Rec: Eleventh Doctor
I've decided to post a recommendation of a slightly different sort this week. Instead of recommending a fanwork, I'm going to recommend a TV series. Or.. well, a part of a TV Series.
This recommendation is for Doctor Who, but I'm not going to be talking about all of Who. I'm only going to tell you about the Eleventh Doctor.
Doctor Who is one of my ( Read more... )
Ultimately, to me, The Day of the Doctor feel like more than one episode - one of which I dislike, one of which I’m sort of uneasily ok with, and one of which I love.
The one I dislike is the one with the Zygons. Mainly because, for something coming from Moffat’s pen, it felt unreasonably childish. The build up was good, and when I thought that it was angels under the drapes in the basement, I was hooked. (To me angels made sense… after all, they’d have every reason to smash statues in order to create hiding spaces). When it proved to be Zygons, it lost me. And that part of the plot only seemed to go downhill from there.
In addition to the Zygons not engaging me, a few other small things annoyed me about that storyline, including the lack of chemistry between Ten and Elizabeth I. In fact, almost everything involving Elizabeth I frustrated me. (I feel she was a bit miscast… but I hesitate to say that too emphatically. There were a lot of things that didn’t work for me, and it wasn’t only the acting. There was also the dialogue, the plot etc.).
The ‘episode’ I felt uneasy about was the return of Gallifrey. I think Moffat’s made the right choice in retconning the disappearance of Gallifrey, but it was always going to be a hard ask, bringing the Time Lords back, and I’m not sure he did it as well as I had hoped.
I think the distinction between the ‘Doctor’ and the ‘War Doctor’ is part of what had me on edge. The Doctor I have in my head is complicated, confusing and a mess of contradictions. He is, above all, layered. So, for me, he can quite easily, be - at the same time - the Doctor and the destroyer of Gallifrey.
No so, apparently for Moffat. The hard line between the ‘War Doctor’ and the ‘Doctor Doctor’ is annoying to me because it means the Doctor was involved in the destruction of Gallifrey in the same way a second cousin once removed can be part of the family. He did it, but it wasn’t really him, you see? And so the heavy weight that I thought sat on his shoulders sort of… didn’t… it sat on the War Doctor’s shoulders instead. What is more, the War Doctor was specifically engineered… so he’s not only emotionally cut off from the Doctor, he’s also cut off because in some ways he was ‘artificial’. The Doctor can say that the War Doctor wasn’t really a part of him because he never would have been the War Doctor if it hadn’t been for the meddling of the Sisterhood of Karn.
The ‘episode’ I loved wasn’t really an episode at all. It was those moments in the midst of the action where you had the Doctor on screen (any and all of him).
Matt Smith stole the show for me - absolutely. Almost to the point where I have to admit I was feeling a little lacklustre about David Tennant… But, in the end, it was brilliant just having them together.
The moment where they met in the woods, the moment where they were talking in the prison, the moment when they were being smug about finding a solution to the Zygon problem, and most of all the moment when they were standing over the Moment, about to make the hard decision all over again… Those moments were all golden. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.
If I had to rank The Day of the Doctor really and truly properly, it would probably sit at around 14 on my list with 11: The Angels Take Manhattan, 12: The Bells Of St John, 13: Closing Time and then 14: The Day of the Doctor.
Of course, my list gets very hazy after 10, so I can’t guarantee that those would be the rankings if you asked me again tomorrow…
Anyway… this post got very long. Sorry!
Hopefully it all makes sense!
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Re. War Doctor, then I'll say he's obviously the Doctor... The whole word play when he's introduced points to this explicitly - Eleven says he is NOT the Doctor, and a second later letters flash up on the screen introducing John Hurt as 'the Doctor'. (As Promethia said: 'It's character versus writer, the winner takes the franchise!') And the fact that there was a war Doctor explains so much. Normal people have issues - the Doctor parcels them out into a whole person! Who is him, no matter that he tries to distance himself afterwards. As Matt Smith said:
"That's what interests me about The Doctor because, actually, look at the blood on the man's hands... Which is why I think he has to make silly jokes and wear a fez. Because if he didn't, he'd hang himself."
Twelve is - I think - an attempt at dealing with NOT being the killer of his own kind. Who is he? Who was he, before the War?
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Regarding your point about the War Doctor obviously being the Doctor - I do agree with you. In fact, my gut instinct has always been to agree with you, which is why that part of the episode is in my 'uneasy' basket.
I think, if I have a problem, it's that it wasn't shown brilliantly in the episode. I know from your meta that you can find meaning even when it's hidden about as deep as it can get (that's something I love about it!)
But, I'm not like that. For me the mechanics of the storytelling trump the meaning nine times out of ten. For me, in the Day of the Doctor, the War Doctor wasn't given enough screen time to really truly bridge the artificial divide that dialogue had created between him and the Doctor. In truth, I was a little sad that John Hurt didn't leap of the screen in the way I expected him to.
When I think it through, I can see that the final scene in the barn with the Moment proves without a doubt that the War Doctor is the Doctor. But...
Just, but. I can't really articulate why it doesn't entirely work for me, but it doesn't.
Often your meta takes things I find problematic (like the Wedding of River Song) and makes them feeling like they have an ocean of meaning to plumb, all of which is exciting and exhilarating. Hopefully your meta for this episode will do that for me again.
As it is, I wasn't all that capable of looking past the surface to the surfeit of meaning below.
...
As for Twelve. I hadn't thought of it like that. I think you're probably right. It makes so much sense now you've said it!
I had a slightly different theory for the characterisation of Twelve, but it's rather out there, so I'm sort of waiting a bit to see how much of it is borne out.
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Well if something doesn't work, it doesn't. I hope I can make you look at it in a slightly more positive light though... (My daughters ADORE the War Doctor. They want him as a plushie.)
As for Twelve. I hadn't thought of it like that. I think you're probably right. It makes so much sense now you've said it!
It's not all mine! This post does a nice job of laying things out. Although considering he's the first of a new cycle of regenerations, a re-boot seems sensible. Also, he's quite like One. :)
ETA: Have you seen Fear Me, I Killed All Of Them? Still gives me chills, and v. relevant re. Day of the Doctor. (I even wrote meta on it!)
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