The TARDIS wardrobe - a place of infinite variety, and indeed clothing options. A place where Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor found himself an outfit similar to that of Harrison Ford in the teaching segments of Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, and topped it off with a bow tie in a conscious nod to one Patrick Troughton whose Second Doctor wore one well before they became cool. All in all, an outfit far removed from the simplicity of the leather jacketed Doctor he was not too long before.
With both their respective fashion choices and mannerisms being so different were there were ever any similarities between Christopher Eccleston's Ninth and the man he would become in two selves time?
A question to ponder upon, starting perhaps logically at the beginning, with The Eleventh Hour & Rose. It would seem both act as handy escape routes for young ladies bored with the everyday grind! With no job thanks to the shop being blown up & a stagnant relationship with boyfriend Mickey Smith, little wonder Rose Tyler hops aboard.......
As will Amy Pond upon learning her raggedy Doctor is real, temporally hotfooting it out of Leadworth!
DOCTOR: Been knocking around on my own for a while. My choice, but I've started talking to myself all the time. It's giving me earache.
AMY: You're lonely. That's it? Just that?
DOCTOR: Just that. Promise.
AMY: Okay.
DOCTOR: So, are you okay, then? Because this place, sometimes it can make people feel a bit, you know...
AMY: I'm fine. It's just, there's a whole world in here, just like you said. It's all true. I thought. Well, I started to think that maybe you were just like a madman with a box.
DOCTOR: Amy Pond, there's something you'd better understand about me, because it's important, and one day your life may depend on it. I am definitely a madman with a box. Ha ha! Yeah. Goodbye Leadworth, hello everything.
It's just possible that then-new showrunner Steven Moffatt was taking more than a few tips from the man he succeeded in terms of the running order of the series, too. Both Series One & Five open in the present day before taking in trips to the far future - The End Of The World & The Beast Below depicting the slow implied death of Earth itself. These are then followed by first trips into the past with The Unquiet Dead showing an eighteenth century Christmas & Victory Of The Daleks set at the height of the Blitz, both of which were penned by Mark Gatiss.
Of course, both of those also feature the Doctor meeting a famous figure from the appropriate period, the Ninth coming across Charles Dickens......
DOCTOR: Dickens?While the Eleventh encounters the man many still consider to be the greatest Prime Minister we've ever had!
DICKENS: Yes.
DOCTOR: Charles Dickens?
DICKENS: Yes.
DOCTOR: The Charles Dickens?
DRIVER: Should I remove the gentleman, sir?
DOCTOR: Charles Dickens? You're brilliant, you are. Completely one hundred percent brilliant. I've read them all. Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and what's the other one, the one with the ghost?
DICKENS: A Christmas Carol ?
DOCTOR: No, no, no, the one with the trains. The Signal Man, that's it. Terrifying! The best short story ever written. You're a genius.
DRIVER: You want me to get rid of him, sir?
DICKENS: Er, no, I think he can stay.
A key aspect of the revival of the series was of course the Time War, and alongside it the implication that the sole survivor of Gallifrey's destruction was the last of his kind. His guilt & rage over his part in the conflict is evident when he meets a lone member of the other side.
DOCTOR: They're never going to come! Your race is dead! You all burnt, all of you. Ten million ships on fire. The entire Dalek race wiped out in one second.
DALEK: You lie!
DOCTOR: I watched it happen. I made it happen.
DALEK: You destroyed us?
DOCTOR: I had no choice.
DALEK: And what of the Time Lords?
DOCTOR: Dead. They burnt with you. The end of the last great Time War. Everyone lost.
DALEK: And the coward survived.
DOCTOR: Oh, and I caught your little signal. Help me. Poor little thing. But there's no one else coming 'cause there's no one else left.
A similar conversation then occurs between he & the Silurian Alaya in The Hungry Earth, another long-awaited return for a classic foe.
DOCTOR: You are beautiful. Remnant of a bygone age on planet Earth. And by the way, lovely mode of travel. Geothermal currents projecting you up through a network of tunnels. Gorgeous. Mind if I sit? Now. Your people have a friend of mine. I want her back. Why did you come to the surface? What do you want? Oh, I do hate a monologue. Give us a bit back. How many are you?
ALAYA: I'm the last of my species.
DOCTOR: Really. No. Last of the species. The Klempari Defence. As an interrogation defence, it's a bit old hat, I'm afraid.
ALAYA: I'm the last of my species.
DOCTOR: No. You're really not. Because I'm the last of my species and I know how it sits in a heart. So don't insult me. Let's start again. Tell me your name.
Different face, different threads, same man! And it turns out one of them was a big fan of the other too, as Matt said of Chris...
"I love his Doctor. I really do. He was from Manchester. Proper hard. Leather jacket."
Enough said!
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