Like my friend and blogfather [Orac][orac], I’m a huge fan of Doctor Who, and I’ve been
\ngreatly enjoying its renewed life in the new series on BBC. In fact, the current Doctor, played by David Tennant, has become my favorite of all of the Doctors – better than the
\nusual fan favorite of Tom Baker, better than my own former favorite, Jon Pertwee.
\nThe reason why I’m such a fan of Tennant is that his Doctor combines many of the personality
\ntraits of the past Doctors, while giving it his own unique spin. Tennant’s Doctor has the
\nhands-on activity of Jon Pertwee, the exuberance of Peter Davison, the sense of *history* of
\nWilliam Hartnell (the very first Dr), and the kind of goofy enthusiasm of Tom Baker.
\nBut he’s more than just a mish-mash of past Doctors – he’s got those traits that connect his
\ncharacter to his past incarnations, but he’s definitely his own person. His hyperactive
\nexuberance is quite different from any Doctor we’ve seen before. Now that’s partly just the
\nstyle of writing in the new series: the Christopher Eccleston Doctor had a similar
\nhyperactivity. But Eccleston’s hyperness was much more self-focused: his Doctor was almost as
\negocentric as the Colin Baker incarnation. Tennant’s Doctor is just enthusiastic about the
\nuniverse, about humanity, about the excitement of living. But that’s also played in conflict
\nwith the other major trait of this Doctor: he’s got a darkness, an edge of bitterness and
\nalienation just below the surface.
\nOne of my favorite examples of this comes from last season’s episode “School Reunion” which
\nfeatures the return of Sarah Jane Smith, the old companion of Tom Baker’s Doctor. Overall, Tennant’s Dr. in the episode is the bouncy happy silly doctor – particularly when he finally gets to admit to Sarah Jane that he is the Doctor, and when SJ shows him K9. But there’s
\na scene, where he’s alone with the leader of the Krillitane, the villains of the episode. The
\nKrillitane tries to entice the Doctor to join forces with him, and Tennant sneers and replies
\nthat in his youth he was so very patient, so very merciful, but *not any more*. Now he only
\ngives one warning, and this is it.
\nThe reason I’m writing all this today is that I just watched a bit-torrented download of this
\nyears special Christmas episode. Overall, it’s a rather goofy (if fun) affair – a rather
\nover-the-top monster story. But it’s got another really wonderful scene that is so typical of
\nwhat I like about this Doctor. He’s coming in to confront the monster, disguised as one of her
\nrobots. After revealing himself, he shuts down the rest of her robots with great humorous
\nflair using the (extremely large) remote control hidden in his pocket (it’s larger on the
\ninside!); and he offers the monster one chance to let him move her and her children to some
\nother planet, where they won’t harm anyone. She refuses, and he replies “then this is *your*
\ndoing”, reveals that he is from Gallifrey, and destroys all of her children. It’s a great
\nscene, and one that does a remarkable job of demonstrating just *who* this Doctor is.
\nAt the end, the woman who appears to be the new companion doesn’t join the Doctor, but
\ntells him to find someone. He naturally replies, “I don’t need anyone”. She disagrees,
\nand tells him that she believes that he sometimes needs someone “to stop him” – and
\nin one of those perfectly played bits of alienation and loneliness at the heart of this
\ndoctor, he agrees. It’s a subtly played scene, but it’s perfect.
\nAnyway, overall, this years Christmas special is good, but not great. As I said above,
\nit’s really a bit over-the-top and goofy. Definitely *not* the best writing of the
\nnew series. But it’s got a few really tremendous scenes, and overall, it leaves me
\nwith confidence that Russell Davies and crew are going to continue to do a great job
\nof keeping Doctor Who alive and kicking.
\n[orac]: http:\/\/www.scienceblogs.com\/insolence<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like my friend and blogfather [Orac][orac], I’m a huge fan of Doctor Who, and I’ve been greatly enjoying its renewed life in the new series on BBC. In fact, the current Doctor, played by David Tennant, has become my favorite of all of the Doctors – better than the usual fan favorite of Tom Baker, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-who"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-47","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}