Christopher Eccleston
(1964- )
The ninth Doctor's era
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Christopher Eccleston(1964- ) |
The ninth Doctor's era |
Doctor Doom by Antony Tomlinson 18/10/05
I remember my reaction to the news that Christopher Eccleston had been cast as the Doctor back in 2004. It was sheer delight. I was overjoyed to learn that RTD had cast an actor who was both serious (at a time when the newspapers were suggesting Alan Davies and Eddie Izzard) and also far from obvious (unlike Stephen Fry or Anthony Stewart Head). I knew immediately that Eccleston would do something great and original with the part.
As time went on, however, I became more anxious. As was commented on this site, Eccleston is an actor rarely seen to smile. His brilliance generally reveals itself in moments of violent anger (Shallow Grave, The Revenger's Tragedy [his best film]), sneering cruelty (his Machiavellian character in Elizabeth) or noble misery (The Others or RTD's Second Coming). He has not been a barrel of laughs on screen.
"Oh no" I murmured to myself, "not another dark Doctor". It was fine the first time around, but after years of violence and glumness from Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, the books and the webcasts, I did not want another lead character who would spend his time brooding and shouting. The new series needed an energetic, charismatic Doctor who would be fun to be around, like Hartnell, Troughton or Tom Baker - not a miserable sod caught up in his own legend.
Fortunately Eccleston delivered the goods. His Doctor joked, grinned and danced with the best of them. Cleverly, however, Eccleston also fully incorporated the dark side of his persona into the character. And thus, beneath the smiles, I think we can happily say that the Ninth Doctor is the first incarnation who is indisputably a depressive. He is, in fact, the first truly damaged Doctor.
Before I examine this claim more carefully, however, I would like to point out a couple of interesting and relevant facts about the Ninth Doctor, which make him a rather slippery figure for fans.
The first point to make is that, compared to all the other Doctors, the Ninth's character will ultimately be the least fully explored. Indeed, this incarnation appears in only ten (relatively short) TV adventures. More importantly, it also seems likely that he will disappear from the world of books and comic strips as soon as David Tennant makes his debut (thus missing the re-examination enjoyed by McCoy and McGann's Doctors). In addition, it seems unlikely that Eccleston will be visiting the Big Finish studio any time soon, given his rising-star status and his weariness with the part.
So we actually have relatively little to go on in exploring this character. This leads me to my second point. This is a very short-lived incarnation in fictional terms, too. At the beginning of Rose, the Doctor examines his own face in a mirror with interest, clearly indicating that he has only recently regenerated. By The Parting of the Ways, however, Rose is still the same age as when she met him. So, of the Doctor's 900 years, it seems that the Ninth incarnation contributes only about twelve months.
Furthermore, if the Doctor had only just regenerated by Rose, then it seems that all the important Time War stuff he had recently been through actually involved his previous self. Indeed, it seems likely (given his bitterness in Dalek and the replay of past events in The Parting of the Ways) that he actually gave up his youthful, energetic Eighth life to win the Time War.
This then seems to be the key to the Ninth Doctor's character. He is an individual who was born anew into an utterly unfamiliar world, and is still learning to fit in with it. Previously the Doctor always had something familiar to lean on, to help him work out who he was, as he grappled with a new body - be it fellow Time Lords (Castrovalva, The Twin Dilemma, Time and the Rani, The TV Movie), the battle with the Daleks (Power of the Daleks), UNIT (Spearhead from Space, Robot) or the Doctor's faith in his own virtue. For even when he was throttling Peri, playing spoons with the Rani or snogging Grace, he knew deep down that he was a Time Lord and a hero.
This Doctor has nothing to call on, however. His people have gone. He also seems to have lost faith in his own heroism, following his genocidal actions during the Time War. By The Parting of the Ways, he is so troubled by his previous deeds, that he becomes impotent when the menace returns. He ends up doing nothing but hoping for death - "maybe it's time" he muses with some relief.
This is therefore a Doctor desperately clinging onto the familiar. In Dalek, he delights in his own hatred of his ancient enemies. That is something old which he can understand. Even when it becomes clear that this threat is now impotent, he maintains his hatred. Ultimately, however, he realises that he - like the Dalek - faces a choice between change and death.
As his life goes on, this Doctor sees the death of more and more that is familiar. He sees the end of Earth in The End of the World and the end of UNIT in World War Three - although he is ultimately glad to break his links with the planet. Wronged beings also return to further undermine his self-belief (Rose, The Unquiet Dead, Boom Town, The Parting of the Ways). He even loses faith in a companion (he forgave Turlough, Dodo and Barbara for far worse crimes than Adam's), ultimately dumping him in The Long Game.
This then explains the Ninth Doctor's unusual habit of clinging jealously onto the only things he believes he can rely on - Rose and the TARDIS (who, interestingly, end up merging in Parting of the Ways). And this attitude also explains his indulgence of Rose's whims in Father's Day - he cannot help but trust her, for the sake of his own sanity. If he did not, he would have nothing at all. However, he faces utter disappointment when she proves to be "another stupid ape".
