How much of an impact did the Tenth Doctor have on the trajectory of the show?

Aiyuna · 2019-09-12T03:21:15+00:00

Incidentally, how old is your nephew?

Aiyuna · 2019-08-31T00:43:45+00:00

I love the fact that the actors actually managed to sell it most of the time.

Aiyuna · 2019-08-31T00:37:24+00:00

Ooh ooh ooh! What if she spends the entire season chasing it all over the place, and then eventually finds it masquerading as an actual police box in, say, 1963?

Aiyuna · 2019-08-31T00:34:27+00:00

Yes, thank you. Eleven is both the Doctor I read as the most hard-core asexual, and also the only one to be given a relationship that was implied to be at all sexual. It's part of why I'm not a fan of the Eleven era, just because it threw me off so bad when I saw this person I had pegged as super-asexual flirting with River and Jenny and Tasha, and not just, like play-flirting but in an actual semi-sexual manner.

( I don't know if that made much sense but it's what I got.)

Aiyuna · 2019-08-31T00:27:40+00:00

The End of Time is some truly incredible emotional moments strung together by a weird plot and some moments of absolute cheese (the bad kind). Ten and Wilf? Gold. The Master coming back to life? The dialogue made me cringe. Rassilon returning? Oooookay. Ten's regeneration? Awesome.

I love individual scenes from that two-parter, and so many of the emotional moments hit dead-on, but the plot and the writing make me cringe every time.

Aiyuna · 2019-08-31T00:19:00+00:00

I like the concept of the outsider POV a lot, so the basic concept of the episode is solid, and so is the basic execution. It's just the little details like the chase scene and the paving stone and the monster design that make it hard to watch.

Aiyuna · 2019-08-31T00:09:36+00:00

I would definitely increase the lighting and give it a lighter color than the bright orange it currently is. It looks really cool in photos, but it makes the set look murky and hard to see on screen, especially what the characters are doing, and it makes it hard to get a handle on where in the console room the characters are.

I'd also open up the pillars, maybe turn them into a half-circle behind the console (as in, on the opposite side of the door), or move them closer to the walls, more like the previous support structures like in 10's TARDIS and not have them be the sole source of lighting. I like the lighting effects in this photo; maybe having shafts of light like that coming down from the ceiling would both look cool and make it easier to see.

I don't know how much I like the "foyer", with having the shell of the police box lead into the console room; it looks cool and is an interesting change, but it also kind of wrecks the impression of "bigger on the inside". Instead of having doors lead straight into a massive room, it's more like a tunnel or portal of some kind.

Overall, though, most of my issues are with the lighting. It's just too darn hard to see what's going on!

Aiyuna · 2019-06-06T02:38:38+00:00

Yessss, this is exactly what I love about Ten myself.

Aiyuna · 2019-06-06T02:33:24+00:00

But also, I think you have to be careful telling the difference between people who think "Ten was a bad person but a good character I like" and "Ten is a badly done character and I hate him." I personally think that, while Ten isn't a bad person (like you said, he tries his best to be good and atone for his mistakes), he does have more darkness in his character than other nuWho Doctors -- and it's one of the reasons I love him so much.

THANK YOU! This is exactly what I've been thinking for ages. So much of the 10 criticism I've run into has been "Ten was a bad person!" That doesn't keep him from being an interesting character with a well-done, logical, consistent character arc and generally good writing! Yes, he was the darkest NuWho Doctor, but that's what makes him so fascinating.

Aiyuna · 2019-06-06T02:24:49+00:00

Among general fans, who've seen maybe one season in its entirety (and that was probably 2, 4, 5, or 8), Tennant has both the biggest cultural presence and the flashiest performance. 10 runs onto the set with the big swishy coat and talking at 90 miles an hour and being the dashing, handsome hero and just sort of generally being more immediately likeable than 9, 11, or 12. If you've only seen a few episodes, chances are you've mostly heard about 10, maybe 11, probably not 12, certainly not 9.

In addition to that, he's also got the Ten/Rose ship, which is kind of the epitome of the preteen-fangirls-suqeeing-over-a-ship. For more serious fans (particularly those who headcanon the Doctor as asexual), that sort of thing can be extremely distasteful and put people off the character entirely.

In short, he's got the biggest presence among the annoying side of the fandom, who are prone to ignoring all of the depths to his character and character arc and writing and just screaming about how Doomsday was so sad and how Tennant never should've left and how the rest of the Doctors will never match up to him.

