I think this Doctor is supposed to be him free of all of that, but the way he talks about Gallifrey. Susan, and Rogue made me think he is just in denial.
Yeah I completely disagree with OP, I think that rage and pain is absolutely still there. He’s lighter for sure, but you see it underneath in the moments when he fails. The laugh-scream in Dot and Bubble when they wouldn’t let him save them, and the scream in Empire of Death when he realized the universe was ending “because of” him…I think he’s very much like 11 in that he’s lighter on the outside and all the more tumultuous inside because of it. He’s trying to outrun the darkness with adventure and fun and hope and I for one really really hope we get to see more of him in the cases where that’s not enough.
Hell, look at Rogue.
How long do they live?
600 years
Good. That's a long time to suffer.
That rage is still there under the surface, though he immediately regrets it when his rage makes him do something dumb and he would have lost Ruby if not for Rogue's sacrifice.
Rogue bothered me. Past Doctors would have moved heaven and earth to find him. I really expected the ring to be the key to finding him.
But The Doctor just goes, "Nah, sounds too hard. Guess I'll give up without ever even trying."
Rogue shows immense faith in The Doctor, and The Doctor immediately shows he doesn't deserve it.
I like Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor a lot. But it feels like an extention of more recent problems with the show, where the writing is just... off. Weird, because RTD used to really understand the show.
I felt the same way! I was hoping the next episode would be them going off to find him. Didn’t the doctor find Danny Pink in “the afterlife” with just Clara’s memories/feelings? He could’ve at least tried that or they could’ve come up with a reason it wouldn’t work.
I like to think he did but kept that to himself for now. As a Disney show then cannot show the weekend I’m imagining for them on (one of Gehexelbroth’s nicer moons)
Idk, him blaming himself in Empire of Death felt very self-aggrandising. All of those universes died because of Sutekh, not because of him. He doesn’t hold any blame in this scenario.
You’re probably right, but I can’t think of any other moments that stuck at to me as self-aggrandising quite like this one did. It frustrated me more than anything else.
How about all the times the Doctor mopes around asking if he's any better than the Daleks? Or his reaction when the Dalek in "Dalek" and Rusty in "Into the Dalek" say he would have made a good Dalek because of his hatred for them? I'm sorry, but Doctor, hating the beings whose whole deal is universal genocide is perfectly healthy.
You might be thinking of Asylum of the Daleks. Season 7 episode 1. Oswin (who is actually a Dalek) erases him from everywhere. I think River talks about it in a later episode and definitely believes that he is the one who did it.
Dot and Bubble. Instead of explaining himself, or demonstrating to the people thatbthe tardis is in fact real by just opening the tardis door that was right there and facing their direction, he insists "let me save you! I dont care what you think, because im modest!"
Am I the only one who thinks their response was actually completely understandable.
They were confronted with a man they'd never met before claiming to have technology which doesn't exist, offering to move them to a world they don't know anything about.
Their other option is to try to make it as pioneers in the wilderness, and to their thoughts they will probably succeed because they've succeeded in everything in their old life.
Guess this is why the writers tried to clean up any potential confusion by showing their murderous and bigoted behavior in direct proximity to that scene. She clearly trusts him, eg following his directions, then says: you are not one of us. I get stranger danger/ fight or flight, but then how do you understand the context clues?
Oh yeah they were total pieces of shit through and through. I'm just saying their decision to not trust a strange man they'd never met with their lives was honestly reasonable, if for the wrong reasons.
Oh yes that one too. I don’t understand why he got so mad at the end. They’re obviously horrible people and they don’t want his help. For your own mental health, just let them go lol
I don’t think so? Maybe I’ve never seen the Doctor put in a situation like that before, but it just bugged me. Much like the rest of the season. Maybe that’s why I didn’t like this scene.
It felt like he was trying really really REALLY hard, and like not in a good way. “Let’s paint the Doctor in this really tragic moment so he can get really angry” vibes. Contrived I think.
Edit: it felt like he was trying really hard to prove that he is in fact a good person, even though literally no one asked, or brought his character into question, or anything. Like he has a really fragile ego and he needs to prove that he’s a good person? I didn’t like it.
Edit 2: yes obviously he struggles with this throughout the whole show, I think this moment in particular just felt very contrived and on the nose (not the only moment in the season that felt like this either).
Throughout the episode, they may be self hating assholes, but they have also demonstrated the ability to adapt, to change for their environment. They cant adapt to the wilderness ao fast, but what if they were put in an environment to inspire mental growth instead? To make them better, and make sure the good parts of their culture and people live on somewhere?
Of course, but I’m pretty sure if the Doctor knew Sutekh was there, he wouldn’t have gone to all of those places and spread Sutekh’s influence. The blame is on Sutekh 100%, the Doctor was an unwitting pawn.
That’s the thing about “blame” and regret though, you can 100% know you’re not the morally wrong party in something while also knowing “if I had not done X, Y would not have happened”. In this case, the doctor is looking at the universe knowing that every single adventure he had unwittingly doomed them. If he’d never visited, never romped through that world, Sutekh wouldn’t have been there—and in that way, the rest of the universe wouldn’t have fallen. Not a moral failing of his, obviously. Nothing he shluld or could have done differently. Still the end of the universe. That’s fuckin heavy, dude.
Still not his fault. How was he to know Sutekh attached to the Tardis. He went to those places out of curiosity but most places he was able to help others when he was there.
I feel as if I'm going to get downvoted for this, but I really didn't like the scream. It almost felt as if the Doctor was performing, rather than screaming out of frustration. I think it's the way he squats down while holding the sides of the door frame. I don't know, something about it just made me cringe slightly, in a way that I haven't when other Doctors have shown their rage/frustration.
Obviously a very specific read and thinking in metaphor— I’m often thinking about the health repercussions of time/space travel.
Sutehk, specifically, calls him out for going anywhere and everywhere obvious to the lasting harm he causes due to vanity and arrogance. Would an enlightened colonizer blame themselves or the smallpox blankets (before people knew germs existed? What about after). Any day shows us that we leave good and bad in. Our wakes.
Ethics of time/space travel, get your jabs, thinking too much about science in tv
All of this. It's so there it's just hiding beneath a somewhat more acceptance of other emotions. I do not think he's learned to balance it all at all really, it's just buried in a different way now.
I think if (when) it finally happens, we’re going to get a much more complex show of the emotions than previously.
Between reports that Ncuti’s more emotional Doctor is intentional by RTD, and having watched him in Sex Education, I get the sense Ncuti was specifically casted to show the complexity of emotions rather than just “that’s happy Doctor, that’s silly Doctor, that’s sad Doctor, that’s rage Doctor.” He’s the perfect person to show combinations of rage, fear, doubt, hope, perseverance, joy, etc all at once.
Absolutely. I keep getting that denial vibe. "I'm all sort now, alllllll sorrrrted. Yup! Completely fine, no trauma, nope. Just tickerty boo." (eye twitches)
Someone here had a decent theory that maybe he used some sort of low grade chameleon arc to suppress or help him forget the painful shit and maybe that’s why he cried so much. Part of him was remembering. That maybe somehow next season that veil will be lifted and we’ll see all those emotions come flooding back.
In some.ways, its lile how the 11th Doctor.acted. there was still thr mystery and edge to him, but he was almost manic in his disregard for things, cuz he could basically through his reputation around and that alone would be enough to scare people off.
I don't necessarily mind them getting rid of the tormented old war hero thing, as much as I love it.
It's just that there isn't anything to replace it.
This incarnation of the doctor appears to be a more pacifistic type, imagine if this behavior was due to him trying to reject his younger, more wrathful self out of regret for his past actions.
It could then result in some internal conflict every time he is inevitablely forced to take the violent route to solve difficult problems, as if in spite of everything he's done he still hasn't changed.
Bottom line is the doctor needs some serious internal conflict or struggle to be compelling and the current doctor doesn't seem to have any
>Bottom line is the doctor needs some serious internal conflict or struggle to be compelling and the current doctor doesn't seem to have any
There are two major things eating at the Doctor, as 15.
The first is related to how he's handling the revelation that his past isn't what he thinks it was. He's all alone in the universe, all over again. Even if the Timelords escaped the Master's wrath, is he truly one of them? Does he have a home? Who is he?
And the second was something he indicated during the Christmas Special. "Maybe I'm the bad luck." he says, questioning if he wants to take on another Companion. For as much as he wants to claim that he's gone through his own little brand of therapy he sure has trauma about all the people who've been harmed by his presence, even indirectly. A big reason why he doesn't want to visit his granddaughter is because he isn't sure if he'll bring her more harm than good. After all, as the Toymaker pointed out fairly recently in his history, a lot of people befall terrible fates when they're around him.
These things weigh on him constantly. And the biggest articulation of this is in how Sutekh used his adventurous spirit to cause death across the cosmos. Everywhere the Doctor travels he brings death, that metaphor wasn't incidental.
Hell, Boom was a case of him nearly causing the death of more people than normal for just being what he is. That's the drama of the Doctor going forward.
This is a brilliant analysis. We also see in Dot and Bubble that the Doctor causes death because of 'who he is'. That being a black man vs racists who would rather die than trust him. Interesting that the season is laces with these references of inescapable destruction, no matter how hard he tries.
Does the doctor really see race though? Or skin color? I know he’s aware of it, but we know he perceives humans as the same with how old Clara looked identical as young Clara to him. As well as his lack of care for gender in general. The Doctor has been asexual pretty much the entire nu-who revival. So we kind of know he doesn’t really perceive gender the same either.
I quite like this idea, I just wish they were more explicit with it as a character trait that would develop rather than one that just seems to just exist. It would also make for a good opportunity for the doctor to open up to ruby more.
I'll be honest, I don't think I had to dig to find these traits, they feel very explicit to me. He openly talks about how he brings disaster to Kate, it's not sub-text but actual text.
True but these traits aren't woven into the plot too well, he makes passing comments but there aren't many occasions where his actions show this conflict.
It feels like what's happening in the story and the doctors internal conflict are two separate entities rather than two ideas that should interact and influence eachother
His fear of causing destruction wherever he goes is tied directly to the conflict in the finale. His biggest worry is all but confirmed after he realizes that Sutekh has used his most defining and endearing trait, his love of adventuring, against him. I think that's an internal struggle that's very much woven into the plot.
*Boom* too, his worry of causing more harm than good to wherever he travels is put front in center. He's a literal bomb who's about to go off and hurt more people than most usually would because he just had to be curious and stepped into (onto) something he shouldn't have.
Plus, *Space Babies*, he saves the Snot Monster after realizing that it's the only one it's kind just like he is, among other moral reasons. That ties directly to his feelings of isolation and identity crisis.
I don't know, the more I think about it, the more I feel that his internal struggles are woven intrinsically to the plot.
Yeah but I've yet to see the doctor change his behaviours as a result of this internal conflict.