Given his inability to find anything in which to maintain his faith, the Doctor inevitably loses his system of values and thus his ability to act heroically. Dramatically, this is disappointing for a "new" action adventure series - we don't want a hero who only saves the day four out of ten times, and then only with a great deal of help from others. Nevertheless, in terms of the entire history of the character, this tendency to fail fits perfectly.
In essence then, the Ninth Doctor is only a brief stage in the Doctor's life. He is the chrysalis-type figure who absorbs the need for change following the death of his old life. He exists to make the character ready for a new beginning. And so he learns to trust the unreliable - an ape like Rose and a rickety old TARDIS - and learns to love what has become an alien universe. And so he can begin again.
In portraying this conflicted figure, Eccleston does an amazing job. He grins and jokes as the Doctor has always done. However, he also clearly shows that there is something superficial in these smiles. Equally, he tries to show off his heroic streak in an over-the-top manner, and then collapses sadly when he realises he's not up to it any more. Even his costume fits well with this "half-formed" status. It is a blank, black costume. Unlike his predecessors, it does not tell us about his character. For he is yet to fully develop one.
Anyway, delightful as this Doctor was (joking with urchins at dinner, dancing at the end of the world or fawning over Dickens) he was always doomed. For there was no core about which his personality could form. So it seems appropriate to me that he vanished after only one season. He was always meant to die and to be born again. And so the star of "The Second Coming" will, hopefully, be replaced with a more self-assured "Casanova".
A Review by David Rosenthal 6/5/06
I liked Chris Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor. He said in interviews he never really watched Doctor Who and just did his own interpretation and didn't really use any of the others. He did a great job and I loved when he always said fantastic. I also like when he did serious dramatic episodes. Like Dalek, for example, he really expressed his anger over the destruction over Gallifrey being destroyed by the Daleks in the Time War and he expresses his anger to the one Dalek and how they are both the last of both their races.
You are a hero Chris Eccleston thank you. Chris Eccleston is great: I love the tear he shed whe Jabe talked to him about his world being destroyed in The End of the World; that one tear was perfect. I really loved his performance. I think his best episode was Dalek, with the psycological interplay between him and the Dalek. He really was fantastic. And at the end of The Parting of the Ways he says you to Rose, "You were fantastic - and you know what? So was I."
He was, as he would say, fantastic, in every sense of the word. It's too bad he had to leave and quit so early but I have really high hopes for David Tennant. He isn't my very favorite Doctor but he is close.
Chris you were fantastic. David Tennant looks fantastic too. We will miss you Chris. Come back for a reunion special if they make one.
A Love Letter by Robert Smith? 18/7/07
Dear Chris,
I know the moment when I first knew. No, it wasn't that opening scene of Rose ("Run!"), magical though it is. You did a fine job, sure, but the power of that opening is fairly and squarely due to Russell's writing, I think we can all acknowledge that. It's not that scene where you take Billie's hand and talk about the spinning of the Earth as though you're drunk, despite the fact that that scene got all the airplay on every documentary imaginable in those first few weeks. You were good, sure, but I still wasn't certain.
Oh yes, I had my doubts. Some of it wasn't your fault, some of it couldn't be helped. The costume, the accent, the hair... it's as though they'd stripped you down to the bare essentials and asked you to create a Doctor without any of the usual trappings the others had to fall back on. What a challenge that must have been... but it's one I didn't think you - or anyone - was up to. I mean, I tried to imagine the Tom Baker with a shaved head, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and talking in a thick Liverpudlian accent and I just had to lie down for a while. I wondered about Sylvester McCoy facing down Davros in a pair of shorts and those round spectacles, putting on a broad Australian accent and suddenly the master of a thousand chessboards didn't seem so impressive. I thought about the third Doctor, as played by Jon Pertwee if he didn't bother to do any acting... and it wasn't that different, really.
But I digress.
No, the moment I first knew was when you have to explain what a police box is to Billie. It's that scene that every other Doctor has played straight, taking that fundamental conceit at the heart of the series as seriously as possible and simply pretending that of course everyone knows what a police box is, decades after the last one was removed. It's the look in your eyes and the lilt in your voice as you proclaim "It's a disguise!" as though it really were the cleverest disguise in history. It's a plot point you have to get across to new viewers, it's a nod to the series' history for long-time viewers, it's a character point about the Doctor and it's a really funny joke, rolled into one. And you pull that off magnificently.
That was the moment when I first knew you were the Doctor. And not just a Doctor, but my Doctor. I've been a fan for longer than Billie Piper has been alive, but suddenly you made me feel ten years old again, staring at the screen with wide eyes and a grin on my face and that's when I knew that not only was Doctor Who back, but the Doctor was too. You know how The Unfolding Text spends about forty pages academically dissecting the three words "similar, but different" when tracing through the origins of the first story and its relationship to the pop-culture paradigm from which it was born? Well, you probably don't, but trust me, it made a big semiotic impression on my twelve year old self.
