Matt Smith as the Doctor. It still feels wrong. After so many years with David Tennant in the lead role and with all the build up to his departure it’s hard to imagine ever liking another actor in the role again.
I was never worried about Steven Moffat taking over, after all he wrote some of the best episodes of the new Series (Blink, The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead), but how was this new actor going to fair? I admit I had some concerns when David took over from Christopher Eccelston but he quickly proved he was more than up to the task which would only serve to make Matt taking over the reins that much harder.
So now with Russell T. Davies gone, and David Tennant no longer the Doctor, there were some extremely large shows to fill.
Then I watched Eleventh Hour.
Let me get the bad out of the way right off the (cricket) bat. I HATE the new intro. Not so much the visuals but the theme song has been changed so much as to be un-recoginizable. If I had closed my eyes it would have been hard to be sure I was watching a Doctor Who intro.
And the behavior of the new Doctor at first was borderline repulsive. He was about as rude and insensitive to a child as one can be without physical contact. Calling her an idiot and insane, making her cook him food in the middle of the night, and then spitting said food all around the room.
Seriously, lose the bowtie.
The ‘Run.’ comment could have been delivered better. Almost no facial involvement in that whatsoever. No menace.
Now the good. The new Doctor has a very playful personality. I absolutely loved when he meets Jeff for the first time and while talking to him is bobbing up and down on (what looks like) his toes. There is a moment just before that when he’s examining the speakers and radio in the ice cream truck and searches and touches and spins around. It’s fun!
He’s also very caring. This is evident when he first mets Amelia and tells her everything is going to be fine. Then again when Amy tells him she doesn’t believe him and he asked her to for 20 minutes. You can see the concern all over his face.
He’s clever. Granted it’s the Doctor and he’s super smart but how often have you seen him solve the ‘Crisis of the Day’(tm) without either his TARDIS or his sonic screwdriver? And writing a virus on a cell phone and using it to solve the crisis? Ingenious!
I’m torn on the new interior of the TARDIS. One the one hand it’s kind of cool, but on the other it looks like people ran out of ideas and just grabbed whatever they could find and shoved it in. I imagine this is a nod to the older series, it feels like as he gets closer to 12 the more ‘retro’ the series seems.
It seems that each regeneration in the new series has had problems. Possibly because each triggering event has been fairly violent and involved a massive amount of energy (the Time Vortex in Series 1 and the radiation at the end of Series 4). Or maybe as he reaches the end of his 12 regeneration cycle it gets harder. Either way the first few minutes/hours have been less than encouraging for each new version, only to work itself out by the end of the first or second episode.
Meaning I need to give this new incarnation a while before a decision is made on whether I like him or not.
So far however, he’s a great Doctor. So I guess I like him, but he’s no David ;)
This entry was written by , posted on April 4, 2010 at 9:38 pm, filed under Television. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
I’m starting to wonder if the ‘death’ of the Master at the end of Series 3 was planned. And by that I mean planned by the Master himself. We know his wife is returning, and we know he was on Earth 18 months before the events of the series Drums, and we know the Doctor didn’t met him before that. So what if the Master planned that if things went wrong (because they always do) he had an escape plan. He was killed. And failing anyone else to do it, his wife would step in and take the shot. Perhaps he wasn’t really dead but drugged or something.
It might be that his resurrection is a result of being brought back by the TimeLords during the Time War. There is so much we don’t know about the TimeLord ability to regenerate that it is possible that he is able to delay the regeneration and when it does occur he is better able to control it and keeps the same face but with some physical characteristics different. (blond hair).
Remember, we never see who is actually wrapped in the white cloth on the funeral pyre. We just assume it is the Master.
A stretch I know but it’s the only thing that makes sense to me and accounts for all the odd variables.
I could also be way the frick off base and it’s something totally off the wall. Remember, in Doctor Who, they have to be able to explain it, but it doesn’t have to actually make sense ;)
This entry was written by , posted on August 20, 2009 at 10:09 am, filed under Television. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.