Nine over Ten

finally finished my nth viewing of the Complete First Series of the Russel T. Davies incarnation of Doctor Who, right after finally getting to watch the Third Series Finale (The Last of the Time Lords). i'd been putting off watching Father's Day coz i'd been feeling a bit too fragile for it, and it turns out i was right.

anywho (see what i did there?), i'm done now, even the First Series Doctor Who Confidential episodes, and all that's left is to watch the episodes with DVD commentaries with the DVD commentaries on--but i think i'm ready to put this out there: contrary to general opinion, David Tennant's Doctor Number Ten isn't the best Doctor ever. he's pretty amazing, i'll admit, and even Tom Baker's Doctor (just because he happens to be the 'Original Doctor' in my head, me having come to the series ages ago off those particular episodes once shown on the now long defunct FEN--meet the Doctor and his various incarnations here) is hard to pit against Tennant's, but i still say he isn't. i've always been of the opinion that Christopher Ecclestone's Doctor Number Nine didn't have it fair at all, what with having just come off the Time War and having survival guilt and all, but having seen it all over again, it isn't just that.

Tennant's Ten has a more conventional charm, owing to his brilliant sometimes-verging-on-maniacal behavior, but this often takes away from the complex subtlety that comes off as a poor echo of Ecclestone's Nine's; admittedly, he's a bit more healed from the Time War, so this can only be expected, and besides, yes, there are other subtleties to Ten; still, Ecclestone's stone-face is often more effective than Tennant's playdough features at showing the exact same sort of thing--the shift from confounded contemplation to dismissive delight, for instance.

this may sound like me repeating myself, but in the past few months, i had, in fact, grown to love Tennant's Doctor as much as Ecclestone's. (i'd also grown, at last, to actually like Rose, but that's another thing altogether, and something i don't think i've ever mentioned before. what?!? you didn't like Rose?!? not initially, no. mainly because i thought Billie Piper hammed it up a bit too much a bit too often, but i'm about ready to change my mind on that as well. there may be another post in that; the Doctor's Companions. stay tuned after the break.)

er. where was i? ah. may sound like. repeating myself. love Tennant's Doctor. so, how to decide between the two Doctors? well, i wasn't about to, but then comparing the three serieses (?!?) in my head changed my mind.

the problem here is that we aren't just talking about the Doctor and the actors' distinguished portrayals; we're talking about how they've been written as well. had it been just the two Doctors to decide between per se, i'd have had to chalk it up to my mood at the time: damaged, occasionally sullen and potentially ruthless, or schizophrenic (in the typical literary sense of the word), ginger and rude?

despite dishing out some of the best episodes (for my money Girl in the Fireplace, Love and Monsters and the absolutely fantabulously unequabble Blink), the latter two serieses have been, for the most part, rather uneven. when those serieses's (?!?!?) episodes were bad, they weren't irredeemably bad (except perhaps, off the top of my head, the utterly malodorously horrendous The Shakespeare Code, saved only by a few brilliant one liners: 'Fifty-seven scholars just punched the air with their fists' after a homosexual innuendo from the Bard, for instance--oh and that 'Human Dalek'. wtf), and unevenness, by itself, isn't particularly fatal. but, on top of the unevenness, there was a failure to satisfactorily tie-up all the threads that had been woven into the series, and, on top of that, an insistence on even trying to tie everything up--more a disservice to the series than anything, really, seeming, in the end, nothing more than an unnecessary obeissance to the precedent set by the First Series--or, perhaps by contemporary television in general (thank Babylon 5 for that; i hear they're to blame for all this 'story arc' business in serial TV these days).

and while the latter two serieses might boast some truly niftier-than-nifty eps, the First after all had The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances; the utterly revealing Dalek; the disturbingly insightful Boom Town; and, yes, the gut-wrenching Father's Day (a rather silly ep, really, but utterly effective); oh, and who can forget watching the TARDIS hurtle through space as it charges bravely into the thick of the two-hundred-ship-strong Dalek armada? and while the First Series did have the potentially annoying tendency to resort to Deus Ex Machina (but what is the TARDIS, after all, but a ready-made, custom-built D.E.M.?), there was a majesty to the way the series engaged in its resolutions, and, though i admit to being initially miffed by The Apotheosis of Rose (in The Parting of the Ways), i now, surprisingly, find it rather satisfying. (the D.E.M. resolution of Boom Town never really bothered me; there was just no other proper way to end it, and by that point in the ep, it was a definite relief for the TARDIS to have stepped in just then.)

(it was interesting to see, then, The Apotheosis of the Doctor in The Last of the Time Lords; an even more complete apotheosis, in fact, with Martha Jones playing the role of uber-companion: prophet to the Doctor's deity. more on this, if i feel like it, later.)

the Doctor's overall story arc seemed to have hit a peak with the First Series and with Nine, akin to my mind to the way Neil Gaiman's The Sandman caught Morpheus at exactly the right time for us to come into his story.

(and, like Morpheus, Doctor Number Nine also had reached a point at which he had to change or die; sure, they'll tell you, Nine died to save Rose and that's that, and they're exactly right. but there's an undeniable weariness to Nine which makes me almost believe that, yes, maybe the Doctor had, at last, seen just that bit too much of the cold, hard universe...alors!)

at this point, i now feel capable of sympathizing with those who feel the show isn't what it used to be; i would even add that what the show lost, it lost immediately after the end of the first series, and the Doctor's ninth regeneration; it faltered at The Christmas Invasion and never recovered.

however, i will say this as caveat: yes, it lost something, something precious, even priceless; something worth missing. but no, that shouldn't keep you from watching what remains a damned fine show; Russel T. Davies' Doctor Who is still better than Doctor Who has ever been, and the show remains one of the finest on TV these days.

and anyway, the latter serieses, after all, only fail to my mind in comparison to the First.

watch it for the Doctor's wit, his incomprehensible brilliance, his endearing rudeness, or his suspicious penchant for sneakers...watch it for the scary monsters; the bold, imaginative silliness you won't find on any other SF TV show that isn't a parody (MST3K, for instance; or Red Dwarf and Hyperdrive); the well-developed humanity...watch if for the TARDIS...

or watch it for Catherine Tate. i hear they're bringing her back for the entire Fourth Series. i can't wait.