But those words describe my impression of what you achieved perfectly. Sure, Doctor Who was back and as difficult a logistical behind-the-scenes process as that was, it was just a technical procedure. The real test was whether someone could step into the role and convince me that the show really was back. And even that wasn't too hard: Paul McGann managed it in the nineties and he only had about sixty minutes of screentime and some well-fitting shoes to do it in. No, what was really tough was to take that concept and that character and make it into something that was like what came before, yet was also new and innovative. Similar, but different.
And so, about 30 minutes into Rose, you had me.
But best of all, it didn't end there. From episode to episode, you continued to impress. Your revelation at the conclusion of The End of the World, where you and Billie are firing on all cylinders, had me glued to the screen. The sudden easy authority you exhibited just before the cliffhanger of Aliens of London. The timed-to-perfection jokes in World War Three. The "narrows it down" scene. All great stuff, all pushed even further than the material required.
Then along came Dalek. In among the action-movie staging of the gunfights, the battles and the return of the scariest monster ever to glide across a studio set, you stood out as the highlight of the episode. From the sheer depth of emotion in the "Why don't you just die?" speech to the pained and damaged Doctor you played at the conclusion, awkwardly holding that gun, but saying "They're all dead, Rose" like you were a little boy lost. Episode by episode, beat by beat, your acting choices were spot on, shading the Doctor's character with subtlety and emotion... when I'd never really thought the Doctor was the type of character that needed that sort of thing. He'd always struck me as an archetype, rather than a type, but you turned my expectations upside down and forced me to reevaluate a character I thought I knew back to front.
In your speech to the Editor, which is really a speech to Catheca, you take the Doctor from what appears to be a position of weakness, captured and manacled, and create what is almost a mission statement for the ninth Doctor's character. He's the one who inspires others to be better than they are. You turn that position of weakness into one of strength, so we understand that the manacles are irrelevant. The panic you show when you find the TARDIS interior gone in Father's Day is wonderfully unsettling, to say nothing of the way you salvage the "Who says you're not important?" scene from the cliche it could so easily have been.
The Empty Child sees you range from bewildered standup comedy to unbridled curiosity at Jamie's true nature, coupled with the child-like rapport you have with the homeless kids at the dining table. In The Doctor Dances, you make the "bananas are good" scene completely your own, sounding more like you'd ad-libbed the entire thing than learned it from a script. Then there's the way you bring out the subtextual jealousy while resonating concrete and the sheer, almost panicked, joy you express at the possibility of winning. It's an interpretation that so many others could have taken the other way, given that the Doctor almost always wins, but you play it with a pained desperation that tells us so much about this intricate and complex character.
In Boom Town, you show us the Doctor's darker side. In a story that's taking apart the Doctor to see what makes him tick, you're the perfect vehicle for conveying multiple levels of meaning at once. Whether it's your distaste at taking Margaret to face the death penalty, but willingness to do it anyway, or the magical "dinner and bondage" scene, where you answer her charges, but tell us, the audience, that they all have some merit nonetheless.
And then there's the final two-parter, which is your tour-de-force, but best highlighted by Bad Wolf's conclusion. What makes it delicious is the way you scowl and tug your jacket down just before having to face the Daleks, as though you're about to stand up to the school principal. And then your "I'm coming to rescue you, Rose" speech is riveting television. Only on later viewings did I realise that the entire cast swung around as one to face you the moment you pronounced "No." I missed that entirely, so captivated was I by the power of your delivery.
The Parting of the Ways sees your character become so focussed that he even contemplates the unthinkable... but you convey this with utter conviction, so much so that I thought you might even go through with it. Until, finally, your realisation that there's only one answer to the "killer or coward" dilemma, which you act as though relieved at the prospect of death. It's a note-perfect climax to a perfect season.
And, naturally, I was devastated when I found out you were leaving. My disappointment only grew as the season continued. But by its conclusion, part of that disappointment was tempered by the realisation that your arc couldn't have played out more perfectly. The sheer range of emotions you shared with us brought more out of the ninth Doctor in one season than other Doctors in three, five or seven seasons. The small touches and undercurrents you shaded the character with forced me to see that there was so much more to my favourite time traveller than I'd ever conceived.
So I want to say thank you. You opened my eyes to the wonder of the Doctor again... but "again" is the wrong word, because you showed me a side to the Doctor I'd never seen and for that I'll always be grateful. Episode after episode, scene after scene, you took your lines and actions and made them something greater and more powerful than they were intended.
I like to think you had me convinced from that "disguise" scene. However, that was just the moment when my cynicism and pre-expectations melted away and I was able to open myself up to the magic of what you had to offer.
Really, you had me from "Run!"
