![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Shake it up, Mr. Lyon. Shake it up
I wasn't expecting him, but I am perfectly fine with Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor. He's not a chameleon, except insofar as he's shockingly young in Local Hero (1983) if you noticed him first in Torchwood (2009), but he's an actor I watch out for. The Angel Islington, John Frobisher, Danny Oldsen, Angus Flint, Malcolm Tucker, Randall Brown; I'll be very curious to see what he does with this role. Especially if it means I get to see him and John Hurt in scenes together.
no subject
no subject
Nine
no subject
no subject
I think one of the things I like best about Capaldi as an actor is that I don't like his characters all for the same reason. His Islington in the 1996 Neverwhere is in no way the angel of the book, but he has very nearly the face of a Renaissance statue, all graceful classical bones and darkly curling hair, and even the series' famously awful production values cannot put out the chill of the audience's realization that he is mad and fallen, his beauty curdling as suddenly as a Breughel painting as the white light of the door slices over his sharp-winged brows, his eyes like glass inlay, the dog-points of his teeth—it is not a naturalistic or a human performance and that is what I like about it, because anything else would have come off wrong. At the other end of the spectrum, Frobisher in Torchwood: Children of Earth is an arresting portrait of a character in moral crisis who didn't think that was part of his job description. Local Hero's Danny is an adorable gawk with a knack for physical comedy; Malcolm Tucker is a high-wire act of verbal fireworks and seething rage at a level usually reserved for psychopaths in action movies. And I would have enjoyed him as the clipped, enigmatic second-season Head of News for The Hour no matter what, but he did something in the last episode that blew me away. It was purely physical: Randall Brown in the grip of unmanageable shock and grief organizes his desk in the familiar, repetitive patterns that this time do nothing to calm him, throwing down papers and books and binders faster and faster until he collapses gasping over the chaos, and when the woman who has been in the room with him all the while moves to put her arms around him, he flails her off full-body, an instinctive, choking startle; she starts to stroke his hair and he reaches in one jerky motion to grip her hand tightly, holding it hard against his skull—he can't be caressed, he can barely be touched, but he needs to be held. They stay that way, both of them grieving. If Capaldi himself is not touch-defensive when stressed, then he knows people who are. I'd never seen that in a screen performance. It rang very poignant and very true. So I don't know what I'm going to like his Doctor for, but I know there'll be something. I just hope Moffat can write a better season of scripts. Watching this last round of the Eleventh Doctor with
no subject
I haven't! It's been recommended to me! I think it was not readily available in libraries or on Netflix the last time it came up in conversation, and then I never sought it out.
no subject
I would also have liked to see more variance in the Doctor for the reasons you name, but I am glad that if they had to go with the more conservative choices, at least it meant an actor I really like. There were alternatives I would have found actively disappointing.
(Having seen Pacific Rim, however, I will say Idris Elba was a definite missed opportunity. I don't know if he was ever in the running from the show's perspective, but I saw a lot of fan support for him and now I understand why.)
no subject
I read your comments on Capaldi above, and they give me reason to be interested. (I've seen him in too little before now to have an opinion one way or another.) Prior to reading that, however, my reaction could best be summed up as "eh."
no subject
Though they could do something fun by having him meet Frobisher and then I'd probably be fine with it :)
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Huh. That doesn't seem to matter to me at all.
Do you mind if I ask why it's an issue?
no subject
I don't see why there even needs to be a handwave! Audiences at this point should be able to grasp the idea of an actor who plays more than one character within a long-running franchise.
no subject
Which I have not seen; thank you.
I spent much of late 2011 hoping there would be an NT Live-style broadcast of Graham Linehan's The Ladykillers, but that winter was not an accommodating season.
no subject
It's easier to set up the divide between actor and role when it's in totally separate universes. Patrick Stewart will always be Captain Picard . . . but also Professor Xavier. However, I can't imagine anyone ever taking seriously a Trek movie (or new show) recasting Stewart in some other role in the Trek universe. It would just be wrong.
I admit I have not seen Capaldi in anything else; it is possible if I had I would not have this concern in his particular case, and certainly Capaldi's role in Children of Earth was not Picard-level important. But it was important enough that the face could immediately be called to name, and role was memorable. So it's enough to give me pause at least -- I'd much rather have had an actor who I'd never heard of so that there'd be this totally new Doctor to get used to.
I'm just worried that seeing him as Frobisher is going to take away the emotional punch of the first few episodes. And if that happened, it would be a shame.
(Though no matter what, obviously, I'll just have to get used to him one way or another, and in a few years it'll be someone else. Probably Cumberbatch the way he's ending up in everything.)
no subject
Enitirely understood.