The Next Doctor

Matt Smith is officially slated to leave Doctor Who during the 2013 Christmas special -- now I'd heard this news as likely coming from credible sources (namely the way that the show's creators/writers/producers were phrasing the way the talked about the future of the show) but people kept telling me it was "just a rumor," "allegedly leaving," "don't believe it."

Regardless of the naysayers, I trusted my own ears and intellect  -- it's been a four year run, after all. Consequently, I've had some months to think about my top choices for which actors I'd like to see as The Next Doctor.

** Although, I should note that in the best of all possible worlds, the Doctor re-regenerates back into David Tennant. Just saying. **

Paging doctor cranky-pants
English actor Hugh Laurie, best known to Americans for his dramatic role in House M.D. We're already used to seeing him as a cranky, eccentric, meddling, lying, smartest-man-in-the-room doctor. Why not upgrade to being the Doctor?

(Note: I would probably pee my pants if this absolutely awesome idea came to fruition.)

Laurie is an amazing actor -- watching the wheels in his head turn (his characters' heads, to be exact), is fascinating. It would be so much fun to see him in an action-ish role. Lot's of running in Doctor Who, you know. But it would be beyond fun to see the Doctor with the cynical-romantic edge that Hugh Laurie portrays so well.


Am I a ginger?
The Doctor's always wanted to be a ginger, why not let him? And here I turn to suggest a former member of the Harry Potter cast -- but not one of the leads. Puhleeze. Can't imagine Ron, Harry, or Hermione stepping from one iconic British spec fic lead into another -- my little brain would explode. Although to be honest, just about all of England's finest actors and actresses have played in Harry Potter at one time or another.

I suggest for the role of the Doctor, Domhnall Gleeson who played Bill Weasley. A redhead and an Irish actor -- does that DQ him? We've had Scottish actors play Who after all. I have to admit that I'm an ignorant American when it comes to the sometimes prickly nature of English-Scottish-Irish-Welsh cultural overlap.

But how can we let such notions stand in our way when there are already movies stills of Domhnall Gleeson like this one that could come from just about any episode of Who? Puts you in mind of William Hartnell, no?

I'm a girl!
Every time the public scents a regeneration in the air, the question becomes when will everyone's favorite Time Lord appear as a Time Lady? A prospect reanimated not that long ago in the episode "The Doctor's Wife" when the 11th Doctor mentioned a particular tattoo a Time Lord friend of his got every regeneration -- whether he regenerated as male or female.

My top actress pick -- just for its timey wimey impossibilities -- would be Georgia Moffett. How awesome would it be to have the actress daughter of the 5th Doctor (Peter Davison) and the wife of the 10th Doctor (David Tennant) play the 12th Doctor? Oh yes, wibbly wobbly timey wimey goo indeed.

Alas, that seems unlikely to happen as she's already played Jenny, the Doctor's cloned daughter, and the writers of Doctor Who prefer to make sense of actors who reappear -- even going so far as to have characters take a time out while trying to save the universe from imminent destruction to explain why the Reboot Season 1 Episode 2 actress Eve Myles appears as part of the Torchwood team (a Welsh family with deep roots, apparently). Other actresses that reappear in unrelated episodes get entire story lines to explain themselves (see: Impossible Girl).

So Georgia Moffett appears to be an unreasonable addition to my list, but maybe her adorable son will one day take up acting.

Let me get sidetracked for a second: dangling story line here people! The Doctor's cloned daughter is still out there! Someone! Write an episode, or five, about that! Please!

In all seriousness though, what about Jennifer Ehle? An English-American actress I'm most familiar with for her roles in Pride and Prejudice (BBC version) and The King's Speech. Narratively speaking, I think that if the Doctor were to regenerate as a woman, she would need to not be a barely legal hot young thang, she would need to be a bit more mature in order to deal with all the bits and people of her past ... including her dead wife.

That's the shortlist. I'll be waiting with bated breath this Christmas to see just what the heck happens on screen. I might cry. Well, there might be tearing up. Gotta admit that I'm not likely to shed the tears I did when Tennant uttered the line "I don't want to go."

And if, for any reason, the Doctor Who production team wants to hire me to help write for the show, or cast actors, or shine Dalek chrome tops -- call me.

Dear Impossible Girl,

We've solved your existence. More or less. Now I'm half-certain that I must go and rewatch the past half-season. How am I supposed to divine the emotional thread of these things if I don't line them up end to end to analyze? This whole one-every-week thing is a nice way to watch TV, but nice apparently doesn't do it for me. I must be immersed.