Not So Fantastic by Adrian Loder 7/8/07
The inspiration to write a review strikes me sporadically, haphazardly even, and I'm not always sure what I'm going to write next. This is borne out in my collected output: my first review was submitted all the way back in 1997 for The Brain of Morbius; that was back when there were actually stories that hadn't been reviewed yet, a concept which now seems absurd, as every TV story has at least a page full of reviews and oftentimes more than just a page. But anyway, I've been submitting since then, but I've gone years without sending anything in sometimes.
And so when I decided this morning that I was going to review the Ninth Doctor, it was without any real kind of warning. I'd just been kind of mulling over some things in my head, about the way the Ninth Doctor's story arc worked itself out, and I said to myself, "You know, I just really didn't like the Ninth Doctor very much, did I?"
And that's when it hit me: I don't really like the Ninth Doctor. And I started wondering why, and I think the reason is because he didn't feel like the Doctor to me. I don't know if people develop complexes where they are wary or scared of seeing their heroes brought down to Earth, and so they go ahead and just do it themselves to get it over with, or what, but after hearing Jubilee for the first time, and knowing that Dalek was largely a trimmed down and rewritten version of it, it really struck me. Because Colin Baker's 6th Doctor does not behave at all the way Eccleston's 9th Doctor behaves, and I don't fault Eccleston; I think he played the role they asked him to play, and did it well, I just didn't like the role very much.
Before the point of this spirals completely out of my reach, what I'm trying to say is, Rob Shearman was obviously trying to do something grand and new with Jubilee, but that story shows how humans behave in a Dalek-like manner, whereas in Dalek, it is the Doctor whose behavior is compared to the Daleks. I don't think Shearman is responsible for this - or that he would have done it without prodding. RTD was off on a "character arc" deal, an "emotional story" with the Doctor, where he's tired and bitter from the Time War, and sure, ok, that's understandable, and I see where he went with it and the point, but I just didn't like it. Doctor Who's been around for how long? 42 years before the first new season on TV aired, 40 years before work began on devising the revival or New Series. It all just feels a bit dancing on someone's grave; here, I brought back your childhood (hell, adulthood) hero and turned him into someone you don't like, aren't I daring and cute and cool?
The wonder of fiction is that it isn't real and that may sound obvious or redundant, but hang on a second. In reality, no one is perfect, and indeed perfection is impossible. As an aside, we seem to have taken that truth as meaning that perfection is undesirable or would be unfulfilling, but perfection is, by definition, um... perfect. As in, flawless. Which means if we did have perfection it would not be undesirable; in fact, that is exactly what we should desire, even though we know it can't actually happen. But the creative aspect of society has become so enmeshed with depicting every human failing, every misery, every wretchedness, as realistically as possible; you know, I'm not saying everything should be beyond belief, but there comes a time when I think you have to say 'Stop'. The beauty of creativity and created works are that they don't have to be true to life, we can do whatever we want with them. Why is everyone so obsessed with making our fictional heroes as fallible and borderline-psychotic as our real life ones so often turn out to be? Instead of aping our own misery we should take advantage of fictional media to create something that is better than our world.
Which brings me back to what RTD did to the character of the Doctor. In Dalek he tortures the titular creature, and I don't care about the Time War and the motivations and the rationalizations and justifications you can construct; the entire thing is fiction, the entire thing need not have been as it was, and someone or several someones are responsible for making it what it was because they decided to do so. None of the other Doctors would have tortured anyone - not even Colin Baker's 6th Doctor, as portrayed on TV, would do such a thing - and yet this incarnation of the Doctor is so filled with hatred and bitterness over what the Daleks have caused, and of his own lost race, that he sinks to the very level they do. And I'm sure someone will argue that the point of the whole thing is not in what happens in one particular story during that season, but the overall progression. Baloney.
Throughout the majority of that season the Doctor is remorseless and often ineffectual, trying to save the day but usually having to be bailed out by someone else, as if he were just going through the motions. There are only two moments in that entire season where I really feel any good feelings for the Ninth Doctor, and those are 1) the point in The Doctor Dances, near the end, where he rejoices that the problem is solved and no has died, that everyone is saved; and 2) the point in The Parting of the Ways when he finally becomes the Doctor of old and refuses to put an end to the Daleks, refuses to commit genocide, even thought it may mean his own death.
This progression may be interesting from a character development point of view, watching the Doctor's progression through his Ninth incarnation as he gradually regains what made him so unlike other so-called heroes. But the problem is that creating that progression also creates a lot of stories in which the star of the show is not someone I look at as heroic or the equal of his actions of old.
In the end, I can't be too hard on him; it is, after all, the Doctor, even if he has become something that would have probably horrified himself in an earlier incarnation. But I'm afraid that the Ninth Doctor just doesn't fit the role of hero the way he did in earlier incarnations, and just is not very fun to watch when the actions he commits are often so much against what he always stood for. And no amount of "emotional stories" excuses can justify it to me. Fortunately, although he does show echoes of the pain of the past in his Tenth incarnation, more of the hero of old, the champion of the rights of all others, giving even the wicked a chance to redeem themselves before delivering the final blow, shines through in the next and current incarnation.
