(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.")
Which episode? "The Crimson Horror"?
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.)
My first Doctor was the Fourth, so some part of me is always faintly disappointed when a new Doctor doesn't want a long stripy scarf after all. My first new Doctor was the Ninth; I missed most of Ten and a lot of the middle of Eleven; over the winter derspatchel started showing me the Seventh Doctor, starting with "Remembrance of the Daleks," and I loved him more or less unreservedly and at once. (Also, Ace. Pretty much everything about Ace. Including the way she bonds with another female character over their favorite explosives.) Like, we watched one episode with an ancient sunken Arthurian spaceship. It was great.
So we admired him because we empathized with this character who admired him.
Hm. I don't think that's what decides me to like/admire/trust/sympathize with a character; I have a fine track record of enjoying characters who are kind of terrible at things. But I agree that—unless their unreliability is the point—we have to be able to believe the characters who like/admire/trust/sympathize with a central figure, otherwise it's just more empty insistence.
Whereas in Eleven, I feel like our focus was meant to be on the Doctor. Which just doesn't work as well.
We may be differing in our definitions of "focus." I felt Eleven's run suffered badly from the need for his Companions to be mysteries for him to solve, first Amy Pond, then Clara Oswald; I wanted more of the story to be about the Doctor and his travels across time and space, not about his efforts to unravel the riddle of the women in his life. (The whole name-of-the-Doctor mystery did not count.) I'd really like to know what Clara's like when she's not defined by her plot function: the "impossible girl," the girl born to save the Doctor. Maybe we'll finally get some of that this season. But I also feel like Eleven was shortchanged in needing to spend so much time trying to figure out what made Clara tick. The Doctor was looking at the Companions, so we looked at the Companions. The philosophical issues you talk about with Ten, the question of what immortality means when you still have to die and the person who comes back isn't you, I don't think Eleven ever had anything like that. Maybe by "The Day of the Doctor," when the War Doctor identifies him as a figure of escapism: the man who forgets. But that was very late in the game.
no subject
Which episode? "The Crimson Horror"?
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.)
My first Doctor was the Fourth, so some part of me is always faintly disappointed when a new Doctor doesn't want a long stripy scarf after all. My first new Doctor was the Ninth; I missed most of Ten and a lot of the middle of Eleven; over the winter
So we admired him because we empathized with this character who admired him.
Hm. I don't think that's what decides me to like/admire/trust/sympathize with a character; I have a fine track record of enjoying characters who are kind of terrible at things. But I agree that—unless their unreliability is the point—we have to be able to believe the characters who like/admire/trust/sympathize with a central figure, otherwise it's just more empty insistence.
Whereas in Eleven, I feel like our focus was meant to be on the Doctor. Which just doesn't work as well.
We may be differing in our definitions of "focus." I felt Eleven's run suffered badly from the need for his Companions to be mysteries for him to solve, first Amy Pond, then Clara Oswald; I wanted more of the story to be about the Doctor and his travels across time and space, not about his efforts to unravel the riddle of the women in his life. (The whole name-of-the-Doctor mystery did not count.) I'd really like to know what Clara's like when she's not defined by her plot function: the "impossible girl," the girl born to save the Doctor. Maybe we'll finally get some of that this season. But I also feel like Eleven was shortchanged in needing to spend so much time trying to figure out what made Clara tick. The Doctor was looking at the Companions, so we looked at the Companions. The philosophical issues you talk about with Ten, the question of what immortality means when you still have to die and the person who comes back isn't you, I don't think Eleven ever had anything like that. Maybe by "The Day of the Doctor," when the War Doctor identifies him as a figure of escapism: the man who forgets. But that was very late in the game.
[edited] aaaaagh HTML