A tribute to the Tenth Doctor (with images)
He's complex. Perhaps the most complex incarnation of the Doctor there's ever been.
He's got a light side. He's heroic, noble, and self-sacrificing. He's caring and compassionate, kind and gentle. He's friendly and funny, silly and sexy and sweet.
He's got a dark side. He's ruthless and scary and cold. He's rude and insensitive, smug and cocky, and every bit as egotistical as Six ever was. Though Ten is more charming about it.
He binds the universe together. No, sorry, that's the Force. (Or duct tape.)
He's broken and angsty. So was Nine, but Ten raises it to an art form. Nine bore the brunt of the end of the Time War and the destruction of his people. Ten lives with the consequences. He's also getting on in incarnations (if you subscribe to the expectation that the powers that be will stick to the twelve-regenerations limit established in Old Who), and he is starting to feel the weight of his longevity.
As an aside, I don't understand the people who roll their eyes at Ten's angst (or "emo" as they put it -- grr, I hate that word). How can anyone who's lived so long and seen and done and lost as much as he has *not* have moments when it all starts to get to him? I love the angst, because it gives his character -- and therefore the show as well -- depth and resonance and realism. The Doctor of the new series can't be the (mostly) happy-go-lucky wanderer that he was in the old series. He just can't.
Yet he *keeps on going*. He keeps on fighting the good fight, holding out hope for himself and the universe. That's a point that the detractors all seem to miss. Even during his lowest lows, he doesn't wallow for long. There's always a light somewhere at the end of the tunnel, and he never gives up running toward it.
He has an enormous god complex. Which is pretty inevitable, considering what he does and the fact that he's the last of his kind. Where once there were lots of Time Lords watching over things, now there's only him, running around putting out fires. Civilizations, planets, and universes live or die because of his decisions. There's no one left to keep him in check, except maybe the Guardians, and there's been no indication they even still exist. Can anyone wonder why he might overstep now and then, make choices for people that they have no say in but have to live with regardless? It's not exactly an admirable trait of his, but it's an understandable one.
He's the ultimate social butterfly. Ten is perhaps the most open and gregarious incarnation the Doctor has had yet. Where Nine looked on humans with cynicism, Ten makes no bones about his admiration for them. He loves people in general. He can't get enough of talking and interacting and simply spending time with them.
One scene that stands out in my mind, to illustrate this point, is in Midnight, when he goes on a bus expedition. His companion, Donna, having opted out, he gets his fellow passengers to talk to him and each other by surreptitiously disabling the entertainment system. And later in that episode when his voice is stolen and he is paralyzed, part of the horror (besides the others deciding to murder him out of fear) is the sheer torture it has to be for Ten, of all incarnations, to be unable to speak.
It's this need for people that makes it so tragic that the outcome of Journey's End affected him so strongly that, for the first time ever, the Doctor has actually started to actively *reject* potential companions. I think I understand why, for production purposes, the powers that be chose not to give Ten another companion, but still the prospect of his not having anyone with him when he regenerates scarcely bears thinking about.
He's the ultimate geek. When he puts on his Clark Kent glasses, it's showtime. You know he's really getting into it. And anyone who thinks a geek in glasses can't be hot has never seen David Tennant in hornrims.
He's touchy-feely. He hugs. A lot. And holds hands. He always has to touch somebody, even if that somebody is himself. He's constantly ruffling his hair, scratching his neck, playing with an earlobe, facepalming, rubbing an eye. You can always tell when his patience is being tried, or when he's stressed, embarrassed, thinking hard, or trying to figure out how not to get slapped, because up goes the hand, toward the vicinity of his head. Sometimes it's both hands.
He has an oral fixation. Which, of course, has been much commented on. He is all about the mouth, whether it's talking or tasting or simply moving it around (as in his tongue-curling habit). He analyzes by taste, probably because that sense seems especially keen in this body. He apparently simply enjoys having things in his mouth, from his sonic screwdriver to food. He's a bit like a toddler in that regard.
He gets snogged a lot. Some people groan. I laugh. I find it amusing.
Face it, Ten is a flirt. A huge flirt. Who doesn't necessarily always get that he's flirting. I look at it as an incarnational quirk, like Five's gas allergy or Seven's mangled metaphors. He'll spend an entire episode giving off signals of interest to a woman, and then he's shocked when she goes for the liplock. The look on his face is priceless.
And on the rare occasions when he does the initiating, the look on *their* faces is priceless. Apparently for an "asexual" alien, he's a hell of a kisser.
He has tons of other quirks. One is his little mini-obsessions with the sound of a word or phrase. For example: "via the void", "Allons-y, Alonzo", "physicsphysicsphysicsphysics", "monky monk monks", etc. Another is his habit of giving a series of self-corrections, each prefaced with "Well..." Then there's his odd occasional inability to remember whether he's listing things by number or letter (as in Voyage of the Damned).
He's in love with life. You'd think that after 900 years and nine regenerations, Ten would have little if any sense of wonder left. Yet somehow he's as far from jaded as you can get. When there's a new sight to see, a new experience to be had, he jumps in with both feet.
Sometimes, of course, this enthusiasm gets him into trouble. It's not just the dangerous situations he finds. It's that he delves into each new mystery or crisis with so much zeal that he can sometimes appear unfeelingly cavalier toward the people who are being affected by it. He often loses sight of the fact that what is fun or intriguing to him may be a matter of serious trauma or tragedy to them. On occasion he has gotten slapped for it, or otherwise called on the carpet (by Agatha Christie, for example); and this was also how he earned Queen Victoria's disapproval, which led to dire personal consequences for him.
He's played by David Tennant. 'Nuff said. But I'm going to say more anyway. To put it simply, David Tennant rocks. He is the Doctor I find most enjoyable to watch.
Okay, yeah, part of it is the fact that he's just plain dead sexy. I've never really gone for the classically handsome jock types that all (straight) women are supposed to be turned on by. I like men who are more unconventional-looking. Tennant fits that description perfectly, gorgeous yet with enough "flaws" to make him much more interesting to look at than Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt.
Mostly, though, it's his intelligence and presence and sheer talent. Not that he's necessarily *better* than any other Doctor, but he's been given more opportunity to show his range than the Old Who Doctors used to get, as a rule. Tennant is an extremely expressive and energetic actor who throws his whole being into his performances, and isn't afraid to look uncool. But he can pull it back too. He can say volumes with the subtle tilt of an eyebrow or a turn of the lips. And he can do comedy just as handily as heavy drama.
I wish he wasn't leaving, but OTOH, he does have his career to think of and it's the right time for him to do so, I think. He's left a great mark on the series and the fandom, and I'll miss him.