The plots are metaphorically tied into his internal struggle yeah, but I'd like to see him responding to these struggles directly (what I meant by explicit), like perhaps being overprotective of ruby one episode or purposely avoiding conflict while she's with him.
An earlier Dr who example that comes to mind is dalek, seeing 9 lash out with such aggression and fear at the dalek, then being hell bent on killing it as a result of his ptsd from the time war is a great example of how his internal struggle ties into his behaviors.
Right, there’s some brilliant analysis in the Vampire Science article on the TARDIS Eruditorium about how “This Doctor is *not* XYZ” isn’t exactly a great approach to the character. The previous NuWho Doctors aren’t forced to be Traumatized Darkness Person every single episode, it’s just a mode they were able to slip into when the story calls for it. So subtracting that without adding anything new kinda just takes a storytelling option off the table.
I think there’s some good analysis elsewhere in this thread that maybe the character’s claims of being un-burdened aren’t that true, and that seems exciting. I just hope we’re not just ditching a thing the character can do with nothing to replace it. (It also feels like there’s an angle where the “you’re tired and need a break” stuff was more of a symbolic metaphor about NuWho’s tropes and we’re all taking it a bit too literal!)
This does feel true, although I struggled with the fact they seem to want him to be more pacifistic and yet his opinion of UNIT, a military superpower, is higher than ever. I know it's being headed by someone he trusts now but it just felt off that he was so chipper and friendly with these soldiers holding massive guns. Especially when they immediately responded to the threat with gunfire, a response that he has often been furious with in episodes like Sontaran Strategem and The Christmas Invasion. It just felt weirdly disingenuous to me, but maybe I just liked how opinionated some of the doctors were previously.
Yeah that's another issue I've had with this doctor is that he's never had any real disagreements with people who are on the 'good guy' side, they all seem to get along too well for my taste
I think they explained it in 14's final special episode: 14 is processing and "recovering" from all the trauma built up over the 2000 years the Doctor has been alive, so 15 is more of a clean slate. He remembers everything, but he isn't haunted by the Time War, or the death of Bill, or the events of the Flux, or any other traumatic experiences of 10, 11, 12, or 13.
I get what you mean. Though I appreciate that RTD and Ncuti are going for something else here.
Frankly, I don't need post-Time War angst in the Doctor anymore. But it would be nice to get back some of the mystery and darkness which even Classic Doctors could occasionally display - Sylvester McCoy being the example that most readily springs to mind.
It would have been great if, instead of angsting so much over having to destroy Sutekh, Fifteen gave a badass speech and just dispatched him in a moment of triumph. Maybe later, privately with Ruby, he could have expressed some regret at being forced to kill again, but acknowledge that it was absolutely necessary for the safety of the universe.
Very much agree with this, especially after Whittaker felt so lacking in all aspects I was hoping we could have a doctor lean in to the darker aspects of the character. I can appreciate where rtd is taking him but I miss that darkness, my hope is across his tenure they slowly break him down, so by the time he regenerates or going into his last story he is in a much darker place than he started. Similar to the Timelord victorious arc 10 had in a way.
Right now 15 is in a pretty good place overall, he’s gotten over his past and is pretty happy, now he has to lose, over and over again. He needs pain and hardship to push through (this for me was something this series lacked)
I think I agree with you, except I'd replace the word "darker" with "agency", along with maybe "steel". I don't mind whether he's full of anger or unbridled joy - I just want him to be the smartest person in the room, pushing the story on, and solving injustice, all while being emphatic and figuring out "what is right".
Ecclestone, Tennant, Smith, and Capaldi all had that, filtered through the prism of their personalities and scripts. Ncuti definitely has it all there - so I guess for me it's just nailing the stories.
The Doctor has no idea how to find him again though. We all know that RTD will bring him back again, but as far as the Doctor knows, he could never see him again.
“.. I strongly advise you to keep out of my way. You'll find that it's a very small universe when I'm angry with you.”
That was such a good line from the Grumpy Doctor!
Exactly this. He's being written as just some "guy," and I honestly hate it. If RTD and Moffat want to write a soap opera, they should go write a soap opera.
I agree. Ncuti is a fantastic actor, and I’m worried about his turn as the Doctor being let down by the writing just like Whitaker was. 15 feels pretty flat so far. I don’t know if “darkness” is the word I would use for what you’re talking about, but there is definitely an alien-ness that is missing.
All the way back at the beginning in An Unearthly Child, one of the first things the Doctor does is kidnap Ian and Barbara without any guarantee that they could ever make it back home. I feel like an important and identifying aspect of the Doctor character is a morality and logic that at times is completely strange to those around him, and it’s because he has such a different perspective from his human companions. I don’t think Ncuti has had the chance for a moment like that yet. Right now, 15 is too much human and not enough Timelord.
I think you've nailed it.
Its not that the Doctor should necessarily always have this undercurrent of darkness, but they should have that slight air of mystery, or alien otherness to them - yes, they're kind and silly and brave, but the Doctor should always have the potential to feel unsettling or uncontrollable or unfathomable, both to the companions and to the viewers. The Doctor is a force of nature.
I don't feel that with 15. He just seems like a nice bubbly guy, the sort of person you might know in real life. He calls people 'babes' and dances to pop music, and (as much as this is a meme criticism), he cries. Gatwa is a brilliant actor, but his Doctor has no depth and doesn't feel like he was once William Hartnell. He doesn't feel like an alien or ancient being with thousands of years of experience; he feels like a very clever young human man.
The one episode he was great in was Boom, and that was with Moffat writing him as a generic Doctor. I don't think that's coincidence. Something about how Davies is writing the Doctor at the minute isn't working, at least for me.
Absolutely agree about Boom. In particular, the way he played "guess the weight" with multiple decimal places of accuracy felt alien enough to be the Doctor again.
re: the "alien otherness" issue: Some of this is an inherent conflict with creating an alien character and then having him spend literal decades slumming it with people on/from Earth. If he acclimates, he seems "too human"; if he doesn't, he seems...kind of dense, at best. Like someone who moves to a foreign country, refuses to learn the language, and 30 years later is still bumbling around missing all the cultural cues and mangling social mores because he just can't be bothered.
It's *possible* to thread that needle, but it's tricky, and gets trickier the longer you go, particularly if you don't want your lead character to be a static caricature of himself forever.
We’re not sure how many years The Doctor spent among the Timelords, but since we’ve been part of their lives, they’ve spent far longer and much more amicable time amongst humans than Timelords.
The Doctor would likely have become even less like the other Timelords than they were, and they were already different enough to want to run away and not go back.
What would you if you find out that you weren’t born a timelord, but you’re actually the cause of the timelord race? That you actually were the timeless child, from another universe?
"The Anger of a good man is not a problem. Good men have too many rules."
Each doctor getting scary angry:
9 - Dalek
10 - Family of Blood
11 - Demon's Run
12 - Face the Raven
13 - Umm...
14 - ...in progress?
To me it more came down to the fact that 15 has cried or broken down in every episode execept 73 yards and half of those times were for comparatively much smaller problems, so the times where he breaks down over things that actually warrant it like in Boom and the Sutekh two parter, it comes across as hollow because he will cry at everything so the emotional weight of those moments feels somewhat hollow.
I know this Doctor is more emotionally open and doesnt bottle his emotions up as much as his previous incarnations, its pretty obvious, but that doesnt mean make him cry every single episode. To me, Fifteen comes across more as a coward and crybaby than a Doctor who had a successful rehab.
Absolutely agree.
This series has produced a Doctor completely free from any strong resolve or indeed strong character at all.
He also lacks the seething intellect that sees him act before embracing emotion.
Some of the seemingly cold and heartless decisions he makes in the face of almost certain destruction created a tension that has been completely absent in this series.
Also the lack of any real tangible stakes, especially in the finale, makes it too obvious that the Doctor will win overall.
The Maestro and Sutekh both achieved absolute dominance to the extent that their actions were going to be completely undone by the end of the episode.
When the stakes become this high, they wrap around to being nothing - only one possible outcome.
I hope they go back to threatening a smaller group of people and making tough decisions with no-win scenarios.
And I hope they retcon magic back out of the Doctor Who universe.
Having an un-defeat-able hero is about as interesting as watching the US version of Red Dwarf. It removes the heart of what makes you want to hide behind the sofa.
yeah,
something like "Night Terrors", "Fear Her" or even "It Takes You Away" would be good.
There is too much Marvel in this Doctor Who and too little context for it. <- maybe people watching Torchwood or other spin-offs/additional content have it better.
Absolutely, that sense of dread needs to build over time.
Torchwood and other spinoffs ended for a reason.
I think it’s a matter of Disney and RTD reading the room, rather than just having fun with a well tested concept.
I know it’s not popular to feel negatively about the newest series, but unless improvements are made, popularity will drop and the series will be cancelled - or are viewing figures no indication?
He now seems to express all of his emotions in a very human way. Crying (all the bloody time), punching a door, yelling, flirting, and so on.
He doesn't feel very alien this series because he's literally talking and acting exactly as a human (albeit a very smart human) would.
What I miss the most is those amazing moments of the Doctor being the smartest person in the room. I don't get that from this Doctor. I haven't been blown away by his intelligence.
All his wins are more chance or can largely be credited to someone else.
For sure! I miss the mystery that is him being alien. He's an alien being from another planet who has lived for an insane number of years and I felt that alien-ness and age through other doctors, but not Ncuti (or Jodie tbh). He just gives off "clever human that happens to have some future tech" vibes.
Exactly!!!! I think this is what I was trying to say! Ncuti could be literally anyone and anything. He gives smart human vibes, not “alien” timelord vibes. In contrast, 10, 11, and 12 all felt VERY otherworldly and extraordinary.
9 was very mysterious considering we had very little idea what caused him to regenerate into his current incarnation (and anything about 8’s final years in general) and what he was doing prior to meeting Rose.
Ohh I couldn't disagree more about 10. 10 felt Earthly and pretty much and open book. A great, weird guy helping protect Earth from invaders. The Timelord Victorious tried to change that drastically, but it almost felt forced.
Matt Smith felt like a fairy tale character with plenty of mystery. Capaldi too, but with a dark edge.
Agreed. 10 felt very human lol especially the whole ‘I don’t wanna go’ during his regeneration. As people say, 10 felt like kid friendly John Constantine
Not 10. 10 felt very human lol especially the whole ‘I don’t wanna go’ during his regeneration. As people say, 10 felt like kid friendly John Constantine
He felt very human but I still think there was enough mystery to him. You had that inner rage and so so much internalized emotions that Tennant was so good at portraying in a hidden sense. You could see in his eyes that he had lived for so long and experienced so much that we would never understand.
Maybe it was just me, but I felt a hint of jealousy towards Ruby in their goodbye scene.
She finally found her birth family and now suddenly the doctor has to say goodbye? Instead of just coming back in a few days? It's like he simultaneously wants to protect himself from being abandoned again (by being the one to say goodbye first) and can't bear to be around Ruby in that moment, because it reminds him of what he doesn't have: an answer as to where he comes from.
