Here Comes 12
Aug. 5th, 2013 09:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloThe Smith years have been characterized by enormously complicated story-lines that mostly just sort of petered out. The romance with River Song- designed with David Tennant in mind- turned faintly embarrassing once the asexual Smith was the object of desire. She chased him and he ran away and it was as if Bertie Wooster were being lusted after by one of his aunts. And then there were the uxorious Ponds. Most of what was wrong with the era was Moffat's fault not Smith's. Smith was a comedy Doctor. Moffat's dark, twisty,neo- romantic vision calls for a Pertwee not a Troughton.
The new Doctor is still white and male but at least he's not a stripling- and the Doctor is no longer youthening with each incarnation. Peter Capaldi is a very fine actor- known for comedy, capable of considerable range and I'm hoping for surprises..You wouldn't think it to look at them side by side, but he's the same age Hartnell was when he first created the role. An middle-aged Doctor should mean rather less emotional incontinence than we've had from the last three models. Let's hope so, anyway.
The new Doctor is still white and male but at least he's not a stripling- and the Doctor is no longer youthening with each incarnation. Peter Capaldi is a very fine actor- known for comedy, capable of considerable range and I'm hoping for surprises..You wouldn't think it to look at them side by side, but he's the same age Hartnell was when he first created the role. An middle-aged Doctor should mean rather less emotional incontinence than we've had from the last three models. Let's hope so, anyway.
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Date: 2013-08-05 03:49 pm (UTC)I found Smith very effective when he was allowed to be alien, actually; his first few episodes impressed me strongly on that front. He was any age in his out-of-fashion tweeds, with that quirked face that kept missing handsome by an eyebrow and his screwball springiness of movement. He could be funny and you were never sure what it meant. He wasn't human, he just looked like it if you weren't paying attention. Then Moffat started falling into the pattern of the mysterious companion who is the puzzle the Doctor must solve and the whole focus of the series shifted weirdly—I am all for strong Doctor-companion relationships, and I did like that his with Amy Pond was not a romance, but I watched right up to the end of Series 7 and I still can't figure out the point of Clara. "Born to save the Doctor" isn't a personality, it's a job description. And if that's all the Doctor is thinking about, he's a lot less interesting.
Capaldi is a very fine actor- known for comedy, capable of considerable range and I'm hoping for surprises.
Yes. And better scripts.
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Date: 2013-08-05 05:12 pm (UTC)I don't know why Moffat is allowed to run two shows at once. I think his involvement with Sherlock- which is a brilliant show- have hurt Dr Who.
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Date: 2013-08-05 04:31 pm (UTC)"Emotional incontinence." Yeah, Eccleston had a bit of that and Tennant had a lot and I haven't seen enough Smith to be entirely sure where he's going to go.
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