Doctor Who (28 page)

20

The Renaissance

“All those planets and creatures and horizons! I haven't seen them yet, not with these eyes. And it is gonna be . . .
fantastic!
”

—Tenth Doctor, from “The Christmas Invasion” (2005)

 

Not only was the show a success, it was regaining the kind of mainstream popularity it hadn't held since the 1970s. Including recordings, the final viewing figures for the opening episode, “Rose,” hit 10.5 million, making it the #7 watched show across UK television. Both viewership and critical reception were so high that on March 30, only four days after “Rose” aired, BBC Head of Drama Jane Tranter announced that the new show would have a second season in 2006 as well as a Christmas special beforehand.

Puzzlingly, however, despite high ratings, wide-scale praise, and numerous awards, US networks had little interest in licensing the show, believing Americans either wouldn't be interested or would remember it as a strange cult show from the past with no production budget. The Sci-Fi Channel (now SyFy) aired the first season a year later, after cutting lines and shortening scenes to accommodate the longer commercial breaks of US television.

But back in the UK, no one had any doubts that the new program was a massive hit, earning both the respect and support that the classic program never fully attained. Over the next few years, the BBC hosted promotional events and concerts, a museum about the show opened, and tons of press for all things
Doctor Who
followed. An asset once considered a barely tolerable silliness had become a prized possession. Many critics, journalists, and TV historians suggested that this recognition stemmed from the Doctor having evolved from simply a TV character to a quintessential British hero on the level of James Bond and Sherlock Holmes.

Of course, there were still critics who recognized the show's success but didn't believe that it was truly a continuation of the classic series. Some argued that the special effects budget alone made it a different show,
along with the constant pop culture references in the dialogue. Others thought it had more to do with the sudden presence of sexual innuendo and romantic possibility, making the program less innocent.

As time went on, some critics changed their position. What seemed fresh during Eccleston's season may have become predictable for them by Tennant's third year. Or they didn't care for the program at first, but warmed up to it once they got used to certain new aspects. And some chose just to appreciate it, even if it wasn't something they were interested in following. In 2010, two years before he played a robot on
Doctor Who,
comedian David Mitchell spoke of the new show on his webcast
David Mitchell's Soapbox.
“I used to be a big fan of
Doctor Who
. . . And I watched the new version at first, until I found myself irritated by the undermining of what I felt to be its core principles . . . But really, so what? These so-called core principles of mine were simply my remembrance of feelings I'd had towards the show as a child. And the sign that the new show is doing the job it's supposed to is that children love it.”

At New York Comic-Con 2012, Peter Davison shared his thoughts on the program's new status:

 

Now
Doctor Who
is one of the BBC's premier prestige programs. It really wasn't in those days. It was very successful, and it sold to many countries and made the BBC lots of money, but it was never considered a premier drama series. So the people who wrote for
Doctor Who
quite often were people who wrote for a detective series one week,
Doctor Who
one week, and then maybe a hospital drama the week after. They weren't really driven by their love of science fiction. . . . [the new]
Doctor Who
is written by people with a passion for what they're doing. A comfort for me about that, and the other classic Doctors, is these people were all sitting out there as kids in the audience and watching
us
do
Doctor Who
; they're all fantastic fans.

 

However some people felt about it, success had arrived for
Doctor Who.
Now the program needed to stay on the course despite recasting its hero after only one year.

The Tenth Doctor

Although Jack Harkness was a quick hit with fans, Davies had a practical reason for removing him from the TARDIS moments before the Doctor regenerated. RTD wanted to emphasize the frightening and strange experience of Rose witnessing her trusted friend physically transforming, echoing how he thought some of the younger viewers would feel who perhaps hadn't been prepared for such a change. As a Time Agent, Jack would have known about regeneration and would have tried to explain it in a way that would calm her down.

When asked to participate in the 2005 Children in Need charity Christmas event, RTD took advantage of the situation to explain regeneration and provide a peek at the new Doctor. In an untitled mini-episode for the charity special, the Tenth Doctor tells Rose that he's the same person as before, not some replacement. Rose understandably has difficulty absorbing this information and then asks what no companion ever had: “Can you change back?”

The answer of course was no and the episode ended with the Tenth Doctor having a fit of temporary madness. Until “The Christmas Invasion” finally aired, viewers wondered what kind of man this new hero would be. That had certainly been the topic of many discussions behind the scenes once David Tennant had been cast.

Born in Bathgate, Scotland, to a Presbyterian minister, David McDonald was an avid fan of
Doctor Who,
regularly watching the adventures of Tom Baker and then Peter Davison. At the tender age of three, he told his parents that he wanted to become an actor because of
Doctor Who.
He entered the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama at seventeen, one of the youngest students ever to pass the audition. Learning that another David McDonald had registered with the Equity union already, he took the stage name “Tennant” from Neil Tennant, singer of electronic pop band Pet Shop Boys.

Tennant joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and impressed many with his work. Still making occasional appearances in TV and on film, he played opposite Christopher Eccleston in the 1996 movie
Jude.
Starting in 2004, Tennant appeared more regularly on television, including as a
singing detective in the miniseries
Blackpool,
in which he played opposite David Morrissey (who later played the titular character of the 2009 TV special “The Next Doctor”). In March 2005, while the new
Doctor Who
was making its debut, BBC Three aired the miniseries
Casanova,
created by Russell T. Davies and featuring Tennant and Peter O'Toole as the Italian protagonist at different times in his life.

Before 2005, David Tennant had been doing voice work for Big Finish, appearing in
Doctor Who
audio plays. He still had a strong affection for the character and was excited to see how Russell T. Davies would modernize it for a new audience. Tennant even provided the voiceover narration for the documentary
Doctor Who: A New Dimension.