The Ninth Doctor in question by Nathan Mullins 6/4/09
When I heard that Doctor Who was due to come back, I had very high hopes for the new series, but I didn't know what approach would be taken concerning the lead actor and the show itself. I had thought that Paul McGann might return as the eighth to show the regeneration of him into the ninth Doctor and it was rumoured for a while that he was but no. When I heard of Christopher Eccleston fulfilling the role of the Ninth Doctor, I had doubts. I hadn't seen him in anything so I had nothing to judge his acting by but my mum had seen him in the Second Coming so she didn't know what to make of him. I was displeased, from what I saw of him in the lead role of Doctor Who. Needless to say, I will say my piece when I write this review.
I felt that during his time as the Doctor, we saw another side of this wanderer that we hadn't seen in a long while. The scripts seem to portray the ninth Doctor as a lonely 'God', seen as a loner who feels he can travel with no one due to the loss of his people. I also didn't like his costume. The leather jacket just didn't suit the Doctor's personality, I felt, and without sounding as if I'm bashing the ninth Doctor, I'm not because the majority of the episodes we saw of him were brilliant and some weren't and that's how it goes. I just didn't like Christopher Eccleston's 'take' on the role and whereas some people did, I felt David Tennant had a better understanding of the role than he did when he took the part.
I did like the ninth Doctor. His personality and energy he (Chris) gave were good, but there were some things that riled me and they were the smiles the ninth Doctor would pull when he had an idea or was excited and it was overkill because he'd do it nearly in every episode. Though, the emotion the ninth Doctor gave when he was about to regenerate was just beautiful and the chemistry between him and Rose that had developed for so long during her stay in the TARDIS, and the build up that led to him regenerating into the tenth Doctor was just as heartfelt as the performances they both gave. He was a great Doctor but one I wasn't ready for. I also have an issue with him leaving the series just after making just one. To be honest, if he had stayed, the impression that I have of him now would have been altered a hell of a lot but when I heard that he'd be staying for only one season, I wasn't impressed and there was no way he would have been typecast for making just one series. Peter Davison left after three and that was good enough, but one series isn't good enough in my opinion.
However, his episodes were among the best the series has ever produced. Bear in mind, David Tennant's are just as fantastic but I've said my piece and have made my point.
Every Doctor Has His Day by Kaan Vural 18/4/14
The Ninth Doctor is not what we often think of as "Doctor-ish", but he's nevertheless a believable continuation of the character considering that he's suffered perhaps the greatest kind of loss the Doctor can suffer: the loss of his identity, family, and home in a massive act of destruction he was forced to carry out, all on the same day he regenerated and underwent massive physical and psychological upheaval.
I've heard it said that the Ninth Doctor was less of an intellectual, but I don't buy that, to be honest. This is a Doctor who admires the works of Dickens, who prides himself on a near-flawless knowledge of Earth history, who springs into action when he discovers a caste of journalists who are little more than glorified secretaries. Hardly the actions of a man who shuns learning. He speaks in a more casual dialect, but he still articulates rather weighty ideas about death and optimism. The Emergency Program One hologram's words to Rose Tyler, asking her to accept death in a way the Doctor couldn't and exhorting her to make the most of her life, are as beautiful as any speech the Doctor's ever given. Real eloquence isn't about pronunciation or avoiding slang, it's about fluency and meaning.
I think the stylistic difference gets mistaken for a dumbing-down of the Doctor because there's a subtler change to his personality. Deliberately in contrast to Rose's cultural complacency, this is the most cosmopolitan Doctor we've ever seen on television. He becomes close friends with a tree, sympathizes with energy beings enough to give them the corpses of Victorian Britain, spares the life of a Dalek, and sits down to a stolen black-market dinner with the orphan children of the London Blitz. This isn't behavior we'd have seen from previous Doctors, probably due largely to budgetary and logistical concerns - as well as Doctor Who having a lot of rather poor writing in its later years. But it works. It's a new extension of traditional Doctor-ish behavior, but it's right at home with everything we knew of the Classic Doctors. There's a sense that this Doctor doesn't think culture is "better" just because it's older to us; he rolls his eyes the game shows of 200,000 as easily as he criticizes "that American bit in Martin Chuzzlewit".
