Very Late Meta

[stick_poker]

Eleven steals all the scenes, doesn't he? I don't know why I've suddenly noticed this now, but whatever was happening in the scene before he's there, it all quickly gets diverted into what Eleven's doing afterwards.

Nine said 'I'm the Doctor, now forget me' and Rose could have done just that, if she hadn't been looking for some way out of her life

Comments

[promethia_tenk]

Holy crap, you are right. And yet I have NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT IT that way . . .

It's very strange because for some reason it never quite bothers me with Eleven--it really does mostly seem charming rather than particularly selfish or self-aggrandizing or or annoying. If you asked me, I would have said your general description fit Ten far better, and yet . . .

I have to go to sleep so badly right now, but I will definitely be mulling this over.

[promethia_tenk]

Another thought:

Oddly enough, a major concern of mine in most of the fic I've written has been making sure Eleven has a way to hold onto his own. Particularly with banter-y stuff, River is just such an aggressive voice that she can easily run roughshod over things. It took me a long time to work out what Eleven's bag of tricks would be for parrying her, once he'd gotten past just being sulky and shouty, and most of them are actually quite quiet and understated, with a sort of judo stealth to them.

None of which applies to the meta fic, admittedly, where I figured the counterweight to everything I was doing was the entirety of RTD's Who, plus the simple fact that it's the Doctor's show and everything, in the end, is about him. But it was a bit of a perspective shift for me to think of it as bringing out the "big guns" because the writing of it was more a matter of just not minding the flood gates.

[stick_poker]

To be fair, I do know why I'm thinking about this now, just not why I've only noticed now. In a fic I've been fiddling with for ages where Eleven has to keep upstaging everyone, I found he was just coming across as quite normally Elevenish.

So the problem with making him hold his own could be sort of the same thing; making him pay attention to River, engage with her, because this is what we wish to explore in fic, means not having him run roughshod over the whole scene, which then makes him feel less Elevenish. Unless you draw on the few moments of quiet power we have seen that are another way of doing the same thing. Bastard has them queueing up to be concerned over him while he's sitting in the Pandorica half out of it, and even his weary, resigned daft-old-man speech to wee Amelia was in fact a cunning way to make sure he stayed in her dreams. Dammit, he made sure he upstaged her entire childhood

[promethia_tenk]

Lol--thank you for being annoyed at this and picking it apart, because you're not wrong . . . And somebody should point these things out.

*kicks self for falling for the charm* Evil, evil charm.

I guess that, on balance, Ten was a bit less of an attention hog but more overbearing and dangerous in the effects he had on the lives of the people around him. Eleven is at least so much more conscious of how he can screw things up for people and seems to want to correct that, so if the price for that greater awareness and respect for other people's lives is that he needs everyone to lavish him with attention and affection . . . that seems like a fair enough trade to me. It's like he needs less genuine control over people and just more reassurance that he matters.

You did see this scene, yes? (Advance to 3:05) Relevant to your point:



making him pay attention to River, engage with her, because this is what we wish to explore in fic, means not having him run roughshod over the whole scene, which then makes him feel less Elevenish.

[owlsie]

He likes to put on a show, even when people aren't looking! I adore that about him.

[stick_poker]

He does, and I don't think he usually realises he's doing it. More that other people are being boring by not just doing whatever it is they want to be doing.

[elisi]

Promethia sent me here, and now I'm thinking...

Mostly, I'm reminded of this quote by Matt Smith, describing his Doctor:

"He is completely, unconsciously himself, without any compromise," which sums it up exactly. He never worries how others perceive him, he just *is*. Ten, in Midnight, is enjoying being 'just a passenger' (see all of Ten's issues and his desire to be human), but Eleven could never keep up that kind of pretense, nor would he want to. Ten, in many ways, was acting a role a lot of the time, but Eleven finds that impossible.

(This is rambling. But it's quite early. I hope it makes sense...)

ETA: You know, Eleven reminds me of this poem, this bit in particular:

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

[stick_poker]

It was indeed early, and I could have done without this idea keeping me awake for some of last night too, but that definitely makes sense, especially Ten wanting to be human, trying to enjoy being just a passenger.

I'm not quite so certain about Eleven never being able to keep up a pretence. I think there's a way where he's coming across that everything he does is bluster, given the way he's been able to bluff answers to questions like 'why are you taking me with you?' Maybe I'm just naturally suspicious...

