Christopher Morley looks at the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant, and his time as key-holder of the Type 40. Allons-y!
As Doctor Who
began a difficult shift following the departure of the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston), the search was on for the Tenth. What most
viewers probably didn't recognise was that one of their own would be
the next man to take command of the TARDIS - David Tennant having done
his time as a lifelong fan & now getting the chance to take on
the mantle all of geek-kind would gladly sell their granny to get
within touching distance of.
It was Davey-boy
who seized it, though. First appearing in the dying moments of The
Parting Of The Ways (in
retrospect, the jacket he wears post-change, while indeed part of
his former self's clothing actually makes him resemble a Gallifreyan
equivalent to Barty Crouch Junior, the Death Eater Tennant had played
in the film adaptation of Harry Potter & The Goblet Of
Fire), his first full outing as
the Doctor came in the 2005 festive special The Christmas
Invasion - saving Earth from the
Sycorax in his jim-jams.
And that
combination - the friendly/outwardly funny battling for position
alongside a fiercely protective streak - is probably what defines Ten.
It's there consistently throughout everything from the aforementioned
Christmastime adventure to The End Of Time,
and probably what most will remember of his tenure in years to come.
Classic Who
fans may be tempted to use the man the Tenth was five incarnations
ago as a handy point of comparison. The man in the cricketing outfit
balanced compassion with a willingness to use force where necessary -
remember him pointing a gun at Davros's head in Resurrection
Of The Daleks?
Coincidentally
they'd later meet in Time Crash
before the younger self became father in law to his senior (see The
Doctor's Daughter for the first
glimpse of a spot of wibbly-wobbly romancey-wancey - the Doctor, or at
least the man playing him, going on to wed the woman in the role of
his daughter, whose father also happens to have played the Doctor!).
Perhaps the
ultimate brainteaser from a series with 50 years & counting's
worth of the bleeders! In a unique case of art imitating life, we
were also of course introduced to Professor River Song in the later
double-header of Forest Of The Dead/Silence In The
Library.
She's a lady
who'll be important enough to him in the future that he'll reveal his
true name to her - & true enough, as if to emphasise the often
non-linear nature of time travel we'll later see the true beginnings
of their relationship in an arc which begins chronologically with the
Eleventh Doctor in Let's Kill Hitler
& ends with her death in the Library - a life lived in reverse
from the Doctor's perspective.
But there was a
lot to be done before regenerating & having the Fuhrer of the
Third Reich stuffed in a cupboard in Berlin. New foes abounded - the
Ood perhaps the best recurring example, with the Beast easily winning
any 'most terrifying' contest (handily you can see both in The
Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit).
Any similarity to the Sensorites is purely cosmetic of course! And
there's also the small matter of a maiden outing for the Weeping
Angels (Blink).
Just to even the
score there were a few returns from 'oldies but goodies' too - the
Master (Utopia/The Sound Of Drums/Last Of The Time Lords/The End Of Time) & the
heavily devolved Macra, the specimens hiding under the motorways of
New New York (Gridlock)
no match for their considerably
more intelligent forefathers from The Macra Terror.
He might've grown
too old for the odd tootle on a recorder, but he could have been
forgiven for a shiver of recognition upon getting reacquainted with
the Daleks in, well, Manhattan (Daleks In Manhattan/Evolution Of The Daleks).
They're planning something rather big during the construction phase
of the totemic Empire State Building, but there's a certain sense of
deja vu - especially for those lucky enough to have witnessed The
Evil Of The Daleks.
Old Tenny also
managed to win perhaps his greatest victory yet in the
process...knocking his Fourth incarnation off the top of 'favourite
Doctor' fan polls (heresy). Of course he'd depart before having the
chance to meet him or at least a chap who looked rather like him
after freezing their home planet - that honour going to the man who
emerged following an explosive delayed regenerative process.
The Pink Paper
loved him too! By 2006 he'd been voted their 'Sexiest Man In The
Universe'. But while fangirls worldwide were quick to gush about how
cute & stuff he was, he was more interested in the altogether
more important business of saving everybody.
Well, not quite
everybody on the evidence of The Fires Of Pompeii,
though he did manage to save at least four people from flaming death
at the hands of Mount Vesuvius. One of them would later come to look
strangely familiar, but he had no time to ponder that as he defeated
the Pyrovile race with a water pistol.
Rumour has it
that we will, though, get some kind of explanation as to why the
Twelfth Doctor appears to be the spitting image of Caecilius - the man
who would come to take Ten on as a sort of household god. A big step
on the road towards that came in The End Of Time,
a titanic battle between the suited & booted Jamie Oliver
lookalike (all intentional, Russell T Davies probably a fan of
cookery shows on the sly) & the massed ranks of the rejuvenated
Time Lords, including the Master, who finally gets to the bottom of
that drumming noise that's been driving him a little crazy.
And there's Rassilon &
his Gauntlet (or is it merely a giant metal glove?) too. It could be
said that here began the quest to locate Gallifrey once more - sending
his own people back into the hell of the Time War, including the
apparently willingly sacrificed Master.
If you believe the
gossips, upon his return he'll in fact be Lord President if/once
Twelve encounters him again so maybe there was a sort of method to
his madness. Throw in the fact that Ten himself is thrust back into
the War alongside his future self & the past one who'd seen
active service in the conflict he'd forgotten up to that point (The
Day Of The Doctor) and some big threads start to tie themselves
nicely.
Oh, how could we forget
his marriage to Queen Elizabeth I? First alluded to in The
Shakespeare Code, when she's not too happy to see him turn up at
the Globe Theatre - well, he did kind of run off after the wedding,
which we see in Day after a spot of confusion with a Zygon-
it's promptly used as a verbal stick to beat him with by a future
Queen, Liz Ten, in The Beast Below & then again by the
Dream Lord (Amy's Choice) following his regeneration.
Speaking of which, Ten
was also rather guilty of using up one of these precious changes of
appearance for reasons of pure vanity, diverting the energy from the
process into his own severed hand. Which led to the birth of the
Meta-Crisis Doctor, the result of biological interaction between a
human & a Time Lord. All very complicated. But presumably
somewhere in the universe he could still be out there, having the
romance with Rose Tyler the 'true' Doctor just couldn't allow
himself.
Just reward for
seemingly causing the 'final end' of the Daleks & indeed Davros
(The Stolen Earth/ Journey's End) as prophesied by Caan, the
giggliest of all the sons of Skaro born from their creator's own
cells - the purest of the pure, you might say. Why did he have so many
such laughing fits? Travelling back into the Time War to save the
renegade Kaled who'd started his journey to planned mass conquest in
Genesis Of The Daleks sent him a bit loopy.
But in the process he'd
seen the true evil of his own species & led them a merry dance,
the Doctor & Donna Noble arriving bang on time to ensure
destruction came as he'd already envisioned. Lovely stuff. Of course
we now know that at least one ship, carrying a Progenitor device,
survived...
But to many, the Tenth
was 'their Doctor', the man who helped lay the foundations for what
Doctor Who is - a worldwide phenomenon, Ten leading the
march from cult concern to 'in' crowd favourite. Would he be pleased?
Oh yes.