And yes, I'm also the kind of person who, when I get a good novel,  will stay up all night to finish it.

My thoughts on season seven part two (without divulging spoilers):

We had an over arching question -- how is the Impossible Girl possible? -- which we answered in the final episode of the season. Not to say that there aren't going to be more impossible attributes to her existence, but we did learn her origin. But we really didn't chip away at that question except in the very final episode. Personally, I was hoping for more hints, I was hoping to chip away the way we did when we got to see Rose Tyler calling out to the Doctor in her failed attempts to punch through dimensions, then her discussion with Donna, eventually heralding her actually punching through dimensions.

The end of season seven poses loads of new questions, all of which make me very excited for season eight. Of course the existence of Clara as posed by the season seven Christmas special made me very excited and well ... it sort of panned out. The final two episodes were great. The stuff in the middle of the season? ... I guess every season needs filler. Like that episode with Rose and the 10th Doctor about the support group that got assimilated into the alien's body fat. Yeah, could have done without that one too.

When people raved about Neil Gaiman's "The Doctor's Wife" a few seasons ago I raised an eyebrow -- but Mr. Gaiman has redeemed and outdone himself with "Nightmare in Silver." Not only has he upgraded Cybermen back into the realm of scary but he gives as a brilliant statement from the Cyber Planner: (to paraphrase) you may have erased yourself from history, Doctor, but there's much to be learned from the shape of the hole you've made. 

Now that's cool.

We finally get sense made of the stupid leaf. The leaf was cool when it was in her book. It was stupid when it was fed to a giant planet-ish vampire. Now, come the end of the season, we understand the leaf's importance ... but it was still stupid in episode two. A bit like Rose Tyler using Bad Wolf to keep herself from burning up in the second episode then sitting on it until the finale when she realizes what it means. Although in this case I guess she was always supposed to have known what it meant, we just weren't really privy to an understanding of that information? Maybe? I feel like I'm reaching here.

Two other interesting revelations which I'm still teasing out -- and since these do have spoilers, I'm putting a cut, which you'll have to click on to read more ... unless you came to this page via direct link, in which case: ahoy! spoilers ahead!

A Whovian Problem: Old men, young men, and decorative vegetables.

We've entered into a season seven (part two) Doctor Who problem which either qualifies as meta sci-fi, or the show and its production have been sucked into the Twilight Zone without its knowledge. Which is, in fact, a meta plot. So I guess that first sentence isn't so much a statement of this or that but more of a this or this non-option.

First problem: In the first few episodes of season 7.2, Clara, the current companion, comes across as more Doctor-ish than the Doctor himself. As if she's the timelord. Or as if she's draining him of his Doctor-ish mojo and his portrayal is becoming that of ... the companion.*

I told you it was very meta.

Clara is bright, witty, spunky. She delivers quick intelligent banter. And while her statements don't necessarily possess all the knowledge of centuries spent traveling the universe in an impossible time machine, she is always intelligent. Sometimes more intelligent than the Doctor. Clara also got to save the day in her first off-earth adventure ("Rings of Akhenaten") in a way that most of the other companions had to earn -- with the possible exception of Amy Pond in "The Beast Below"; although that was more of a save-the-day by gut instinct and the quick, last minute push of a button, whereas Clara had this whole drawn out speech proceeding her high-concept saving-of-the-day. All the other companions had to work up to that sort of Doctorish-understanding of how to save the universe, which makes Clara ... ahead of the game?

Unlike some past companions, Clara doesn't ask dumb questions or jump to mundane conclusions. Where Rose, Donna, and even uber-educated uppermiddleclass Dr. Martha Jones blundered into things in a very modern earth-centric human way, Clara ... doesn't.

Will this become an important aspect of her Impossible Girl conundrum? I sure as hell hope so because otherwise it's just dragging down my viewing experience. Clara's the Doctor, and the Doctor is ... old.

The character of the Doctor in season seven part two, is becoming an old man. But he's a thousand years-old, of course he's an old man! But he was so sprightly and spry when he was a mere 900 years-old, and now he's acting like when we first met him back when he was still traveling with his granddaughter Susan!

Don't think too hard on the problem of the older character now seeming older like he did when he was much much younger -- I tried and all I ended up doing was giving myself ice-cream-style brain freeze. But consider this:

The first few actors to portray Doctor Who played the character as if he were an old man. A weird old man, yes.  But it wasn't until a few actors later that the Doctor gained a youthful energy.

Let me explain. No there is too much. Let me sum up.**