Why I like Jamie
this post is dedicated to thinkingingallifreyan on his birthday
James Robert McCrimmon is a Jacobite piper from 1745. He was another very experimental character - they actually filmed two endings to "the Highlanders": one in which Jamie came along and on in which he didn't. And this time the experiment was wholly successful. Jamie remains one of the most overwhelmingly popular companions of all time, despite so many of his episodes being lost. And for good reason. Jamie is wonderful. He is another of the people who has occupied the illustrious position of my favorite character in the entire show.
There are different approaches to character and team design. Tegan, for instance, was designed specifically to clash with the rest of the team, to create conflict and interpersonal drama. Jamie is precisely the opposite - he was built to work well with the existing team and particularly with the new Doctor. And he does. He's friendly and companionable, generally cheerful and gets on well with people. Polly takes him very much under her wing, educating him in the ways of sixties fashion, among other things. And he's pretty consistently adorable as well.
Jamie is from another time and place, and so brings a very different perspective from the people around him. On the one hand, he's scientifically very naive - all technology is futuristic technology. He's terrified of trains and airplane, and he spends an entire episode of "the Space Pirates" being fascinated by a pair of magnets. On the other hand, he is unusually comfortable with the existence of things he does not understand. Jamie already believes in magic and fairies - it's not much more of a leap to time travel and daleks. This comes into play most obviously in "the Moonbase." Ben and Polly recognize the Cybermen because they've seen them before. But Jamie recognizes them as well. It helps that he's a little unwell and delerious a the time. His fevered brain identifies one a s the Phantom Piper of his own mythology, coming for his soul. Which, really, is far more terrifying than a mere Killer Robot.
This easy acceptance of the supernatural and unfamiliar has the effect of making Jamie singularly unimpressed with the goings on around him, and in particular the Doctor's piloting skill. Jamie may not know how the TARDIS works, but it takes him very little time to figure out that the Doctor doesn't either, and he takes great joy in spending the rest of his time on the show pointing this out as often as possible. And it never ceases to crack me up that rather than marveling at the wonders of time travel, Jamie prefers to poking fun at the times that it goes wrong.
It ties into the absolutely beautiful relationship between the Doctor and Jamie. Jamie is unarguably one of the people the Doctor is closest to in the entire run of the show. And, for the record, I don't ship it. But I understand why people do - there's an awful lot of Love there. Or, as the Sixth Doctor puts it: "I was always rather fond of Jamie." This almost entirely takes the form of Jamie making fun of the Doctor for his poor piloting skills and the Doctor calling Jamie stupid. And of course leaping to each others' rescue and stopping at nothing to ensure each others' safety. Occasionally they slip up and let their mutual admiration show, as in "you know something? - yer a clever wee chappy, aren't you." They understand each other very well, and work extremely well together as a team. Jamie trusts the Doctor completely, even knowing from personal experience that the Doctor is untrustworthy. Like Leela, he knows that if the Doctor is luring folks into a trap, he's probably got a good reason for doing so. Especially by the end of his run, they're very much on the same page about most things. And they know each other well enough to be almost constantly ribbing each other about almost everything.
The thing people tend to forget (or, perhaps, not notice) about Jamie is that he's actually not at all stupid. He just looks that way because he's from an earlier time and he's traveling with geniuses. He picks things up very very quickly - scans of his brain in "the War Games" reveal "recent, rapid learning." He adapts easily to new situations and rolls with things very well: the Highland Fling, playing stupid in "the Dominators," keeping his mouth shut and playing along after his brain gets "reprogrammed," etc. And often displays a lot more common sense than, well, the Doctor in particular. Enough, at least, to point out obvious flaws in his plans - the presence of a Quark waiting for them back at the base, or the fact that drifting in endless space and possibly falling into a sun is less of a problem than the fact that they've only got food for three days. And certainly enough common sense to know that pressing random buttons when you don't know what they do is probably a bad idea (so more than the folks in "Tomb of the Cybermen" is what I'm saying here). Jamie is well grounded, and his plans are by and large very good, and quite clever. Jamie and the Doctor are obviously best together, but when they are apart Jamie holds his own, using not only his natural strength and agility, but also his quick thinking, and ability to turn around and immediately apply things he has just learned. The fact that Jamie is not intellectual does not mean he is not intelligent, as he is constantly proving.
