All The Doctors
Sep. 2nd, 2014 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI'm not going to rate them in order of merit. They're all joint number one as far as I'm concerned. Except for Colin Baker- who comes in second.
William Hartnell: No-one knew the show was going to run for fifty years- and Hartnell- who had spent his career playing toughies (he was Richard Attenborough's side-kick in Brighton Rock) turned in a mannered performance as a crotchety grand-dad. In some ways it was a false start, but it established the Doctor as an odd, ambiguous cove and ensured that- no matter how young and dashing his later incarnations- he was never going to dwindle into a big-chinned space explorer.
Patrick Troughton: Troughton's other TV work has been forgotten (probably wiped) but he was one of the BBC's first big stars. I remember watching him play St Paul and Quilp in Saturday afternoon drama serials. His Doctor was playful, fey, lovable and did a lot of running away.
John Pertwee: Pertwee was a second tier comedy actor- one of a host of radio names who wasn't Sellers or Milligan or Hancock. Dr Who gave him the chance to do something completely different and he later spoke of finding himself in the role. He was the first Doctor who could hold his own in a fight, also the first to have a driving license. I seem to remember watching an episode that consisted largely of Pertwee dashing about in a hovercraft.
Tom Baker: I've no idea where they found Tom Baker. A bona fide eccentric, he threw played himsef into the role and has never done anything memorable since. He remains the definitive Doctor, not the best, but the one the cartoonists reach for when they want to picture the character in its essence.
Peter Davison: Davison turned down the volume and played the Doctor as a quirky, cricket loving, older brotherly type. He's the Doctor it's least easy to caricature- in spite of the leek, the one who best resembles a regular chap. For the earlier actors the role was a pinnacle, for Davison it was just an episode in a long and distinguished TV career.
Colin Baker: Oh dear. Did they cast him for his surname? To be fair Baker planned a character arc which would have seen his Doctor soften and mellow but was cut off before his primebecause he was so crap. Also the costume was a mess.
Sylvester McCoy: Previously known as the chap who stuck ferrets down his trousers on the Ken Campbell Roadshow, McCoy gets a bum rap. He's primarily a clown- but then so was Buster Keaton. If The Curse of Fenric isn't the best story ever I'd like to know what is.
Paul McGann: The first sexy Doctor. He'd have been really good if given a chance, but the attempt to reinvent the character as an action hero in the American style was ill-conceived and quite rightly died the death.
(John Hurt: Oh those sad, sad eyes.)
Christopher Eccleston: The revived show could afford the best. Eccleston was an odd choice and an odd fit but, hey, every planet has a north.
David Tennant; Tennant brought an unprecedented emotional breadth to the role and was indulged- possibly over-indulged by the writers. Put it this way: no other Doctor has also been a star of the RSC and the definitive Hamlet of his generation.
Matt Smith: A relative unknown (though not any longer.) Lightweight but genuinely funny. Also as alien as they come.
Peter Capaldi: Promising...
William Hartnell: No-one knew the show was going to run for fifty years- and Hartnell- who had spent his career playing toughies (he was Richard Attenborough's side-kick in Brighton Rock) turned in a mannered performance as a crotchety grand-dad. In some ways it was a false start, but it established the Doctor as an odd, ambiguous cove and ensured that- no matter how young and dashing his later incarnations- he was never going to dwindle into a big-chinned space explorer.
Patrick Troughton: Troughton's other TV work has been forgotten (probably wiped) but he was one of the BBC's first big stars. I remember watching him play St Paul and Quilp in Saturday afternoon drama serials. His Doctor was playful, fey, lovable and did a lot of running away.
John Pertwee: Pertwee was a second tier comedy actor- one of a host of radio names who wasn't Sellers or Milligan or Hancock. Dr Who gave him the chance to do something completely different and he later spoke of finding himself in the role. He was the first Doctor who could hold his own in a fight, also the first to have a driving license. I seem to remember watching an episode that consisted largely of Pertwee dashing about in a hovercraft.
Tom Baker: I've no idea where they found Tom Baker. A bona fide eccentric, he threw played himsef into the role and has never done anything memorable since. He remains the definitive Doctor, not the best, but the one the cartoonists reach for when they want to picture the character in its essence.
Peter Davison: Davison turned down the volume and played the Doctor as a quirky, cricket loving, older brotherly type. He's the Doctor it's least easy to caricature- in spite of the leek, the one who best resembles a regular chap. For the earlier actors the role was a pinnacle, for Davison it was just an episode in a long and distinguished TV career.
Colin Baker: Oh dear. Did they cast him for his surname? To be fair Baker planned a character arc which would have seen his Doctor soften and mellow but was cut off before his prime
Sylvester McCoy: Previously known as the chap who stuck ferrets down his trousers on the Ken Campbell Roadshow, McCoy gets a bum rap. He's primarily a clown- but then so was Buster Keaton. If The Curse of Fenric isn't the best story ever I'd like to know what is.
Paul McGann: The first sexy Doctor. He'd have been really good if given a chance, but the attempt to reinvent the character as an action hero in the American style was ill-conceived and quite rightly died the death.
(John Hurt: Oh those sad, sad eyes.)
