith in his old ways and openly embraced death of himself and the inevitability of it to others as well.He was there to change.9 came in feeling defeated but still trying and went through a character transformation throughout so that he was confident and no longer haunted by his pain allowing him to regenerate into being "himself" once more.



Christopher Eccleston is an brilliant actor and I look forward to seeing him in the Thor sequel as well as other works he has been a part of.His personality and professionalism in carrying the show is honestly what allowed it to become the vastly successful series it deserves to be.Sure he may have been a bit brooding and different but what he lacked in quirkiness he made up for in intimidation, darkness, and depth.When the 9th threatened, you felt like he was going to back up every word of it and when he finally lets loose of his emotions in Dalek (the best episode of his era) there is a real feeling of uncertainty about what all The Doctor is actually capable of if you push the wrong buttons.



Sadly Christopher Eccleston was only around for one season having left due to a great distaste for the senior management of the show.He left on principle because he felt that he would rather be his own man than be successful and I say all the power to him.It's also sad because this Doctor only occupied around one year of his 900 years of life.He looks in the mirror in "Rose" for what appears to be the first time meaning that he had recently regenerated probably during the end of the Time War, and when he regenerates again, Rose is still the same age.His parting words are beautifully said as he is finally able to face his past and you can see the weight come off his shoulders with a genuine smile that he was able to give up his life to save another and that he found his faith restored.



He was a great Doctor who deserves every bit of praise he can get and more than he usually does.And with Eccleston gone, it's time to regenerate into....



THE 10TH DOCTOR - DAVID TENNANT



If you were to ask modern Whovians who their favorite Doctor is, the majority of them would say David Tennant and for good reason.David Tennant is a brilliant actor who brings an unyielding amount of energy and charisma to whatever role he is playing.He gives all to his acting even if the actions he is performing are a bit silly.It was his impromptu thinking on the set of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that gave Barty Crouch Jr. his tongue flickering. He brings this same amount of energy, ingenuity, and sincerity to his role as the 10th Doctor and because of it has become synonymous with the role as many people still can't see anyone else other than Tennant as the Doctor despite someone else currently filling his shoes.10 is an outrageous storm of eclectic charisma.Tennant, having supposedly been the first actor to play the Doctor who was originally a fan of the show, takes on the quirks and oddities from the Classic Doctors and gives them his own twist making them fresh and new.



10 gave us three seasons and a year's worth of specials to enjoy so there is far more that could be said about his tenure than I'm going to get into.There's just something about the Tennant years that made those seasons better than any other seasons or instances that I have personally seen so far and I can't quite put my finger on what made them so good other than Tennant owning the role.At his best, 10 was everything you would expect the Doctor to be: loving, wise, crazy, funny, intimidating, a great friend, and someone you truly wish was real.



At his worst... I want to preface this by saying I absolutely cannot say bad things about Tennant's acting.He performed everything wonderfully as the script called for; it was the writing and script making him do dumb things that was the problem.At his worst he was arrogant, whiny/depressive or overly preachy.Those fans amongst us probably know which episodes I'm talking about and are mostly from the specials a.k.a. The Tennant Dance of Death.The bad writing especially comes in when the writer wants to talk about issues of the day and have the Doctor preach it... like in The Doctor's Daughter



OH REALLY?You NEVER would??



Bullcrap!



10 gave us some great storylines to chew on throughout his time with us but also gave us the only episode I absolutely hate and refuse to watch a second time, but again, I'll get to Love and Monsters at a later time.The Highlights of his tenure for me were as follows:



SCHOOL REUNION - While the overall premise of the episode is a little bit silly, this episode is made great by the recurrence of Sarah Jane Smith, who was companion to the 3rd and 4th doctors and who hadn't been seen in Doctor Who for 40 years.This was also the episode where Rose's boyfriend/ex-boyfriend finally had something good to do and was allowed to join Rose and the Doctor as a companion because 9 wouldn't allow things to "get domestic."The chemistry between the characters and the confrontation between The Doctor and the main villain is wonderful and well worth your time.