And of course, like all the Leading Men of the sixties era, Jamie is there largely to, well, be a Leading Man, and do the Doctor's punching for him. That said, Jamie is a lover, not a fighter. That is to say, he's a piper. He carries a sword, but he breaks it on a killer robot, and has the good sense to run away immediately afterward. His knife is a tool, not a weapon, but he is willing and able to use it to defend himself. He is extremely brave and extremely loyal, risking much in daring rescues, but also fighting intelligently, and not being ashamed to run away from things that are scary (Like unicorns). And his most effective tactic is to make friends and allies of potential enemies. He befriends Kemel and saves his life after the latter did everything in his power to impede Jamie's attempt to rescue Victoria in "the Evil of the Daleks." And when he meets the Red Coat from his own time in "the War Games," Jamie puts their shared situation and background over their historical enmity, and they are able to formulate an escape plan together. Actually, I love the scene with the Red Coat so very very much. He and Jamie are from opposite sides of the same war, complete contemporaries. Jamie's reaction to him shows how much his own worldview has been broadened - it's more important that they're from the same time and place then that, in that time and place, they should be enemies. But also he knows how to empathize with him - when the Red Coat is bewildered and disoriented by unfamiliar technology (like Jeeps), Jamie is comforting and reassuring. He just says "aye, I've seen them too." He knows more about them, but he focuses on the shared experience, rather than his own superior experience. Because Jamie is a wonderful human being.
Actually, Jamie is canonically the Ideal human being. At least according to the Daleks, who admittedly may not be experts on the subject. But when they need a Perfect Human to distill the very essence of Humanity out of - they choose Jamie. And it pays off - he shows them the very best of humanity. Bravery, determination, loyalty, compassion, mercy - it's no wonder the little baby daleks based on him are so darned great. And of course there's the fact that when the Daleks make their own human, they make him Scottish. Because Jamie is the standard against which all worthiness must be judged.
Also, I should pause to mention, Jamie is extremely sexy. The Scottishness doesn't hurt, and Jamie is extremely Scottish, as he will proudly and defiantly tell anybody who dares to doubt it. Not unrelatedly, he wears a kilt. Guys. Kilts are hot. More people should wear them. And of course, Frazier Hines is just plain incredibly good looking. And 45 years later he's still incredibly good looking. He possesses this remarkable ability not to age. Some more fun Frazier Hines facts are: (a) there are only two episodes of the show which have Patrick Troughton but not Frazier Hines ("Power of the Daleks" and "the Three Doctors"), (b) he caries a picture of the Second Doctor in his wallet, and (c) he has played the (second) Doctor in Big Finish productions.
I feel like a lot of this blog is defending things people don't generally like. So it's weird talking about Jamie, because everybody loves Jamie. It's hard not to. I don't need to tell you why I like Jamie. It's kind of obvious.
James Robert McCrimmon is a Jacobite piper from 1745. He was another very experimental character - they actually filmed two endings to "the Highlanders": one in which Jamie came along and on in which he didn't. And this time the experiment was wholly successful. Jamie remains one of the most overwhelmingly popular companions of all time, despite so many of his episodes being lost. And for good reason. Jamie is wonderful. He is another of the people who has occupied the illustrious position of my favorite character in the entire show.
There are different approaches to character and team design. Tegan, for instance, was designed specifically to clash with the rest of the team, to create conflict and interpersonal drama. Jamie is precisely the opposite - he was built to work well with the existing team and particularly with the new Doctor. And he does. He's friendly and companionable, generally cheerful and gets on well with people. Polly takes him very much under her wing, educating him in the ways of sixties fashion, among other things. And he's pretty consistently adorable as well.
Jamie is from another time and place, and so brings a very different perspective from the people around him. On the one hand, he's scientifically very naive - all technology is futuristic technology. He's terrified of trains and airplane, and he spends an entire episode of "the Space Pirates" being fascinated by a pair of magnets. On the other hand, he is unusually comfortable with the existence of things he does not understand. Jamie already believes in magic and fairies - it's not much more of a leap to time travel and daleks. This comes into play most obviously in "the Moonbase." Ben and Polly recognize the Cybermen because they've seen them before. But Jamie recognizes them as well. It helps that he's a little unwell and delerious a the time. His fevered brain identifies one a s the Phantom Piper of his own mythology, coming for his soul. Which, really, is far more terrifying than a mere Killer Robot.
This easy acceptance of the supernatural and unfamiliar has the effect of making Jamie singularly unimpressed with the goings on around him, and in particular the Doctor's piloting skill. Jamie may not know how the TARDIS works, but it takes him very little time to figure out that the Doctor doesn't either, and he takes great joy in spending the rest of his time on the show pointing this out as often as possible. And it never ceases to crack me up that rather than marveling at the wonders of time travel, Jamie prefers to poking fun at the times that it goes wrong.