When RTD and Julie Gardner discussed finding a new Doctor to succeed Eccleston, David Tennant's name quickly arose. Impressed with the actor's work and aware that some were predicting he was “the next big thing” in television, Gardner offered him the role. Tennant was at first surprised, then ecstatic, proclaiming, “I want a long coat!”

There were plenty of Eccleston episodes left to air, so Tennant was asked to keep his casting a secret. Unfortunately, news of Eccleston's departure leaked, which annoyed both RTD and the Ninth Doctor actor since it robbed them of being able to make a big announcement. Curious about the fan response, Tennant visited the message boards of the
Doctor Who
fan website Outpost Gallifrey. He told
Doctor Who Magazine
:

 

I went on there, and the first comment I read was very nice, and the next comment was terribly flattering, and then the next comment said something like, ‘I can't bear the sight of him!' And the one after that said, ‘Who?' The one after that said, ‘I'd rather have David Morrissey.' The one after that said, ‘That's it! The dream is finished! Someone who looks like a weasel could never play the Doctor! It's over!' And then I thought to myself that maybe it's best not to read this sort of thing too much.

 

Tennant pushed forward on constructing his version of the Time Lord. He and costume designer Louise Page discussed a military look, dismissed in favor of a suit. Tennant wanted his Doctor to look like a proper student
or young teacher, similar to what Jamie Oliver had worn on the show
Parkinson.
He wanted “geek chic” but also a suit comfortable to run and leap around in. For similar reasons, he elected to wear casual running shoes. He found a pair of brown trousers with blue pinstripes that he liked. There was no matching jacket, so Page bought several more pairs of the same trousers and made jackets from the material.

Page told
Doctor Who Magazine,
“The jacket shape was based on a 1930s period suit. . . . The long coat started off much more theatrical and period-looking, with bigger lapels, but Russell asked me to pare it down to make it narrower. I said, ‘He's going to end up looking like a pencil.' Russell said, ‘I like that idea!' ”

Tennant grew up with the Fourth and Fifth Doctors, and we can see their influence on him. The Tenth Doctor has a vulnerability and occasional indecisiveness reminiscent of Peter Davison's portrayal, yet he also possesses a wild, childish energy and bouts of righteous anger that bring the Fourth Doctor to mind. While danger excited the Ninth, the Tenth thrills at the unknown, human creativity, and enduring hope in spite of the odds. This Doctor doesn't lose his temper and call people “stupid apes” all the time. He seems practically in love with
Homo sapiens.
Billie Piper told
Doctor Who Magazine,
“Chris would go away in between breaks and save his energy for the performance—whereas, with David, we'll kind of chat, we'll have a laugh, but then, as soon as he needs to focus, he'll find his own way of doing that. David dances with it more. He's a bit more like—I don't know—a baby deer. He's my little Bambi!”

At the same time, there was a darkness to this Doctor, a remaining glimmer of the ninth incarnation. Soon after his regeneration, the Tenth Doctor witnessed Prime Minister Harriet Jones destroy alien invaders who had surrendered and were leaving. In the past, the Doctor would sometimes walk away in such a scenario, unwilling to fully impose his values on a society or alter major political futures. But here, he is angry. First he warns and then, when he sees his warning is not taken seriously, he follows through, perhaps just to prove that he is not to be trifled with. Through manipulation, the Tenth Doctor removes the Prime Minister from power and isn't sorry about it. Nor does he wonder how this will change the “golden age” future he knew previously existed for the UK with her in charge.

In the second season premiere “New Earth,” he seemed to sum up the situation: “I'm the Doctor. And if you don't like it, if you want to take it to a higher authority, there isn't one. It stops with me.”

Doctor-Lite

The first season of the modern show broke new ground with a companion's parent and ex-boyfriend as recurring characters. The second season took matters further. “Love and Monsters” included Rose's mother, Jackie Tyler, and delved into the stress a parent feels knowing that her only child is traveling through space and time, seeing incredible things but also facing terrible dangers for days or weeks at a time. Tennant's tenure as the Doctor also featured a kind of story never before done in the program's history, the “Doctor-Lite” episodes.

In order to spread the budget across not only another thirteen adventures but also another Christmas special, the
Doctor Who
production team decided to do one adventure during the season that wouldn't feature major special effects and would barely involve the Doctor and Rose, since reduced time meant less money spent on them. “Love and Monsters” instead showed ordinary people affected by the Doctor's adventures forming a group akin to some
Doctor Who
fan clubs. This same episode featured a creature called the Absorbaloff, a monster created by a young fan who'd won a contest on Blue Peter.

The Doctor-Lite episode successfully saved money and was repeated in the next season with the episode “Blink.” This adventure was based on a story that Steven Moffat had included in
Doctor Who Annual 2006,
“What I Did on My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow,” featuring the Ninth Doctor sending messages to a twelve-year-old student twenty years in the future. Reworked to make Sally older and pitting her against a new menace known as the Weeping Angels, “Blink” quickly became a fan favorite despite barely including the Doctor at all. “Blink” also gave us the phrase “timey-wimey,” the Doctor's pet name for paradoxes that don't disrupt the space-time vortex. Fans have adopted this phrase widely, sometimes using it to refer to instances when the show's internal logic gets a bit strange.

The fourth season had a “companion-lite” episode, as the Doctor had a strange adventure while separated from his friend. This episode,
“Midnight,” received praise as one of the more frightening examples of
Doctor Who,
featuring a monster neither understood nor defeated.

Just Friends?

In his stories, the Tenth Doctor's connection to Rose seems much stronger than the Ninth's. More protective and playful, he also seems awkward and uncomfortable when she implies that she might want something closer to a relationship or when he senses her jealousy toward another woman. This personal envy comes to the fore in “School Reunion,” which brought back Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith.