it's essay o'clock!
Lives that don't make sense: or, THE GREAT BIG Doctor regeneration essay.
So, with my CFO announcement in mind, the general object of this is have a good witter about what regenerating the Doctor means and why and some stuff on the Doctor's character progression and so on. NEEDLESS TO SAY, this essay is riddled with spoilers for the most recent Doctor Who series and all the specials before that a bit. It's also long. Just as a forewarning. ANYWAY, without further ado:
BASIC STUFF
Doctor Who, the adventure of a charming alien and his many and varied companions, changed hands in several ways on the most recent series. From an epic, universal OH NOES THE PLANETS ARE COLLIDING sort of story as it was under Russell T Davies, Doctor Who has downsized a bit. A theme is fairytales - how a fairytale is created, how it's left in the memory, and so on. This seems a bit oblique, but knowing about how important fairytales are to the basic story is really important to understanding how the Doctor changes between his Tenth and his Eleventh variation.
The first question I would ask if I were unfamiliar with Doctor Who would be 'but aren't they different people?'. They do, after all, have different mannerisms, different personalities, in this case different friends, and they deal with situations in different ways. However, as was hammered in to great effect at the beginning of the first episode, the Doctor is the same person - all the same memories, the same events having occurred in his life to make him exactly what he is. The way he looks and expresses himself to the world is the only thing that changes, and thus! Canon update is perfectly applicable as far as I am concerned.
Regeneration therefore is exactly what it seems like: a quick way of the principal actor leaving a long-standing show without ruining it forever. I started the regeneration process for Ten and had it stalled a little while back, so I could update to the point the Master and I felt like playing from: biologically, it runs as follows. A Time Lord's body will surge with energy, causing what appear to be the world's worst menstrual cramps, before eventually the entire body pretty much blows up. There are probably more technical terms around for this but I don't especially care to use them. Either way, when the energy surge ends, the Doctor has a new face and a new body. There are side effects - one Doctor lost a lot of his memories and had a bit of a personality change, the Tenth Doctor collapsed out for a while, the Eleventh got a bit manic and hungry for fish custard, and walked into a tree - his thought processes were a bit diminished. Also, while the process is occurring if any part of him gets lopped off it will simply grow back, which caused a lot of hand shenanigans at one point. The process is usually added to or defined by the way the show runners want it to happen.
In this instance, the TARDIS - the Doctor's spaceship - also regenerated. It also surged with energy for an episode, before taking on an entire new look. The TARDIS has actual stairs visible now! And is a lot more cyberpunk and somewhat more phallic. The sonic screwdriver also got a do-over, it is now bigger and the light is green. Everything looks different, in other words! But all the things that look different still do the same job.
THE TENTH DOCTOR
As a bit of a send-off, and also to give a whole area of comparison for the stuff I'm going to talk about in the Eleventh Doctor's section, I thought I'd talk about the Tenth Doctor a bit - he's the only version of the Doctor I've played at Camp, and I played him for pretty much his entire tenure as the Doctor, and I haven't really done much essaying. This makes me a bit sad, even though as you all can see I am not the best essayer. So TENTH DOCTOR STUFF goes here.
I'll begin by saying that the Tenth Doctor is a very insular character. This seems on the face of it a bit wrong, since the character is extremely social, but by the end of his fourth series and through the specials, the Doctor is focused inwardly. He is a character that focuses on what he can do, what he can change; his influence on both his friends and his enemies. He isn't self-serving; he's just very old, and after losing Rose, and Martha leaving him, and all that happened to Donna, he comes to realise that what he can count on is himself. He is always what he can bring to the table, in other words, and it is this thinking which creates something that others don't much like in the Waters of Mars special - when he tries to change the laws of time to suit the ending he prefers. The Tenth Doctor's final journey, then, is this: his coming to understand how powerful and lonely his position is in the universe, trying to use it to change what he should serve, and ultimately turning away from that path and dying as he lived - to save an ordinary person on an ordinary day.
It's important to think about that when the Tenth Doctor regenerates, his last line is "I don't want to go." This gives us a huge huge clue into the character, because despite his insular nature the Tenth Doctor loves living life at its fullest - and he loves his life at the fullest, despite how it could be a blight on him. He loves being the centre of attention, understanding just what to do to save an entire universe and having all the pieces in the right place to do so. And when it came down to it, he's just a lonely man who wants to travel with friends, but when it came down to finally having a TARDIS full of people he cared for, he came to realise that he had changed them all irrevocably just by existing in their lives. And so he let them all go. And that is exactly why the Tenth Doctor is an insular character - he wants friends, he needs them, but when it came to letting them go, it was something he could do. Which doesn't mean he didn't look back, because he looked back very particularly, before he regenerated, visiting every one. But the point I am making is that the Tenth Doctor doesn't need others to function. He loves humans, but he didn't even begin to function as one, living and working in a community of betters, lessers and equals. He was a man apart and therefore, a man very much alone.