[elisi]

Firstly, then I love bendingwind's comment below. Agree a lot. [insert a ton of meta about the Doctor being a storyteller/trickster]

Secondly, then yes, the Doctor lies. A lot. But... *thinks* He lies about things, rather than himself. He doesn't pretend to be something he's not (just look at how that works out in The Lodger, and even then his lies are lies of omission) - his lies are always for a specific *purpose*, not an attempt to hide.

(He lies about his reasons to ask Amy along, because he's trying to work out what's wrong with her. He lies to Amy and Rory about future!almost-dead!Doctor being dead in The Big Bang, because future!almost-dead!Doctor needs time to work on the Pandorica. He lies to the Daleks to try to save the world. But he's always 100% himself in the way he does it... Does that make sense?)

[stick_poker]

Ah, yes; he lies about things, rather than himself, but, is he using what people expect of him to make those lies stick sometimes? He can get away without answering a question properly because he often doesn't bother, just goes on talking about whatever he was going to be talking about, and the question is, when is he doing that because no-one's said anything interesting enough to divert his attention and when is he doing that to avoid the subject that he doesn't want to be drawn on?

[alt_universe_me]

Oh, wow. I never really thought about that, but it makes so. much. sense.

I honestly thought that Ten without his companions was always a bit odd. In the specials where he didn't really have one, especially in The Next Doctor, I really felt like he needed to have someone to divert some attention away from him. (That sounds mean, but I mean it in the way that I think Ten almost likes having the attention away from him sometimes)

[promethia_tenk]

I really felt like he needed to have someone to divert some attention away from him. (That sounds mean, but I mean it in the way that I think Ten almost likes having the attention away from him sometimes)

Ooo, that's fascinating--I think you must be right.

. . . actually, I think I can see how that would work. There was something so deeply self-conscious about Ten most of the time.

[stick_poker]

It was kind of the way all the 'famous person from history' ones with Ten went; he loved having the other genius take the limelight for a bit, whereas Eleven just gets on with his own thing around them. Including upstaging the crucial moment of the romantic thread of the Christmas special by having paid sufficiently poor attention to what Marilyn Monroe was up to to accidentally get engaged to her.

(The more I think about this the more of them there are, honestly.)

[bendingwind]

Ohohoho, fascinating. I wonder if this isn't why Ten has always been my least favorite of the Doctors--it introduces a sort of discordance in characterization that really, really bothers me. So many of his actions are like this--seeking to find someone else who can upstage him, not wanting the limelight for himself--but others involve him putting himself out there as the hero intentionally. Hmmm, I wonder...

[bendingwind]

So I've been thinking about similar stuff, and hopefully what I'm about to say will make sense because I haven't quite finished thinking it through.

I've discussed in other places my feeling that RTD-era Who was about the Doctor and Moffat-era Who is about the companions, but I think that that's an oversimplification. To me, at least, RTD-era Who feels like it's told from the companion's point of view (inasmuch as television can be said to have a point of view) about the Doctor. It's their story about him. Moffat-era Who seems to me to be more about the companions from the Doctor's point of view. So to me it seems that Eleven's upstaging everything is part product of his characterzation (because every Doctor but Nine has been quite fond of being the center of everything), part Matt's acting (I really am not sure he ever stands still...), and a large part the way Moffat is approaching his stories. Regardless of who we're talking about, our focus is almost always on ourselves--so the Doctor's story about his companions would still,

[stick_poker]

Now this I can get right behind as a theory. That series is Doctor's POV so everything focuses around him unless it's got a reason not to... Like how, when he's going through the rewind at the end of The Big Bang, it's not at all surprising to be following his path through it because there's no change of focus needed to do that. Oooo.

[bendingwind]

I think it fits nicely, too, with the episodes we've seen so far. I feel like there's a tendency for smaller, more focused casts--just the people the Doctor is paying attention to, which fits nicely with his assertion that the universe only seems new through his companions' eyes. RTD-era Who, told through the companions, focuses on everything as fascinating a new and features much larger, more diverse casts of characters (if there's anything I miss about him, it's that) whereas the Doctor's already seen it all, so he only focuses on the individuals who are immediately important and/or useful to him.

Let me know when I stop making sense.

It is interesting, based on some of the other posts, that I notice that Eleven is actually somewhat more continuous from Ten than is generally assumed (because, thank you Moffat, the angst has taken a back seat to the show finally). I really think there's a fascinating evolution from post-War Nine--shying away from attention, even that of a companion in Rose, just wanting to be alone--to openly

[elisi]

goldenmoonrose summed it up perfectly: Ten needs people. Eleven needs to *help* people.

ETA: Re. the continuation between Ten and Eleven, I also have meta on that which I can link you to? (I ramble... It's a thing.)