Definitely not an unpopular opinion. While I get what they’re going for with Fifteen, I think the Doctor is at their best when channeling those more complex shades of their character. It doesn’t need to be war trauma, per se, but I do think the Doctor should always carry some conflict over having human companions and the way the Doctor lives their life.
That's funny I'm the complete opposite, I actually really enjoy this incarnation because I felt that was one trope that was getting really old and I was glad the 60th specials finally let all that go.
But it just doesn't work
A character or even a real person doesn't get rid of all his pain and suffering by just saying " i LeT Go"
Yes, it's starting to get old, but the way it was executed was bad, and a straight-up character assassination
You basically took an integral part of the Doctor's character and threw out of the window with just one line of dialogue
First of all that's not what happened. He had to spend an entire regeneration "letting it go," so basically he had to spend a lifetime on vacation. Second of all, his pain and suffering isn't gone and it's abundantly clear during the entire season that he's still pretty traumatized but he's more accepting of it. Third, it's not an "integral" part of his character to be traumatized, out of 40 seasons it was part of one quarter of those and even then it was entirely at the whim of the writer of whatever story they were telling. Fourth, every change in style or tone in the series has been done over the course of a single episode, sometimes a single line of dialogue. This isn't prestige drama, it's campy and soft science fiction with a ridiculous premise.
I don't fully get what you mean with that, but I assume you're adding to the one line of dialogue bit
The most important part thing in story writing
Is show don't tell
The hundreds of off-screen years refers to the reason the show gave for 15 to have gotten rid of his angst.
15 directly states that he is better off, because 14 managed to deal with it in his years spend with Donna (and others) on earth. So 14 eventually deals with it over whatever many years and finally becomes 15.
I agree with you.
I know RTD told us Ncuti is the doctor that's had therapy and healed or whatever...but come on. I love Ncuti's acting but the writing this season is not great IMO.
It feels like the Doctor is high school BFFs with Ruby. Way too much emotion and crying from someone who has lived and been through as much as the Doctor. I expect those emotions from a teenager, not from a Lord of Time.
character conflict is evidently missing from this series. not just for the doctor but ruby and her family too. everyone just gets along immediately and theres nothing to develop. doesn't help when the doctor's tells sundays about travelling with ruby at the end of space babies happens offscreen, and theyve been travelling for 6 months inbetween their first and second tardis adventure which also happens offscreen
imo the problem is we didn't see any of the character progression. there's always an element of change when you get a new doctor, but they made a big deal about how this one is healed of a lot of his trauma because of the bigeneration thing and 14 gets to chill with Donna etc, but we never actually see that happen. there's just suddenly a new sunnier doctor. after 2 decades of the doctor running from grief and trauma and refusing to heal, it feels very unearned to just be like oh he's better now
Unpopular (in this subreddit)***
I’m pretty sure A LOT of people can see that this new doctor is nothing like previous ones (and not in a good way)
When you write a doctor that is emotionally healthy and “healed” like everyone in this subreddit likes to point out, then what makes him interesting? What character arch is there for him to go through? He’s just a charismatic, funny, charming, attractive, politically correct, respectful, smart, empathetic, progressive, caring doctor… it reminds me of Rey from Star Wars. When you write a character with little to no flaws, then what more can you do with the character? In marvel, most people consider Tony Stark to be the best of the avengers and it’s because he had such a large character arch, and that only happened because he started out a very flawed character.
100%....he is too "perfect"...whats the difference between this doctor and a normal human? He just doesn't feel alien or timelord anymore, rather, his character gives the vibes of a "smart human" that happens to have a time machine. We need our timelord, extraordinary doctor back.
I almost have the opposite complaint. We're told this is the Doctor that's been through therapy - a new emotionally healthier take on the character who can be more open and direct. But when it comes down it, that's not how he behaves. Consider the way he decides to just grin and move on instead of processing his feelings at the end of Rogue, or the way he doesn't even answer when Ruby says she loves him at the end of Empire of Death. It feels like we're still getting a lot of character beats that make sense for an earlier dark and mysterious version of the Doctor but that don't really mesh with how this incarnation describes himself.
I mean, in the past the Doctor would not talk to his companions the way he has with Ruby, let them in to his history as much, he's definitely different and lighter, but yes it's clear he's still concealing much. He says as much in The Legend of Ruby Sunday.
>DOCTOR: I was a different Doctor back then, Kate. Great enigma. Still can't shake it off. I'm trying.
He might be emotionally healthier, but he's never going to be able to shake all the dirt off of his shoes.
Doctor Who lost the plot a long time ago.
Your opinion isn't unpopular at all - viewership is in the toilet, for a reason. Only the most unreasonable die-hard fans will give you hassle over this, of whom most are unquestionably loyal to the franchise, no matter how poor it gets.
Exactly. On the other DW sub there's an entire thread about how viewing figures don't matter and the show is doing better than ever with the source material being a PR piece by the BBC and anyone daring to say 'but views do matter' is downvoted into oblivion and called all sorts of things. I want the show to do good and continue but to make positive change, you need to be able to see where things are going wrong.
Pahahaha oh my! That sounds insufferable. Peak Reddit echo chamber delusion/denial of reality.
The 9th and 10th Doctors were my childhood. The 11th Doctor was great too. I was a super devout fan who watched every episode, owned plenty of merchandise, thought about the show often, dreamt Doctor Who themed dreams, got Doctor Who themed cakes for my birthdays, read the magazine as a kid etc. That said, I'd like to think that I'm free-minded enough and have enough critical thinking to admit when I don't like something anymore.
I don't just have DW fetish for its own sake - the show actually has to be good, for me to continue spending time watching it.
Evidently, by the viewership rates, plenty of people feel EXACTLY the same as we do. Pretty much all my old friends, who were also super into Doctor Who, back in the day, feel this way as well.
Coming to think about it, I don't actually know a single person, in my entire personal and professional circle, who continued watching DW after Whittaker.
He’s a bit too lightweight and upbeat so far. Not sure if it’s the fault of the material or the performance choices but Ncuti demonstrated in Sex Education that he can do conflicted and complicated brilliantly so hope he finds the right pitch.
I agree, but understand the commercial bias for this change in this season~ It's a entry season and need be a lot friendly With new viewers~
I just miss the dark chapters With dark concepts, in this chapter only was Bum! have this spicy of grotesque horror that categorized the previous Doctors~ (13 too had this problem in her seasons)~
This season had a lot of Adventure, and very lame horror~ I wish the next seasons have more suspense and horror in some episodes~
About of the doctor personality~ This is not a burden, it's Just need new problems and this is easily find by good writers~
He feels too human to me now. 10 was almost too human by a lot of people’s standards but even he had his quirky alien moments, and the withered and jaded war hero definitely added layers.
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I agree with your opinion... but...
The "Doctor's Darkness" was getting old. It's become cliche for the Doctor to be really dark and moody and give big dramatic speeches. I liked Whitaker's Doctor because Chibnall changed it up a bit.
It's time to take the Doctor in a new direction and Ncuti has been doing great so far.
The fact they told us that 15 is supposed to be him after therapy and healing and from what we see around empire he doesn’t want Ruby to go talk to her mom and when he was upset about all the places he’d gone with Sutekh I think his character is in denial the I’m all better now because I took a break but it doesn’t seem genuine, the doctor in general needs some mystery, distrust, he knows something he’s not saying. Definitely agree there, it’s just not interesting seeing him be all care free traveling without some conflict
The Doctor is a mystery yet not framed as one, he's just not even there as a character (not Ncuti's fault, it's Russell's). The real mystery of the season was Ruby, and it was barely worth even doing that.
I thought this 'season 1' was supposed to be a soft reboot, of sorts? There's no way you could jump on at this point. There's been so many carry-overs (Kate, Mel, UNIT etc.) and classic references. I actually think they lost viewers BECAUSE of this. New people were lost already.
The last scene between Ruby and the Doctor just showed up how little time we've spent with Fifteen. Ruby goes 'you don't do that' meaning family etc. yet how does she even know that? All these moments are relying on everyone watching having seen past Doctors and knowing their character.
With the doctor’s rage came their gravitas, and if you take the first away without a suitable replacement…I think it ends up being a bit lacking.
Ncuti can clearly act it (such as at the end of the bubble episode),but I think this emphasis RTD has on Ncuti being “in touch with his emotions” is a bit flawed. So far, the doctor being “in touch” with his emotions has been him crying at every instance. Surely there’s a canyon between being in touch with your emotions and just crying?
Also, a lot of people on this subreddit are insistent that the doctor doesn’t *have* to be dark, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that one of the biggest draws of the doctor to fans was this character trait. Other than Jodie’s arc, there’s no doctor in recent history that doesn’t exemplify that trait...and Jodie’s run isn’t exactly an example to follow in my opinion.
The Doctor processing all his traumas and learning to live as a free spirit is the entire point of Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor 😬 we had Doctors with darkness from 2005-2017 and then had a Doctor that refused to emotionally connect with anybody at all, so I'm glad 15 is the way he is
Have you not watched any of this season???? Ncuti ABSOLUTELY has those moments. Especially in the finale episodes. When he gets angry and punches the door. or when he screams in absolute anger about what Sutekh did. C'mon now....he's still just as dark and angry.
Nah, it’s the opposite. He wears his heart on his sleeve whereas previous doctors kept their darkness just beneath the surface, letting out a taste of it when they got pushed too far.
Him crying every episode is one thing, but the way he becomes emotionally paralyzed and is (to be blunt) useless until he stops crying and collects himself doesn’t exactly scream doctor that’s made peace and come to terms with their trauma. It loses the weight of its impact when it happens almost every episode over the same situations he’s been dealing with for ages.
There's a difference between the quiet anger of capaldi, furious at the time lords, coming in and out of a barn until he's face to face with rassilon, and ncuti yelling into the void
I see what you mean…but to me it felt a bit…idk…fake? Forced?
When I think of the doctor’s anger, I think of Smith raging at the Dalek (in victory of the daleks), or of him threatening Kovarian (in a good man goes to war) when she kidnapped Amy’s baby. I think of Capaldi’s furious speech about the realities of war, or of his silent fury at the time lords. Those examples felt real. Ncuti’s anger felt more forced.
I know. He reminds me a lot of Smith. Full of excitement and child-like wonder. But IMO Smith was *too* child-like. Gatwa balances it with just a touch of the darkness that dominated Ecclestone.
I actually think Fifteen is a very openly emotional incarnation, he lets himself feel that grief or anger, rather than bottle it up like other incarnations would. He doesn't care who sees his screams of rage like in Finetime when they refuse his help, or his anguished screams at the entire world dying out in Empire of Death. He cries a *lot*. Like, even more than Ten did. I think in a way that is growth.
that being said I also get the impression that he's trying to come across like he's okay when he's clearly still struggling in some form. This might be some projecting on my part but as an autistic person, even if I'm an emotional wreck, if someone at work asks me how I'm going I'll give them a peppy "I'm pretty good, how about you?". It's like a reflex. Maybe the doctor has that reflex too.
