And as promised, the longer reaction ...
It feels weird to say "goodbye" to someone who's still going to be around for more than a year yet, but I suppose it had to happen this way - which, come to think of it, is a statement that applies as much to the relatively early announcement of David Tennant's decision to depart
Doctor Who as it does to the departure itself.
Practically, this is a sound decision. It allows Tennant to leave while his popularity is still high, it makes it that much less likely that his subsequent career will be defined exclusively by
Doctor Who, and it does that much more to enable oncoming show-runner Steven Moffat to set his own stage.
Because, let's face it, in ways both good and bad, outgoing show-runner Russell T. Davies really defined the character of the Tenth Doctor, and while I wouldn't blame Tennant for Davies' bad habits with Ten, I suspect it'd be hard for Moffat not to follow in some of Davies' missteps with Ten, simply because he'd still be played by Tennant.
And I say this as someone who, on the whole, likes Ten. I like Tennant as Ten for many of the same reasons that I still like Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor - both were manic madmen who masked their manipulations with silliness and mercurial swings between moods mirthful and melancholy, and yeah, I can probably stop writing this in Stan Lee style now. That being said, there were times when Davies' tendency toward portraying Ten as Emo Cosmic Jesus were too much to bear, so while I'd hoped to see as much as a full season of Moffat fixing those bugs in his own handling of Ten, I suppose we'll have to settle for next year's hand-off specials, between Davies and Moffat, to do that job. The rumors that Catherine Tate and John Simm are returning for those specials, as Donna Noble and the Master (respectively, obviously), give me some hope that we might indeed see such a deck-clearing exercise, of the type that "Journey's End" tried (and, in its last few minutes, failed) to be.
But, yes, it's probably easier for Moffat to simply start fresh, especially because of the unique nature of NuWho's fandom. After all, while many of us have been following the show since its original run, there are now just as many fans for whom
Doctor Who literally began with Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and Billie Piper as his "first" companion. When Eccleston's Ninth Doctor regenerated into Tennant's Ten at the end of NuWho's first season, many of those fans clung even more fiercely to Piper's Rose Tyler, and thus, when Rose was traded out for Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones, a significant number of those newer fans simply went apeshit, retroactively declaring Rose to be OMG TEH DOKTARZ WUN TWU WUV. This rendered the character of Martha, as much as I still love her, pretty much radioactive, in both fandom and the franchise, and it wasn't until Tate came on board full-time as Donna that the more militant batchippers seemed to be slowly starting to get over their butthurt. However, the way that a lot of them seem to have done so is by transferring their single-minded fixation from Rose over to Ten, to which I attribute the shrieking online hysteria that followed the cliffhanger of "The Stolen Earth," as many such fans' reactions mirrored those of Rose herself, who acted like it was the end of the world that "her" Doctor might suddenly have a new face, instead of the pretty one that she'd fallen in love with.
So, with that in mind, as much as I'd love to see Tennant break Baker's record for longest-serving Doctor, and Ten get rehabilitated from his wangst by Moffat, I also find myself worrying that Tennant might have stayed on too long already, since I'm afraid that whoever plays Eleven will instantly be hit with a wailing wall of fans going BAAAWWWWWW YOU AREN'T PRETTY ANYMORE WE WANT OUR TEN BACK, and no new Doctor deserves to weather a shitstorm of fandom hatred akin to what Colin Baker went through as the Sixth Doctor.
What now, then? Well, I look forward to seeing how Tennant makes his departure as Ten, and I anxiously await news of who will replace him as Eleven. With a few notable potential exceptions (see below), I'd tend to prefer that the Doctor still be played by an actor in his 30s - old enough to have dramatic gravitas, but young enough to have frisson in scenes with former companions like Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, which have showcased Ten's status as a Peter Pan-style puer aeternus archetype - and while it's not a requirement by any means, I'd love it if, like Tennant, the new Doctor was someone who
grew up a fan of the show. Even when Tennant had his off-performances, or had to deal with less-than-stellar scripts, I always wound up being won over by the fact that, in many ways, he played the role of the Doctor in much the same style that
my 10-year-old self would have done, and as someone who grew up on
Doctor Who myself, I couldn't help but find that appealing.
More than anything, though, I suppose you could say that I want an Eleventh Doctor who can be an
emotive juggler, since I want someone who will be equal parts hyper, funny, scary, brilliant, egotistical, manipulative, deceptive, sarcastic, bastardly, enthusiastic, relentless and unbeatable. What I want, in short, is what I've always seen the Doctor as - a clever, laughing liar, a super-genius trickster anarchist who acts like an asshole, breaks all the rules and pisses everyone off, but for all the right reasons (and maybe more than a few of the wrong ones, as well).
Gee, I wonder who that reminds me of ...?
(The Eleventh Doctor, seen here with Romana III.)
