Is there a Doctor in the house?

Updated on November 12, 2009 By Ken Begg 16 Comments

Be still my heart. I just got my first glimpse at the new guy playing Doctor Who, and I can’t tell you how excited I am that they went the utterly dreamy Robert Pattinson route. If David Tennant had one central problem, surely it was that he was so unbearably old. Good grief, by the end there he looked like a guy in his early thirties! I’m relieved that they rectified that situation.

UPDATE: I just noticed the new companion is being played by an actress who’s all of 21 years of age. Is this there attempt to make the new Doctor look mature? Why not a toddler companion then. He’d look positively ancient compared to a two-year old.

Between the two of them, I’m definitely getting a Twilight vibe here. (TARDISlight?) Except that apparently the Doctor was doing it with Rose, so I guess that bothersome chastity thing wouldn’t be an issue.

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  • fish eye no miko

    Jim Henson’s Doctor Who Babies!

  • Ericb

    I rather liked Tennant and as he was getting close to 40 would have been entering the prime Doctor years. I could see that he probably thought it was a good time to leave. Who wants to end up having a post doctor career like Tom Baker’s? I don’t even know if I’m going to bother with the new one. Even if he is the next Laurance Olivier he’s simply too damned young.

  • Ericb

    TARDISville

    Doctor 90210

  • Mr. Rational

    I got whiplash from that massive outpouring of untagged sarcasm. Still, as regards the point…agreed.

  • Ericb

    Seriously this is really sad. They’re going to kill the series and just to think a year ago I thought things were going to get better because Russell Davies was leaving.

  • roger h

    off topic, i found a job for Ken if he wants to move to California:

    http://joblist.ala.org/modules/jobseeker/controller.cfm?scr=jobdetail&jobid=13933

    I want to know who is paying for this.

  • GalaxyJane

    I have to admit that all my excitement about Stephen Moffet taking over as head writer was more than tempered by my first look at Matt Smith.

    I’m trying to reserve judgement because, well, hope springs eternal when you’re a Who fan, but I would really have liked to have seen the series go back in the other direction for a while. The thing I liked best about the Doctor/Donna series was the fact that there was no romantic interest between the characters at all and casting an older, more curmudgeonly type would have put paid to that altogether for a while. Or maybe it’s just because it’s a bad day when a Doctor makes me start feeling my age.

  • I’m not writing off Matt Smith, simply because he WASN’T what the producers were looking for. Moffett et al have said, right after the new casting was announced, that they were expecting to find someone in that late 30s-thru-40s range, but then Smith came in and blew them away with his audition.

    That’s not to say that Bill Nighy wouldn’t have been terrific.

  • fish eye no miko

    FWIW, I’m with Nathan; I’m not going to write Smith off just because he’s young. I can just never resist a good “Jim Henson’s ___ Babies” joke. ^_^

  • I would also like to point out that this isn’t the first time that, even if this is a Twilight thing (which I don’t really believe), it wouldn’t be the first time that the BBC has allowed Doctor Who to be blown about by every wind of pop culture. Pertwee’s adventures were more slam-bang and gadgety in direct response to the popularity of the post-Bond “superspy” genre.

    (If Matt Smith ends up glittering in the sunlight, thought, I’m outta here.)

  • As you can see, I liked the first half of my first sentence so much that I wrote it twice. Gaaah.

  • BeckoningChasm

    I’ve said it before, but what they did to Donna Noble killed my interest in the new Doctor Who series. Good luck and all, but I won’t be there.

  • sandra

    re the Doctor sleeping with Rose: I always took it for granted that the Doctor was sleeping with all of his companions – well, the girls, anyway. What other reason would ha have for dragging pretty teenagers through time and space?

  • Well, that certainly raises the question of what he was doing with K9.

  • fish eye no miko

    I just noticed the new companion is being played by an actress who’s all of 21 years of age. Is this there attempt to make the new Doctor look mature?

    Doubtful. He’s had young companions before, of both genders. Zoe was supposed to 12, Turlough was still in school, the actor and actress playing Adric and Nyssa were both still in their teens, Peri was in college (so, late teens, early 20s), Ace was a teenager, and so on. I doubt the choice of Smith had much to do with whether to have a young companion.

  • I’d like to point any and all complainers to this: “The 45 Deaths of Doctor Who“. Basically a list of every development in the show’s history that raised a complaint.