Perhaps in order to combat this, the Tenth Doctor's relationships are very, very prominent in his story. The Ninth Doctor had a relationship with Rose Tyler that could be perceived as something as romantic as it was platonic - he loved her in every possible sense of the word. When the Ninth Doctor regenerated into the Tenth Doctor, when he was no longer the kind of character that desperately needed people but was instead just a character that rather liked having them around - as someone to show off to, someone to change and educate and show a new world to - his relationship with Rose changed to one that was in my opinion (every Doctor Who fan reading this is bunching their eyebrows at me right now) more romantic than platonic. He'd needed her, and she'd been there for him, and he adored her for it. This is the bit you have to understand about the Doctor and Rose - the Doctor didn't pick her for her virtues, for any of her traits. He picked her just because she was there at the time, because she existed near him. All of his other assistants were people he just happened across - Martha, a girl at the hospital that just happened to get beamed to the moon, and Donna, a woman who was beamed onto his spaceship. The Tenth Doctor never looked for companionship, it just happened upon him. This is a big difference between him and the Eleventh Doctor.
The Tenth Doctor loves humanity. I think this is also important to emphasise because the Eleventh Doctor, well, he can go either way. To the Tenth Doctor, humanity is the be all and end all - his foster race, after his people died, and so on. The Tenth Doctor's most important traits are his love for humans, his isolation, his arrogance and his sadness. We can see all of this stuff here:
Wilf: Look, just leave me.
The Doctor: [angrily] OK, right, then, I will. Because you just had to go in there, didn't you? You had to go and get stuck, oh yes! Because that's who you are, Wilfred! You were always this. Waiting for me all this time!
Wilf: Oh, really, just leave me. I'm an old man, Doctor, I've had my time.
The Doctor: [still angry] Well, exactly, look at you. Not remotely important. But me ... I could do so much more! So much more! But this is what I get, my reward. And it's not fair! Oh ... I've lived too long. [Wilf pleads with him to reconsider sacrificing himself] Wilfred. It's my honour.
YOU SEE. Getting angry, then trying to do the right thing, is one of the very few traits that the Tenth Doctor shares with the Eleventh. WHO WE WILL TALK ABOUT NOW, because I cannot indulge any more time in this essay on talking about the Tenth. I will always love him :'D! My first character at Camp, you guys. But I prefer Eleven for reasons I shall no doubt blather on about below.
THE ELEVENTH DOCTOR
Okay. HERE ARE WHERE ALL THE NEW SERIES SPOILERS ARE.
So I was saying about fairytales at the beginning. The first four seasons of New Who were a bit about mythology - season five is all about fairytales. The story begins with a young Amy Pond, later to become the series' companion, praying for Santa Claus to save a policeman to fix a crack in her wall. What she gets is the Doctor. The idea that the Doctor is a substitute for all sorts of mysterious but positive figures in myth and legend - the "good wizard" in every story, as River Song puts it - is an interesting juxtaposition with the first impression the Eleventh Doctor makes on Amelia Pond. He climbs out of his collapsed TARDIS, demands food, walks into a tree, and promptly decides to eat fish fingers with custard after having spat out several other foods while quizzing her on her family life. This isn't the insular, youthful and idealised Doctor of the previous incarnation - he looks younger by a good few years, but he acts older in many ways.
The Eleventh Doctor is a multi-faceted character - at times a venerable professor, at times absent-minded, at times energetic and youthful, at tiimes callous and rude, with an extremely quick temper, but he never once seems as young as his face makes him look. While Ten made some attempts at sartorial elegance, the Eleventh dives straight into geek chic, dressing like an Oxford don with a bowtie - which, he expresses often, is cool. Late in the series upon acquiring a fez, he states that fezes are also cool. The fashion sense is not strong in this one. But Matt Smith, the actor, is 27, and since he looks younger than he is the Doctor looks even younger than that - something Amy comments on at least once or twice - there is a merging of old and young. Since the old wedding adage of "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" becomes very important late in the series, this is probably very deliberate.
Eleven expresses himself physically a lot. He's a hand-talker, he touches and expresses and communicates physically as well as verbally a lot - both with people he knows and with people he's never met. He's the kind to get up into people's faces and talk right at them, not entirely conscious of personal space - he's a draper, a hand-taker, a lot more immediate and in your face than Ten was. There's a bit of a fundamental difference between Ten and Eleven - when Ten was happy, he was loud and vivid and forthright to the point of being rude, but when he was truly angry he switched off and went very, very quiet. Such as, for example, when he drowned all the baby spiders on that one Christmas special. Eleven when happy, however, is absent-minded, slightly slower than Ten, mercurial, more prone to pontificating while waving his hands about than darting around - but when he's angry, he shouts. And he shouts nastily.