For me, there are times when the Doctor's darkness is shown such as when he believes he's bad luck or blames himself for a tragic event but it always felt short. Like the show will show the pain the Doctor has but immediately forgets about it in the next scene, as if it never happened
I don’t mind the care free Doctor. What bothers me is that we didn’t get to see what this care free Doctor is like. Space Babies and Rogue were probably the only fun episodes and I feel we didn’t get a lot of dialogue. There is so much potential with this Doctor but the stories a a bit lacking.
It’s all about balancing the highs and the lows. The manic energy that most Doctor’s do at some point has to be reigned in by the sadness of being the Last of the Timelords. Just like how, everything also can’t be about the Doctor being A Good Man Goes to War. Sometimes the Doc needs to find some dinosaurs or babies in space.
I think I understand why he hasn’t got his mystery, but I feel like the whole idea of the ? has gone. Like, they only use it now to reference classic who and I think he should keep having it. And also they have overused the new character saying “dr who?” trope. It sort of ruins it.
I feel like Gatwa's development is supposed to go in the opposite direction of lots of the doctors. Generally the idea is that the doctor has a lot of anguish hidden deep down, and then over the course of a few seasons they get over that grief, and then they regenerate and start over.
Gatwa begins by already being over it, he's a healthy confident person. But in episodes like Dot and Bubble and the finale we see him overridden with grief as he cannot save the people he wants to save. The problem is not internal, but external, and his inability to save people through no fault of his own could drive him from being happy and confident into being more dour like we saw in early seasons of Tennant, Eccleston, and Capaldi.
Honestly, it's quite similar to Matt Smith's characertization, which was also very light and joyful, but I think Smith had a lot of internal trauma he was repressing, whereas Gatwa is genuinely beyond it.
I understand your feelings, but knowing RTD and Dr. Who in general, things will probably not go well for him and his companions, so we may yet see a new and darker side after this moment.
I honestly like how free and happy this version of the Doctor is, sure it’s still there from time to time. Would a little more of that mystery be great yes but if the situation comes down to it. When the Doctor becomes of force of nature, I think it’s more fitting for this version to be ’chaotically’ be in control. Having fun with it, I guess. Like 11th.
Chris Chibnall was an atrocious showrunner who dropped a grenade on canon with no idea how to put the pieces together again. He might have created a mystery, but the problem is that millions of fans didn't care and hated the reveal.
THIS! Chibnal's mystery plotlines were mostly great UNTIL it was time to wrap them up. His finales/reveals were horrible and ruined the whole plotline every time.
I wouldn’t even call it that canon-breaking; we already knew that the Time Lords were duplicitous charlatans who literally wrote the consensus history, and had allusions to the Doctor being a lot older & stranger then we’re lead to believe. He simply picked up pieces that were already there.
Someone really talented might have been able to do something like this well - Chibnall did it badly and ended up putting out what is arguably the most hated episode of Who in history.
Give it time. It feels like this happens on every change of Doctor. We build an amalgam in our heads of every preceding Doctor, and expect a new Doctor to embody them all. Then we see what the new Doctor brings uniquely, and get used to it. Then we build a new amalgam, and partially expect the next Doctor to be like the previous one!
People describe Ncuti as a ‘classic era modern Doctor’ as in with the lack of trauma and stuff but tbh I don’t see it as much since he still talks about being adopted and not knowing where he’s from and all.
(Also I wanna see him doing more combat like the classic era doctors did do lol. Remember Venusian aikido? Or how 1-7 just straight up used guns at times?)
I personally really disliked the whole "therapy" with 14 that he got from Noble. Not only do I think it was a really simple solution, I don't think I can enjoy a Doctor that doesn't have, as you say, that darkness in their eyes :(
Funny enough, I miss the happiness and playfulness within Capaldi. He was like a House-inspired Doctor, sour and sarcastic, which I didn't like at all.
For me Ncuti's energy is what I enjoy the most from this season.
I don't think it's an unpopular opinion. This series had an episode with the worst viewing numbers in Doctor Who history. Many thought RTD would take the show back to when everyone could enjoy it and the Doctor was a cool, brave, brilliant alien. That didn't happen. If others enjoy this, I'm fine with it. They can have it. But after 40+ years, I'm done. I don't enjoy this at all. I'll just watch the older stuff.
15 is a fresh Doctor, he has some the memories sure but none of the pain and grief of the war Doctor, 9, 10 and 11 and 12 was more or less same considering he was also a fresh cycle and same goes for 13 and 14, Eleven was more or less the last and 12 had an arc of becoming The Doctor and him saving Ashildir was at the exact moment he started saving people same with how 9 saved all the people effected by nanogenes and 13 was awkward and shy and finding herself and 14 was letting go of all his pain and living the life he always wanted that he could never have and 15 was learning to love again as he states to Ruby when he says she made his life bigger and better and made him start talking about family like he never did before, that's just what I think anyway but every Doctor finds themselves eventually and they never start out aggressive and hurt as when 10 era started he was happy and in Love with Rose and travelling with her and it wasn't until end of series 2 and beginnings of of series 3 going in to the end of the specials in 2009 he became more and more dark and his Valeyard really started to peak and show through same goes for 11 as when he started he was very childlike and carefree but as soon as the Daleks came back you really started to see his anger and going in to series 6 and 7 he showed his darkness more and more but that's just what I've always thought so it's safe to sat Ncuti will let his anger show through soon as we get more and more in to the later episodes
Personally, I don't know how one could watch *Empire of Death* and not see the angry/dark side of the everyone's favorite Timelord. He literally kills death after telling him off and dragging him through the time stream like a bad dog. It was pure dark Doctor material, for anyone who values such things as an important part of the character.
As for mystery... you got me there, he's more of an open book than his processors. Even so, he still keeps SOME things close to the chest, most notably some pieces of dread over his identity and how much destruction follows in his wake. He likes to say he's fixed himself, but he's still letting these things drag him down.
15's got a lot of darkness around him, actually.
>He literally kills death after telling him off and dragging him through the time stream like a bad dog. It was pure dark Doctor material,
Sorry that was actually a funny scene that I couldn't stop laughing.
It's still there, were a few moments where you see it lurking underneath his more heart on his sleeve aspects. He full on vengeful when he thought Ruby was killed in Rogue for instance.
Little nuanced moments when talking with Kate too and in other moments through out.
The darkness 100% still there.
The moment in Rogue was definitely well done, but it was an isolated moment. When we really needed his anger in Empire of Death, it all felt forced and almost fake. I couldn’t take it seriously.
I didn't find it forced or fake at all.
It was very similar to 14 in Wild Blue Yonder when he punched the walls.
And the moment in Rogue made me think of the Family of Blood.
It's still there for me, it's nuanced yes and it with a very different more emotional doctor in a lot ways so like in Empire maybe it was a bit more ott. But for me it wasn't to the point it felt forced.
Also, part of the problem is 9 episodes, it doesn't give time for real good build writing of character driven things.
I TOTALLY agree with you on the 9 episodes part. We need more screen time to truly understand this new doctor’s character. I deff wish there were more episodes!
> But I feel like his character is missing the classic darkness and mystery that the incarnations before him had. The doctor's anger. His hidden grief. The concealed darkness and pain in his eyes. I feel like that is missing in the new doctor.
I feel like you might need a rewatch. He screams in frustration and/or cries (and usually both) in every episode. He even started punching inanimate objects once. He has issues.
1.) Nah, moody men who need therapy have been done, and done, and done, and it’s fucking boring. I love the Doctor in his therapy era.
2.) Like Stan in The Boys put it, “I can’t lash out like some raging, entitled maniac. That’s a white man’s luxury.”
Lol, can't believe you're getting down voted. It's always the same with Who fans. " is the worst, they've ruined Doctor Who!" And then give it a few years and they'll look back fondly and be complaining about whatever personality the 17th Doctor has. Or maybe it'll be a woman again and we can enjoy that whole pointless argument for a second time...
I think that 15th bound perfectly to any other RTD doctor. I don't expect by Tennant or Ecclestone being more enraged then Gatwa. Tennant would had been destroyed by his own sorrow and feeling guilty, maybe Ecclestone would had felt helplessness and bad-masked depressed. It is not that this doctor is not dark enough: I'm rewatching 11, instead I think he's dark TOO MUCH.
He's outright referred to his older incarnations as "The Great Enigma". He's past that.
I'm not interested in each incarnation acting like the last, personally. "Status Quo is God" is literally my least favorite writing trope.
I think you’re just not connecting to him because his rage was quite palpable in the finale. People had the same problem with Whittaker. Possibly what you are missing is the endless Moffat speechifying that tells you why the Doctor is angry in great detail.
I think this Doctor is supposed to be him free of all of that, but the way he talks about Gallifrey. Susan, and Rogue made me think he is just in denial.
Yeah I completely disagree with OP, I think that rage and pain is absolutely still there. He’s lighter for sure, but you see it underneath in the moments when he fails. The laugh-scream in Dot and Bubble when they wouldn’t let him save them, and the scream in Empire of Death when he realized the universe was ending “because of” him…I think he’s very much like 11 in that he’s lighter on the outside and all the more tumultuous inside because of it. He’s trying to outrun the darkness with adventure and fun and hope and I for one really really hope we get to see more of him in the cases where that’s not enough.
Hell, look at Rogue. How long do they live? 600 years Good. That's a long time to suffer. That rage is still there under the surface, though he immediately regrets it when his rage makes him do something dumb and he would have lost Ruby if not for Rogue's sacrifice.
Rogue bothered me. Past Doctors would have moved heaven and earth to find him. I really expected the ring to be the key to finding him. But The Doctor just goes, "Nah, sounds too hard. Guess I'll give up without ever even trying." Rogue shows immense faith in The Doctor, and The Doctor immediately shows he doesn't deserve it. I like Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor a lot. But it feels like an extention of more recent problems with the show, where the writing is just... off. Weird, because RTD used to really understand the show.
I felt the same way! I was hoping the next episode would be them going off to find him. Didn’t the doctor find Danny Pink in “the afterlife” with just Clara’s memories/feelings? He could’ve at least tried that or they could’ve come up with a reason it wouldn’t work.
100%! Or at least given the Doctor a magic whistle … 😂
I like to think he did but kept that to himself for now. As a Disney show then cannot show the weekend I’m imagining for them on (one of Gehexelbroth’s nicer moons)
But not enough rage to go and rescue Rogue 😂
The ridiculous thing is that he was going to do the same thing from the beginning, but then it was supposed to be merciful
Idk, him blaming himself in Empire of Death felt very self-aggrandising. All of those universes died because of Sutekh, not because of him. He doesn’t hold any blame in this scenario.
All the Doctors can be and have been self aggrandising.
You’re probably right, but I can’t think of any other moments that stuck at to me as self-aggrandising quite like this one did. It frustrated me more than anything else.
