Why the Fourteenth Doctor is NOT the 10th Doctor, and who he might be instead…
Feature article by Richard Elliot.
Many eyebrows on many foreheads were raised last year when pictures of David Tennant filming in Camden for Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary hit the internet. The shock didn’t come from the simple fact that Tennant was back, however, but from his costume. Tennant was not adorned in the Tenth Doctor’s warm browns and deep blues, rather, his Doctor was now wearing a blue-black greatcoat, a tartan-check waistcoat and a grey knitted tie. The only original part of the costume was the Converse sand shoes, but even these were in a Papyrus grey rather than the original cream or burgundy.
So Doctor Who fans across the globe simultaneously scratched their heads – WHO was this man? Could it be the Metacrisis Tenth Doctor after a trip to Saville Row? Could it be the Valeyard wearing a dark alternative to the Tenth Doctor’s Costume? Could it be the Tenth Doctor himself, simply wearing a fancy new outfit the morning after the night before? It wouldn’t be until ‘The Power of the Doctor’ aired, and the world was astounded to see the Thirteenth Doctor regenerate into an old face, that the truth would be revealed. This wasn’t the Tenth Doctor… it was an entirely new man. A Fourteenth Doctor, a blank slate, an enigma wrapped in a suit wearing a nice knitted tie.
Initially, we might have been happy to assume that this Fourteenth Doctor was, in fact, the Tenth Doctor after some wibbly wobbly, timey wimey, dibby dabby who ha. “You can’t fool us, Davies!” We all shouted. “That’s David Tennant right there, that is!” But if we had made such an assumption, we would have been wrong. Now, nearly a year after Tennant returned to our screens, we’re sitting on a plethora of signals that all our presumptions were wrong and the show has something rather more exciting planned. We don’t know who this new Doctor is… at all.
Tennant himself said so in an interview with the Radio Times last month – “The Doctor’s been three different people in the meantime, so I’m not necessarily the same version of the Doctor that I was before.”
But if Tennant isn’t playing his original incarnation of the Doctor… why not? And who is he playing instead?
Why this Doctor isn’t the Tenth… despite the face!
The Doctor isn’t a simple succession of faces and personalities, rather, he (or she) is a continuous person. Each actor may wear a different wig and speak in a different accent, but from the Doctor’s point of view each day simply follows the previous. After the passage of time, it may become difficult to remember which personality he was wearing at any given time. (“Maybe I was Scottish? RELEASE!”) Each Doctor is cumulative and not a blank slate – the events of their previous regeneration define them. As Steven Moffat hinted at years ago in an interview with Doctor Who Magazine – the boyish Tenth Doctor couldn’t have regenerated into the stern Twelfth, but through the lens of the contemplative Eleventh it somehow makes sense. We see the character progression.
The same thing is happening with the Fourteenth Doctor.
The Tenth Doctor was a product of his time, more Ninth Doctor than anything else. The Ninth Doctor carried a huge amount of survivor’s guilt which manifested in sombre moments and sarcastic responses, and a desperate need for a quiet life. Though in the year after his regeneration, the Tenth Doctor would become more flippant and enjoy his newfound vitality, as Rose changed to Martha and Martha to Donna the Tenth Doctor found himself increasingly weighed down by the same burden as his predecessor: he was alone, getting old and increasingly detached from the universe around him. The Tenth Doctor of ‘The End of Time’ was exactly the same character as the Ninth Doctor of ‘Parting of the Ways’, just played by a different man. Don’t believe me? Go back and compare the scene where The Doctor sacrifices himself to save Rose with the one where he saves Wilf – you’ll notice that same quiet nobility, that tearful affection, and that heartbroken resignation. Some excellent acting, and a far cry from the man who blurted cockily that he had a “fightin’ hand!” Even the Doctor’s multiple faces aren’t enough to overcome the sheer power of his own history.
Of course, there is precedent for this in the series, most notably in the presence of The Curator. If we accept the commonly-held belief that the Curator is, indeed, a reincarnated version of the Fourth Doctor’s personality, we must also accept that aside from face, voice and mannerisms the two men share little in common. The Curator is quiet when the Fourth Doctor would be loud, he smiles softly when the Fourth would give a big toothy grin, he minds his surroundings when the Fourth Doctor would be rushing to his next adventure, getting offended at K9 and shouting at Adric.
Just because these men are the same men doesn’t mean that they are the same men…
So if the Fourteenth Doctor isn’t the Tenth Doctor, who is he?
We’ll have to wait until next month to find out for sure, but we can already make some educated guesses about what kind of Doctor we’ll soon be seeing on our screens.
A more youthful Doctor – Though he may look a little older than his counterpart and initially seem more intense with his grizzled stubble and deeper voice, the Fourteenth Doctor has more positive roots than the Tenth. Unlike the bitter Ninth Doctor, he’s spent his last life as the excitable Thirteenth, speaking at the speed of sound and seeing the entire world like one big playground. He’s further from the horrors of the Time War and has learned to love having a ‘fam’. We can already see hints of this more emotionally-healed Doctor in the trailers released so far – the booming greeting to “KATE LETHBRIDGE-STEWART!!” feels rather more bombastic than anything the original Tenth Doctor would have done, and the Fourteenth Doctor clearly has trouble acting like an adult. Take a look at the petulant frown on his face as he watches his TARDIS swinging from a helicopter, or the googly-eyed stare he gives the camera as he sticks his head out of the Police Box doors.
This Doctor, however subtly, owes more to the Thirteenth’s childishness than the Ninth’s maturity. What’s the point in growing up if he can’t be childish sometimes?
A more insecure Doctor – This Doctor has multiple decks stacked against him. Not only has he recently had his entire perception of who he is shattered after the Timeless Child bamboozlement, he’s also got the same set of teeth as he used to… and he clearly doesn’t know why. Add into that the return of a best friend who is permanently at risk of death if she sees him, and the rise to power of an incredibly powerful foe from his deep past (who is now German, it seems), it’s not hard to see why this Doctor might be deeply insecure underneath the surface.
Watch that scene from the trailer as he tells Donna “I don’t know if I can save your life this time”… this man is terrified.
A man determined to live life – The Tenth Doctor’s life was defined by being short. In the show canon he lived for only four Earth years, which pales in comparison to the Eleventh Doctor’s several-thousand-year lifespan and the Twelfth’s multi-billion-year stint. As far as the Doctor is concerned, his Tenth incarnation was gone in the blink of an eye… and it upsets him. For a shining moment he lived life and he fell in love, he explored the universe, made lasting friendships, and had some truly madcap adventures. The Tenth Doctor was the best of The Doctor and The Doctor himself could feel it… which is why he didn’t want to go. My prediction is that we’ll see this Doctor making up for lost time, playing fast and loose with his travels, and having a last hurrah.
We might get a montage of him setting a TARDIS speed record across the Medusa Cascade or cuddling up to Isaac Newton. One thing is for sure… even if the Fourteenth Doctor has a massive hill to climb, he’s going to have fun climbing it.
Ultimately, none of us know who the Fourteenth Doctor is going to be yet, but the biggest mistake we can make is to rest on our laurels and assume we know more than we do, just because we all remember the Tenth Doctor. We should keep an open mind and treat this incarnation with the attention that he deserves, not merely as a re-hash or an in-between. We are in the hands of two of the greatest veterans in Doctor Who history, after all, and we’re going to want to enjoy the journey whilst we’re on it.