The Doctor: Nobody talk to me. Nobody human has anything to say to me today!
Unlike Ten, Eleven can be downright callous and unkind in order to prove his point. He often takes the position of the Devil's advocate in order to get what he wants out of people - such as:
Rory: ...Can you help her, is there anything you can do?
The Doctor: Yeah, probably, if I had the time.
Rory: The time!?
The Doctor: All of Creation has just been wiped from the sky. Do you know how many lives now never happened, all the people who never lived? Your girlfriend isn't more important than the whole universe.
[at which point Rory punches the Doctor in the face.]
Rory: She is to me!
The Doctor: Welcome back, Rory Williams! Sorry. Had to be sure. Hell of a gun arm you're packing there. Right! We need to get her downstairs. And take that look off your plastic face, you're getting married in the morning!
This is a marked difference from Ten, who always took a much gentler approach to persuasion when it came to humans, extolling their good points and his belief and so on. Ten tells, but Eleven shows. This is one of the main differences in the way Ten interacts with his companions in comparison to Eleven; to get results, Eleven pushes them to prove themselves by being harsh occasionally to the point of being cruel. In the second episode of the series, Eleven reprimands Amy, telling her cruelly that she is only human and that he's going to take her home as soon as they were finished, and she responds immediately by proving her worth. This is how the Doctor's relationships henceforth function with his companions: he is fond of them, but never to that point of smugness in the way the Tenth Doctor is with Rose; he seeks companionship, since he actually did try to go back for the young Amelia, but there is a distance he keeps between himself and his human companions that Ten never kept.
Furthermore, he is far more welcoming to Rory, Amy's boyfriend, than Ten or Nine ever were to Rose's boyfriends, comes to appreciate him more and more, is genuinely sad at his death, and most importantly of all believes in the importance of Amy's relationship with him. Both Nine and Ten seemed to take the perspective that the girl who was travelling with them didn't need anyone but them - this was particularly true with Rose, and to an extent true with Martha, although Ten had grown out of that viewpoint somewhat by Donna. What happened with those three girls is probably what has led to Eleven's change in perspective, about the importance of not taking his friends into his world and changing them so as to be unrecognisable. Amy's grounding in Rory, and their genuine affection for each other, is something that Eleven revels in as opposed to rebelling against. In short, he ships it.
Now, a lot of that stuff was about what Eleven doesn't have in common in Ten. What, however, Ten and Eleven do have in common is this:
The Doctor: Hello, Stonehenge! Who takes the Pandorica, takes the universe! But, bad news everyone, 'cause guess who! Ha! Listen, you lot! You're all whizzing about. It's really very distracting. Could you all just stay still a minute because I - AM - TALKING! Now the question of the hour is, "Who's got the Pandorica?" Answer: I do. Next question: Who's coming to take it from me? Come on! Look at me! No plan, no back-up, no weapons worth a damn! Oh, and something else I don't have: anything to lose! So! If you're sitting up there in your silly little spaceships with all your silly little guns and you've got any plans on taking the Pandorica tonight, just remember who's standing in your way! Remember every black day I ever stopped you and then, and then... do the smart thing: Let somebody else try first.
Talk and persuasion has always been the Doctor's way out of a tight spot through all of his regenerations, and never force. Reliance on reputation, on wits, and on the fear or stupidity of his enemies has always been huge in the Doctor's crisis management abilities, and the same is true for Eleven. Ten's speeches were often a bit shorter than Eleven's, a bit more low-key, sometimes a lot more based in the world instead of the self. This is because Ten, although very confident, was still more of a doubter in himself than Eleven. Ten questioned himself, but Eleven has this innate knowledge of exactly what he is - and exactly what would betray the person he is.
The Doctor: Look, three options: one, I let the Star Whale continue, in unendurable agony for hundreds more years; two, I kill everyone on this ship; three, I murder a beautiful, innocent creature as painlessly as I can. And then, I... I find a new name, because I won't be the Doctor anymore.
Eleven is prideful! Eleven is a daredevil, leaping into danger with a "geronimo" and no particular plan at all. But what Eleven isn't is infallible. He relies on Amy Pond a lot more than Ten ever relied on his companions - she brings solutions to the table as often as he does, and they grow closer because they understand each other better. There is no hero worship in their relationship whatsoever - he was her imaginary friend, but their relationship is founded on bitterness and we never quite forget it. Waiting, and time, and longing for someone, all of these are prominent themes of the series, and they're represented in the Doctor as well because they always have been - he is a Time Lord, after all. Eleven is sad, but he's also flippant. He refers to the Time War as "it was a bad day, lots of bad stuff happened". He doesn't dwell, in the way Ten dwelled. Eleven would not be the type to turn to his new companion and go "oh, my old companion would have known exactly how this worked", or so on. He is completely kinetic, and is always moving - whether it's physically or mentally.