THE LAST HALF OF SEASON 3 - What a great run of consecutively good episodes.It starts off with a Two parter about the Family of Blood who are trying to track down the Doctor and steal his potential lives so he decides to wait them out till they are dead living as a human being in the 1900's.He is literally a human as he re-writes his DNA and only Martha (his companion at the time) knows about what he is.It's great to see The Doctor living out a separate life and loving a woman from that time and the potential life they could have had.Blink follows which is the introduction of the Weeping Angels; stone angel statues that come to life when you aren't looking at them.These creatures can hurdle you back in time and leave you there feeding off the energy of the actions you could have done in the future.It's a Doctor-Light episode meaning the Doctor is barely in it, but it is incredibly creepy and one of the best episodes to date.Following that is the three parter about a rival Time Lord, the Master.It's a great close to the season tying up the loose ends, giving Martha some final closure on her rocky relationship with The Doctor,you get to see the Doctor rise from the lowest place we've seen him in modern times, and to end it all, an extremely heartfelt scene where he begs the Master to regenerate so he can share his time and have another Time Lord alive to be with.



THE UNICORN AND THE WASP - This season 4 episode involves the Doctor and Donna (his companion for that season) meeting Agatha Christie and the story of what happened during her absence in real life.I must admit that I have a soft spot for this having grown up watching Poirot and other mystery series such as Murder She Wrote with my Mother from a very young age.Seeing this turn into a murder mystery with the Doctor, Donna, and Agatha all solving the case was more personalized fan service than I have ever been able to see before.It's a great episode any sleuth would love to watch.



The last two episodes of Season 4 were beyond brilliant.It tied up everything and had an extremely large cast of people helping him in his crisis.Everyone showed up and I do mean everyone!Rose, Rose's Mother, Mickey, Rose's Dad from an alternate universe. Martha and her family, Sarah Jane Smith and her son, K-9, Donna, Captain Jack Harkness and his buddies at Torchwood, and a new half-human version of The Doctor.This episode which had a bit of a sad ending with Donna, but tied up every lose end imaginable and was extremely fulfilling.It was the way an ending to a series should have been handled.



It was at this point that not only was David Tennant stepping down from the role, but the show was losing several key members of production including executive producer Russel T. Davies.Having these people leave, the show went on a sort of hiatus for 2009 but still producing 5 full length specials to wet our appetite and usher in the 11th Doctor.This was both a great and a poor decision at the same time.It was great because we still got some more Doctor episodes, one of which included a great character that should have been a companion if it was a new full season, and we got Donna's grandfather as his companion for 2 of the specials(Bernard Cribbins is a wonderful actor who outclasses most of his peers)but these episodes... ugh.At best these episodes are tolerable and that's the most positive I can say about them.They tend to be slightly boring despite the danger going on, the actions some of these people take are despicable, and the reason people call it the Tennant Dance of Death is because in basically every episode they mention how the Doctor is about to die in this form.It's a long stream of depression and crying that ends with the 10th Doctor traveling through time to see each person he cares about one last time before crying in his Tardis that he doesn't want to go.



I will admit the scene DID make me cry and make me not want to see him leave, but I still can't help but see this as a massive middle finger to Steven Moffat who was going to be taking over and this amazingly brutal emotional goodbye was surely to make it difficult for anyone to fill those shoes and not be instantly hated by many.



Lucky for us one man was bold enough to fill those shoes so let's regenerate and take a look at...



THE 11TH DOCTOR - MATT SMITH



"You never forget your first Doctor."That statement is often made when talking to a Whovian and it really is 100% accurate.You may enjoy one Doctor more than the other but the one that you saw first, the one that truly made you a fan of the show is the one you will always have a soft spot for and will be very difficult to top.For me, that Doctor was Matt Smith.As I previously stated, the Tennant send off was needlessly long and depressing and I feel that it unintentionally attempted to set up the 11th for failure and sure enough the scrutiny came within moments of seeing him.Matt Smith is the youngest actor to play The Doctor to date being only 26 when he picked up the role in 2010."That's too young!" and "He'll only appeal to the children!" were just some of the things shouted about him and boy were they absolutely wrong.



