David Tennant
(1971- )
The Tenth Doctor's era
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David Tennant(1971- ) |
The Tenth Doctor's era |
What about the tenth? by Nathan Mullins 28/6/10
Well, what can be said about the tenth Doctor that's not been said by the British public other than saying that he's one of the best there's been in a long while? The tenth incarnation of the Doctor in many ways portrays the role as the 4th, 5th and 7th once did. He can be just as charismatic, energetic, deadly serious and moody as the aforementioned Doctors.
The many companions he's had from the moment Rose saw him regenerate include Martha Jones, whose love went unrequited, and Donna Nobel who only travelled with him to see the stars alongside him, as she might say.... 'just good company'. I feel that David Tennant who plays the role of the Doctor has such a good understanding of who the Doctor is and what he stands for and he knows exactly how to play him because he grew up watching the show and aspired to be the Doctor as a child. To compare him to another Doctor, for example the 9th ( played by Christopher Eccleston), you can see the differnce in personality and strengths of both actors in the title role. Though I prefer what David Tennant's did with the part. He made the part his own and showed us that he was more than capable of handling the role.
Also, something I despise the 9th Doctor for is for not staying in the role for long enough. It's as though he's wasted one regenration all ready and that's a fact but what I like about David Tennant is that he commited himself as an actor and to the show because he enjoys the role immensely. He's one of the best Doctors since the 3rd and 4th that we've been privliged as fans to see. Thanks to Russell T Davies for reviving the show.
A Review by Harry O'Driscoll 6/12/11
One of the unfortunate limitations of any Doctor is that they can only ever be as good as the stories they are given. Colin Baker's Doctor has great potential but was given some of the worse episodes in the series history, whereas the high point of Tom Baker's Doctor was during the Holmes/Hinchcliffe era which gave us some magnificent stories. The Tenth Doctor could have been so much better and David Tennant is actually a good actor, but he was let down by Russell T Davies who seemed determined to ground the series into the present day and turn the Doctor into the typical cool, womanising hero you see on TV. It is sometimes easy to look at the Tenth Doctor and not see a 900 year old alien; he could easily be just a larger-than-life human constantly trying to fit in and be popular with everyone. In The Idiot's Lantern, he goes on about Kylie Minogue, drives a moped, impersonates Elvis, wears sunglasses and does everything he can to seem cool to make so that young people will like him and won't be put off by anything alien he might say.
Russell seems frightened that if The Doctor does anything controversial or anything the audience doesn't like they'll be put off him. In The Fires of Pompeii, the Doctor is insists he mustn't interfere with history and warn people about the volcano, but it's later in the episode that we find out that the Doctor must make the volcano erupt to save the Earth. This changes the goalposts and tries to make what the Doctor does expectable, by having the Doctor cause the eruption to save the Earth he now has a moral obligation to let history take its course, Stories like Father's Day and The Massacre showed how important and difficult the decision not to interfere with history was, but The Fires of Pompeii just tries not to make the Doctor seem to nasty. Even worse, at the end the Doctor is persuaded by Donna to go back and save someone even if was just one family; if the Doctor had told Donna that it wasn't their right to decide who deserves to live and who deserves to die, it might have salvaged this story, but of course the Doctor must save someone because otherwise it would all be too depressing to let everyone die.
What I don't understand is why Russell made such a U-turn from the Ninth Doctor who was never afraid to express views that may upset someone and never cared about looking cool or living up to his reputation. In The Unquiet Dead, when Rose is repulsed at his plan to let the Gelth inhabit people's corpses, he slaps her down with the hypocrisy that we are willing to uses corpses for their organs. The Tenth Doctor never challenges anyone's beliefs like that in case he may upset some viewer somewhere; he comes close in Planet of the Ood pointing out to Donna the exploitation going on in the east but then apologises when she accuses him of making a cheap shot. It's a million miles from the Ninth Doctor whose alien perspective made him challenge even the people close to him. Tennant was constantly willing to admit that humans knew more than him.