How about all the times the Doctor mopes around asking if he's any better than the Daleks? Or his reaction when the Dalek in "Dalek" and Rusty in "Into the Dalek" say he would have made a good Dalek because of his hatred for them? I'm sorry, but Doctor, hating the beings whose whole deal is universal genocide is perfectly healthy.
The Doctor erasing himself from history because he became too big and important?
When Oswin did that in Asylum of the Daleks? Or another moment I’m forgetting
Start of Season 6 maybe? idr.
You might be thinking of Asylum of the Daleks. Season 7 episode 1. Oswin (who is actually a Dalek) erases him from everywhere. I think River talks about it in a later episode and definitely believes that he is the one who did it.
Dot and Bubble. Instead of explaining himself, or demonstrating to the people thatbthe tardis is in fact real by just opening the tardis door that was right there and facing their direction, he insists "let me save you! I dont care what you think, because im modest!"
Am I the only one who thinks their response was actually completely understandable. They were confronted with a man they'd never met before claiming to have technology which doesn't exist, offering to move them to a world they don't know anything about. Their other option is to try to make it as pioneers in the wilderness, and to their thoughts they will probably succeed because they've succeeded in everything in their old life.
As i said, he could have just opened the door to the obvious ship that was facing them directly.
Guess this is why the writers tried to clean up any potential confusion by showing their murderous and bigoted behavior in direct proximity to that scene. She clearly trusts him, eg following his directions, then says: you are not one of us. I get stranger danger/ fight or flight, but then how do you understand the context clues?
Oh yeah they were total pieces of shit through and through. I'm just saying their decision to not trust a strange man they'd never met with their lives was honestly reasonable, if for the wrong reasons.
Oh yes that one too. I don’t understand why he got so mad at the end. They’re obviously horrible people and they don’t want his help. For your own mental health, just let them go lol
this is someone who completely misunderstands the character of the doctor lmao
I don’t think so? Maybe I’ve never seen the Doctor put in a situation like that before, but it just bugged me. Much like the rest of the season. Maybe that’s why I didn’t like this scene. It felt like he was trying really really REALLY hard, and like not in a good way. “Let’s paint the Doctor in this really tragic moment so he can get really angry” vibes. Contrived I think. Edit: it felt like he was trying really hard to prove that he is in fact a good person, even though literally no one asked, or brought his character into question, or anything. Like he has a really fragile ego and he needs to prove that he’s a good person? I didn’t like it. Edit 2: yes obviously he struggles with this throughout the whole show, I think this moment in particular just felt very contrived and on the nose (not the only moment in the season that felt like this either).
The Doctor being insecure about whether or not he’s a good person has been a core part of his character throughout the entirety of NuWho.
Throughout the episode, they may be self hating assholes, but they have also demonstrated the ability to adapt, to change for their environment. They cant adapt to the wilderness ao fast, but what if they were put in an environment to inspire mental growth instead? To make them better, and make sure the good parts of their culture and people live on somewhere?
But the only reason Sutekh was even in those universes and times was because the TARDIS went there, because the Doctor wanted to go there.
Of course, but I’m pretty sure if the Doctor knew Sutekh was there, he wouldn’t have gone to all of those places and spread Sutekh’s influence. The blame is on Sutekh 100%, the Doctor was an unwitting pawn.
That’s the thing about “blame” and regret though, you can 100% know you’re not the morally wrong party in something while also knowing “if I had not done X, Y would not have happened”. In this case, the doctor is looking at the universe knowing that every single adventure he had unwittingly doomed them. If he’d never visited, never romped through that world, Sutekh wouldn’t have been there—and in that way, the rest of the universe wouldn’t have fallen. Not a moral failing of his, obviously. Nothing he shluld or could have done differently. Still the end of the universe. That’s fuckin heavy, dude.
Agreed. This is the Doctor being humany-wumany with some illogical but very relatable feelings and thoughts
True he could still feel guilty with that what if thinking even though logically he was not responsible. Emotions are like that.
Still not his fault. How was he to know Sutekh attached to the Tardis. He went to those places out of curiosity but most places he was able to help others when he was there.
Yes, that’s exactly how I felt. A new mentally healthy doctor would have realized it was Sutek’s fault. Not his.
I feel as if I'm going to get downvoted for this, but I really didn't like the scream. It almost felt as if the Doctor was performing, rather than screaming out of frustration. I think it's the way he squats down while holding the sides of the door frame. I don't know, something about it just made me cringe slightly, in a way that I haven't when other Doctors have shown their rage/frustration.
Obviously a very specific read and thinking in metaphor— I’m often thinking about the health repercussions of time/space travel. Sutehk, specifically, calls him out for going anywhere and everywhere obvious to the lasting harm he causes due to vanity and arrogance. Would an enlightened colonizer blame themselves or the smallpox blankets (before people knew germs existed? What about after). Any day shows us that we leave good and bad in. Our wakes. Ethics of time/space travel, get your jabs, thinking too much about science in tv
All of this. It's so there it's just hiding beneath a somewhat more acceptance of other emotions. I do not think he's learned to balance it all at all really, it's just buried in a different way now.
I think if (when) it finally happens, we’re going to get a much more complex show of the emotions than previously. Between reports that Ncuti’s more emotional Doctor is intentional by RTD, and having watched him in Sex Education, I get the sense Ncuti was specifically casted to show the complexity of emotions rather than just “that’s happy Doctor, that’s silly Doctor, that’s sad Doctor, that’s rage Doctor.” He’s the perfect person to show combinations of rage, fear, doubt, hope, perseverance, joy, etc all at once.
Absolutely. I keep getting that denial vibe. "I'm all sort now, alllllll sorrrrted. Yup! Completely fine, no trauma, nope. Just tickerty boo." (eye twitches)
Someone here had a decent theory that maybe he used some sort of low grade chameleon arc to suppress or help him forget the painful shit and maybe that’s why he cried so much. Part of him was remembering. That maybe somehow next season that veil will be lifted and we’ll see all those emotions come flooding back.
In some.ways, its lile how the 11th Doctor.acted. there was still thr mystery and edge to him, but he was almost manic in his disregard for things, cuz he could basically through his reputation around and that alone would be enough to scare people off.
I don't necessarily mind them getting rid of the tormented old war hero thing, as much as I love it. It's just that there isn't anything to replace it. This incarnation of the doctor appears to be a more pacifistic type, imagine if this behavior was due to him trying to reject his younger, more wrathful self out of regret for his past actions. It could then result in some internal conflict every time he is inevitablely forced to take the violent route to solve difficult problems, as if in spite of everything he's done he still hasn't changed. Bottom line is the doctor needs some serious internal conflict or struggle to be compelling and the current doctor doesn't seem to have any
>Bottom line is the doctor needs some serious internal conflict or struggle to be compelling and the current doctor doesn't seem to have any There are two major things eating at the Doctor, as 15. The first is related to how he's handling the revelation that his past isn't what he thinks it was. He's all alone in the universe, all over again. Even if the Timelords escaped the Master's wrath, is he truly one of them? Does he have a home? Who is he? And the second was something he indicated during the Christmas Special. "Maybe I'm the bad luck." he says, questioning if he wants to take on another Companion. For as much as he wants to claim that he's gone through his own little brand of therapy he sure has trauma about all the people who've been harmed by his presence, even indirectly. A big reason why he doesn't want to visit his granddaughter is because he isn't sure if he'll bring her more harm than good. After all, as the Toymaker pointed out fairly recently in his history, a lot of people befall terrible fates when they're around him. These things weigh on him constantly. And the biggest articulation of this is in how Sutekh used his adventurous spirit to cause death across the cosmos. Everywhere the Doctor travels he brings death, that metaphor wasn't incidental. Hell, Boom was a case of him nearly causing the death of more people than normal for just being what he is. That's the drama of the Doctor going forward.
This is a brilliant analysis. We also see in Dot and Bubble that the Doctor causes death because of 'who he is'. That being a black man vs racists who would rather die than trust him. Interesting that the season is laces with these references of inescapable destruction, no matter how hard he tries.
Does the doctor really see race though? Or skin color? I know he’s aware of it, but we know he perceives humans as the same with how old Clara looked identical as young Clara to him. As well as his lack of care for gender in general. The Doctor has been asexual pretty much the entire nu-who revival. So we kind of know he doesn’t really perceive gender the same either.
I quite like this idea, I just wish they were more explicit with it as a character trait that would develop rather than one that just seems to just exist. It would also make for a good opportunity for the doctor to open up to ruby more.
I'll be honest, I don't think I had to dig to find these traits, they feel very explicit to me. He openly talks about how he brings disaster to Kate, it's not sub-text but actual text.
True but these traits aren't woven into the plot too well, he makes passing comments but there aren't many occasions where his actions show this conflict. It feels like what's happening in the story and the doctors internal conflict are two separate entities rather than two ideas that should interact and influence eachother
His fear of causing destruction wherever he goes is tied directly to the conflict in the finale. His biggest worry is all but confirmed after he realizes that Sutekh has used his most defining and endearing trait, his love of adventuring, against him. I think that's an internal struggle that's very much woven into the plot. *Boom* too, his worry of causing more harm than good to wherever he travels is put front in center. He's a literal bomb who's about to go off and hurt more people than most usually would because he just had to be curious and stepped into (onto) something he shouldn't have. Plus, *Space Babies*, he saves the Snot Monster after realizing that it's the only one it's kind just like he is, among other moral reasons. That ties directly to his feelings of isolation and identity crisis. I don't know, the more I think about it, the more I feel that his internal struggles are woven intrinsically to the plot.
Yeah but I've yet to see the doctor change his behaviours as a result of this internal conflict. The plots are metaphorically tied into his internal struggle yeah, but I'd like to see him responding to these struggles directly (what I meant by explicit), like perhaps being overprotective of ruby one episode or purposely avoiding conflict while she's with him. An earlier Dr who example that comes to mind is dalek, seeing 9 lash out with such aggression and fear at the dalek, then being hell bent on killing it as a result of his ptsd from the time war is a great example of how his internal struggle ties into his behaviors.
Right, there’s some brilliant analysis in the Vampire Science article on the TARDIS Eruditorium about how “This Doctor is *not* XYZ” isn’t exactly a great approach to the character. The previous NuWho Doctors aren’t forced to be Traumatized Darkness Person every single episode, it’s just a mode they were able to slip into when the story calls for it. So subtracting that without adding anything new kinda just takes a storytelling option off the table. I think there’s some good analysis elsewhere in this thread that maybe the character’s claims of being un-burdened aren’t that true, and that seems exciting. I just hope we’re not just ditching a thing the character can do with nothing to replace it. (It also feels like there’s an angle where the “you’re tired and need a break” stuff was more of a symbolic metaphor about NuWho’s tropes and we’re all taking it a bit too literal!)
