So, new blog! New thoughts to ramble out into the cyberspace. I could do an introductory spiel, lay down a mission statement, even introduce myself - But no, I think not. In truth, I don't know what this blog is about. I don't know if it'll last, or even if I'll share it for a wider audience. Quite frankly, I'm simply bored, in need of an outlet and so desperately want to write something, anything, to pass the time. So, let's begin with something that has occupied my mind for the past month, at least.
When some people think of Christmas, they think of snow, of Santa Claus, of tinsel, and wrapping paper, and gifts, and chestnuts roasting on an open fire - Some, I dare say, may even spare a thought to little baby Jesus lying in his manger. But for me, being a rather cynical adult who spends a great deal of time with his family in any case and isn't too huge a fan of large roast dinners or excessive amounts of chocolate - Christmas has come down to two very distinct things. Finding weird and wonderful presents for the select amount of people I buy presents for and hoping to God they enjoy them, and Doctor Who. For almost a decade now, the Doctor Who Christmas special has been something of a Christmas staple and I have to be honest, for as much as I look forward to them, more often than not they're... Disappointing. For every A Christmas Carol or The Snowmen, there's a The Doctor, The Witch and the Wardrobe or The End of Time to counteract it. But I look forward to it eagerly and expect the best every year regardless because, well, it's Doctor Who! And especially in these days of series being split in half over two years, as a fan, you've got to take every precious drop of that you can.
Only this Christmas, it was different. This Christmas promised so much more. The end of one era and the beginning of a new! A capstone to everything the last three series of Matt Smith's Doctor threw at us, and the launchpad of a shining new age spearheaded by potty mouthed spin doctor, or Oscar winning director, depending on which way you'd like to spin it - Peter Capaldi. One Doctor I've come to love and admire leaves, as a Doctor I have such very high hopes for enters.
As you can imagine, my expectations were set pretty high - A situation not quite helped by such amazing, high energy trailers such as this;
And how did it do? Very well, I thought. But that's not quite why I'm here. I could talk for days about the soaring triumphs, the odd murky low and the somewhat frequent 'Hold on a minute!'s of the Time of the Doctor. But ultimately - All you have to know is this. It was a beautiful tribute to a wonderful actor who, over the course of the last few years, has crafted a Doctor with a heart of pure gold. That, ladies and gentleman, is why we're here. Because while I could talk about the special itself, I'd much rather talk about the man at the centre of it.
You see, the Moffat/Smith era is deeply important to me. I'll own up right here and now to being a rather new Doctor Who fan. I was born in 1987, the year that McCoy stepped into the role of the very last televised Doctor for more than a decade. For most of my life, Doctor Who has not been a consistent part of British television. I was aware of it, of course! As every good Briton should be! But I never grew up with it, never had anyone there to introduce me too it. Much like all the science fiction and fantasy and other worldly fiction I now love and cherish, I had to find it on my own. So when the reboot happened, and those amazing, overly dramatic trailers with Christopher Eccleston running from a ball of flame started to appear, I was there!
It's funny really, I can still remember the first time I watched this silly old show. Huddled up on an uncomfortable sofa in the caravan, watching Rose unfold on a tiny little TV screen with poor reception. Not the most glamorous of introductions, but I was intrigued enough to watch more - And by the time The Unquiet Dead hit I was hooked. I still have a poster of Chris and Billie stood in front of the TARDIS hanging proudly over my computer desk to this day. The only problem? That wonder couldn't last. By the time David Tennnat's second series was over, I was done. The magic had been lost, and the show had started to collapse for me under the weight of it's own silliness. Not just the overt silliness such as the Scooby Doo homages and large doses of Peter Kay in Love and Monsters. Nor the sappy, sentimental silliness of Fear Her. No, it just seemed like the whole universe was nothing more than a joke, or simply expendable, to both the Doctor and the writers.
Villains were brought back and cast aside with a causality that destroyed their reputation, here one minute as a galaxy dominating army only to be gone the next, never to return! Until next series, that is. The Doctor himself was also distressingly human and, worse than that, like a casual, know it all tourist who's just bored of the universe. Every time he stepped out of the TARDIS there was the usual 'Oooooooh, it's this place! I know this place!' as if the universe held no wonder for him and he was just retreading the same old stomping grounds, seeing the same old sights.To pick up the tourist analogy again, he was the equivalent of a man who travels to Asia yet refuses point blank to eat anywhere but McDonalds. Not only that, but he picked up another ugly tourist habit to boot - That if he shouted at people loud enough and made enough of a fuss, everyone would just fall in line and follow the Doctor, regardless of the fact he'd displayed no actual authority whatsoever. Unless having the loudest voice and being able to shout the angriest is a mark of authority, which in this universe it seems, was the case!
I'll raise my hand and admit that I was one of those people who ranted and raved about Russel The Davies with the same passion and intensity as the Moffat denouncers I roll my eyes at now. Yet even given the above, I have to admit I regret that now. I've come to recognise that for all the obvious chinks in RTD's armour, he brought so much to the show and we have so much to thank him for, and David Tennant himself is a fantastic actor - Something I always knew throughout his run, even if there were times I was bitter to him by association. Given the right script, that man was the Doctor. Without a shadow of a doubt.
So how did I come to that realisation? Well, funnily enough, and getting, belatedly, to the point of all this - It was through Matt Smith.
