The Doctors Who's Who (25 page)

Smith’s first season wasn’t all chills and darkness, but it did have a feast of monsters in its two-part grand finale, which included Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans and the promise of an appearance – albeit never seen – of old favourites, the Draconians. These things would help the ratings if nothing else, but surely Matt Smith wasn’t ruled out as a credible Doctor because of the success of David Tennant?

Of course not. The part is greater than the actors who have played it, but even Patrick Troughton thought no one could follow William Hartnell and, of course, millions of fans believed no one could follow Tom Baker (and some still think that); but actors do follow, and all of them have a blue police telephone box and a familiar theme tune. Along with two hearts and a fondness for red-headed human females (on
The Jonathan Ross Show
in March 2010, when asked about Karen Gillan, Smith said, ‘She’s a ten’), there’s always proof that life goes on after the death of a Doctor. So how did Matt Smith occupy his first 25 years on Earth and suddenly find himself at the controls of the TARDIS?

Matthew Robert Smith was born in Northampton on 28 October 1982. He attended Northampton School for Boys, where he became head boy. Unlike many of his predecessors, acting wasn’t his first love: it was football. Smith started out playing for his local team Northampton Town in their under-11s
and under-12s squads. He then progressed to Nottingham Forest and played in their under-12s, 13s and 14s. He finished his short football career playing for Leicester City’s under-15s and 16s before he had to give up due to a back injury.

While other people give up acting for a second career, Smith gave up football for an acting career. Having kept his hand in, he did well to fall into work. This was largely due to his drama teacher, who signed him up as the tenth juror in
Twelve Angry Men
. Smith said of him: ‘[Mr Hardinham] encouraged me and I found it [acting] was something I enjoyed. I did an A-level in drama, without any particular aspirations at the time of becoming an actor.’

He then turned down the opportunity to go to a drama festival afterwards – something his teacher had arranged – but he was persuaded to join the National Youth Theatre in London.

His first role was in T. S. Eliot’s
Murder in the Cathedral
(2003), for which Lyn Gardner of the
Guardian
singled him out as giving ‘an exceptionally mature performance as the Archbishop’.

The following year, he would play in
The Master and Margarita
and
Fresh Kills
, both of which would earn him plaudits –
Fresh Kills
being his first professional performance.

The National Youth Theatre’s interpretation of
The Master and Margarita
ran from 23 August to 11 September 2004, and was adapted for the stage by David Rudkin at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, and directed by John Hoggarth. Smith was one of a 36-strong cast, and the production was 3 hours 10 minutes in duration, which some felt was overlong. A handful of actors were highlighted for their performances, such as Tom Allen, who played the sinister black magician Woland, supported by the ‘seriously camp’ Smith as Bassoon.

Smith played the 16-year-old Eddie in
Fresh Kills
, which
Variety
gave a rather poor review. Although he wasn’t mentioned, the cast were accused of making ‘heavy work’ of the American working-class accents. Years later, Smith would adopt a Southern American accent for his narration of the audio book
The Runaway Train
(
Daily Telegraph
, 24 April 2010), which he did uncannily well.

On the Shore of the Wide World
was a co-production by the National Theatre and the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester. At 2 hours 40 minutes, the company should have had plenty of time to convey the meaning of the piece, but audiences left a little baffled.
Variety
mentioned Smith once, saying that his character Paul Danzinger was ‘crudely conceived’. Of course, not all reviews are good and Smith had to accept that, if you can’t stand the heat, you should get out of the kitchen; but it appears that the heat wasn’t a problem as he then took the part of Lockwood in Alan Bennett’s
The History Boys
at the Lyttelton Theatre, London.

The play, which focuses on the lives of a group of bright young sixth-formers in a northern school looking for a place at Oxford or Cambridge, was another long one (2 hours and 45 minutes) but it was universally well received by theatregoers and critics alike. Within the quality cast, Smith excelled, and it was no coincidence that later that year he landed his first TV role in
The Ruby
in the Smoke.