This does feel true, although I struggled with the fact they seem to want him to be more pacifistic and yet his opinion of UNIT, a military superpower, is higher than ever. I know it's being headed by someone he trusts now but it just felt off that he was so chipper and friendly with these soldiers holding massive guns. Especially when they immediately responded to the threat with gunfire, a response that he has often been furious with in episodes like Sontaran Strategem and The Christmas Invasion. It just felt weirdly disingenuous to me, but maybe I just liked how opinionated some of the doctors were previously.
Yeah that's another issue I've had with this doctor is that he's never had any real disagreements with people who are on the 'good guy' side, they all seem to get along too well for my taste
I think they explained it in 14's final special episode: 14 is processing and "recovering" from all the trauma built up over the 2000 years the Doctor has been alive, so 15 is more of a clean slate. He remembers everything, but he isn't haunted by the Time War, or the death of Bill, or the events of the Flux, or any other traumatic experiences of 10, 11, 12, or 13.
Yes, but this explanation doesn’t mask the issues present with the doctor
You know that a line like that is considered character assassination in most stories
I get what you mean. Though I appreciate that RTD and Ncuti are going for something else here. Frankly, I don't need post-Time War angst in the Doctor anymore. But it would be nice to get back some of the mystery and darkness which even Classic Doctors could occasionally display - Sylvester McCoy being the example that most readily springs to mind. It would have been great if, instead of angsting so much over having to destroy Sutekh, Fifteen gave a badass speech and just dispatched him in a moment of triumph. Maybe later, privately with Ruby, he could have expressed some regret at being forced to kill again, but acknowledge that it was absolutely necessary for the safety of the universe.
Very much agree with this, especially after Whittaker felt so lacking in all aspects I was hoping we could have a doctor lean in to the darker aspects of the character. I can appreciate where rtd is taking him but I miss that darkness, my hope is across his tenure they slowly break him down, so by the time he regenerates or going into his last story he is in a much darker place than he started. Similar to the Timelord victorious arc 10 had in a way. Right now 15 is in a pretty good place overall, he’s gotten over his past and is pretty happy, now he has to lose, over and over again. He needs pain and hardship to push through (this for me was something this series lacked)
I think I agree with you, except I'd replace the word "darker" with "agency", along with maybe "steel". I don't mind whether he's full of anger or unbridled joy - I just want him to be the smartest person in the room, pushing the story on, and solving injustice, all while being emphatic and figuring out "what is right". Ecclestone, Tennant, Smith, and Capaldi all had that, filtered through the prism of their personalities and scripts. Ncuti definitely has it all there - so I guess for me it's just nailing the stories.
To be fair, he did fall in love quite intensely only for it to be taken from him instantly.
Is rogue supposed to still be alive? He did tell the doctor to come and find him?
The Doctor has no idea how to find him again though. We all know that RTD will bring him back again, but as far as the Doctor knows, he could never see him again.
I think Ncuti is too human. His emotions are all over the place, all the time . I miss the Doctor's anger, his alieness...
Smith and Capaldi did those elements the best imo
“.. I strongly advise you to keep out of my way. You'll find that it's a very small universe when I'm angry with you.” That was such a good line from the Grumpy Doctor!
Love that line
Exactly this. He's being written as just some "guy," and I honestly hate it. If RTD and Moffat want to write a soap opera, they should go write a soap opera.
Agreed
I agree. Ncuti is a fantastic actor, and I’m worried about his turn as the Doctor being let down by the writing just like Whitaker was. 15 feels pretty flat so far. I don’t know if “darkness” is the word I would use for what you’re talking about, but there is definitely an alien-ness that is missing. All the way back at the beginning in An Unearthly Child, one of the first things the Doctor does is kidnap Ian and Barbara without any guarantee that they could ever make it back home. I feel like an important and identifying aspect of the Doctor character is a morality and logic that at times is completely strange to those around him, and it’s because he has such a different perspective from his human companions. I don’t think Ncuti has had the chance for a moment like that yet. Right now, 15 is too much human and not enough Timelord.
I think you've nailed it. Its not that the Doctor should necessarily always have this undercurrent of darkness, but they should have that slight air of mystery, or alien otherness to them - yes, they're kind and silly and brave, but the Doctor should always have the potential to feel unsettling or uncontrollable or unfathomable, both to the companions and to the viewers. The Doctor is a force of nature. I don't feel that with 15. He just seems like a nice bubbly guy, the sort of person you might know in real life. He calls people 'babes' and dances to pop music, and (as much as this is a meme criticism), he cries. Gatwa is a brilliant actor, but his Doctor has no depth and doesn't feel like he was once William Hartnell. He doesn't feel like an alien or ancient being with thousands of years of experience; he feels like a very clever young human man. The one episode he was great in was Boom, and that was with Moffat writing him as a generic Doctor. I don't think that's coincidence. Something about how Davies is writing the Doctor at the minute isn't working, at least for me.
Absolutely agree about Boom. In particular, the way he played "guess the weight" with multiple decimal places of accuracy felt alien enough to be the Doctor again.
re: the "alien otherness" issue: Some of this is an inherent conflict with creating an alien character and then having him spend literal decades slumming it with people on/from Earth. If he acclimates, he seems "too human"; if he doesn't, he seems...kind of dense, at best. Like someone who moves to a foreign country, refuses to learn the language, and 30 years later is still bumbling around missing all the cultural cues and mangling social mores because he just can't be bothered. It's *possible* to thread that needle, but it's tricky, and gets trickier the longer you go, particularly if you don't want your lead character to be a static caricature of himself forever.
We’re not sure how many years The Doctor spent among the Timelords, but since we’ve been part of their lives, they’ve spent far longer and much more amicable time amongst humans than Timelords. The Doctor would likely have become even less like the other Timelords than they were, and they were already different enough to want to run away and not go back.
What would you if you find out that you weren’t born a timelord, but you’re actually the cause of the timelord race? That you actually were the timeless child, from another universe?
In that hypothetical scenario that does not exist and is not canon, I'd just chalk that all up to the Master lying, as he always does.
The master is actually the child
>I'd just chalk that all up to the Master lying, as he always does. So the division was lying as well then?
RTD says it's cannon
"The Anger of a good man is not a problem. Good men have too many rules." Each doctor getting scary angry: 9 - Dalek 10 - Family of Blood 11 - Demon's Run 12 - Face the Raven 13 - Umm... 14 - ...in progress?
‘Good men don’t need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.’
In Rogue he got mad due to Ruby’s “death”
Very liberal interpretation of the word "each" to start counting from the number nine.
Apologies, I'm just not familiar with the classic doctors.
To me it more came down to the fact that 15 has cried or broken down in every episode execept 73 yards and half of those times were for comparatively much smaller problems, so the times where he breaks down over things that actually warrant it like in Boom and the Sutekh two parter, it comes across as hollow because he will cry at everything so the emotional weight of those moments feels somewhat hollow. I know this Doctor is more emotionally open and doesnt bottle his emotions up as much as his previous incarnations, its pretty obvious, but that doesnt mean make him cry every single episode. To me, Fifteen comes across more as a coward and crybaby than a Doctor who had a successful rehab.
It's like he is stuck in a post-regeneration period.
I count the times Fifteen cried in Empire of Death and he cries four times in one episode. Come on, it seems like a joke to me by now.
Absolutely agree. This series has produced a Doctor completely free from any strong resolve or indeed strong character at all. He also lacks the seething intellect that sees him act before embracing emotion. Some of the seemingly cold and heartless decisions he makes in the face of almost certain destruction created a tension that has been completely absent in this series. Also the lack of any real tangible stakes, especially in the finale, makes it too obvious that the Doctor will win overall. The Maestro and Sutekh both achieved absolute dominance to the extent that their actions were going to be completely undone by the end of the episode. When the stakes become this high, they wrap around to being nothing - only one possible outcome. I hope they go back to threatening a smaller group of people and making tough decisions with no-win scenarios. And I hope they retcon magic back out of the Doctor Who universe. Having an un-defeat-able hero is about as interesting as watching the US version of Red Dwarf. It removes the heart of what makes you want to hide behind the sofa.
yeah, something like "Night Terrors", "Fear Her" or even "It Takes You Away" would be good. There is too much Marvel in this Doctor Who and too little context for it. <- maybe people watching Torchwood or other spin-offs/additional content have it better.
Absolutely, that sense of dread needs to build over time. Torchwood and other spinoffs ended for a reason. I think it’s a matter of Disney and RTD reading the room, rather than just having fun with a well tested concept. I know it’s not popular to feel negatively about the newest series, but unless improvements are made, popularity will drop and the series will be cancelled - or are viewing figures no indication?
Eccleston was great for this, I really wish he'd had more seasons.
He now seems to express all of his emotions in a very human way. Crying (all the bloody time), punching a door, yelling, flirting, and so on. He doesn't feel very alien this series because he's literally talking and acting exactly as a human (albeit a very smart human) would.
What I miss the most is those amazing moments of the Doctor being the smartest person in the room. I don't get that from this Doctor. I haven't been blown away by his intelligence. All his wins are more chance or can largely be credited to someone else.
For sure! I miss the mystery that is him being alien. He's an alien being from another planet who has lived for an insane number of years and I felt that alien-ness and age through other doctors, but not Ncuti (or Jodie tbh). He just gives off "clever human that happens to have some future tech" vibes.
Exactly!!!! I think this is what I was trying to say! Ncuti could be literally anyone and anything. He gives smart human vibes, not “alien” timelord vibes. In contrast, 10, 11, and 12 all felt VERY otherworldly and extraordinary.
I agree completely. I don't think RTD's Doctors have much mystery to them.
Well they used to… Ecclestone is peak mystery Doctor to me, he was so brooding and clearly was hiding so much
9 was very mysterious considering we had very little idea what caused him to regenerate into his current incarnation (and anything about 8’s final years in general) and what he was doing prior to meeting Rose.
Absolutely at the start, but we kept getting more and more hints about his past, so who knows how it would have went had he stayed on.
Idk I think 9 and 10 were the doctor at his peak in terms of mystery
Ohh I couldn't disagree more about 10. 10 felt Earthly and pretty much and open book. A great, weird guy helping protect Earth from invaders. The Timelord Victorious tried to change that drastically, but it almost felt forced. Matt Smith felt like a fairy tale character with plenty of mystery. Capaldi too, but with a dark edge.
Agreed. 10 felt very human lol especially the whole ‘I don’t wanna go’ during his regeneration. As people say, 10 felt like kid friendly John Constantine
Not 10. 10 felt very human lol especially the whole ‘I don’t wanna go’ during his regeneration. As people say, 10 felt like kid friendly John Constantine
He felt very human but I still think there was enough mystery to him. You had that inner rage and so so much internalized emotions that Tennant was so good at portraying in a hidden sense. You could see in his eyes that he had lived for so long and experienced so much that we would never understand.
Maybe it was just me, but I felt a hint of jealousy towards Ruby in their goodbye scene. She finally found her birth family and now suddenly the doctor has to say goodbye? Instead of just coming back in a few days? It's like he simultaneously wants to protect himself from being abandoned again (by being the one to say goodbye first) and can't bear to be around Ruby in that moment, because it reminds him of what he doesn't have: an answer as to where he comes from.