Some seasons of Doctor Who have an indelible sense of identity, like Season Seven (Doctor Who and the Year of Industrial Complexes) or Season Twenty-Six (Doctor Who and Four Ways to Play Mind Games with Ace). Series 1 will always stick in my head as the year which most believed in the notion that alien cultures and moralities could be just as self-contained and worthwhile as our own. Gwyneth's Victorian upbringing shows up how judgmental the "modern" Rose can be. The Doctor points out the moral necessity of recycling dead bodies to keep an alien race alive (which seems tasteless but, let's face it, they aren't going to complain). A Dalek is shown to have some capacity for compassion. The omnisexual Jack Harkness is as acceptable a product of his time as Nancy is unacceptable to hers. The Doctor admits to a sexual history - which it was always obvious he'd had, but I suppose in fairness that sex is a fairly alien thing to the fan stereotype. An alien who once tried to destroy Earth shows fondness for its restaurants and nostalgia for the flat she lived in. In fact, the Doctor explicitly draws a link between everyday tourism and his own travels, and points multiple times to the necessity of experiencing and making some concessions to foreign cultures, as long as you aren't being required to violate basic morality. The Doctor's limits are tested, yes, and he hits some hurdles, but by and large he's as open-minded as the Doctor has ever been.
So what's missing here? What's the element that the Doctor has lost? He dresses and talks differently, yes, but that comes with the territory and I don't think wearing a leather jacket and having a Northern accent are really fair grounds for accusing the man of having lost his intellectual edge or sophistication, otherwise I'd be justified in calling the Second Doctor a bumbling idiot because Patrick Troughton dressed a bit shabbily and had a playful streak. When it comes to the Doctor, we have to allow for the possibility that appearances are deceptive.
No, what this Doctor is missing is closure.
It's been a recurring theme in New Who, but never explored as well after this season. The Doctor of old was a man who said goodbye to many people and witnessed many deaths, a man with a superhuman capacity for goodbyes. Which is a good thing, as it gave the Doctor an understated alienness but also emphasized the bittersweet nature of the show, with change its only constant. But in my experience, people who are a lot more durable also take a lot more recovery when they finally break. Star Trek's Kirk was a man who never allowed himself to be defeated, which made his eventual defeat by Khan that much more wounding and that much more dramatically compelling. In emotional terms, Series 1 is the Doctor's Wrath of Khan (or its aftermath): the Doctor, a man who always moves on, suffers a loss he can't shake off. He doesn't know how to cope with it, and this weakness clouds other aspects of his character. Grieving people don't behave in predictable ways; their actions don't conform to neat patterns of "in character" or "out of character". Harshly berating Rose for acting on her natural impulse as a human being and a daughter in Father's Day and picking up a gun in Dalek - these aren't much in the Doctor's character, but the Doctor is grieving. He's erratic, unsure of himself. In that context, what he does is very much in character. When the Tenth Doctor expressed unwarranted quasi-romantic feelings towards Rose, it felt like she was emotionally hobbling him; but this grieving Doctor, who formed attachments too quickly and too strongly, had a sympathetic vulnerability that made his closeness to - shall we say dependence on - Rose believable.
Did Series 1 always explore this idea as well as it could have? No, of course not, but Doctor Who almost never does live up to its full potential, even in the fan-anointed Golden Ages. And that's OK. As the Doctor once said, the bad things in life don't necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant. Series 1 did have the right idea, and it knew it had the right idea and took risks to make it happen - something that can't be easily said of subsequent seasons.
It should be noted that Eccleston was an excellent choice of actor for the role. I couldn't tell you if there was someone more deserving out there, but Chris's portrayal of the character walks that fine line between a fun, adventurous character and a damaged man in mourning. So many people try to hide their pain and sadness; but, unlike most of those people, who try too hard and end up behaving like aggressive, obnoxious brats, the Doctor as played by Eccleston remains sympathetic throughout. When he's happy, you're happy with him; when he's angry, you feel his anger when he's in the right and feel sorry for him when he's in the wrong. We've all fantasized about being the Doctor at some point, but of course to play him convincingly is a deceptively difficult task, and whether out of professionalism or genuine belief in his character, Eccleston rose to the challenge and talk about his opinion of the show and his work on it isn't of so much interest to me.
In fact, it's fortuitous that Eccleston chose to leave when he did, because I doubt his Doctor would have endured a longer run without becoming unrecognizable - in which case, why not recast anyway? The Ninth Doctor only ever made sense as a transitional figure, a time during which the Doctor could go through the worst of the healing process. Series 1 may have been generally weakly plotted, and it may have had the occasional tasteless moment, but this approach to the Doctor was a flash of brilliance that shows up how toothless and conservative the following years became. It's a sad time when an episode like A Town Called Mercy gets lauded for its moral dilemma because it's the only story in an entire season that really attempts to present one, or when our idea of a bold and risky storytelling move is to spring a new character on us like The Name of the Doctor did.
Viewed in retrospect, Series 1 makes me sad for the future of the show because the feeling in the back of my head is that the Powers That Be wanted to get the raw, experimental elements of the Doctor out of the way so they could settle as quickly as possible into the simplistic Doctor-as-dashing-hero mould that has saturated so much of New Who. In the early days of William Hartnell, moral courage and idealism were rare and precious flickers of the candle in a dark and challenging world. Series 1 made its own stab at recapturing that feeling. Let's hope the future holds more promise than a safe, comfortable Doctor who is taken for granted.