But Russell tried to have his cake and eat it too; he showed the contrast between the ninth and tenth Doctors but still wanted the Tennant to have the same emotional heaviness and dark side that Eccelston did. The Tenth Doctor's bursts of rage are done because it was so successful with his predecessor but they're just going through the motions, like this is how the Doctor should act with no substance to it. With the Ninth Doctor, his anger and emotion looked real because this Doctor was wrestling with survivor's guilt but after The Parting of the Ways that guilt is gone. However, the writers still tried to give Tennant such emotional moments as the Eccelston did. But this trying to live up to the Ninth Doctor doesn't work; in Dalek, we see the Doctor's sadistic glee at watching the last Dalek crippled and alone and he goes so far as to torture it. That's why at the end it looks like he could shoot the Dalek because it looked like the Doctor was losing himself in his hatred of the Daleks. But we never get that with the Tenth Doctor; we know in The Poison Sky that he won't kill the Sontarans because he lacks the motivation. There is none of the hatred and survivor's guilt that we saw in Dalek. The ninth Doctor stops because he sees what he is turning into but never does the Tenth give the impression that he could be a killer.
The Waters of Mars actually tried to change that and have the Doctor become sick of being constrained in helping people. The Doctor for the first time appears callous in his arrogance that he can control the universe, that he can now have that power over life, becoming a self-appointed judge, jury and executioner. But this is over by the end of the episode and is forgotten immediately. What a massive letdown to see the Doctor develop naturally as a character and then revert to normal. Had it been played out to the next episode, we could have seen the Doctor leave on a real high note where, just like his predecessor, he stops himself from truly becoming a monster but Russell didn't seem interested in anything like that.
Another big problem of course is Russell's determination to give the Doctor a libido, in some attempt to make the show appeal to women the Doctor is now obligated to kiss all his main companions (who are invariably young women) even in cases where there is no sexual relationship. When I watch Matt Smith getting all in a fluster when Amy tries to seduce him, I think that is what the Doctor should be like, treating sex as something alien that he doesn't want to get into. The Tenth Doctor is the only one to display sexual interests so arbitrarily. What's more, it's the Doctor's relationship with Rose that is almost unacceptable for the Doctor. To see him treating Rose as if she's something special, that he loves her and to see him pining on about her after she leaves seems again to just appeal to all the teenage girls out there who want to believe that they are something special and amazing. What makes Rose so amazing anyway? Acting so smug about herself, thinking like she was unique and would always be with the Doctor. We see Martha watch over John Smith for months, go across the world for a year as a fugitive to stop the Master with her family imprisoned and all the Doctor does is say thanks! The Doctor doesn't go on about how great she was he barely looks twice at her; in comparison with Rose, the Doctor seems to hardly care at all about Martha.
Having said all of this, there will always be moments I love about the Tenth Doctor. Often it is when you take away his nattering confidence and his sudden bouts of anger that he is at his best. Like in Midnight when he is shocked to see that humans can be paranoid and ruthless and that for once he is not in control of the situation, or when he asks Nurse Redfern to travel with him and she coldly reminds him of all the damage he caused or in The Satan Pit when he is questioned about his own beliefs. It is a shame that these moments will remain moments and that they are not typical of the Doctor who, in another writer's hands, could have been much more than he was.
It's All About Context by Kaan Vural 5/3/12
I have mixed feelings about the Tenth Doctor and, given his overwhelming popularity as far as New Series fans goes, I suppose I have to be extra careful in explaining why. So I'll preface the following arguments with some important disclaimers.
First, I don't blame my dislike of the Tenth Doctor on the acting. I think David Tennant is a very good actor, and although I think he could have done more to mitigate the problems with his character, ultimately he's playing the part as it was written. His valuable contributions aside, David did not create the Tenth Doctor and, frankly, when you happen to be a fan of the show you're now starring in, I imagine you wouldn't be too eager to criticize either. I'll say it again: I do not blame David Tennant, I blame what the writing and direction made him do.
Secondly, I'll admit that my dislike is partly down to personal taste. I prefer my incarnations to be a little more isolated from humanity; like the Fourth and Seventh Doctors, with a layer of detachment between their friendly exteriors and their hearts of gold. I don't think I'm unjustified in this preference, as the Doctor is after all an ancient immortal alien who should think and behave like one, but it is a preference nonetheless and people's mileage will vary as to how much detachment they will want from their Doctors (the Sixth, for instance, was often at his best when channeling his inner righteousness at those who deserved it).