Smith co-starred alongside Billie Piper and, although a little scattergun in its interpretation of Philip Pullman’s original novel, the actors took their parts well, as they would the following year in
The Shadow in the North
and
The Secret Diary of a Call Girl
(Smith appearing in only one episode of the latter).

It seemed that Smith worked very well with Piper, which is
a little ironic considering that they missed each other in
Doctor Who
.

Smith’s first West End role came in 2007 with
Swimming with Sharks
, acting alongside Christian Slater and Helen Baxendale at the Vaudeville Theatre, London. He took the part of Guy, personal assistant to devilish movie-maker Buddy Ackerman (Slater), and received much praise.

He was then shortlisted as an ‘outstanding newcomer’ in the
Evening Standard
Awards after his performance as Danny Foster in BBC2’s political drama
Party Animals
(2007), which together with
Swimming with Sharks
really highlighted him as a young man with promise, and soon
Doctor Who
beckoned.

When Smith learned that he was to be David Tennant’s replacement as the Doctor, he said that he paced around the room for three days. ‘It does weird things to you,’ he confessed in a promotional interview. He went on to admit that keeping the whole thing a secret was extremely hard, and that he had to tell someone – his father – who was ‘flabbergasted’ and started to talk about Tom Baker. But his grandfather could remember even further back.

On
The Jonathan Ross Show
(26 March 2010, a week before Smith’s first episode was broadcast on 3 April 2010), he explained that he told his family that he was to be the new Doctor on Christmas Eve. Imagine the joy of telling your parents that you’ve just landed the biggest part on television, that you will be immortalised in TV history. Put all the past behind you, those small roles, those character-building roles, those roles that were good and respected in the business – ‘Now I’m Doctor Who.’

When the dust settled, Smith had about six months to build the character of his Doctor Who. A time he called ‘empowering’ (
The One Show
), when nobody knew the secret,
not even an actress who asked him point blank what his next role would be.

Smith decided that he would ‘be brave’ with the part, and try and put as much enthusiasm into it as his predecessors. In fairness, there was no point in copying the extremely popular David Tennant – his Doctor had to be a complete break from what children had come to know as the Doctor.

At the time of the promotional round of interviews before his first episode, Smith had only read two scripts but was incredibly excited about his future as the Doctor, not unlike those who had gone before him. He would later admit on
Jonathan Ross
, ‘My Doctor becomes more assured as the series goes on.’

In one of his first stories (Episode 6) ‘Vampires of Venice’, he pulls out what looks to be an OAP bus pass with a colour photo of William Hartnell on it. The moment lasts only a couple of seconds, but the true fan immediately picked up on it. The message was clear: the legacy was there, the show went on.

Steven Moffat took great care with the building of the new Doctor’s character, spending the first third of the opening story, ‘The Eleventh Hour’, introducing his character and that of his companion, Amelia ‘Amy’ Pond. The first episode was one hour long as a consequence, but Moffat’s decision was vindicated when the
Daily Mail
reported that eight million people had watched it, making Smith an instant success.

It quickly became apparent that Smith liked spitting; he had done this as soon as he was regenerated from David Tennant’s Doctor and now he was trying a variety of foods in his first story to see what he liked. After spitting most of them out, he settled for fish fingers dipped in custard.

Once Smith had won over the little girl serving him his fish fingers in custard – and over 35 per cent of the TV watching
population – a fast-paced episode ensued and suddenly everyone was captivated by the new Doctor. But the second episode, ‘The Beast Below’, didn’t meet with as much praise from the fans’ point of view. Although the reviewers were keen to give the show four or five stars, the story – what there was of it – confused most of the audience, but that was soon sorted by the third episode: the Daleks were back (God bless Terry Nation and the neurosis of Tony Hancock), but this time they were making the tea and working for Winston Churchill.

The Doctor isn’t fooled by their tricks and exposes the Daleks’ mothership on the dark side of the moon. Suddenly, all hell breaks loose and Spitfires travel into outer space to attack the ship in a
Star Wars IV – A New Hope
type of way.