While the 11th Doctor IS a bit of a child trapped in a man's body as his Doctor is a more comedic one than many we've been used to, he is far from childish.The 11th Doctor does a good job of hiding his past demons behind what seems like a genuine smile.He doesn't focus on the bad; he's constantly looking to lighten the mood unless something needs to be addressed in another manner.If you don't pay attention to him you will miss the subtle differences in his behavior.While he maintains pleasant and usually doesn't even raise his voice when making threats, just like Eccleston you have no doubt in your mind that he is going to back up his comments and then some as can be clearly seen in A Good Man Goes to War where he sends an entire military fleet running away without the use of any sort of violence, just showing up and speaking.Or in The Pandorica Opens where he addresses legions of all his enemies with no weapons, just his words and reputation which causes them all to back off.



Some may say a downfall of 11 is that he is a little too comedic bringing up jokes when he shouldn't but honestly I don't see that the jokes are that far out of character or out of the left field.It's certainly nowhere near as awkward as the farting aliens from Season 1.The biggest complaint I have about the 11th Doctor's tenure is the feel of the show.Obviously when you replace three very essential parts of a show, the people replacing it will make changes as they see fit.Change isn't necessarily bad and the fact that Smith's run has a different feel is a good thing further distancing him from the Dance of Death.The problem comes from the fact that with the previous seasons there was a variety of likability.We had excellent, good, mediocre, bad and one abomination against nature before now.



As of this writing I have only seen seasons 5 and 6 of the 11th Doctor and one episode of Season 7, so I can only really speak of Seasons 5 and 6.However, with the exception of five episodes, all of 11's tenure that I've seen can be lumped in as either "good" or "boring."To me being boring is a far worse sin than just being bad.I can't tell you how many times after watching an episode for the second time I've fallen asleep during a boring episode and it has NOTHING to do with Smith's performance either.It's just the ideas, writing, and pacing that he's having to deal with.Of those five exceptions only one of them I consider bad and that would be Night Terrors.



The four highlight episodes that I've seen thus far are as follows:



VINCENT AND THE DOCTOR - The Doctor and Amy go back to meet Vincent Van Gogh because of something disturbing they find in his paintings.It is an invisible creature called the Griface that only Van Gogh can see because of how he can see the colors in the world.This is probably my favorite episode to date because it showcases one of the greatest artist's lives in a very real way.How he was shunned as a man for being mad due to his deep seeded depression.It takes a very good look at depression and its effects.Not only that but it is an episode that never ceases to make me cry as to the thing they do for Vincent by showing him how beloved his work is in the future. Even after this though, Vincent still takes his life and the Doctor says one of the greatest phrases I've ever heard on this topic."The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don't always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant."



A CHRISTMAS CAROL - This was my first episode with the Doctor and what a glorious introduction this was. Many people criticize the timey wimey aspect of this episode but as a fan of Dickens' A Christmas Carol it was great to see their take on using that book to achieve a goal.Not only is it a great use of the book, but you also get a wonderful performance by Michael Gambon and a beautiful song by Katherine Jenkins.Watching this episode has become a Christmas tradition for me now and will for many years to come.



THE IMPOSSIBLE ASTRONAUT AND DAY OF THE MOON - This was an amazing opening to season 6 as it leaves Amy, Rory, and River all meeting the Doctor in America where he tells them they need to go back to 1969.They then witness the Doctor getting killed by an astronaut which rises from the lake.I don't mean killed to regeneration though.He is shot again during his regeneration cycle and dies leaving them to burn his body.Devastated they go to a nearby restaurant to find a younger version of the Doctor than what they just saw die and convince him to go back in time to team up with an ex FBI agent to fight a cult of aliens known as the Silence whom you forget ever seeing once you look away from them.How will the Doctor get out of this?Is this really the end of him?Well since I mentioned Season 7 you know the answer to that, but HOW is a season-long trip of insanity.



Since he is still the current Doctor that's pretty much where I have to stop things.I love Matt Smith's Doctor and will hate to see him go when he eventually does.I look forward to getting the Season 7 box set and watching all his adventures to current and I look eagerly forward to seeing both him and David Tennant in the 50th Anniversary special to air this November.



So there we have it.Three great Doctors played by three great actors.



So I'll just be hopping back into the TARDIS and I'll see you all in.... well...a couple minutes time for me.Until then, this is Ghost fading into the darkness.
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