So let's get down to the Tenth Doctor. What's the problem with him?
Essentially, my beef is that the Tenth Doctor works fairly well, but only when you consider him as a continuation of the Ninth Doctor. Viewed as an extension of the entire series including the Classic Doctors - in other words, viewed in full context - he just doesn't work. To demonstrate this, let's look at a list of traits Ten needed to be a viable successor to just the Ninth Doctor:
But then let's look at the criteria when you lay out the Classic Series as well. Ten as a character must be:
With age... I'm sorry, but I just don't buy the Tenth Doctor as being older than his predecessors. Truly good writing - some might say truly great acting - would combine Ten's existing enthusiasm and exuberance with a sense of the ancient. In the words of the Eleventh Doctor, "brand new and ancient" and, while Matt Smith and the writers took that idea to heart (I would say successfully), the Tenth Doctor just didn't manage it. I don't ask that David Tennant go around doing a Peter Davison imitation of an old man, but I do ask that he shows his age and experience in some way, and I just never got it from him. Every scene that's been pointed out to me as a supposed example is really just reducible to general character angst. Enthusiasm or not, posturing or not, nine hundred plus years shows in a character. Or it should, if you want your character to have much verisimilitude. And if you're still not convinced, consider the following: does the Tenth Doctor genuinely come across as older and more world-weary than the First? The Seventh? The Fifth, even? Moreover, to a certain subsection of Ten fans, I pose this: if it's OK for the Tenth Doctor to fall in love with Rose, is it then OK for the Seventh Doctor to do so? The Sixth? The First? They're all younger, remember!
Regarding the scientific genius issue... I'll grant that on some nominal level this character is portrayed as a man of science. In practice, he's a superhero whose power is his brain or, more often, his sonic screwdriver. Because the New Series is much less grounded in basic hard science (which is being kind considering the egregious DNA nonsense in Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks), the narrative must often portray science as a kind of magic. Not only is this undercutting of part of the whole point of Doctor Who - that knowing real science and learning about real science is cool - it undercuts the character by making him seem more like a wizard than a genuine intellectual. Any writer worth his salt knows that the key to believability is detail, detail, detail and, while I don't ask for the writers to publish papers on the topic of Calabi-Yau manifolds, or even to know what a Higgs boson is, I would hope that they could use at least basic, high-school science as a foundation for some flights of fancy. Point is, when the Doctor's "knowledge" is based on faulty or non-existent science, you don't believe he's a scientist. When he calls things "timey-wimey", instead of thinking he's simplifying for people you think the writers just can't be bothered to put in some detail (since earlier Doctors could explain similar concepts without such patronizing and vague language). To say nothing of the magic wand - er, sonic screwdriver, whose evils have been well-documented.
This also applies to his knowledge of history. I said above that Doctor Who should make it cool to know science (by association with the cool Doctor), and by extension it should also be cool to learn about history. But while earlier Doctors would quote Archimedes, visit Da Vinci, and witness the atrocities of the Second World War - you know, stuff that really matters - we instead get bastardizations of this trait. The Tenth Doctor seems to be full of references, but only to the stuff "we" like: The Lion King (beautiful, but narrative trash), the Harry Potter books (good reading, but hardly classic literature), and Ghostbusters (seriously?). The point, dear Whovian, of the Doctor referencing things is not to prove to us that he likes the same stuff that we do; the point is to demonstrate that he is learned by introducing us to stuff that we don't know. If the Doctor mentions Joseph Lister, a fan might think, "Wonder who he is? Maybe I'll look him up later." If the Doctor mentions J.K. Rowling, a fan will think, "Good old J.K.," and think no further. This extends to the pseudo-historicals which devolved into distortions worthy of early Tintin: a Shakespeare whose only demonstrable wit seems to be in flirting with Martha, a fifties England that exists only so that the Doctor can lather contempt on people who don't know any better, and an ancient Pompeii that resembles nothing so much as a fancy-dress episode of EastEnders. For God's sake. When we say "expand viewers' horizons," we don't mean "make everything alien and historical cartoony and hip so that we don't have to conceive of worlds that aren't quite like ours"!
