Comments | tempestsarekind: still trying to define the season for myself

tempestsarekind

still trying to define the season for myself

May 26, 2010 13:22

I've been seeing (and hearing) a lot of comments like, "I wish they'd chosen someone really different to play Eleven/chosen to make Eleven really different; Matt Smith (or Eleven) is just David Tennant (or Ten) lite." I find these comments fairly baffling, in part because I've been reading season 5 as an extended meditation on the fact that Eleven ( Read more... )

doctor who, dw series 5, tenth doctor, david tennant, eleventh doctor

Comments 15

gileonnen May 26 2010, 17:25:59 UTC

This more or less summarizes why I love Eleven so much. All of it. ^____^

tempestsarekind May 26 2010, 17:29:42 UTC

Well, yay! :)

I find myself just wanting to think about this season a lot, and I've missed that. But I'm also just enjoying it!

lareinenoire May 26 2010, 17:51:33 UTC

I have nothing to say beyond complete agreement. And it's the young-old-slightly alien aspect of Eleven that I just love so, so much.

tempestsarekind May 26 2010, 18:48:32 UTC

Me too! I was a bit worried about Matt Smith, because I'd only seen him in The Ruby in the Smoke (although I'd liked him in that, quite a bit), and just couldn't imagine what he would *do* as the Doctor. But I'm just finding more and more little touches that I love, both about the character and the way Matt Smith portrays him.

viomisehunt May 26 2010, 19:02:48 UTC

But I also don't think that Matt Smith is playing the Doctor in the same way that David Tennant did. They are both pale Brits with interesting hair, and they...both wear slightly odd clothes? Honestly, I'm out. I'm with you. They are two very different actors. There is a realness about Matt's "alien" innocence, so his the youthful features work for him. The Wedding Cake scene was perfect, because I could really Hear Three and Four in that speech. And it was beautifully shot so the audience felt the "in the moment" awkwardness of Eleven and Rory's situation. There was no silly music, or drum roll gimmick. Well done to the director and editor. I think Matt's voice and cadence of speech helps with the old man image. You're looking at this face that could clearly pass for seventeen with the right camera angle, and out comes this voice of a sixty-year old thespian. When Eleven is loud, you hear power and authority you would expect from someone who is Nine hundred years old. He's not strident or snarling. It's very startling to hear ( ... )

tempestsarekind May 26 2010, 19:05:52 UTC

I think Matt's voice and cadence of speech helps with the old man image.

That's a very good point; there really is something about his speech that is rather unexpected. And he uses that very well.

viomisehunt May 26 2010, 19:33:23 UTC

To clarify what I mean about David: David did wondefully as well, but his head writer was very committed to showing a "Side" of the Doctor we had not seen before --except with Six! -- and David's task as an actor was completely different. David was given the task of portraying these emotions the Doctor hides from himself, or the side of the hero we don't like. His Angst became a "character". Eleven gets flaws and all, but Matt has to portray the Doctor as Moffat envisions him, which is not as Ten different people, but one person always, who has had ten different faces. Matt's Doctor plays the Doctor like someone who made a drastic hair-color comestic surgery change, so people react to HIM different, but he's still the same person who fled with his Granddaughter to Earth centuries before, with just more experiences. And now -- well humans are the ONLY family he has. Earth is "his" world.

tempestsarekind May 26 2010, 22:05:12 UTC

Ah, I see what you mean. And if you're going to make Ten's angst as much a part of the role, then you want someone who can pull it off as well as David Tennant can--but that very specific "I am Ten, and I am grieving" thing did get old after a while.

Thread 5

skirmish_of_wit May 27 2010, 03:17:43 UTC

YES. All of this. I love Eleven more and more with each episode, and get more and more disappointed that we never got to see David Tennant work with a less asshatty version of the Doctor.

viomisehunt May 27 2010, 03:36:18 UTC

Okay. "Asshatty". I must confess I have never encountered that term before. Please expound.

skirmish_of_wit May 27 2010, 03:48:21 UTC

Deriving from "asshat," i.e. to have one's head so far up one's ass that one's ass becomes a hat. The noun form, the state or process of behaving like an asshat, is "asshaberdashery."

viomisehunt May 28 2010, 20:16:03 UTC

Thank you for the explanation. I love that term.

The other thing is that Matt Smith plays Eleven as young-and-old at the same time--he hops back and forth between moods in a way that's more genuine than Ten (and I don't mean that pejoratively; it's just that Ten is more deliberate about his mood shifts). I was expecting Eleven to be an old man in a young man's body, but that isn't quite what I'm seeing with him Ten seemed like a teenager with too much power and responsiblity shoved at him. Ever see the film "Our Mother's House"? Creepy, excellent little British movie. A mom dies leaving a house filled with children from about sixteen to a toddler; they bury her in the Garden House I think, and decided fend for themselves, rather than call the authrorities and risk being split up. The older two childre are flying blind. They understood their mother had traditions and rules, but understanding why she behaved liked this, or what was right, wrong, and what was neither -- somethings are a part of life. After a seance -- to ( ... )

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