This doesn't mean he escapes from the good old Time Lord emo. But it's tackled in a very different way. Eleven has a lot of self-loathing - for his choices, and what happened in the Time War, and for a lot of things that happened after the Time War. But he's flippant about it, and does not talk about it at all. He's a bottler. What the show does to express it is create a character - the Dream Lord - to pretty much express Eleven's self-hatred for his weaknesses, his mistakes, and so on. The Doctor gradually figures out who the Dream Lord is and expels him from putting them in danger, but we see him in the Doctor's reflection - making it quite clear that Eleven has demons, and that they aren't going away any time soon. But he isn't like Ten - he doesn't have periods of long mourning. His sadness is as mercurial as his happiness - appears, is as passionate as an emotion can be, and then is gone. Eleven is more honest about his feelings, but he speaks far less of them.
HMM, other stuff to cover. He has a short attention span! He is witty! He often chooses a witty retort at the most inconvenient of times. He is more grouchy than Ten, even being called "Mr. Grumpy-Face" by his wife River at one point. He is a bit embarrassing sometimes, like a dad at a wedding. He will try out new words and sometimes they just sound ridiculous coming from him. He gets embarrassed and awkward, more than Ten ever did. He has very strange tastes in food. He's a lot more alien than Ten was -- Ten fitted in among humans, but Eleven doesn't quite understand how to do it, needing Amy's help when he has to live among humans for a few days. But most importantly of all, Eleven is unlike Ten when it comes to knowing that the universe is far bigger and far more important than he is - unlike Ten's impotent rage of "I could have done so much more, look how big and important I am" before he inevitably did the right thing, when Eleven accepts his fate and possible death, he does it with grace: understanding that when it comes down to it a person like him can be just a story.
The Doctor: When you wake up you'll have a Mum and Dad. And you won't remember me. Well, you'll remember me a little. I'll be a story in your head. That's OK, we're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one. Cos it was, you know. It was the best. A daft old man who stole a magic box and ran away. Did I ever tell you that I stole it? Well, borrowed it; I was always gonna give it back someday. Oh, that box, Amy. You'll dream about that box. It'll never leave you. Big and little at the same time. Brand new and ancient. And the bluest blue ever. And the times we had. Woulda had. Never had. In your dreams they'll still be there. The Doctor and Amy Pond. And the days that never came. The cracks are closing. But they can't close properly 'til I'm on the other side. I don't belong here any more. I think I'll skip the rest of the rewind. I hate repeats. Live well. Love Rory. Bye bye, Pond.
The line "we're all stories in the end" brings us back to the idea of Doctor Who as a fairytale - of the Doctor as a fairytale, in fact. River comments that she hates good wizards in fairytales, because "they're all him" - but this Doctor can accept his fate as just a story, can adjust to it easily without feeling angry. He accepts it as another thing that may have to be done. This is probably the most fundamental thing he learned from his tenure as the Tenth Doctor. The Doctor's regenerations are exactly that, a learning curve - especially in this case. From Nine to Ten, and even more from Ten to Eleven, the personality that appears is grounded in the decisions and the regrets of the previous life.
And that makes this a good place to leave this essay~.
(I LOVE THIS SHOW, YOU GUYS.)
ANY OTHER STUFF OF IMPORTANCE
For people who don't want to be spoiled or people who tl;dr'd: the Doctor will look younger now! But if anything, he will act older, though just as energetic. He dresses like the old guys who might teach you at university. He's more absent-minded, more of a hand-talker, an attention wanderer, slightly more humble (if anything), a lot more callous, and he'll be put out if you insult his bowtie.
... that was a terrible spoilerfree summary don't mind me.
OTHER THINGS. People I have CR with - obviously, the Doctor won't forget you! In any way whatsoever. How he reacts to you will depend on how you react to him, as he is both a reactionary and kinetic sort of character.
ANOTHER THING: I decided new Doctor, new journal - thus the Eleventh Doctor's stuff will all be done in geronimust henceforth. His icon page is magical. And there's an updated stats/permissions here.
FINALLY: this will be the second-last post I will make to this journal. Either like now, or in a few hours time, or tomorrow if I get distracted, or something, I will make a ic journal post for last threads with the Tenth Doctor. People can say goodbye to that variation of him if they want to, etc, etc. AFTER THAT, later or tomorrow or etc, there will be a CFUD post for the actual regeneration and the appearance of Eleven. I'll be taking him from the end of the fifth series eventually, I will decide exactly where closer to me actually doing it.
OKAY, I THINK WE'RE THERE.