Christopher Eccleston: The revived show could afford the best. Eccleston was an odd choice and an odd fit but, hey, every planet has a north.
David Tennant; Tennant brought an unprecedented emotional breadth to the role and was indulged- possibly over-indulged by the writers. Put it this way: no other Doctor has also been a star of the RSC and the definitive Hamlet of his generation.
Matt Smith: A relative unknown (though not any longer.) Lightweight but genuinely funny. Also as alien as they come.
Peter Capaldi: Promising...
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no subject
Date: 2014-09-02 01:05 pm (UTC)I agree with your assessment of Paul McGann, and apparently so does Big Finish -- he's been in more than 70 of their productions. Not only was the re-casting of the Doctor as an American action hero, ill-advised, it was also a weird British-U.S. hybrid of a conception of what said action film might look like. Kind of "The TARDIS lands in the middle of Die Hard." It didn't help that the actor they cast as The Master was, as one reviewer quipped, out-acted by a CGI snake.
By the way, I don't think Peter Davison wore a leek -- I think it was celery.
Peter Capaldi is shaping up to be my favorite doctor, if they don't give him rubbish scripts and rubbish directing.
EDITED TO ADD: I think I'm enjoying Doctor Who right now for the same reason I'm fascinated by the Silmarillion and its antecedents. What an abyss -- backstory on backstory on backstory. Once you make it through the TV canon, there's all that stuff that Big Finish has done. And I understand that some fan-produced material is pretty wonderful, too. The new "steampunk-ish" opening sequence is based on a fan production.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-02 04:40 pm (UTC)the Doctors. I watched it as a child and watched it with my kids. I'm a little bit obsessed but not to the extent of going outside the TV canon. If I did I'm not sure I'd ever surface again.
You're right about Davison's buttonhole; it was celery.
McGann is a fine actor. I can see why they went down the route they did with him, but it was a big mistake.
Capaldi could turn out to be tremendous- but it does rather depend on what the writers give him to do.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-02 04:44 pm (UTC)Baker isn't a team player, I guess.
Smith never really won me over.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-02 04:01 pm (UTC)I don't think I'm going to change your mind about Colin Baker, but this is my defence of him:
-when he joined the show, the producer and the head writer weren't talking to each other, and they probably weren't communicating well with him. That's just unthinkable in today's TV production world!
-I get the impression the head writer wasn't necessarily fond of the central part of his job that was dealing with contributing writers, either, and I think Baker got stuck with some writing that needed a lot of work.
-he was against the costume and complained/gave constructive ideas to everybody about it, but got nowhere.
-he was the Doctor as the show was changing from a 'show them once, chuck them out serialised episodes' show to a current-TV-era show with character arcs and season arcs. By the end of McCoy's run around Curse of Fenric, it was a show ready for the 90s. During Baker's time the whole thing was rupturing. (His idea to have his character arc was ahead of where the show was at.)
-as
I'm enjoying Capaldi a lot so far, and it seems Moffat has revamped his creative approach a bit this season and I'm liking that too.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-02 04:21 pm (UTC)I also read somewhere that there are rumblings of Moffatt's leaving. I could understand it -- being the showrunner for two runaway hits has to be draining.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-02 04:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-02 05:19 pm (UTC)I loved "The Night of the Doctor." But it was a tiny, self-contained, one-shot story. He doesn't know what to do with seasons.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-02 05:49 pm (UTC)McGann's Doctor.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-02 04:48 pm (UTC)You argue persuasively for Baker, but I just don't think he's that good an actor. His career speaks for itself. What else has he ever done?
no subject
Date: 2014-09-02 06:38 pm (UTC)Perhaps his Big Finish success is success as a niche Doctor Who specialist. Or maybe he's just better as a voice actor?
no subject
Date: 2014-09-02 06:57 pm (UTC)Could be. One of the problems with his tenure was the way he looked- silly clothes, silly hair.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-03 10:24 pm (UTC)"My" Doctor is Pertwee - I was taken in quickly by him, even if I scarcely remember anything of my original viewings, beyond the odd fragment. Even now, I can admire his sheer style (and his RL background was rather impressive, too, extending well into 007 territory), and dedication to the part - that special road-craft-thingy in the show was his own design, which he even funded, too.
Overall, I can't pick out particular favorites, all the same. They've all done quite amazing jobs, in the face of a whirlwind of wretchedly earthly pressures and constraints, back in the "original" era. (Now, much less so, but the BBC remains bizarrely opposed, from what I can see of their output, to producing new sci-fi that isn't Doctor Who. Even Red Dwarf got jettisoned, with its long-standing fan base, let alone The Fades)
I do wish I'd been able to enjoy more of 1 and 2, regardless. I'd enjoy feeling that excitement of a show that was so different that, in the end, it would outlast all its creators, and even become something of an emblem for the corporation, for all its faults.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-02 05:18 pm (UTC)Presumably he was at his best playing roles as alien as himself. Going back to his planet wasn't an option, so he stuck around after the Fourth Doctor wrapped and no one ever gave him anything as interesting again. He still spends a lot of time looking at the stars.
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Date: 2014-09-02 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-02 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-02 06:02 pm (UTC)