The Ninth Doctor - Christopher Eccleston
With us all too short a time, the Ninth Doctor had a lot to carry. He had to sell the show to a new audience - as Eight had failed to do, through no fault of the actor - and to the old audience, as well as inaugurating the change of pace that came from the episodic format and 42 minute running time. He was a huge hit, there's no denying it, bringing the Doctor to a new generation and bringing us veterans up to speed on the new order, as it were.
Cheeky, flirtatious, enthusiastic and - when the occasion called for it - incredibly dark and serious, the Ninth Doctor was never less than compelling. His affection for Rose Tyler endeared him to many, and his regeneration after only thirteen episodes came a sight too soon.
The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
Future showrunner Stephen Moffat hit the ground running with a tale of aliens and confidence tricks amid the London Blitz. The gas mask zombies are chilling, and while Rose gets to have fun with dashing new boy Captain Jack Harkness, the interaction between the Doctor and Nancy is intense and heartwarming. The story works hard with its set-up, such that the finale manages not to be a deus ex machina, and the double episode - in general, double episodes of nuWho work a little better, benefiting from the extra set-up time - earns its uplifting payoff.
Other highlights include the emotional sucker punch of Father's Day and Dalek, which made the eponymous pepper pots scary again, albeit briefly, and even kind of tragic.
The Tenth Doctor - David Tennant
Bubbly, exuberant and really rather kissy, the Tenth Doctor was all energy and motion, except when he wasn't, and when he wasn't was the time to be afraid. Like the Seventh Doctor he was an incarnation with a lot of darkness inside him, but unfortunately it was expressed more in grandiloquent declamation than in schemes and secrecy, and in the end he became almost Messianic, declaring himself 'the Time Lord victorious' and dubbed 'the Lonely God'.
He also got saddled with the Rose wuvs the Doctor sequence, which did neither Tennant nor Billie Piper any favours, and the succeeding Martha pines at the Doctor but he doesn't really notice sequence, which shamefully underused Freema Agyeman.
Human Nature/The Family of Blood
Based on a Seventh Doctor novel, this two-parter sees the Doctor disguise himself as a human in pre-War Britain. It touches on the racism of the period, but its great strength lies in the way that it plays with the nature of the Doctor's adventures, fantastic and yet terrible. It is slightly let down by an ending in which the villain of the story narrates how the Doctor did some stuff that he has never done anything like before and it makes you wonder what's up with him trapping people in mirrors and shit.
The Tenth Doctor has a hit and miss run otherwise, with Blink as a standout that I overlooked here only because it's a Doctor lite episode, and thus hard to categorise as a Tenth Doctor story, and likewise Catherine Tate's tour de force performance in Turn Left, which is sadly followed by the horrific betrayal of her character in Journey's End, an authorial decision which still leaves me angry.
I liked David Tennant, but ultimately I was glad to see him go because I didn't care for a lot of the stories he was given. Ten bowed out, as ungraciously as any Doctor ever has or hopefully will, in The End of Time, a two-part special which basically contained one pretty good special sandwiched between a lot of padding.
With us all too short a time, the Ninth Doctor had a lot to carry. He had to sell the show to a new audience - as Eight had failed to do, through no fault of the actor - and to the old audience, as well as inaugurating the change of pace that came from the episodic format and 42 minute running time. He was a huge hit, there's no denying it, bringing the Doctor to a new generation and bringing us veterans up to speed on the new order, as it were.
Cheeky, flirtatious, enthusiastic and - when the occasion called for it - incredibly dark and serious, the Ninth Doctor was never less than compelling. His affection for Rose Tyler endeared him to many, and his regeneration after only thirteen episodes came a sight too soon.
The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
Future showrunner Stephen Moffat hit the ground running with a tale of aliens and confidence tricks amid the London Blitz. The gas mask zombies are chilling, and while Rose gets to have fun with dashing new boy Captain Jack Harkness, the interaction between the Doctor and Nancy is intense and heartwarming. The story works hard with its set-up, such that the finale manages not to be a deus ex machina, and the double episode - in general, double episodes of nuWho work a little better, benefiting from the extra set-up time - earns its uplifting payoff.
Other highlights include the emotional sucker punch of Father's Day and Dalek, which made the eponymous pepper pots scary again, albeit briefly, and even kind of tragic.
The Tenth Doctor - David Tennant
Bubbly, exuberant and really rather kissy, the Tenth Doctor was all energy and motion, except when he wasn't, and when he wasn't was the time to be afraid. Like the Seventh Doctor he was an incarnation with a lot of darkness inside him, but unfortunately it was expressed more in grandiloquent declamation than in schemes and secrecy, and in the end he became almost Messianic, declaring himself 'the Time Lord victorious' and dubbed 'the Lonely God'.
He also got saddled with the Rose wuvs the Doctor sequence, which did neither Tennant nor Billie Piper any favours, and the succeeding Martha pines at the Doctor but he doesn't really notice sequence, which shamefully underused Freema Agyeman.
Human Nature/The Family of Blood
Based on a Seventh Doctor novel, this two-parter sees the Doctor disguise himself as a human in pre-War Britain. It touches on the racism of the period, but its great strength lies in the way that it plays with the nature of the Doctor's adventures, fantastic and yet terrible. It is slightly let down by an ending in which the villain of the story narrates how the Doctor did some stuff that he has never done anything like before and it makes you wonder what's up with him trapping people in mirrors and shit.
The Tenth Doctor has a hit and miss run otherwise, with Blink as a standout that I overlooked here only because it's a Doctor lite episode, and thus hard to categorise as a Tenth Doctor story, and likewise Catherine Tate's tour de force performance in Turn Left, which is sadly followed by the horrific betrayal of her character in Journey's End, an authorial decision which still leaves me angry.
I liked David Tennant, but ultimately I was glad to see him go because I didn't care for a lot of the stories he was given. Ten bowed out, as ungraciously as any Doctor ever has or hopefully will, in The End of Time, a two-part special which basically contained one pretty good special sandwiched between a lot of padding.
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