Saturday, October 14, 2006

stick to your tongue waggling, Barty Crouch Jr.

So. There's a Tenth Doctor. I am not amused.

Well, that's not entirely fair. As Maggie Cats pointed out to me earlier today, I can be loyal to my beloved Christopher Eccleston and still adore the new Doctor. But so far, i just ... don't. He's a little too unhinged, too dangerous, too ... the issue, or as fine a point i can put on it, is that David Tennant plays him without sufficiently tempering the scary, to me. Which, i suppose, is not only a conscious choice but probably a valid one, given that The Doctor is "so old," and used to be "filled with so much mercy," but ... not so much, these days.

I get that, i do. And he was filled with mercy when he finally, properly said goodbye to his Sarah Jane (what a heartbreaker that was, too). But this Doctor makes me twitchy, in a way that hits a little too close to home for me to relax around him. His turn on Prime Minister Harriet Jones was more than on a dime, it was uncannily, frighteningly easy. I suppose i've been spending too much time on feminist blogs today, but there's an element of scary in there that bothers me in a certain fashion that i can't entirely sign off on. There's unpredictable, and then there's dangerous. I think the Ninth Doctor toed the line on just the other side, whereas the Tenth has crossed it, a little.

Again, i think there's probably some definite thought in that choice; every time he regenerates, the Doctor gets older, lonelier, less merciful. But at some point, the ratio of mercy to scary flips to uncomfortable, and i fear we're getting close with this go-round. And yet, i still get chills and clap like an idiot every time i hear the theme song. I'm not giving up on you, David Tennant, but i'm watching.

2 comments:

Maggie Cats said...

I love how he has become slightly unhinged. It amps up the tension, and makes the scary more scary and the funny more funny. But I also think he is totally adorkable, so perhaps that is coloring my view. So, I say, viva la Tentha Doctora!

Maggie Cats said...

PS: I don't disagree with any of your character assessments of the Tenth Doctor, it's just that I find them awesome while they make you twitchy. That is all!