Geronimo! Christopher Morley takes a look at Matt Smith's time as the Doctor.
Following a quite literally explosive regenerative process
for both the Doctor himself & the team bringing his adventures to
life- Russell T Davies replaced by Steven Moffatt as head writer-
April 3, 2010 was the day we finally saw for ourselves what this new
Who would be like. After
months of head-scratching over the casting of a near-unknown
youngster by the name of Matt Smith as the Eleventh incarnation of
Gallifrey's favourite son, it was time to see what he could do.
And The
Eleventh Hour didn't disappoint,
as he saved Earth from the Atraxi in an amazingly quick twenty
minutes! Perhaps this is the finest of his early moments...
Seasoned viewers might note his developing blend of the vaguely clownish & the sombre, even calculating. Where have we seen that before, boys & girls?
But to call Eleven a mere clone of his similarly bow-tied self - the dickie-bow a conscious nod to Patrick Troughton by Smith after viewing Tomb Of The Cybermen & acclaiming the man with the recorder as ' rather wonderful' - would be doing him a disservice. Watch anything from his début onwards & be amazed all over again at how he portrays both sides of the ' daft old man who stole a magic box'.....
Yes, he could be
wonderfully silly when called upon! But when the gravity of the
situation demanded it he could be deadly serious, & there are
arguably no better showcases for that than his speech at Stonehenge (The Pandorica Opens)...
...A fine culmination to his quest to fix more than a few cracks in time, & facing up to 'Grandfather'/the Old God in The Rings Of Akhaten...
He was a warrior too, going by the Battle of Demon's Run- There's also the small matter of the Silence, too!
...A fine culmination to his quest to fix more than a few cracks in time, & facing up to 'Grandfather'/the Old God in The Rings Of Akhaten...
He was a warrior too, going by the Battle of Demon's Run- There's also the small matter of the Silence, too!
Which leads us
nicely into the most defining relationships of his life. He'd already
seen the woman who would become his wife, River Song, die in theLibrary in his previous incarnation.
Next it was time to meet her for the first time alongside his
companion & future mother in law Amy Pond in Let's Kill
Hitler...
Then some murky business with the Silence, a faked death for the Doctor & a mission to salvage the Byzantium among others after The Wedding Of River Song.
Then some murky business with the Silence, a faked death for the Doctor & a mission to salvage the Byzantium among others after The Wedding Of River Song.
Didn't stop the
great Queen Nefertiti trying to get her claws into him though (Dinosaurs On A Spaceship)!-.
Someone else was after him, too, though not in as nice a manner as
you'd hope. The Snowmen/The
Bells Of St John saw the Great
Intelligence returning for the first time since The
Abominable Snowmen/ The
Web Of Fear. Indeed, The
Snowmen can be said to function
as a prequel/sequel to The Web Of Fear.
As well as meeting Clara Oswald ( 'the impossible girl') for the
first time following the deaths of Mr & Mrs Pond in The
Angels Take Manhattan, Eleven
accidentally gives the Intelligence the idea of invading Earth
through the London Underground...
Which leads
nicely into the Second Doctor's tangle with it in the bowels of
London's transport network- by then the snowmen have been traded for
Yeti, which get a first outing in The Abominable Snowmen,
before returning.
Now then, back to this 'impossible girl'. Just why is she so hard to
pin down? Well, she's been there in some capacity throughout every
one of the Doctor's lives to save him from the clutches of the
Intelligence (The Name Of The Doctor)...
From there it was
on to perhaps his greatest battle yet- with himself. His greatest
secret had been revealed, dating back to the early years of the Time
War (Night Of The Doctor).
The War Doctor's disavowal of the very title of ' Doctor' &
indeed his actions during the War shamed Eleven into doing all he
could to forget about him before a sea change in The Day Of
The Doctor.
What a day it
was- alongside his War & Tenth incarnations, with a little help
from his other previous selves & a previously unseen future
Doctor he undid his supposed genocide of both his own people &
the Daleks! From there it was on to Trenzalore for a last stand &
bearing witness to the formation of the Church of the Silence ( The
Time Of The Doctor). Quite a
goodbye for the Raggedy Man, as well as a quick ' hello' to his
newest body...
All indications are that the Twelfth Doctor will be quite different indeed from his predecessor, & we're promised that he'll finally catch up on his phone calls- more specifically the one at the end of The Big Bang regarding an Egyptian goddess on the loose aboard a spacegoing Orient Express. The intrigue builds, but for now at least until August we must be content in the knowledge that we've seen more than just those piercing, fiery eyes.
Not a bad way to
bounce back from near-death of old age, we're sure you'll agree!
Hints have also been dropped that Eleven will be making a call to
Clara and/or his future self in Twelve's first episode ( wonder if this has anything to do with it?).
After all it could be a call for help in freezing Gallifrey, the
reason we see those eyes in the first place.
It could also be
a reminder that the whole ' Egyptian goddess' thing still needs
sorting, or something to do with the Paternoster Gang (scheduled
to appear in Episode One alongside Twelve in Victorian London, scene
of The Snowman).
But of course, we should always remember when the Doctor was Matt Smith at least as much as we look forward to Peter Capaldi!
But of course, we should always remember when the Doctor was Matt Smith at least as much as we look forward to Peter Capaldi!