"Hit the road Jack!" by Thomas Cookson 24/12/14
Having been re-evaluating Eccleston's season far less forgivingly, I feel perhaps I should properly address and reckon with my inconsistent feelings on the Ninth Doctor.
Eccleston's Doctor, moreso than Davison, varied from being the most consciously Doctorish to the most apocryphally un-Doctorish conception of the character ever. Depending entirely on who's writing him.
There are few moments where the Doctor was more Doctorish than in Dalek. Even knowing the imprisoned creature has already incinerated one technician, he takes one look at the torture equipment in the cell and immediately the alien has his sympathies. He's long known humans are often the bigger monsters. Eccleston said this was the beauty of the Doctor's character. He doesn't see the alien in the alien.
We saw a genuine consciousness to the Doctor, his spontaneous thought processes and emotional internal conflicts. He sadistically gloats over destroying the Daleks to the last survivor, then seconds later he's overcome by guilt, pleading "I had no choice." He reprimands Rose for saving her father, but ultimately he could have sent Pete to his death all along and saved everyone, but he was too human to make that cold decision.
Eccleston's big selling point as an actor was his photogenic eyes. He conveyed a Doctor haunted by his centuries lived in a wider cruel universe of horrors.
However, his worst characterisation was pretty much all RTD's. A showrunner often praised for revitalising an old embarrassment, yet whose writing of the Doctor compares with The Twin Dilemma's volatile, borderline-brain-damaged unpleasant mess.
In hindsight, the noughties were a bloody scary time. We realised dangerous philosophies of poisonous madness that held life to be so cheap existed. That our enemies didn't even value their own lives and had nothing to lose in wanting to destroy us. Likewise, Western culture had become more warmongering than ever. It seemed a spin of the bottle which middle-eastern country we'd attack next. Yet even that seemed a worthwhile bargain if somewhere along the line this warmongering government succeeded in eliminating Al Quaeda's threat. There were older generation voices stating the youth were all violent amoral wastrels and calling to bring back national service. I suddenly got really scared that we were becoming a society that considered you lesser if you weren't prepared to put your life on the line for any or no reason.
That's perhaps why I was comforted, yet worried by, New Who. A show about the beauty and worth of a single ordinary life. Yet which crucially was about learning to put your life on the line for a greater cause. This message got rather ugly when it came to timid, cowardly Mickey who was constantly denigrated by the Doctor as an idiot, and who only gained plaudits off the Doctor for blowing up the Slitheen. And as Rose put her life on the line for the Doctor, no one else was allowed to compare with her or be in the Doctor's clique. But perhaps, despite being a show about fighting evil and risking your own life, it wasn't about doing it for the suspect reasons our government says. In fact, it was about making a stand and saying no against the powerful.
This is probably why my view of Warriors of the Deep changed from unspoken embarrassed disownment to seeing its existence as a positive crime against humanity. In a show that was now about the value of life and yet about placing your life on the line as a moral duty, reflecting a culture where that belief was becoming ubiquitous, Warriors was surely the ultimate expression of madness. In which the Doctor ensures everyone gives their lives for no reason, in the cause of protecting the reprehensible, and tries to wrap it in some phony message of achieving peace in our time through snide appeasement. It was one incompatible version of Doctor Who exposing another by its very existence, and exposing what fools many fans were to accept it as part of the canon whilst disowning the Williams era.
And yet, part of what made RTD's vision so scary was actually how volatile and pathological his writing and his characterisation of the Doctor was. Often in such uncomfortably petty ways. His fixation with shunning and rubbishing any other male Rose took interest in, or was even in a long relationship with, seemed almost programmed behaviour and yet had no existing precedent in the show's entire history.
Yes RTD apologists like on the Planet Skaro forum would point to Pertwee's Doctor and claim the Doctor was always an alpha male. But there was still a maturity and restraint to him. A warmth beneath the banter. He was never vicious about it. Even when Tom was teasing Harry, he was letting him know he was part of the group. When the Ninth Doctor does the same to Mickey, he's asserting the opposite. And it was always an RTD problem. When in Father's Day he stresses that everyone's important, it jars with him treating Adam like dirt on his shoe and not giving him a chance the week before. I'm sorry, but one's a completely different character to the other.
That's what bothers me. Previously, the Doctor's designation of the 'omega male', who is one to avoid or be wary of, would be a sensible choice like Professor Solon or Trenchard. Someone he knew was untrustworthy. Not some 19-year-old student. Russell's Doctor seemed to be fixated with human geography at its most dysfunctionally vicious and extreme to a degree that's almost animalistic. In ways that would have made the Doctor's forging of allies when exiled on Earth impossible. And whilst I'd like to see it as depicting the Doctor in a fragile state reckoning with his own damage, I'm all too aware that it's the Doctor who always ultimately holds all approval on others. Not the other way round.