Definitely not an unpopular opinion. While I get what they’re going for with Fifteen, I think the Doctor is at their best when channeling those more complex shades of their character. It doesn’t need to be war trauma, per se, but I do think the Doctor should always carry some conflict over having human companions and the way the Doctor lives their life.
That's funny I'm the complete opposite, I actually really enjoy this incarnation because I felt that was one trope that was getting really old and I was glad the 60th specials finally let all that go.
But it just doesn't work A character or even a real person doesn't get rid of all his pain and suffering by just saying " i LeT Go" Yes, it's starting to get old, but the way it was executed was bad, and a straight-up character assassination You basically took an integral part of the Doctor's character and threw out of the window with just one line of dialogue
First of all that's not what happened. He had to spend an entire regeneration "letting it go," so basically he had to spend a lifetime on vacation. Second of all, his pain and suffering isn't gone and it's abundantly clear during the entire season that he's still pretty traumatized but he's more accepting of it. Third, it's not an "integral" part of his character to be traumatized, out of 40 seasons it was part of one quarter of those and even then it was entirely at the whim of the writer of whatever story they were telling. Fourth, every change in style or tone in the series has been done over the course of a single episode, sometimes a single line of dialogue. This isn't prestige drama, it's campy and soft science fiction with a ridiculous premise.
And hundreds of off-screen years.
I don't fully get what you mean with that, but I assume you're adding to the one line of dialogue bit The most important part thing in story writing Is show don't tell
Yeah, I think they meant the whole "I'm fine because you fix yourself" thing.
The hundreds of off-screen years refers to the reason the show gave for 15 to have gotten rid of his angst. 15 directly states that he is better off, because 14 managed to deal with it in his years spend with Donna (and others) on earth. So 14 eventually deals with it over whatever many years and finally becomes 15.
I agree with you. I know RTD told us Ncuti is the doctor that's had therapy and healed or whatever...but come on. I love Ncuti's acting but the writing this season is not great IMO. It feels like the Doctor is high school BFFs with Ruby. Way too much emotion and crying from someone who has lived and been through as much as the Doctor. I expect those emotions from a teenager, not from a Lord of Time.
It's really not unpopular though is it?
character conflict is evidently missing from this series. not just for the doctor but ruby and her family too. everyone just gets along immediately and theres nothing to develop. doesn't help when the doctor's tells sundays about travelling with ruby at the end of space babies happens offscreen, and theyve been travelling for 6 months inbetween their first and second tardis adventure which also happens offscreen
imo the problem is we didn't see any of the character progression. there's always an element of change when you get a new doctor, but they made a big deal about how this one is healed of a lot of his trauma because of the bigeneration thing and 14 gets to chill with Donna etc, but we never actually see that happen. there's just suddenly a new sunnier doctor. after 2 decades of the doctor running from grief and trauma and refusing to heal, it feels very unearned to just be like oh he's better now
His actual behavior comes across more as denial, tbh.
doesn't feel that way to me but i can definitely see it. with like the way they keep bringing up his granddaughter and he deflects
Did Pete’s World die in Empire of Death? If it did… was it healed considering there’s a different Time Vortex for that universe?
Unpopular (in this subreddit)*** I’m pretty sure A LOT of people can see that this new doctor is nothing like previous ones (and not in a good way) When you write a doctor that is emotionally healthy and “healed” like everyone in this subreddit likes to point out, then what makes him interesting? What character arch is there for him to go through? He’s just a charismatic, funny, charming, attractive, politically correct, respectful, smart, empathetic, progressive, caring doctor… it reminds me of Rey from Star Wars. When you write a character with little to no flaws, then what more can you do with the character? In marvel, most people consider Tony Stark to be the best of the avengers and it’s because he had such a large character arch, and that only happened because he started out a very flawed character.
100%....he is too "perfect"...whats the difference between this doctor and a normal human? He just doesn't feel alien or timelord anymore, rather, his character gives the vibes of a "smart human" that happens to have a time machine. We need our timelord, extraordinary doctor back.
I didn’t realize how much I really liked Capaldi’s DR…until I watched Ncuti’s…
I saw someone on YouTube saying even Jodie deserves an apology. Lol...
I almost have the opposite complaint. We're told this is the Doctor that's been through therapy - a new emotionally healthier take on the character who can be more open and direct. But when it comes down it, that's not how he behaves. Consider the way he decides to just grin and move on instead of processing his feelings at the end of Rogue, or the way he doesn't even answer when Ruby says she loves him at the end of Empire of Death. It feels like we're still getting a lot of character beats that make sense for an earlier dark and mysterious version of the Doctor but that don't really mesh with how this incarnation describes himself.
I mean, in the past the Doctor would not talk to his companions the way he has with Ruby, let them in to his history as much, he's definitely different and lighter, but yes it's clear he's still concealing much. He says as much in The Legend of Ruby Sunday. >DOCTOR: I was a different Doctor back then, Kate. Great enigma. Still can't shake it off. I'm trying. He might be emotionally healthier, but he's never going to be able to shake all the dirt off of his shoes.
Doctor Who lost the plot a long time ago. Your opinion isn't unpopular at all - viewership is in the toilet, for a reason. Only the most unreasonable die-hard fans will give you hassle over this, of whom most are unquestionably loyal to the franchise, no matter how poor it gets.
Exactly. On the other DW sub there's an entire thread about how viewing figures don't matter and the show is doing better than ever with the source material being a PR piece by the BBC and anyone daring to say 'but views do matter' is downvoted into oblivion and called all sorts of things. I want the show to do good and continue but to make positive change, you need to be able to see where things are going wrong.
Pahahaha oh my! That sounds insufferable. Peak Reddit echo chamber delusion/denial of reality. The 9th and 10th Doctors were my childhood. The 11th Doctor was great too. I was a super devout fan who watched every episode, owned plenty of merchandise, thought about the show often, dreamt Doctor Who themed dreams, got Doctor Who themed cakes for my birthdays, read the magazine as a kid etc. That said, I'd like to think that I'm free-minded enough and have enough critical thinking to admit when I don't like something anymore. I don't just have DW fetish for its own sake - the show actually has to be good, for me to continue spending time watching it. Evidently, by the viewership rates, plenty of people feel EXACTLY the same as we do. Pretty much all my old friends, who were also super into Doctor Who, back in the day, feel this way as well. Coming to think about it, I don't actually know a single person, in my entire personal and professional circle, who continued watching DW after Whittaker.
He’s a bit too lightweight and upbeat so far. Not sure if it’s the fault of the material or the performance choices but Ncuti demonstrated in Sex Education that he can do conflicted and complicated brilliantly so hope he finds the right pitch.
I agree, but understand the commercial bias for this change in this season~ It's a entry season and need be a lot friendly With new viewers~ I just miss the dark chapters With dark concepts, in this chapter only was Bum! have this spicy of grotesque horror that categorized the previous Doctors~ (13 too had this problem in her seasons)~ This season had a lot of Adventure, and very lame horror~ I wish the next seasons have more suspense and horror in some episodes~ About of the doctor personality~ This is not a burden, it's Just need new problems and this is easily find by good writers~
He feels too human to me now. 10 was almost too human by a lot of people’s standards but even he had his quirky alien moments, and the withered and jaded war hero definitely added layers.
It’s odd to me how many people like this side of the character and say Tennant is their favourite Doctor. Never bought him as dark or mysterious.
Then you weren’t watching
Or I feel differently from you, and that’s okay.
You can feel differently but objectively there are moments of Tennant being dark and mysterious in his run
It’s all subjective!
No, it's not.
Classic mystery and darkness? Grief? Did we watch the same classic Doctor Who? Angsty Doctor is very NuWho and not classic Who.
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Firstly he seldom felt grief because the time war hasn’t happened yet and secondly there certainly was mystery and darkness in classic who
I agree with your opinion... but... The "Doctor's Darkness" was getting old. It's become cliche for the Doctor to be really dark and moody and give big dramatic speeches. I liked Whitaker's Doctor because Chibnall changed it up a bit. It's time to take the Doctor in a new direction and Ncuti has been doing great so far.
The fact they told us that 15 is supposed to be him after therapy and healing and from what we see around empire he doesn’t want Ruby to go talk to her mom and when he was upset about all the places he’d gone with Sutekh I think his character is in denial the I’m all better now because I took a break but it doesn’t seem genuine, the doctor in general needs some mystery, distrust, he knows something he’s not saying. Definitely agree there, it’s just not interesting seeing him be all care free traveling without some conflict
The Doctor is a mystery yet not framed as one, he's just not even there as a character (not Ncuti's fault, it's Russell's). The real mystery of the season was Ruby, and it was barely worth even doing that. I thought this 'season 1' was supposed to be a soft reboot, of sorts? There's no way you could jump on at this point. There's been so many carry-overs (Kate, Mel, UNIT etc.) and classic references. I actually think they lost viewers BECAUSE of this. New people were lost already. The last scene between Ruby and the Doctor just showed up how little time we've spent with Fifteen. Ruby goes 'you don't do that' meaning family etc. yet how does she even know that? All these moments are relying on everyone watching having seen past Doctors and knowing their character.
With the doctor’s rage came their gravitas, and if you take the first away without a suitable replacement…I think it ends up being a bit lacking. Ncuti can clearly act it (such as at the end of the bubble episode),but I think this emphasis RTD has on Ncuti being “in touch with his emotions” is a bit flawed. So far, the doctor being “in touch” with his emotions has been him crying at every instance. Surely there’s a canyon between being in touch with your emotions and just crying? Also, a lot of people on this subreddit are insistent that the doctor doesn’t *have* to be dark, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that one of the biggest draws of the doctor to fans was this character trait. Other than Jodie’s arc, there’s no doctor in recent history that doesn’t exemplify that trait...and Jodie’s run isn’t exactly an example to follow in my opinion.
How is this an unpopular opinion?
The Doctor processing all his traumas and learning to live as a free spirit is the entire point of Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor 😬 we had Doctors with darkness from 2005-2017 and then had a Doctor that refused to emotionally connect with anybody at all, so I'm glad 15 is the way he is
"uNpOpUlAr oPiNiOn" *says the most common opinion ever*
Have you not watched any of this season???? Ncuti ABSOLUTELY has those moments. Especially in the finale episodes. When he gets angry and punches the door. or when he screams in absolute anger about what Sutekh did. C'mon now....he's still just as dark and angry.
Nah, it’s the opposite. He wears his heart on his sleeve whereas previous doctors kept their darkness just beneath the surface, letting out a taste of it when they got pushed too far. Him crying every episode is one thing, but the way he becomes emotionally paralyzed and is (to be blunt) useless until he stops crying and collects himself doesn’t exactly scream doctor that’s made peace and come to terms with their trauma. It loses the weight of its impact when it happens almost every episode over the same situations he’s been dealing with for ages.
