First Impressions of The New Doctor Who (Ep. 1 Review)
“Okay! I’ve got one more [question]. Is this world protected? Cause you’re the first one who has come here. Oh, there have been so many. And what you’ve got to ask yourself is: what happened to them?… Hello. I’m the Doctor. Basically… run.”
This is Matt Smith’s true introductory moment as The Doctor in the Fifth Series (Season, for American folks) of the new Doctor Who. Matt Smith’s Doctor is younger looking than our previous (Tenth) Doctor, played by the man often revered by many to have been the best Doctor in the history of the near fifty-year franchise.
I want to start out by saying that the youth really suits the character. Tennant’s Doctor was so tortured. Every time Tennant’s Doctor was happy, it was as if he was experiencing something new. Tennant’s Doctor allowed himself to become somber, dire and melancholic quite easily. There was always a bit of sadness in Tennant’s Doctor. The happy-go-lucky nature of Tennant’s Doctor would change on a dime because this was a Doctor who very much remembered everything that had ever happened to the character; and he carried that weight with him. Always trying to move on to the next adventure, that Doctor was constantly fighting against his inner demons. As the seasons (series for all you Brits out there) went on, any happy-go-lucky left in the character was beat out of him. Losing companions, best friends, then facing the people who made him sad in the first place at the end of his run; Tennant’s Doctor was in shambles by the time we lost him, much like the Tardis.
Series five. Episode one. The Tardis, tumbling towards Earth and over London, comes in for a crash landing in a little girl’s backyard. Enter Emilia (Amy) Pond, a little girl with a crack in her wall (that will eventually be the problem that spawns the antagonist for the episode, causing The Doctor to have to save the world in 20 minutes), who lives alone, takes care of herself and is scared out of her mind, yet is willing to take a strange man in, one that she feels is an answer to a prayer she made… to Santa Claus.
Matt Smith’s Doctor is figuring his body out, trying all kinds of foods in Emilia’s house from bacon to bread and butter, in an effort to find out what he likes to eat. He hates everything normal, that we expect a Doctor to like, and ends up settling on fish sticks dipped in custard. This encompasses the new Doctor, in that he is almost everything Tennant wasn’t.
He is a little more bumbling, he is confident despite himself, he is a little more awkward, and is more easily surprised. Above all else, though, It’s like this Doctor has sobered from the torturous run his last incarnation suffered. This Doctor seems to have almost gotten over it, and has focused on what The Doctor, as a character, actually DOES. Tennant seems like he spent the whole of his run trying, and often failing, to be happy and trying to forget his past at every cost. With every season, though, he was just given more past to have to forget. But at his heart(s), The Doctor is such an adventurer. Tennant’s Doctor is what we, as an audience, got as a balance between what The Doctor wants to be and how he logically should feel after everything that has happened to him.
It was a much more tortured, mourning, and purpose-filled Doctor… Matt Smith’s Doctor seems to achieve what the last one kept trying and failing to do. He is a true escapist. There’s a new sonic screwdriver, a new TARDIS and a new theme song, even. If you haven’t seen this episode yet and are a huge fan of the fanchise, then be ready for change. There is a lot. This is a new start for The Doctor.
“I’m The Doctor, I’m worse than everybody’s Aunt!… No, that’s not how I’m introducing myself”
This quote, I think, solidifies the fact that this Doctor is ready to move on. Even his new catch phrase is a change of direction, in that this Doctor is a true escapist. A true adventurer. Tennat’s “Allons-y” (meaning onward, forward or “let’s go”) was his character going, racing toward a better, happier future. Matt Smith’s Doctor’s “Geronimo!” is a great example of how this character goes with the flow a little more, and tends to have a childlike enthusiasm for the unexpected that he actually seems to relish.
The awesome characteristic that Matt Smith has retained from Tennant’s run is that his Doctor is also a back-and-forth dogfight between problem solver, hero and show off. It’s the deserved-arrogance and playful cockiness we love from The Doctor. It’s still there.
As Matt Smith solves every problem in this episode in an almost MacGuyver fashion with no TARDIS and no sonic screwdriver, we discover that we have not lost a character and that this isn’t really a drastic change that we’re not going to be able to deal with because of how much we loved Tennant; it’s a new beginning. With the same character. It’s The Doctor, and he’s here to have fun with and for all of us.
The new TARDIS interior even LOOKS brighter
This new season also seems to be a little more adult, almost to an early-Torchwood capacity in that it has a character that is looking at pornography when The Doctor commandeers his laptop, a companion who is basically a house-called stripper (who won’t turn away as the naked Doctor is changing into his new favorite outfit) and a head-writer who has written some of the darkest episodes since series one (season one for the U.S. folk), Steven Moffatt. We know the weeping angels, the Daleks, and possibly the Timelords, are coming back. This episode, and this Doctor, was by no means a disappointment. It was refreshing. And I can’t wait for more. Who fans everywhere: The Doctor is back. And he doesn’t suck.
We will always miss Tennant, because he really brought the show into its own on this new, reboot-esque run of the franchise, but I think that we, as fans of Doctor Who might (gasp!!!) be ready to move on. With a fresh new Doctor, weight of the world seemingly off his shoulders for at least the immediate moment (and in the words of the new Doctor):
“To hell with the raggedy, time to put on a show.”
