Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Peter Capaldi - 12th Doctor

Another one of these. I am not making this habit if every weekend doesn't bring interesting announcements. Last sunday it was BBC who announced who is the next Doctor. Here what I think about it.

I haven't written anything about Doctor Who. Here is a little introduction for those who doesn't know the show. First of all, there is no character called Doctor Who. He is The Doctor. There have been separate movies where character was Doctor Who, but in tv it has always been The Doctor. Doctor is Time Lord, time travelling alien, who can regenerate himself when he would die otherwise. Regeneration changes Doctor's body and mind. It also means different actor in role and change of the series' tone. In classic series it was told that time lords can regenerate 12 times. However rival time lord, The Master, used all his regenerations and was able to take another body which he could regenerate. I don't know how much new Doctor Who follows that rule. After all we have already seen 14 doctors already in series. Peter Capaldi will be 12th regular Doctor. Sixth Doctor saw future Doctor in The Trial of a Time Lord and 50th anniversary special has one new character called The Doctor.

One more thing before I can get to my points. Doctor has human companion or companions during his travels. Companions bring human aspect to stories. These are people that Doctor meets on his travels and who start to hang with Doctor. Companions change more often than Doctor. It rarely happens that both Doctor and companions change at same time.

Peter Capaldi will replace Matt Smith. I haven't seen last season of Doctor Who yet. So my opinion of Matt Smith is based on his first two seasons. Matt Smith himself replaces one of best Doctors ever, David Tennant. Tennant was perfect for role and writes knew how to write for him. I think problem with Matt Smith is that all writer doesn't know how to write for him. Ninth Doctor Christopher Eccleston had same problems, but he could act better even when script didn't suit him. He however left after one season. I think that is great shame because I think he could have done better if others had listened him and made Doctor more suitable for him. Ninth Doctor should have been tougher. Eleventh would needed older actor or stories that suited actor of Matt's age. Both had great episodes, at times something was missing.

Another problem with Matt Smith was that he was new Doctor with all new companions. Tennant's last companion, Donna, wouldn't have worked with Smith. It is strange that they didn't introduce new companions during Tennant's special episode run. They had time to do that. In stead they gave us Doctor Who where everything is new. It also didn't help that stories seemed bit rushed at times and we little bit too extraordinary and cosmic.

Doctor Who fans know Peter Capaldi from episode Fires of Pompeii. I will write more about that in near future. It is quite interesting now when we know Capaldi will be next Doctor. I am looking forward for Capaldi's doctor. We don't know anything about it yet. How ever one thing is sure. They have to slow down because Capaldi is much older than Matt Smith. That is only a good thing. Slower and more thinking doctor is what we need. Those who say Capaldi is too old haven't seen classic series. Back then The Doctor was not the one doing the heavy lifting and running.

I don't know if they are planning to end series. I have no idea what they do with John Hurt's Doctor in 50th Anniversary. If he turns out to be one regeneration, then he or Capaldi will be the last one. I think everyone has forgotten future Doctor I mentioned earlier. If they plan to end Doctor Who then older Doctor like Capaldi suits for that. He is also closing to end his career, so he could be long Doctor unlike previous two, who have left to make career outside Doctor Who.

I think this was good choise for Doctor Who. Out of all possible actors mentioned in speculation I would have chosen Jason Statham, I know he has his film career going on and he wouldn't let that go for tv series, but he would have been interesting as The Doctor. We have not seen though guy Doctor. Ninth teased with that idea, but they didn't go that way. Statman could be ultime bad A** Doctor. In dialog they have mentioned how scary Doctor can be. With Statman we would have seen that.

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