Questions below if you have any! SORRY ABOUT HOW LONG THAT WAS.
So, with my CFO announcement in mind, the general object of this is have a good witter about what regenerating the Doctor means and why and some stuff on the Doctor's character progression and so on. NEEDLESS TO SAY, this essay is riddled with spoilers for the most recent Doctor Who series and all the specials before that a bit. It's also long. Just as a forewarning. ANYWAY, without further ado:
BASIC STUFF
Doctor Who, the adventure of a charming alien and his many and varied companions, changed hands in several ways on the most recent series. From an epic, universal OH NOES THE PLANETS ARE COLLIDING sort of story as it was under Russell T Davies, Doctor Who has downsized a bit. A theme is fairytales - how a fairytale is created, how it's left in the memory, and so on. This seems a bit oblique, but knowing about how important fairytales are to the basic story is really important to understanding how the Doctor changes between his Tenth and his Eleventh variation.
The first question I would ask if I were unfamiliar with Doctor Who would be 'but aren't they different people?'. They do, after all, have different mannerisms, different personalities, in this case different friends, and they deal with situations in different ways. However, as was hammered in to great effect at the beginning of the first episode, the Doctor is the same person - all the same memories, the same events having occurred in his life to make him exactly what he is. The way he looks and expresses himself to the world is the only thing that changes, and thus! Canon update is perfectly applicable as far as I am concerned.
Regeneration therefore is exactly what it seems like: a quick way of the principal actor leaving a long-standing show without ruining it forever. I started the regeneration process for Ten and had it stalled a little while back, so I could update to the point the Master and I felt like playing from: biologically, it runs as follows. A Time Lord's body will surge with energy, causing what appear to be the world's worst menstrual cramps, before eventually the entire body pretty much blows up. There are probably more technical terms around for this but I don't especially care to use them. Either way, when the energy surge ends, the Doctor has a new face and a new body. There are side effects - one Doctor lost a lot of his memories and had a bit of a personality change, the Tenth Doctor collapsed out for a while, the Eleventh got a bit manic and hungry for fish custard, and walked into a tree - his thought processes were a bit diminished. Also, while the process is occurring if any part of him gets lopped off it will simply grow back, which caused a lot of hand shenanigans at one point. The process is usually added to or defined by the way the show runners want it to happen.
In this instance, the TARDIS - the Doctor's spaceship - also regenerated. It also surged with energy for an episode, before taking on an entire new look. The TARDIS has actual stairs visible now! And is a lot more cyberpunk and somewhat more phallic. The sonic screwdriver also got a do-over, it is now bigger and the light is green. Everything looks different, in other words! But all the things that look different still do the same job.
THE TENTH DOCTOR
As a bit of a send-off, and also to give a whole area of comparison for the stuff I'm going to talk about in the Eleventh Doctor's section, I thought I'd talk about the Tenth Doctor a bit - he's the only version of the Doctor I've played at Camp, and I played him for pretty much his entire tenure as the Doctor, and I haven't really done much essaying. This makes me a bit sad, even though as you all can see I am not the best essayer. So TENTH DOCTOR STUFF goes here.
I'll begin by saying that the Tenth Doctor is a very insular character. This seems on the face of it a bit wrong, since the character is extremely social, but by the end of his fourth series and through the specials, the Doctor is focused inwardly. He is a character that focuses on what he can do, what he can change; his influence on both his friends and his enemies. He isn't self-serving; he's just very old, and after losing Rose, and Martha leaving him, and all that happened to Donna, he comes to realise that what he can count on is himself. He is always what he can bring to the table, in other words, and it is this thinking which creates something that others don't much like in the Waters of Mars special - when he tries to change the laws of time to suit the ending he prefers. The Tenth Doctor's final journey, then, is this: his coming to understand how powerful and lonely his position is in the universe, trying to use it to change what he should serve, and ultimately turning away from that path and dying as he lived - to save an ordinary person on an ordinary day.
It's important to think about that when the Tenth Doctor regenerates, his last line is "I don't want to go." This gives us a huge huge clue into the character, because despite his insular nature the Tenth Doctor loves living life at its fullest - and he loves his life at the fullest, despite how it could be a blight on him. He loves being the centre of attention, understanding just what to do to save an entire universe and having all the pieces in the right place to do so. And when it came down to it, he's just a lonely man who wants to travel with friends, but when it came down to finally having a TARDIS full of people he cared for, he came to realise that he had changed them all irrevocably just by existing in their lives. And so he let them all go. And that is exactly why the Tenth Doctor is an insular character - he wants friends, he needs them, but when it came to letting them go, it was something he could do. Which doesn't mean he didn't look back, because he looked back very particularly, before he regenerated, visiting every one. But the point I am making is that the Tenth Doctor doesn't need others to function. He loves humans, but he didn't even begin to function as one, living and working in a community of betters, lessers and equals. He was a man apart and therefore, a man very much alone.
