Who is the Twelfth Doctor?
Guest contributor Harry Draper examines what we know about Capaldi’s Doctor so far.
Who is the Twelfth Doctor? Much anticipation was built up towards Series 8 (alias Season 34) of Doctor Who in regards to the casting of hugely loved actor and Doctor Who fan Peter Capaldi in his dream job; when he’s telling the story of his first visit to Skaro, both the Time Lord and the man portraying him speak from experience. Steven Moffat promised us ‘an older, trickier, fiercer Doctor’, but after an almost complete first series, what do we know about this incarnation of the Time Lord so far?
Of course, like the malfunctioning tech that kept the Mummy aboard a space-faring Orient Express alive, the Doctor always retains a core of integral elements throughout his many lives. With poetic elegance, Peter Capaldi outlined his thoughts on how ‘the Doctor sees himself as a cosmic, timeless philosopher, an explorer, adventurer, righter of wrongs, and hopeless piece of flotsam and jetsam.’ The Doctor’s still the Doctor. He has not lost his love of the universe, however dry his humour may be now in making remarks about soldiers reduced to top layers of Dalek protein – ‘if you want to say a few words’ – or how frustrated he gets with the humans he once called ‘indomitable’ but may now be more inclined to label ‘boring’. Or ‘pudding-brained primitives’. Or, as Clara ruthlessly asserts, ‘tiny and silly and predictable’. Or ‘otters’.
If anything, this Doctor will find both the joy in ‘the endless rebirth of the universe’ that he believes can inspire a Dalek to turn good and wants to share experiences of awe with companions like Courtney Woods, even if the sight of the Olveron Cluster is enough to bring up a Coal Hill school dinner. He seems on the edge of choking up with tears as he remarks how the human race, upon creeping off into the stars, ‘endures ’til the end of time’.
Being perhaps a Doctor on a more destructive path in his early years, this exploration causes something to snap in what can only be described as a mental breakdown in ‘Listen’; his irrational fear of a phenomena of creatures living to hide becomes a scientific theory that he must test, because ‘I have to know’. The delight which he directs at the Foretold is telling; ‘I am the Doctor and I will be your victim this evening!’ A death wish is not out of the question. He pours the mathematic equations of his brain upon chalkboards that adorn the TARDIS walls, along with the round things. He will even whisper ‘a sinister puddle’ like it’s something forbidden. ‘Don’t look in that mirror, it’s absolutely furious!’
There are strong correlations between the Twelfth Doctor and the more unpredictable incarnations of the past. Jellybabies in a cigar case? A Tom Baker-lite Doctor? Add an uncanny impression of the man’s chocolate-coated tones in the scene when the Doctor’s talking to himself in ‘Mummy on the Orient Express’. No. 12 shares the Third Doctor’s sartorial flirtation, not settling for a fixed costume, apart from the Crombie coat. Like the Third Doctor, this is no Mother Hen who’ll take you under his wing but a cunning and sombre creature who can assert himself as the leader of a bank robbing heist gang instantly but still trip over his feet when clashing with dashing heroes like Robin Hood or Danny Pink. When the Doctor and Clara first met, he took her on a motorbike ride across London. Now, the Doctor won’t consider the emotional implications of telling Clara, ‘it’s take to take the stabilisers off your bike.’
Of course, fear makes companions of us all, something that the very first Doctor will consider with his head and feel with his mellowing hearts. Our current Doctor is something of a chameleon also, feeding off the experiences of his adventures in order to define himself, verging on being wiser, not unlike the Seventh Doctor. Even if he doesn’t provide a safety net for her, his friendship with Clara is all the more stronger for considering that this is an insecure Time Lord asking for a companion to help him, or at least ‘care’.