See, I may have been lapsed, but I never gave up on Doctor Who. I was waiting patiently for a new writer, a new Doctor, and when I learned that new writer was going to be Stephen Moffat - Not only the man behind some of my favourite episodes, but also the sublime Coupling, I knew it didn't really matter who the Doctor was - I was more than ready to give it another shot. And oh! I'm so glad I did. It seems cheesy to say it, and perhaps somewhat unrealistic to judge a man off an appearance that only lasted a few seconds, but I loved Matt the moment he appeared as the Doctor. While others were getting their underwear in a twist over him being too young, or his manic, spitting on the console while the TARDIS burned around him, I just remember loving his energy. The way he bounced around the set, marvelling at his own legs like they were the greatest thing in the world - It was so out there! So alien!
That one short appearance was all I needed to spark my love, my passion for this series into a flickering flame again. I watched Iplayer like a hawk and managed to watch all the episodes I missed. Finally caught such gems as Blink, The Shakespeare Code, Planet of the Ood and the first appearances of River Song, linked above. I discovered that even though series two took a plunge off the deep end, and series three often continued that trend (as well as featuring a rather bland companion who still had Rose's puppy dog infatuation with the Doctor to boot) series four was... Actually kind of good. I don't know if it was the fact that Donna, a character who was strong, independent and written like a woman and a friend to the Doctor rather than his lovestruck groupie gave the whole show a brand new dynamic that was far more enjoyable or if the ante had just been upped because this was Tennant's last full series. All I know is that, despite some of the silliness still being there, I was rather sorry I missed it the first time around.
Even so, by the time Smith's first episode rolled around I was still nervous. Just because the first little taster was a welcome change, doesn't mean the rest is going to be up to standard. But come the Eleventh Hour, I was spellbound. Smith brought everything I loved about the character back, all of Eccleston's otherworldly charm and quick, memorable one liners but added a whole other layer to it. It's hard to imagine Eccleston or Tennant's Doctor being so at ease with young Amelia Pond. Don't get me wrong, Eccleston seems to be a very soft spoken and kind individual off screen and Tennant is fantastic with children, but number Nine is so full of fire and regret and number Ten... Well, Ten is the action hero. He swoops in, solves the problems, snogs all the girls and then swoops out just as quick. There's something about Eleven, about Smith's portrayal, that allows those quieter moments more power - That gives him a more reassuring aura.
A lot has been made about his old eyes, and how his Doctor is a stuffy old professor in a young man's body. But there's much more to him than that. His Doctor is a man that wears many masks. In some respects, he's the most ancient and knowledgeable being in the room - And unlike Ten, he has the authority to back that up. In The Eleventh Hour he sends proves his credentials by sending calculations far beyond that of any human mind to the world's leading scientific officials and in A Good Man Goes to War he overthrows an army through guile, cunning and a very clever use of a lot of favours. Yet, there's another element to Smith's Doctor that often goes unappreciated - His innocence. His pure, naivete.
While he may be thoroughly brilliant in some respects, in others he's... Well, he's just from another planet. While Ten was a ladykiller, Eleven approached women like they were a whole different animal - And even when it comes to River Song, the woman he married, he approached her, more often than not, more like a naughty schoolboy than a husband or a lover. It was also clear in his fashion sense, his unusual concept of 'cool' but also in the way he carried himself. Matt's Doctor was a never ending fountain of curiosity, of wonder! You got the impression that he'd never grow tired of the universe, that he'd never stop trying to find that one little nook and cranny he'd never seen before! Even when he was retreading old ground, it wasn't met with an 'Ooooh, this place!' it was met with a 'Hey! Look at this! Isn't this awesome!'. He was constantly poking around, constantly touching his surroundings, constantly in a state of awe with the universe that to me, just felt exhilarating. His energy wasn't just in the way he sprang into a mad dash from danger, or his daft Dad dances or even the way he pirouetted around the TARDIS console - He put that energy into every expression, every movement, everything he encountered. To the Eleventh Doctor the entire universe was an adventure, and it was hard not to be swept along with it.
Of course, this is far from the end of his talents - Nor is it the end of what really made the show work for me again. I loved Moffat's new approach to story telling, how he was unafraid to use time travel as a plot device rather than just somewhere to change the setting from London to Cardiff every other episode. Or how he wasn't afraid to address the classic series in clever little asides that were just pronounced enough to be spotted, but not enough to alienate. Not to mention the wonderful array of characters introduced, from Amy and Rory, to the Patternoster Gang, right down to those we only saw for a second - Like Dorium, the space Pirates, Porridge, Brian, Canton Delaware, all of which could carry a story, and some even a series, on their own.
At the end of the day though, I owe the reignition of my love for this series to Matt Smith. I owe it to that first exciting glimpse of him wondering if he was a girl at the end of the otherwise underwhelming conclusion to the End of Time, I owe it to the way he's delivered a Doctor who is so thoroughly alien yet also so painstakingly human when it counts. To the magnificent highs of his grand speeches, be they atop Stone Henge or addressing the sun of Akhatan. To those, sometimes incredibly subtle, emotional lows. He was the old professor dawdling about the universe solving any old problem that came his way. He was the intergalactic Boogeyman to every monster in existence, saving children everywhere from the perils of the universe. He was the excitable child, snogging with confidence when he was overexcited but not knowing what to do with any single part of his body when snogged in return. He was the lonely God, crushed by death, despair and defeat at every turn - And never knowing why the Universe feared him as much as he thought they loved him.
Most importantly though, he was the Doctor. He was my Doctor. And in his final hour, as the bushy eyebrowed visage of Peter Capaldi is a-coming, I'd like to say thank you. Thank you for pulling me out of the wilderness, and making me fall in love with this fantastic, absolutely barmy show all over again. Long may it grace our television screens, and long may it survive and flourish and continue to entertain me without you!