At the time of course, our society was becoming insular and xenophobic, and this was happening long before 9/11. My theory is that when there is a sense of a failed society in breakdown with rampant crime, violence and disrespect, many people are inclined to be more territorial about who they're co-habiting with, and to think that communities are unmanageable enough as they are without more of an influx. They're also more inclined to be nostalgic for the good old days and be against modern ideas of integration on principle.
Then there's the British National Party's influence. Our society is one of pecking orders and parochial education systems that tell young people what to think. The danger of a group like the BNP is that they offer a plethora of new information and angering statistics that rub a collective sore wound at how the lower classes are denied certain facts or knowledge from a corrupt, deceitful system. This gives them a taste of a little empowering knowledge. One that taps into uncertain rage, convinces people of the surety of their philosophy, feeding our overwhelming argument culture, and encourages people to take that rage out on minorities.
What was really disturbing about this period was that our government itself was putting asylum seekers through hell. There was even a period where asylum seekers were being held in prisons with hardened criminals in an interim period before their credentials could be confirmed or accommodation sorted for them. No doubt born from a downright reprehensible perception that if these people were escaping from hell then they should be willing to rough it a bit longer.
One of the reasons I felt that Russell was rather selling the show out is rather vaguely linked with the above. He certainly seemed to have no problem with continuing to treat the common viewers as though they were of limited intelligence who couldn't handle anything too clever. Arguably though, he was talking the tabloid's language but selling a different, healthier message to their vilifying of immigrants.
His confessed mindset being that of course the insular masses can't relate to other cultures, so making the show about alien concerns is a no-no. If it doesn't concern recognisable humans then the people won't care. As I've often said, the Fourth Doctor's discussion of the future atrocities the Daleks would commit on many alien worlds, when he was considering terminating them in their cradle, really did conjure images of real-life refugees from war-torn countries. The kind of people our culture was now denying the humanity of. And often the whole undercurrent of saving Earth from an alien threat was the knowledge of other worlds out there that weren't so lucky. Although one idiot on the Vervoid site when reviewing Logopolis insisted it was narratively crass that the Doctor was more concerned about saving Earth than any other planet, clearly having missed the point that only on Earth did Jodrel Bank possess compatibility with the Logopolitan program that would save the rest of the universe.
RTD's vision of the show never seemed to stretch that far however. The Daleks were a beaten superpower, a near extinct threat that only ever returned from oblivion to threaten Earth. And as Russell himself said in rather moronic fashion, he never really cared about the Zog people of the planet Zog.
I shouldn't be careless about the term selling out. I can't deny I have become disillusioned with left-wing thinking. Then again, I know several disillusioned conservatives who actually think the time has come for class war to drive out the scumbags currently in power. But I began to grow suspicious of left-wing voices that described the latest public rioters favourably. As though reasserting a very pernicious 80's anti-establishment philosophy that renounced the idea of any fair justice existing, and so seemed to vaunt the right of people to treat each other and their communities as horribly as they liked. I even get the sense some people have had so much white guilt drilled into them that it's instilled in them a self-loathing psychosis.
I think the latter applies strongly to fandom as well. Or at least to the kind of elitist fandom overseen by right-on types like Paul Cornell. And indeed that seems to be the very mentality Lawrence Miles has, particularly in the way he has obsessively made the cool socialite Steven Moffat the fixation of his jealous rage, self-loathing and bitter sense of inadequacy in a way most stalkers do.
This is why I think RTD's Who became so uncritically lauded in elitist fan circles and why disagreements became so ugly. Lawrence Miles seemed to vaunt RTD's vitriolic streak and cheap shock-jock material (even defending RTD's gratuitous use of triggering homophobic slurs that rub a painful wound in Children of Earth) as a healthy thing. There's a part of me that sometimes thinks Miles has a point. That noughties British entertainment needed a snarling, angry new punk, and that New Who's very breaking with the past and starting the show on a year zero mindset was particularly true to the countercultural ethos of erasing the old guard. It felt like a throwback to medicinally bitter 80's TV like Boys from the Black Stuff and Comic Strip Presents.
I'd like to say that Eccleston's Doctor counted for a lot, despite RTD's efforts to erase him since.
Yet I still can't get past that moronic moment where the Ninth Doctor furiously threatens the Controller for dismissing Rose's 'death'. Eccleston could have played against that idiocy, if he'd snapped and began the threat, only to stop himself three words in when he realised he was dealing with a mechanised, emotionally stunted abuse victim. Thus making him seem less meatheaded. But Eccleston was playing the angry working man, not the enlightened Doctor of old who Eccleston always regarded with reverse snobbery and contempt. What bugs me is Russell's disgusting autism-bashing remarks since about 'ming-mongs', and here characterising the Doctor as someone with no patience for those who struggle emotionally with self-expression. Denigrating the disadvantaged weak.
That's not the Doctor.