Perhaps in order to combat this, the Tenth Doctor's relationships are very, very prominent in his story. The Ninth Doctor had a relationship with Rose Tyler that could be perceived as something as romantic as it was platonic - he loved her in every possible sense of the word. When the Ninth Doctor regenerated into the Tenth Doctor, when he was no longer the kind of character that desperately needed people but was instead just a character that rather liked having them around - as someone to show off to, someone to change and educate and show a new world to - his relationship with Rose changed to one that was in my opinion (every Doctor Who fan reading this is bunching their eyebrows at me right now) more romantic than platonic. He'd needed her, and she'd been there for him, and he adored her for it. This is the bit you have to understand about the Doctor and Rose - the Doctor didn't pick her for her virtues, for any of her traits. He picked her just because she was there at the time, because she existed near him. All of his other assistants were people he just happened across - Martha, a girl at the hospital that just happened to get beamed to the moon, and Donna, a woman who was beamed onto his spaceship. The Tenth Doctor never looked for companionship, it just happened upon him. This is a big difference between him and the Eleventh Doctor.
The Tenth Doctor loves humanity. I think this is also important to emphasise because the Eleventh Doctor, well, he can go either way. To the Tenth Doctor, humanity is the be all and end all - his foster race, after his people died, and so on. The Tenth Doctor's most important traits are his love for humans, his isolation, his arrogance and his sadness. We can see all of this stuff here:
Wilf: Look, just leave me.
The Doctor: [angrily] OK, right, then, I will. Because you just had to go in there, didn't you? You had to go and get stuck, oh yes! Because that's who you are, Wilfred! You were always this. Waiting for me all this time!
Wilf: Oh, really, just leave me. I'm an old man, Doctor, I've had my time.
The Doctor: [still angry] Well, exactly, look at you. Not remotely important. But me ... I could do so much more! So much more! But this is what I get, my reward. And it's not fair! Oh ... I've lived too long. [Wilf pleads with him to reconsider sacrificing himself] Wilfred. It's my honour.
YOU SEE. Getting angry, then trying to do the right thing, is one of the very few traits that the Tenth Doctor shares with the Eleventh. WHO WE WILL TALK ABOUT NOW, because I cannot indulge any more time in this essay on talking about the Tenth. I will always love him :'D! My first character at Camp, you guys. But I prefer Eleven for reasons I shall no doubt blather on about below.
THE ELEVENTH DOCTOR
Okay. HERE ARE WHERE ALL THE NEW SERIES SPOILERS ARE.
So I was saying about fairytales at the beginning. The first four seasons of New Who were a bit about mythology - season five is all about fairytales. The story begins with a young Amy Pond, later to become the series' companion, praying for Santa Claus to save a policeman to fix a crack in her wall. What she gets is the Doctor. The idea that the Doctor is a substitute for all sorts of mysterious but positive figures in myth and legend - the "good wizard" in every story, as River Song puts it - is an interesting juxtaposition with the first impression the Eleventh Doctor makes on Amelia Pond. He climbs out of his collapsed TARDIS, demands food, walks into a tree, and promptly decides to eat fish fingers with custard after having spat out several other foods while quizzing her on her family life. This isn't the insular, youthful and idealised Doctor of the previous incarnation - he looks younger by a good few years, but he acts older in many ways.
The Eleventh Doctor is a multi-faceted character - at times a venerable professor, at times absent-minded, at times energetic and youthful, at tiimes callous and rude, with an extremely quick temper, but he never once seems as young as his face makes him look. While Ten made some attempts at sartorial elegance, the Eleventh dives straight into geek chic, dressing like an Oxford don with a bowtie - which, he expresses often, is cool. Late in the series upon acquiring a fez, he states that fezes are also cool. The fashion sense is not strong in this one. But Matt Smith, the actor, is 27, and since he looks younger than he is the Doctor looks even younger than that - something Amy comments on at least once or twice - there is a merging of old and young. Since the old wedding adage of "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" becomes very important late in the series, this is probably very deliberate.
Eleven expresses himself physically a lot. He's a hand-talker, he touches and expresses and communicates physically as well as verbally a lot - both with people he knows and with people he's never met. He's the kind to get up into people's faces and talk right at them, not entirely conscious of personal space - he's a draper, a hand-taker, a lot more immediate and in your face than Ten was. There's a bit of a fundamental difference between Ten and Eleven - when Ten was happy, he was loud and vivid and forthright to the point of being rude, but when he was truly angry he switched off and went very, very quiet. Such as, for example, when he drowned all the baby spiders on that one Christmas special. Eleven when happy, however, is absent-minded, slightly slower than Ten, mercurial, more prone to pontificating while waving his hands about than darting around - but when he's angry, he shouts. And he shouts nastily.
