Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Who Is Your Favorite Doctor?

Dear Gary,
Who, I wonder, was your favorite Doctor?  According to Kevin you have said that you thought the original was the best.  But by The Original, did you mean the original, the first, William Hartnell?  Or did you mean collectively the pre Eccleston era set of Doctors?  If I knew the Doctor he could take me back in his TARDIS to ask you what you meant, but then the Doctor would probably say you can’t go back in your own personal time line.  And so I will have to send the question out, waiting for an echo of an answer that will never come.
How often when someone has died do people say, “I was just talking to her,” or “He was just here the other day,” as though the proximity of the moment means you can turn around and touch it, but you only find as you reach out that you are holding nothing but air.  It is the tantalizing reflection in water that when touched, breaks up and scatters and then reassembles itself into its own dancing image, forever out of reach.
How often have I asked Mom a question and sent it back, but it is only a ghost of me asking--that ghost of a self who could reach out and touch the reality that was my mom.  Now the question only swirls as though caught in the Doctor’s time tunnel, and I will never again know the recipe for those Soft Oatmeal Cookies.
And so, Gary, I send my question out into the Doctor’s time swirl—who was your favorite Doctor?  But all I can do is tell you my own ranking of the Doctors and send that out as well, and let it wash through the swirl of time and echo back in a dancing reflection.
My first, my favorite, Tom Baker.  To be honest, this number one ranking is due mainly to the fact that Tom Baker was the first and for the longest time the only Doctor I was exposed to.  It was only after many years of repeated viewing of the Tom Baker years that PBS started branching out to the other Doctors.  But I caught these Doctors randomly and sporadically and viewed them mainly as a means of rounding out the history of the Doctor (Tom Baker).
 Having lived in the same television market, I wonder, Gary, if that would also be your choice.  But then, you had the entire collection long before I did and had more exposure to the Doctor as a whole.  Perhaps you even watched the entire compendium beginning to end, as I have since done and plan to do again, and so had the full range of Doctor Who before you to reason out your choice for number one.  Me—as Madame De Pompadour would say—I had the days of the Doctor’s life pressed together as though in a book such that I could walk through to any point in his life, rather than taking the slow path.
I am now on the slow path, though.  Beginning to End.  Hartnell to Smith (and beyond?).  I have done this once and intend on a second round.  And so I can now reason out my rankings.  But I still maintain Tom Baker as favorite, the echo of my ghostly past too strong to overcome.
Second on my list is the first, William Hartnell.  He wasn’t a Time Lord then, at least as far as we knew.  He was a mystery.  An adventurer.  A vagabond.  An irascible one at that.  He was not yet a demigod, as he is in danger of becoming in recent years.  He was simply a being from another world traveling with his granddaughter and two kidnapped teachers.  He benefits greatly from strong companions (not counting Susan who was only good for three things—introducing us to the Doctor, introducing Ian and Barbara to the Doctor, and naming the TARDIS, that is, if you can believe her).
I will now jump down to the bottom of my list, as it is easier to pick out the best and the worst and then work out the rest in between.  By far the worst Doctor is Colin Baker.  He, unlike William Hartnell, suffers from the worst companion, the whiny Peri of the clunking shoes.  His episodes are almost torture to sit through, but I do it out of loyalty to Doctor Who.  He is much too arrogant, and while all the Doctors are arrogant in their own way, Colin Baker is arrogant in the worst way.  He is meanly arrogant, smugly arrogant, arrogantly arrogant.  His was a regeneration that went wrong.
Jumping up one from the bottom, I move to the eighth Doctor Paul McGann, although I do not consider him The Doctor.  He may be A Doctor, but he is not The Doctor.  But he is officially considered The Doctor and so I must include him, this Doctor of one episode that is so far out of touch with the series and the mythology of the Doctor.  I have nothing against the actor; he is personable enough and might have made a fine Doctor.  But his one episode is so incongruous that I consider this Doctor merely an anomaly, a bad dream that the Doctor had once upon a time.
Moving back up to the top, I place at number three Christopher Eccleston.  I give him credit for resurrecting the Doctor into the modern era while at the same time maintaining the historical integrity of the character.  After so many years he was able to step across the void and into the shoes of the Doctor with ease (and I had my significant doubts beforehand, given the debacle of the brief attempt of the eighth Doctor).   I immediately could accept Christopher Eccleston as Doctor Who; he made the character live again. 
Fourth is David Tennant.  He was important, this next Doctor from Eccleston, to build on the momentum and keep the Doctor alive.  He and Eccleston both benefit from the modernization of the show--the shorter, more compact stories and better effects.  He also has one of the best companions in Donna, just the right person to keep him from his dangerous flirtation with demigodery.  And we see when she leaves how he careens out of control.  Any more episodes from him would have moved him down several notches in the ranking, but he left in time.
Fifth on my list is Matt Smith.  And he might move up some the more I see of him.  I have to say that I was skeptical upon viewing the first previews of this new Doctor and his new companion.  I felt it was a mistake to pair this youngest of the Doctors with an equally young female companion, especially after the experience of Rose (and the show’s unfortunate yielding to temptation in tacking on that sappy end to the Rose saga when it should have left well enough alone).  But I must say that I have been pleasantly surprised in the handling of their relationship, and am especially pleased with the addition of Rory.  The three of them together are more truly companions, as Tennant and Donna were, not superior and underlings, nor demigod and worshipers. However, I have been disappointed with the story arcs through the two seasons I have watched, and he is in just as much danger of slipping in my estimation, through no fault of his own.  The only thing at the moment keeping him in fifth is he himself.  Matt Smith is the pin pricking the ever increasingly bloated egotism of the show.
Sixth I place Patrick Troughton.  Honestly, I almost forgot about this Doctor.  I really like him and he could be higher on my list, except for the unfortunate fact that most of his episodes are lost to us, swirling somewhere out there in the nether regions of time.  He, like Eccleston and Tennant, was important in keeping the legend alive.  As the first regeneration, he had the impossible task of maintaining the established and beloved character of the Doctor while at the same time creating an entirely new characterization. Patrick Troughton successfully made this transition, expanding on the tramp like quality of William Hartnell's Doctor and exploring new and undeveloped directions in his personality. 
Meeting up in the middle now, I have three left.  I can easily place at the bottom of these three, just above Colin Baker and the eighth Mcgann, Sylvester McCoy.  He was good enough, but the creativity of the show was dying.  Although I have to say he is in one of my favorite episodes, one that I have turned into traditional Christmas viewing, and that is Paradise Towers.
Rounding out the middle, and if pressed, I will place first (that is seventh on the list) Peter Davison and second (that is eighth) Jon Pertwee.  Both are likeable enough, but Pertwee was a little too much of a dandy for my taste, and it didn’t help that he was earth bound for most of his run. 
And there you have it, my rankings of the Doctors, one through eleven, but not necessarily in that order.  And so I send this out to you, Gary, through the Doctor’s time swirl, and await any echo of a reply.

1 comment:

  1. Glad that you are finally putting your extensive knowledge to good use. All I know is that teenage girls seem to like Tennant.

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