I think you might be nailing it there, Haus.
Hmmm. I don't know - the more I think about it, the more similar Nine and Ten seem to be.
I think it has to be taken into account that this series is a very different beast to the old Dr. Who, I don't think that regeneration into a new Doctor means the same thing that it did. The original series' runs existed in a very different telly environment. Who's pretty much unlimited run meant it could do things that can't be done now.... like eight part, self-contained stories, daily (that's right isn't it? It's been a good while) transmissions, and complete changes of tack from Doctor to Doctor.
In today's TV market, it's a bit of an anomaly for a series to run for more than seven/eight seasons, and though the Dr. is really popular again, he's not really the national institution he once was. I've been wondering for quite a bit, just how long this is going to run for.
At any rate, I think it forces a greater character-continuity between Doctors, because there is a larger story in sight here that doesn't have infinite time to be told. Eccleston and Tennant are essentially the same man with the same troubles under their skin, it's the way they express themselves to the world that's changed.
Eccleston was a bit hard-faced, done in by what he'd seen and done in the Time War, haunted by the fact that he was alone (and like you said, the fact he can't save everybody) and that totally tortured him. He delighted in the wee fan-tastic things, but I think primarily, when he looked out at the world, he saw a big fucked-up mess and no other option but to keep chipping away at it, healing it bit by bit even though it might be hopeless.
The main thing that keeps him going is Rose, because he sees in her the very things he finds most precious in the universe, the things he fights the monsters for. When he meets her, he's travelling alone and he's not keen on taking her with him, he thinks he deserves to be that way because he wouldn't be able to keep her safe. But Rose proves herself to The Doctor and convinces him to take her along, saving him from himself.
Parting of the ways was his revelation. He's confronted by the total redundancy of his whole regeneration. He sacraficed his own people to fix the universe, only to have his worse fears confirmed. That it didn't do the slightest bit of difference. The cancer broke out all over again.
When he sends Rose home he doesn't really do it to keep her safe. She's not. He's still doomed her really, because her entire race is going to die. But he can't watch her suffer in front of him too. He sends her away I think more for himself than anything else.
He finally submits to the Daleks because he's not going to damn himself again just so the process can repeat itself once more. He really can't make a difference after all. He's lost. Everything dies.
But.....
It's the grassroots stuff that saves the day. It's not the building of Delta Wave guns that does it, it's having Rose as a companion. It's his ideas, his mindset. Standing up and saying no because somebody has to. Against all the odds, Rose comes back and saves the day, proving to him that's he's not alone, and that hopeless actions, done just for the sake of being the right thing to do, can make all the difference. She proves his worst fears wrong and he can finally breathe out that big knot he's been holding in his chest the whole time he's been Eccleston.
So Eccleston becomes Tennant. Same man but different. Expressing the same thoughts and feelings in an almost polar opposite way.
Where Nine was more likely to focus on the darkness and angst, Ten delights in novelty and the simple, fun things. Like Ghostbusters, 3-D specs and Werewolves. He has no illusions about the dark, nasty bastards in the world, he's seen far too much for that, but he refuses to let that get in the way of all the stuff that's good and fun in the world. He knows that the monsters will always keep coming and that people all around him will continue to die, and he really is sorry for that (So, so sorry), but to let that drag him down again is to lose sight of precisely why it is he does what he does. He wades through it all so he can build a world where these people don't have to die.
I think if you really want to boil it down you can see season one as focusing on the problems with his own sense of mortality, versus season two focusing on the problems with his own sense of immortality.
Lonely God, and all that.
I think the gurning and the schoolboyishness of Ten is a very delibirate engagement with the energy and physicality of life, though it's true they may be over-egging the pudding a bit. Then again, that might be the whole point. There's been a whiff of overcompensation in Ten's feelings of invulnerability, that only really becomes apparent when he realises he might have fucked up. He got a fair head of self-righteous fire and brimstone worked up when Rose got caught by The Wire in Idiot's Lantern.
I really reckon he might catch it something nasty next Saturday. Rose saved him last finale and I get the feeling he might not be able to do the same for her this time. At any rate, we know she's on the way out and that Season 3 Tennant's probably going to reflect this.
I wanna see what happens. |
