David Tennant – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

Doctor Who: Season 2/15/41, Episode 8 – The Reality War

“Mr Smith is gone. I am the Doctor!”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Well, that’s it for another season – and, it’s looking like, another era of Doctor Who. If you’re one of those unhappy at what has become known as the RTD2 era, there was really no need to be. In many ways, what we got here was a typical Russell T Davies season finale, with all the strengths and weaknesses he’s shown in writing the show since 2005 – great characterisation and dialogue, with plenty of spectacle, undermined by gaping plot holes that were seemingly papered over by fast-paced set pieces.

Doctor Who: Season 14, Episode 7 – The Legend of Ruby Sunday

“You’ve seen my life. I bring disaster, Kate, disaster.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

It seems like the new season of Doctor Who has barely started, but we’re already into the endgame with this jaw-dropping penultimate episode, the first of a big two-parter. A run of eight episodes is, sadly, pretty short to flesh out a new Doctor, particularly when he’s been virtually absent for two of those eight episodes – but Ncuti Gatwa has been as superb as I always knew he would be. This episode showed us more of that irrepressible joie de vivre, but coupled with the melancholy we’ve seen in the past, drawn from centuries of bad experiences which, rightly or wrongly, the Doctor considers himself responsible for.

Doctor Who: 2023 Special #3 – The Giggle

“You’ll be someone else. It doesn’t matter who. Cause every single one of you is fantastic.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

These specials have been an interesting side trip into the world of Doctor Who, giving us the second shortest-lived (onscreen) incarnation of the Doctor, reinvigorating the show while acknowledging everything that went before. It’s easy to imagine, after these, that we’ll still be watching Doctor Who in several years’ time. But the new question is – just how many?

Doctor Who: 2023 Special #2 – Wild Blue Yonder

“There’s something on this ship that’s so bad the TARDIS ran away?”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

This second Special to celebrate Doctor Who’s 60^th anniversary perfectly demonstrated the show’s flexibility by being almost totally different from the last. A far future, alien, sci-fi setting rather than contemporary Earth; only two (ish) characters rather than the previous ensemble; and some of the weird, weird concepts that only science fantasy can do. Diverted by Donna’s coffee-spilling goof at the end of the previous ep, our dynamic duo found themselves trapped on a ghostly, seemingly empty starship at the very edge of the universe – only to find they weren’t as alone as they thought.

Doctor Who: 2023 Special #1 – The Star Beast

“Why did this face come back? To say goodbye?”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Now that was more like it.

Don’t get me wrong, I know showrunners are all a matter of taste, and some people really loved Chris Chibnall’s run on Doctor Who. Even I had episodes that I really loved, and moments that stirred my feelings. But generally, for me, it was often clumsy, and incoherent (☹) and too satisfied with cramming in spectacle when character-driven stories would have worked better. And Steven Moffat (who I did enjoy while others didn’t) had his failings too – chiefly that his delight in timey-wimey puzzles often overshadowed his characters, and sometimes drowned the emotional beats of stories.

Doctor Who: Destination Skaro (Children in Need)

“I was never here!”

The smorgasbord of Doctor Who laid on for its 60^th birthday continued last night with a 5 minute skit on the BBC’s annual charity telethon, Children in Need. Monsieur BBC, with these Who specials you are really spoiling us!

Doctor Who at 60 – and me at 54!

“Time is memory, and memory is time.”

When I was a kid, Doctor Who seemed like a really old show. It started before I was born, six whole years before in fact. And to a kid, six years is an eternity.

I first got into it very, very young. Literally the earliest memory I have is of my mother sitting the three-year-old me in front of the big, rented colour TV in our Durham suburban home, presumably in an attempt to get some time off from me, and my being enthralled by what I now know to be Planet of the Daleks episode 4 (it was the bit where Jon Pertwee and Bernard Horsfall shove a Dalek into a lake).

Doctor Who – The Power of the Doctor

“Will someone tell me what the hell is going on here?”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

When we Doctor Who fans were kids, we liked to write stories about our hero. Because we were ten year olds with no real grasp of how storytelling worked, we’d just chuck in everything we liked about the show. So, however many Doctors there were at that point would team up with UNIT to fight the Master, the Daleks, the Cybermen and whichever other monster we happened to like. What were the villains trying to achieve? Didn’t matter, just as long as they were there. The results were great fun – if you’re ten.

How sexist is Doctor Who?–Part Nine

The David Tennant years

Welcome to Part Nine of my attempt to analyse the sexism in every Doctor Who story ever, using the Bechdel Test – and my wits. For a reminder of the rules, check the Intro here. Then, going by Doctor:

A quick reminder of the Test:

It has to have two named female characters
Who talk to each other
About something besides a man.

The Tenth Doctor. David Tennant. Skinny suit. Converse sand shoes. Long coat. And endless cries of squee. Yes, Christopher Eccleston may have made the revived show a success, but Tennant made it a phenomenon. Clearly far more at home in the part than Eccleston ever was (not that Eccleston ever let that show on screen, to be fair), Tennant became Russell T Davies’ best asset in selling the show, both onscreen and off.

In his four years in the part, David Tennant notched up almost as many stories as Tom Baker managed in seven – 37 stories all told, as opposed to Baker’s 41. That’s mostly due to the fact that the new show has self-contained episodes, or at most two-parters. It also means that Tennant’s era offers a better balanced sample for the Bechdel Test than the mere ten stories of Christopher Eccleston. It also means that this is one monster of a blog post, made even longer by a combined Ninth/Tenth Doctor summary at the end to sum up RTD’s era as a whole. Ready?

Continue reading “How sexist is Doctor Who?–Part Nine”

Doctor Who–The Day of the Doctor

“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be – be one.” – Marcus Aurelius

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Tricky things, anniversary shows. Although this was celebrating 50 years, technically there’s only been two previous attempts – The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors (no, I’m not counting Dimensions in Time). They have to be crowd-pleasers, they have to encompass the show’s ever-growing mythology, and yet they also have to be accessible to viewers who don’t necessarily have the extensive knowledge of the show’s past that us fanboys have. The Three Doctors works rather well in that regard, while The Five Doctors doesn’t. But what about Day of the Doctor?

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