Too much of his character came to feel defined by impulsiveness and apparent surrealism: the mad man with a box.
The closest I came to liking him was, in a way, the moments when I didn't like him: on closer inspection, I realized that Eleven was by far the angriest of the new Doctors, the one who was most willing to yell at people and even let them die. (There was a moment in Eleven's last season where a villain got killed -- not through any fault of the Doctor's -- and I turned to my husband and said, "Nine would have been sad. Even though she deserved it.") It didn't make me like the character as a person, but it was the one place where I really felt like Eleven distinguished himself as something other than Ten 2.0.
Mind you, I should admit that my feelings are colored by Ten being my favorite of the new Doctors. (I don't know Classic Who pretty much at all.) I like Tennant, and more to the point, I like the kinds of stories they told with him, because they dug into some of the issues I really wanted to see someone explore with the Doctor, re: immortality (or what amounts to it) and what regeneration actually means to him, etc. It's like the fifth season of Highlander: somebody stepped back and took a look at the philosophical ramifications of the premise. So you get Ten saying that he's afraid to die and somebody else saying, well, you'll just do that regeneration thing, won't you? And Ten says, oh, sure -- but the person who walks away won't be him. It'll be somebody else, with his memories. A lot of people thought Ten was too angsty, but I like that particular flavor of angst.
Hearing someone repeat a thing is not sufficient reason to feel it for yourself.
Yep. And I'd have to go back and rewatch things to be certain, but: it feels to me like during Nine and Ten's runs, the audience's focus was meant to be on the Companion, and the Companion's focus was on the Doctor*. So we admired him because we empathized with this character who admired him. Whereas in Eleven, I feel like our focus was meant to be on the Doctor. Which just doesn't work as well.
*I have a recollection of the professor who taught my Hinduism class saying that in one of the standard iconographies of Krishna and Radha, where she's looking at him, the viewer is supposed to look at Radha, not Krishna. Because he's looking at you, and by looking at her you complete the circuit, so to speak. I don't know if I'm remembering that correctly, but even if I'm not, it's a good metaphor for how I think the Doctor works best: we look at the Companion who looks at him who looks at us.
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The closest I came to liking him was, in a way, the moments when I didn't like him: on closer inspection, I realized that Eleven was by far the angriest of the new Doctors, the one who was most willing to yell at people and even let them die. (There was a moment in Eleven's last season where a villain got killed -- not through any fault of the Doctor's -- and I turned to my husband and said, "Nine would have been sad. Even though she deserved it.") It didn't make me like the character as a person, but it was the one place where I really felt like Eleven distinguished himself as something other than Ten 2.0.
Mind you, I should admit that my feelings are colored by Ten being my favorite of the new Doctors. (I don't know Classic Who pretty much at all.) I like Tennant, and more to the point, I like the kinds of stories they told with him, because they dug into some of the issues I really wanted to see someone explore with the Doctor, re: immortality (or what amounts to it) and what regeneration actually means to him, etc. It's like the fifth season of Highlander: somebody stepped back and took a look at the philosophical ramifications of the premise. So you get Ten saying that he's afraid to die and somebody else saying, well, you'll just do that regeneration thing, won't you? And Ten says, oh, sure -- but the person who walks away won't be him. It'll be somebody else, with his memories. A lot of people thought Ten was too angsty, but I like that particular flavor of angst.
Hearing someone repeat a thing is not sufficient reason to feel it for yourself.
Yep. And I'd have to go back and rewatch things to be certain, but: it feels to me like during Nine and Ten's runs, the audience's focus was meant to be on the Companion, and the Companion's focus was on the Doctor*. So we admired him because we empathized with this character who admired him. Whereas in Eleven, I feel like our focus was meant to be on the Doctor. Which just doesn't work as well.
*I have a recollection of the professor who taught my Hinduism class saying that in one of the standard iconographies of Krishna and Radha, where she's looking at him, the viewer is supposed to look at Radha, not Krishna. Because he's looking at you, and by looking at her you complete the circuit, so to speak. I don't know if I'm remembering that correctly, but even if I'm not, it's a good metaphor for how I think the Doctor works best: we look at the Companion who looks at him who looks at us.