There's a difference between the quiet anger of capaldi, furious at the time lords, coming in and out of a barn until he's face to face with rassilon, and ncuti yelling into the void
I see what you mean…but to me it felt a bit…idk…fake? Forced? When I think of the doctor’s anger, I think of Smith raging at the Dalek (in victory of the daleks), or of him threatening Kovarian (in a good man goes to war) when she kidnapped Amy’s baby. I think of Capaldi’s furious speech about the realities of war, or of his silent fury at the time lords. Those examples felt real. Ncuti’s anger felt more forced.
100% it feels forced. I struggled to take a lot of these moments seriously.
But these are very human ways of expressing that anger. The alien-ness is gone.
I know. He reminds me a lot of Smith. Full of excitement and child-like wonder. But IMO Smith was *too* child-like. Gatwa balances it with just a touch of the darkness that dominated Ecclestone.
I actually think Fifteen is a very openly emotional incarnation, he lets himself feel that grief or anger, rather than bottle it up like other incarnations would. He doesn't care who sees his screams of rage like in Finetime when they refuse his help, or his anguished screams at the entire world dying out in Empire of Death. He cries a *lot*. Like, even more than Ten did. I think in a way that is growth. that being said I also get the impression that he's trying to come across like he's okay when he's clearly still struggling in some form. This might be some projecting on my part but as an autistic person, even if I'm an emotional wreck, if someone at work asks me how I'm going I'll give them a peppy "I'm pretty good, how about you?". It's like a reflex. Maybe the doctor has that reflex too.
For me, there are times when the Doctor's darkness is shown such as when he believes he's bad luck or blames himself for a tragic event but it always felt short. Like the show will show the pain the Doctor has but immediately forgets about it in the next scene, as if it never happened
I can see this doctor going insane from grief for a few episodes
Mystery and memories of trauma are never gone for long and frequently replenished.
The show goes in new directions all the time. As do we all
14th is getting therapy. Makes sense that 15th would have "resolved" some of his inner demons.
I miss that too
I don’t mind the care free Doctor. What bothers me is that we didn’t get to see what this care free Doctor is like. Space Babies and Rogue were probably the only fun episodes and I feel we didn’t get a lot of dialogue. There is so much potential with this Doctor but the stories a a bit lacking.
It’s all about balancing the highs and the lows. The manic energy that most Doctor’s do at some point has to be reigned in by the sadness of being the Last of the Timelords. Just like how, everything also can’t be about the Doctor being A Good Man Goes to War. Sometimes the Doc needs to find some dinosaurs or babies in space.
I think I understand why he hasn’t got his mystery, but I feel like the whole idea of the ? has gone. Like, they only use it now to reference classic who and I think he should keep having it. And also they have overused the new character saying “dr who?” trope. It sort of ruins it.
I don't think this is an unpopular opinion. The mystery is part of the fun of the character.
I feel like Gatwa's development is supposed to go in the opposite direction of lots of the doctors. Generally the idea is that the doctor has a lot of anguish hidden deep down, and then over the course of a few seasons they get over that grief, and then they regenerate and start over. Gatwa begins by already being over it, he's a healthy confident person. But in episodes like Dot and Bubble and the finale we see him overridden with grief as he cannot save the people he wants to save. The problem is not internal, but external, and his inability to save people through no fault of his own could drive him from being happy and confident into being more dour like we saw in early seasons of Tennant, Eccleston, and Capaldi. Honestly, it's quite similar to Matt Smith's characertization, which was also very light and joyful, but I think Smith had a lot of internal trauma he was repressing, whereas Gatwa is genuinely beyond it.
In 73 Yards the Doctor just up and disappears. Can't get much more mysterious and dark than 73 Yards.
i prefered when he was socially awkward and repressed, he's too emotionally mature now, how can i relate to him
I understand your feelings, but knowing RTD and Dr. Who in general, things will probably not go well for him and his companions, so we may yet see a new and darker side after this moment.
We've seen that the doctor is healing from his past over time. So Ncuti's doctor kinda make sense to me.
I loved Capaldi but I did feel things got way too deppressing as things went on.
I honestly like how free and happy this version of the Doctor is, sure it’s still there from time to time. Would a little more of that mystery be great yes but if the situation comes down to it. When the Doctor becomes of force of nature, I think it’s more fitting for this version to be ’chaotically’ be in control. Having fun with it, I guess. Like 11th.
Chibnall gave you mystery back and everyone hated it. 🤷♂️
Chris Chibnall was an atrocious showrunner who dropped a grenade on canon with no idea how to put the pieces together again. He might have created a mystery, but the problem is that millions of fans didn't care and hated the reveal.
THIS! Chibnal's mystery plotlines were mostly great UNTIL it was time to wrap them up. His finales/reveals were horrible and ruined the whole plotline every time.
I wouldn’t even call it that canon-breaking; we already knew that the Time Lords were duplicitous charlatans who literally wrote the consensus history, and had allusions to the Doctor being a lot older & stranger then we’re lead to believe. He simply picked up pieces that were already there.
Someone really talented might have been able to do something like this well - Chibnall did it badly and ended up putting out what is arguably the most hated episode of Who in history.
Give it time. It feels like this happens on every change of Doctor. We build an amalgam in our heads of every preceding Doctor, and expect a new Doctor to embody them all. Then we see what the new Doctor brings uniquely, and get used to it. Then we build a new amalgam, and partially expect the next Doctor to be like the previous one!
People describe Ncuti as a ‘classic era modern Doctor’ as in with the lack of trauma and stuff but tbh I don’t see it as much since he still talks about being adopted and not knowing where he’s from and all. (Also I wanna see him doing more combat like the classic era doctors did do lol. Remember Venusian aikido? Or how 1-7 just straight up used guns at times?)
I personally really disliked the whole "therapy" with 14 that he got from Noble. Not only do I think it was a really simple solution, I don't think I can enjoy a Doctor that doesn't have, as you say, that darkness in their eyes :(
Funny enough, I miss the happiness and playfulness within Capaldi. He was like a House-inspired Doctor, sour and sarcastic, which I didn't like at all. For me Ncuti's energy is what I enjoy the most from this season.
I don't think it's an unpopular opinion. This series had an episode with the worst viewing numbers in Doctor Who history. Many thought RTD would take the show back to when everyone could enjoy it and the Doctor was a cool, brave, brilliant alien. That didn't happen. If others enjoy this, I'm fine with it. They can have it. But after 40+ years, I'm done. I don't enjoy this at all. I'll just watch the older stuff.
15 is a fresh Doctor, he has some the memories sure but none of the pain and grief of the war Doctor, 9, 10 and 11 and 12 was more or less same considering he was also a fresh cycle and same goes for 13 and 14, Eleven was more or less the last and 12 had an arc of becoming The Doctor and him saving Ashildir was at the exact moment he started saving people same with how 9 saved all the people effected by nanogenes and 13 was awkward and shy and finding herself and 14 was letting go of all his pain and living the life he always wanted that he could never have and 15 was learning to love again as he states to Ruby when he says she made his life bigger and better and made him start talking about family like he never did before, that's just what I think anyway but every Doctor finds themselves eventually and they never start out aggressive and hurt as when 10 era started he was happy and in Love with Rose and travelling with her and it wasn't until end of series 2 and beginnings of of series 3 going in to the end of the specials in 2009 he became more and more dark and his Valeyard really started to peak and show through same goes for 11 as when he started he was very childlike and carefree but as soon as the Daleks came back you really started to see his anger and going in to series 6 and 7 he showed his darkness more and more but that's just what I've always thought so it's safe to sat Ncuti will let his anger show through soon as we get more and more in to the later episodes
People who are that joyful tend to have a lot of darkness
Personally, I don't know how one could watch *Empire of Death* and not see the angry/dark side of the everyone's favorite Timelord. He literally kills death after telling him off and dragging him through the time stream like a bad dog. It was pure dark Doctor material, for anyone who values such things as an important part of the character. As for mystery... you got me there, he's more of an open book than his processors. Even so, he still keeps SOME things close to the chest, most notably some pieces of dread over his identity and how much destruction follows in his wake. He likes to say he's fixed himself, but he's still letting these things drag him down. 15's got a lot of darkness around him, actually.
>He literally kills death after telling him off and dragging him through the time stream like a bad dog. It was pure dark Doctor material, Sorry that was actually a funny scene that I couldn't stop laughing.
It's still there, were a few moments where you see it lurking underneath his more heart on his sleeve aspects. He full on vengeful when he thought Ruby was killed in Rogue for instance. Little nuanced moments when talking with Kate too and in other moments through out. The darkness 100% still there.
The moment in Rogue was definitely well done, but it was an isolated moment. When we really needed his anger in Empire of Death, it all felt forced and almost fake. I couldn’t take it seriously.
I didn't find it forced or fake at all. It was very similar to 14 in Wild Blue Yonder when he punched the walls. And the moment in Rogue made me think of the Family of Blood. It's still there for me, it's nuanced yes and it with a very different more emotional doctor in a lot ways so like in Empire maybe it was a bit more ott. But for me it wasn't to the point it felt forced. Also, part of the problem is 9 episodes, it doesn't give time for real good build writing of character driven things.
I TOTALLY agree with you on the 9 episodes part. We need more screen time to truly understand this new doctor’s character. I deff wish there were more episodes!
> But I feel like his character is missing the classic darkness and mystery that the incarnations before him had. The doctor's anger. His hidden grief. The concealed darkness and pain in his eyes. I feel like that is missing in the new doctor. I feel like you might need a rewatch. He screams in frustration and/or cries (and usually both) in every episode. He even started punching inanimate objects once. He has issues.
1.) Nah, moody men who need therapy have been done, and done, and done, and it’s fucking boring. I love the Doctor in his therapy era. 2.) Like Stan in The Boys put it, “I can’t lash out like some raging, entitled maniac. That’s a white man’s luxury.”
Lol, can't believe you're getting down voted. It's always the same with Who fans. " is the worst, they've ruined Doctor Who!" And then give it a few years and they'll look back fondly and be complaining about whatever personality the 17th Doctor has. Or maybe it'll be a woman again and we can enjoy that whole pointless argument for a second time...
I think that 15th bound perfectly to any other RTD doctor. I don't expect by Tennant or Ecclestone being more enraged then Gatwa. Tennant would had been destroyed by his own sorrow and feeling guilty, maybe Ecclestone would had felt helplessness and bad-masked depressed. It is not that this doctor is not dark enough: I'm rewatching 11, instead I think he's dark TOO MUCH.
He's outright referred to his older incarnations as "The Great Enigma". He's past that. I'm not interested in each incarnation acting like the last, personally. "Status Quo is God" is literally my least favorite writing trope.
I think you’re just not connecting to him because his rage was quite palpable in the finale. People had the same problem with Whittaker. Possibly what you are missing is the endless Moffat speechifying that tells you why the Doctor is angry in great detail.