It ties into the absolutely beautiful relationship between the Doctor and Jamie. Jamie is unarguably one of the people the Doctor is closest to in the entire run of the show. And, for the record, I don't ship it. But I understand why people do - there's an awful lot of Love there. Or, as the Sixth Doctor puts it: "I was always rather fond of Jamie." This almost entirely takes the form of Jamie making fun of the Doctor for his poor piloting skills and the Doctor calling Jamie stupid. And of course leaping to each others' rescue and stopping at nothing to ensure each others' safety. Occasionally they slip up and let their mutual admiration show, as in "you know something? - yer a clever wee chappy, aren't you." They understand each other very well, and work extremely well together as a team. Jamie trusts the Doctor completely, even knowing from personal experience that the Doctor is untrustworthy. Like Leela, he knows that if the Doctor is luring folks into a trap, he's probably got a good reason for doing so. Especially by the end of his run, they're very much on the same page about most things. And they know each other well enough to be almost constantly ribbing each other about almost everything.
The thing people tend to forget (or, perhaps, not notice) about Jamie is that he's actually not at all stupid. He just looks that way because he's from an earlier time and he's traveling with geniuses. He picks things up very very quickly - scans of his brain in "the War Games" reveal "recent, rapid learning." He adapts easily to new situations and rolls with things very well: the Highland Fling, playing stupid in "the Dominators," keeping his mouth shut and playing along after his brain gets "reprogrammed," etc. And often displays a lot more common sense than, well, the Doctor in particular. Enough, at least, to point out obvious flaws in his plans - the presence of a Quark waiting for them back at the base, or the fact that drifting in endless space and possibly falling into a sun is less of a problem than the fact that they've only got food for three days. And certainly enough common sense to know that pressing random buttons when you don't know what they do is probably a bad idea (so more than the folks in "Tomb of the Cybermen" is what I'm saying here). Jamie is well grounded, and his plans are by and large very good, and quite clever. Jamie and the Doctor are obviously best together, but when they are apart Jamie holds his own, using not only his natural strength and agility, but also his quick thinking, and ability to turn around and immediately apply things he has just learned. The fact that Jamie is not intellectual does not mean he is not intelligent, as he is constantly proving.
And of course, like all the Leading Men of the sixties era, Jamie is there largely to, well, be a Leading Man, and do the Doctor's punching for him. That said, Jamie is a lover, not a fighter. That is to say, he's a piper. He carries a sword, but he breaks it on a killer robot, and has the good sense to run away immediately afterward. His knife is a tool, not a weapon, but he is willing and able to use it to defend himself. He is extremely brave and extremely loyal, risking much in daring rescues, but also fighting intelligently, and not being ashamed to run away from things that are scary (Like unicorns). And his most effective tactic is to make friends and allies of potential enemies. He befriends Kemel and saves his life after the latter did everything in his power to impede Jamie's attempt to rescue Victoria in "the Evil of the Daleks." And when he meets the Red Coat from his own time in "the War Games," Jamie puts their shared situation and background over their historical enmity, and they are able to formulate an escape plan together. Actually, I love the scene with the Red Coat so very very much. He and Jamie are from opposite sides of the same war, complete contemporaries. Jamie's reaction to him shows how much his own worldview has been broadened - it's more important that they're from the same time and place then that, in that time and place, they should be enemies. But also he knows how to empathize with him - when the Red Coat is bewildered and disoriented by unfamiliar technology (like Jeeps), Jamie is comforting and reassuring. He just says "aye, I've seen them too." He knows more about them, but he focuses on the shared experience, rather than his own superior experience. Because Jamie is a wonderful human being.
Actually, Jamie is canonically the Ideal human being. At least according to the Daleks, who admittedly may not be experts on the subject. But when they need a Perfect Human to distill the very essence of Humanity out of - they choose Jamie. And it pays off - he shows them the very best of humanity. Bravery, determination, loyalty, compassion, mercy - it's no wonder the little baby daleks based on him are so darned great. And of course there's the fact that when the Daleks make their own human, they make him Scottish. Because Jamie is the standard against which all worthiness must be judged.
Also, I should pause to mention, Jamie is extremely sexy. The Scottishness doesn't hurt, and Jamie is extremely Scottish, as he will proudly and defiantly tell anybody who dares to doubt it. Not unrelatedly, he wears a kilt. Guys. Kilts are hot. More people should wear them. And of course, Frazier Hines is just plain incredibly good looking. And 45 years later he's still incredibly good looking. He possesses this remarkable ability not to age. Some more fun Frazier Hines facts are: (a) there are only two episodes of the show which have Patrick Troughton but not Frazier Hines ("Power of the Daleks" and "the Three Doctors"), (b) he caries a picture of the Second Doctor in his wallet, and (c) he has played the (second) Doctor in Big Finish productions.
I feel like a lot of this blog is defending things people don't generally like. So it's weird talking about Jamie, because everybody loves Jamie. It's hard not to. I don't need to tell you why I like Jamie. It's kind of obvious.