As well his other-worldly quality being displayed by a quiet and restrained ‘professional detachment’ that requires Clara to be his conscience, our hero is genuinely confused (or is he? Who can tell what he’s thinking behind those eyebrows?) when in the social nest of humanity. This is a quality that the Eleventh Doctor had, but whereas the previous incarnation’s French kissing was quaint and charming, it is both hilarious and chillingly prejudiced at times with this Doctor. This is a Doctor who can understand a molecular nano-scaler and gold-fusion engines but is baffled by Clara colouring in her face and somehow getting — taller?! He doesn’t realise how ridiculous he sounds when he comments on how Clara — sexy and spirited Clara — is no longer a young woman anymore and looks the same age as him, even though he’s ‘being kind’ in that field. He’s a sly fox, this one. He’s not a tidy time-keeper who sticks to his appointments, steamrolling Clara’s dates with — of all things — a big blue box. He’s not on any charm offensive but he naturally oozes it upon name-dropping Errol Flynn in a sword/spoonfight with Robin Hood.
Chances are, his brain’s going so fast, he doesn’t acknowledge any collateral damage. In the Twelfth Doctor’s comic strip debut, ‘The Eye of Torment’; two supporting characters are, for convenience, nicknamed ‘Starsky and Hutch’, since the Doctor won’t remember their real names — far too complicated — just as Journey Blue is ‘gun girl’ and Danny Pink is ‘PE’. With the Twelfth Doctor, there is a rudeness not unlike the Sixth Doctor, in that he will not only dislike people but announce it without care or restraint. Just how ‘quirky’ and ‘loveable’ is his ‘banter’ with former Sergeant Danny Pink, even before any science-fiction robot storms their workplace, guns blazing and adding coal to the fire that burns in Coal Hill?
However, unlike the Sixth Doctor, a man who expels a love of himself through his magnetic personality, the Twelfth is under no such delusions. He doesn’t just refuse to class himself as one of the ‘impossible heroes’, he dismisses the existence of any such pantheon. Isn’t it telling how he willingly revels in him realising that the Architect behind the time-travel heist in the bank of Karabraxos is himself, even having also announced that he hates said Architect for being ‘overbearing’ and ‘manipulative’? The regeneration process isn’t akin to the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly in this case; what has emerged from the chrysalis of a new regenerative cycle is a ‘big, grey-haired stick insect’, one who rubs his arms after even a hug, as if a Cyberman has just performed Venusian Aikido on him, who takes advantage of his Scottish accent to ‘really complain about things’ and who asserts authority by eyebrows that would have started war on Delphon.
Again, like the Fourth Doctor, this new man in the TARDIS lights the fire but can’t mourn those who he doesn’t save and carry out of it. When people are dying at the hands of the monsters, the Doctor works to save the living from ‘a research point of view’; if the Seventh Doctor people into chess pieces, any room in which the Twelfth Doctor enters is a lab and you become his test subject. But the Doctor has not broken his promise of being ‘cruel or cowardly’. He has always cultivated a sense of urgency, but after having left the fate of the Moon in Clara’s hands, he’s become a wiser man, this time putting his own life on the line to confront the Foretold, challenging himself to solve the puzzle of its purpose in 66 seconds.
In fact, we’re probably now at the chapter in this Doctor’s life when he’s acting upon his promise to Clara to do something about the mistakes he’s made, since ‘it’s about time’. He doesn’t ask for approval. ‘Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones. But you still have to choose.’ Which he does. When he wins, it’s an even greater victory than had he just been a knight in shining armour. After all, he is 100% rebel Time Lord, his armour in the form of a Crombie coat. Somehow, being the Doctor comes both naturally and with concealed courage, since being the Doctor isn’t without its complications. But it does come with its rewards — revel in the Doctor’s smile at Clara staying on board the TARDIS, before a slam of the levers and onwards they embark into adventure. And ‘into darkness’.
Time will tell if he continues to find himself with the help of Clara, or if Missy, the Cybermen and the 3W organisation threaten to drive him to tearing himself apart with devastating consequences.
‘The darkest day, the blackest hour. Chin up, shoulders back — let’s see what we’re made of, you and I.’