At the end of the story, a new-look Dalek is created and they escape to fight another day. A sinister crack on the wall appears throughout these early episodes to promise a grand finale of some substance. But for the moment it wasn’t just the Spitfire attack that was evocative of the X-Wing fighter attack on the
Death Star
. Back in Smith’s second story there was a chute that left them in an ‘underground sewer’ – a creature’s mouth; more than one fan made a connection to
Star Wars
, and then there was a further moment that mirrored – to many – Princess Leia’s message inside R2D2: ‘Help me Obi-wan, you’re my only hope’.

It was only when the Weeping Angels returned in their own two-episode story that Smith truly arrived as the Doctor, emulating the dress and style of the first three Doctors. Yes, he was – or rather
is
– a throwback to the old-style Doctor Who, so in a way he played it safe (a posh Doctor once more!).

So much was expected of Matt Smith’s Doctor, and the show was battered with so much criticism by the general public – not
the critics – it was almost as though they were in denial at the end of David Tennant’s Doctor, but Smith weathered the storm.

His character was more erratic than his new series predecessors, basing part of it on Patrick Troughton’s interpretation of the Doctor, but as Smith revealed on
The One Show
(1 April 2010), he had based part of his character on Einstein too, building in a wacky eccentricity not uncommon to any great professor. It was also on
The One Show
that he apologised to ‘six million viewers’ for saying ‘crap’. He was almost certainly forgiven by most, due to the building excitement he felt for his first episode, less than two days later (6.20pm, 3 April 2010) – D-Day indeed, when millions of children went to bed fearing the crack in the bedroom wall, even if there wasn’t one there.

With a new TARDIS interior, sonic screwdriver, companion and an excellent variation of the theme tune, the Doctor was back again to do battle with the evil of the universe. With Moffat in control, the scare voltage would be put up a notch, as that was what he did best. And the very fact that Matt Smith instantly made a success of the part, especially with the younger viewers, was proof positive that the programme would continue – as Tom Baker once put it – to ‘run and run and run’.

Although Smith did many interviews in the run-up to the new series, and even toured the country like a politician seeking votes from a multitude of fans, he couldn’t have planned better publicity than being arrested at the airport for carrying an offensive weapon.

The
Telegraph
reported on 31 March 2010 that he was stopped while passing security at Heathrow Airport en route for Belfast. The X-ray machine showed what looked like a weapon in Smith’s pocket, when in actual fact it was his sonic screwdriver. He normally kept it on his person so that he could
practise with it wherever he went and had broken four before his first episode had been screened.

Smith politely told airport staff that he was the Doctor, but they didn’t seem to understand until he showed them some promotional
Doctor Who
memorabilia.

Only the Doctor could get arrested at Heathrow for having a sonic screwdriver, something that simply
has
to be written into the show.

‘I have a wonderful journey in front of me.’

Matt Smith

So how did Smith cope with his first season as Doctor Who? Simply, he let the audience make up their own minds. There was resistance to begin with, because David Tennant was so popular, but as the weeks went on and the stories unfolded – along with the season sub-plot – hearts and minds were won over and, everybody realised, it was the same old Doctor.

Smith’s interpretation was old school, or rather public school, but that was the eccentric character we were used to. The Doctor’s companion, Amy Pond, wowed many a teenage boy – and probably his father too – and had that feisty presence we had come to expect from the Doctor’s female companions. Matt Smith and Karen Gillan made a great team, and people began to appreciate that. Along with some excellent scripts, which brought back Silurians, Cybermen and Daleks (to name but a few), the show proved yet again that time moves on and there’s always someone ready to take your place.

Arthur Darvill played Karen Gillan’s boyfriend/husband (Rory) in the show and spent most of the time as second fiddle to the Doctor in her affections, but he did manage several very heroic scenes and when the duo eventually left the show, they
were reunited forever, with a headstone marking their grave site after they had died of old age in USA-past.