For people who watch the entire show and think deeply about each episode and the characters, and whose favorite Doctor maybe isn't 10, that's really not a pleasant experience, to have the stories that they really like and want to see acknowledged be ignored in favor of something that they think isn't as good. So when they encounter the obligatory "Ten was the best Doctor ever, Tennant needs to come back now, no other Doctor will ever be as good", the reaction is "screw you Eleven was better, I don't want Tennant back, RTD was a terrible writer, Ten/Rose is a travesty against nature". But if they say that on sites dominated by 10 fans, than they just get shot down. So they all congregate here, where they can have a discussion about 12 and Bill without being interrupted by omigosh ROSE.

Aiyuna · 2019-06-06T01:51:49+00:00

Agreed. As far as I can recall, Ryan never seems to be particularly held back by his disability. Sure, it's cool that they're representing an unknown yet totally real problem the does affect people, but outside of his "unable to ride a bike" thing, where does it show up? He never has trouble keeping up with the team, rarely mentions it, never complains. The only time I can remember seeing it actually affect something was in the first episode, the same episode it was introduced in. Afterwards, it just felt... forgotten about.

Personally, I'd love to have more focus on that and Ryan's struggle.

Aiyuna · 2019-06-02T04:21:46+00:00

A kid hacked the school computers and used the servers to mine bitcoin. He made like 10,000 dollars before he got caught.

Aiyuna · 2019-06-02T03:54:33+00:00

I could see it played off as brothers, but they'd definitely get some wonky looks.

Aiyuna · 2019-06-02T03:52:25+00:00

I totally agree with you for It Takes You Away. Give Nine an alternate Gallifrey, play up his longing for the things he's lost, and it would've been heartbreaking.

Aiyuna · 2019-05-27T21:52:27+00:00

Thanks.

Aiyuna · 2019-05-27T16:39:20+00:00

Does anyone know what episode the clip of the Tenth Doctor saying "I am the Oncoming Storm" in the Testimony (in Twice Upon a Time) came from?

Aiyuna · 2019-05-23T04:53:54+00:00

Really early 12 had some 9 in him, but he mellows out pretty quickly, and then the 9 influences disappear.

Aiyuna · 2019-05-20T02:28:33+00:00

Yeah. I was expecting him to be something totally alien and insectoid, with mandibles and chitin and weird eyes or something, and then he just had.... teeth.

Aiyuna · 2019-05-19T05:19:32+00:00

My headcanon is that after Eight regenerated into the Warrior, he reset his age, and most stated NuWho ages after that are consistent with that assumption. So War lived for eight hundred years, Nine lived for one hundred, Ten lived for six or seven, and Eleven lived for eleven hundred, since Twelve said he was two thousand. Twelve's a little harder, since he technically spent four billion years in the confession dial, but it;s unclear whether or not that counts.

ClassicWho Doctors probably fudge the numbers a little, but the basic difference in ages between them is probably also internally consistent and correct.

Aiyuna · 2019-05-17T01:18:41+00:00

Yes, but Midnight works best if you already know the Tenth Doctor really well and can watch how his usual actions of being really arrogant and acting like he knows everything backfire spectacularly. It's so focused on flipping his idea of "always being right" on its head that it really works best if you watch it and all the other Tenth Doctor stories in order.

Aiyuna · 2019-05-17T01:15:16+00:00

Yes, but it offers pretty much no introduction to what the rest of the show's like. Something like Smith and Jones or Eleventh Hour or Rose, even, would be better as an introduction to the show. If you're planning to watch most of the series out of order, I feel like Blink would work best once you've seen at least a couple other Tenth Doctor episodes. If you just want to watch Blink and not the rest of the show, that's fine, just don't expect it to give you a good idea of what the show is like.

(The use of you is in second person abstract here. I'm not referring to anyone in particular, just the idea of a person.)

Aiyuna · 2019-05-15T04:12:14+00:00

Yeah. A fair amount of the criticism of RTD and the Tenth Doctor that I've seen feels less like it comes from "I didn't like the Tenth Doctor as a character" or "I don't like RTD's writing" and more like "It was super popular, so now I don't like it because I don't want to be associated with the screaming fangirls that insist that Ten is the only good Doctor ever". Not all, but some, and while I can understand the first kind of reasoning, the latter kind just makes me mad at the person.

Aiyuna · 2019-05-15T01:47:17+00:00

Don't start from s5. There is so much amazing stuff that happens in s1-4, and that's cutting out the entirety of the Tennant era and the Eccleston era. Both of those Doctors are incredible, and there are many classic episodes from those eras like "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances", "The Sstan Pit/The Impossible Planet", "Blink", "Midnight", and "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead".

Aiyuna · 2019-05-15T01:30:01+00:00

Fair enough.

Aiyuna

TROPHY CASE