The fighting injustice bit is another ambiguous point. I'll grant that the Doctor isn't amoral, and that he generally works towards fulfilling whatever philosophy he seems to have... but that philosophy is basically incoherent. The Doctor's "refusal" to use violence is totally at odds with his behavior. The Doctor has killed, both directly and indirectly, throughout the history of the show. The difference now is that he can never be held responsible. He refuses to kill Daleks because his sense of moral pride is worth more than, y'know, the lives of everyone in the universe (a perspective which is, weirdly, heavily criticized at a certain point in Series 6). He refuses to kill the Master just because he's the only other Time Lord, in spite of the fact that as far as Time Lords go this one is a murderous waste of space who is so possessed by single-minded hatred for the Doctor that he would kill himself just to annoy the guy (I think even the Master at this point is just begging to be put out of his misery anway). His destruction of the Daleks in Journey's End is passed off as the "fault" of the younger Doctor clone, as if there's something morally reprehensible about ending a pathological threat to the existence of the universe, or as if the alternative of just convincing the psychopathic villains to give peace a chance through polite conversation was some sort of real option. This all culminates in the mind-bogglingly awful The End of Time, where the Tenth Doctor, given a false moral dilemma between shooting one apocalyptic madman and another (with the episode trying to pretend that this is some sort of big decision when the net impact is the same), shoots a machine instead and avoids having to have an opinion.
Now it's OK for characters to hold contradictory beliefs; this makes characters human and interesting. But you cannot ask me as an audience member to consider a man this morally screwed up as some kind of hero when all this contradiction makes him is a hypocrite who will kill only when he can remain popular and blame someone else. Above all, you cannot ask me to root for a character. Well, you can, but you shouldn't expect much of a positive response.
The Tenth Doctor is the least alien of the bunch. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it goes way, way overboard here. From the childish flirting with people centuries younger than him (ick), to the obsession with appealing, visually and referentially, only to the early twenty-first century (gimme a break), to the frankly bizarre weeping over heartless bastards who deserved to die, which Russell T. Davies seems to think is the duty of every die-hard, "humane" liberal. Well, Russell, I'm a die-hard liberal, and I consider myself fairly humane, and while I would never cheer the demise of Osama bin Laden - or urinate on his corpse, as some enlightened commentators have encouraged - I would consider actively weeping at his loss to be just as much a fetishization of death and the imagined enemy. For the Doctor to be the best of humanity doesn't mean he should be deluded.
In many ways, these problems are the fault of the environment that surrounded the Tenth Doctor; the era itself and not just the fact of his existence. But unlike the Fourth Doctor, who was successfully transplanted through a number of different modes of storytelling, the Tenth Doctor is all too much a product of his environment: a morally confused mess of a human caricature in an era that thrived on confused morality and an inability to transcend our limited conceptions of society. The Tenth Doctor would have fared much better had his stories made some sort of coherent point, or had even been truly original and ground-breaking. But then, had his stories been better, the Tenth Doctor as we know him would never have existed.
A Review by David Rosenthal 8/4/17
Well, David Tennant started off strong as the Doctor in The Christmas Invasion. I enjoyed his first season; however, after a while, things started to decline. Him losing Rose in Doomsday was handled well.
But as things progressed, he became too much of kissing-mouths Doctor. First Madame du Pompadour, then Astrid Peth, then Lady Christina and of course Rose. I understood that one, but yeah I think Russell T Davies went too far with that the constant kissing with the girls. At least Matt Smith's eleventh Doctor just had River Song. I think that's the one thing that went too far.
I do really like David Tennant's Doctor, don't get me wrong. I love the allons-y and his spectacles were a bit Jim Carrey-esque. I did feel sad when he had to regenerate in The End of Time. We didn't want you to go either David, but I think his doctor could have been so much more.
His Dark Doctor moments were great like in The Family of Blood and in The Waters of Mars. Those cold, dark eyes look he gives with the whole Time Lord Victorious speech. It's just again I wish we got more of that. Oh well. Still David, we were sad to see you go.