The Doctor: Nobody talk to me. Nobody human has anything to say to me today!
Unlike Ten, Eleven can be downright callous and unkind in order to prove his point. He often takes the position of the Devil's advocate in order to get what he wants out of people - such as:
Rory: ...Can you help her, is there anything you can do?
The Doctor: Yeah, probably, if I had the time.
Rory: The time!?
The Doctor: All of Creation has just been wiped from the sky. Do you know how many lives now never happened, all the people who never lived? Your girlfriend isn't more important than the whole universe.
[at which point Rory punches the Doctor in the face.]
Rory: She is to me!
The Doctor: Welcome back, Rory Williams! Sorry. Had to be sure. Hell of a gun arm you're packing there. Right! We need to get her downstairs. And take that look off your plastic face, you're getting married in the morning!
This is a marked difference from Ten, who always took a much gentler approach to persuasion when it came to humans, extolling their good points and his belief and so on. Ten tells, but Eleven shows. This is one of the main differences in the way Ten interacts with his companions in comparison to Eleven; to get results, Eleven pushes them to prove themselves by being harsh occasionally to the point of being cruel. In the second episode of the series, Eleven reprimands Amy, telling her cruelly that she is only human and that he's going to take her home as soon as they were finished, and she responds immediately by proving her worth. This is how the Doctor's relationships henceforth function with his companions: he is fond of them, but never to that point of smugness in the way the Tenth Doctor is with Rose; he seeks companionship, since he actually did try to go back for the young Amelia, but there is a distance he keeps between himself and his human companions that Ten never kept.
Furthermore, he is far more welcoming to Rory, Amy's boyfriend, than Ten or Nine ever were to Rose's boyfriends, comes to appreciate him more and more, is genuinely sad at his death, and most importantly of all believes in the importance of Amy's relationship with him. Both Nine and Ten seemed to take the perspective that the girl who was travelling with them didn't need anyone but them - this was particularly true with Rose, and to an extent true with Martha, although Ten had grown out of that viewpoint somewhat by Donna. What happened with those three girls is probably what has led to Eleven's change in perspective, about the importance of not taking his friends into his world and changing them so as to be unrecognisable. Amy's grounding in Rory, and their genuine affection for each other, is something that Eleven revels in as opposed to rebelling against. In short, he ships it.
Now, a lot of that stuff was about what Eleven doesn't have in common in Ten. What, however, Ten and Eleven do have in common is this:
The Doctor: Hello, Stonehenge! Who takes the Pandorica, takes the universe! But, bad news everyone, 'cause guess who! Ha! Listen, you lot! You're all whizzing about. It's really very distracting. Could you all just stay still a minute because I - AM - TALKING! Now the question of the hour is, "Who's got the Pandorica?" Answer: I do. Next question: Who's coming to take it from me? Come on! Look at me! No plan, no back-up, no weapons worth a damn! Oh, and something else I don't have: anything to lose! So! If you're sitting up there in your silly little spaceships with all your silly little guns and you've got any plans on taking the Pandorica tonight, just remember who's standing in your way! Remember every black day I ever stopped you and then, and then... do the smart thing: Let somebody else try first.
Talk and persuasion has always been the Doctor's way out of a tight spot through all of his regenerations, and never force. Reliance on reputation, on wits, and on the fear or stupidity of his enemies has always been huge in the Doctor's crisis management abilities, and the same is true for Eleven. Ten's speeches were often a bit shorter than Eleven's, a bit more low-key, sometimes a lot more based in the world instead of the self. This is because Ten, although very confident, was still more of a doubter in himself than Eleven. Ten questioned himself, but Eleven has this innate knowledge of exactly what he is - and exactly what would betray the person he is.
The Doctor: Look, three options: one, I let the Star Whale continue, in unendurable agony for hundreds more years; two, I kill everyone on this ship; three, I murder a beautiful, innocent creature as painlessly as I can. And then, I... I find a new name, because I won't be the Doctor anymore.
Eleven is prideful! Eleven is a daredevil, leaping into danger with a "geronimo" and no particular plan at all. But what Eleven isn't is infallible. He relies on Amy Pond a lot more than Ten ever relied on his companions - she brings solutions to the table as often as he does, and they grow closer because they understand each other better. There is no hero worship in their relationship whatsoever - he was her imaginary friend, but their relationship is founded on bitterness and we never quite forget it. Waiting, and time, and longing for someone, all of these are prominent themes of the series, and they're represented in the Doctor as well because they always have been - he is a Time Lord, after all. Eleven is sad, but he's also flippant. He refers to the Time War as "it was a bad day, lots of bad stuff happened". He doesn't dwell, in the way Ten dwelled. Eleven would not be the type to turn to his new companion and go "oh, my old companion would have known exactly how this worked", or so on. He is completely kinetic, and is always moving - whether it's physically or mentally.
This doesn't mean he escapes from the good old Time Lord emo. But it's tackled in a very different way. Eleven has a lot of self-loathing - for his choices, and what happened in the Time War, and for a lot of things that happened after the Time War. But he's flippant about it, and does not talk about it at all. He's a bottler. What the show does to express it is create a character - the Dream Lord - to pretty much express Eleven's self-hatred for his weaknesses, his mistakes, and so on. The Doctor gradually figures out who the Dream Lord is and expels him from putting them in danger, but we see him in the Doctor's reflection - making it quite clear that Eleven has demons, and that they aren't going away any time soon. But he isn't like Ten - he doesn't have periods of long mourning. His sadness is as mercurial as his happiness - appears, is as passionate as an emotion can be, and then is gone. Eleven is more honest about his feelings, but he speaks far less of them.
HMM, other stuff to cover. He has a short attention span! He is witty! He often chooses a witty retort at the most inconvenient of times. He is more grouchy than Ten, even being called "Mr. Grumpy-Face" by his wife River at one point. He is a bit embarrassing sometimes, like a dad at a wedding. He will try out new words and sometimes they just sound ridiculous coming from him. He gets embarrassed and awkward, more than Ten ever did. He has very strange tastes in food. He's a lot more alien than Ten was -- Ten fitted in among humans, but Eleven doesn't quite understand how to do it, needing Amy's help when he has to live among humans for a few days. But most importantly of all, Eleven is unlike Ten when it comes to knowing that the universe is far bigger and far more important than he is - unlike Ten's impotent rage of "I could have done so much more, look how big and important I am" before he inevitably did the right thing, when Eleven accepts his fate and possible death, he does it with grace: understanding that when it comes down to it a person like him can be just a story.
The Doctor: When you wake up you'll have a Mum and Dad. And you won't remember me. Well, you'll remember me a little. I'll be a story in your head. That's OK, we're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one. Cos it was, you know. It was the best. A daft old man who stole a magic box and ran away. Did I ever tell you that I stole it? Well, borrowed it; I was always gonna give it back someday. Oh, that box, Amy. You'll dream about that box. It'll never leave you. Big and little at the same time. Brand new and ancient. And the bluest blue ever. And the times we had. Woulda had. Never had. In your dreams they'll still be there. The Doctor and Amy Pond. And the days that never came. The cracks are closing. But they can't close properly 'til I'm on the other side. I don't belong here any more. I think I'll skip the rest of the rewind. I hate repeats. Live well. Love Rory. Bye bye, Pond.
The line "we're all stories in the end" brings us back to the idea of Doctor Who as a fairytale - of the Doctor as a fairytale, in fact. River comments that she hates good wizards in fairytales, because "they're all him" - but this Doctor can accept his fate as just a story, can adjust to it easily without feeling angry. He accepts it as another thing that may have to be done. This is probably the most fundamental thing he learned from his tenure as the Tenth Doctor. The Doctor's regenerations are exactly that, a learning curve - especially in this case. From Nine to Ten, and even more from Ten to Eleven, the personality that appears is grounded in the decisions and the regrets of the previous life.
And that makes this a good place to leave this essay~.
(I LOVE THIS SHOW, YOU GUYS.)
ANY OTHER STUFF OF IMPORTANCE
For people who don't want to be spoiled or people who tl;dr'd: the Doctor will look younger now! But if anything, he will act older, though just as energetic. He dresses like the old guys who might teach you at university. He's more absent-minded, more of a hand-talker, an attention wanderer, slightly more humble (if anything), a lot more callous, and he'll be put out if you insult his bowtie.
... that was a terrible spoilerfree summary don't mind me.
OTHER THINGS. People I have CR with - obviously, the Doctor won't forget you! In any way whatsoever. How he reacts to you will depend on how you react to him, as he is both a reactionary and kinetic sort of character.
ANOTHER THING: I decided new Doctor, new journal - thus the Eleventh Doctor's stuff will all be done in geronimust henceforth. His icon page is magical. And there's an updated stats/permissions here.
FINALLY: this will be the second-last post I will make to this journal. Either like now, or in a few hours time, or tomorrow if I get distracted, or something, I will make a ic journal post for last threads with the Tenth Doctor. People can say goodbye to that variation of him if they want to, etc, etc. AFTER THAT, later or tomorrow or etc, there will be a CFUD post for the actual regeneration and the appearance of Eleven. I'll be taking him from the end of the fifth series eventually, I will decide exactly where closer to me actually doing it.
OKAY, I THINK WE'RE THERE.
Questions below if you have any! SORRY ABOUT HOW LONG THAT WAS.