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The
Tenth Doctor
(2005 - 2010) |
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The
Sound Vault |
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| Donna
Noble |
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The Best Doctor
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if I am your favourite Doctor |
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 With
the Ninth
Doctor having returned the concept of Doctor Who to the
screens of the general public for the first time in almost sixteen
years, it was left to the Tenth Doctor to carry on the work he had
begun and demonstrate the program’s full potential. Having
expelled the energy of the Time Vortex from his body while simultaneously
regenerating to save his life, the new Doctor found himself facing
a companion who initially failed to believe his identity as The Doctor,
subsequently causing the TARDIS to crash-land in London on Christmas
Eve in a post-regenerative fit of insanity before collapsing into
a coma himself ("The
Christmas Invasion"). However, despite
his weakened condition, the new Doctor quickly collected himself
to confront the threat of a Sycorax invasion at the crucial moment,
swiftly removing the Sycoraxs’ attempts to threaten Earth before
challenging the Sycorax leader to a swordfight for Earth’s
fate under the Sanctified Rules of Combat. Although he lost a hand
in the confrontation, The Doctor re-grew the hand thanks to excess
regenerative energy - due to him being in the first fifteen hours
of his latest incarnation, the first time this ‘quirk’ of
regeneration was demonstrated -, subsequently defeating the Sycorax
and banishing them to space, renewing his eighth incarnation’s
vow to defend Earth ("The
Adventuress of Henrietta Street")
as he informed them that the planet was defended.
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| The Christmas Invasion |
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In many ways, the
Tenth Doctor made a significant contrast to his previous incarnation.
While the Ninth Doctor could appear somewhat
cold and distant, stating more than once that he ‘didn’t
do domestic’, the Tenth Doctor demonstrated a far greater
willingness to get involved with others, sharing Christmas dinner
with Rose Tyler’s family ("The Christmas Invasion") and
developing a more casually teasing relationship with Rose’s
ex-boyfriend Mickey where his past self barely seemed able to remember
Mickey’s name. His relations with other humans also improved;
while the Ninth Doctor had regularly referred to humanity as ‘stupid
apes’, often growing frustrated at their shortcomings and
only briefly mentioning their successes, the Tenth spent a great
deal of time praising humanity’s ingenuity and courage, prone
to making passionate speeches about the value of human life and
humanity’s remarkable spirit of exploration and determination,
such as their attempts to learn the truth about the mysterious
power source keeping a planet in exact orbit around a black hole
("The
Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit") or their ability
to survive all the way to the end of the universe ("Utopia").
Although his faith in humanity was briefly shaken by such encounters
as a close call when he was apparently possessed by an unidentified
alien life-form and nearly thrown out of a tour shuttle by the
panicked passengers ("Midnight"), later encounters made
it clear that The Doctor’s affection for the human race remained,
The Doctor praising the intelligence of UNIT scientific advisor
Professor Malcolm Taylor and showing a genuine appreciation for
the normal lives of the people accompanying him after a bus he
had been travelling in drove through a wormhole to another planet
("Planet of the Dead"), as well as his evident regret
at the thought of leaving the staff of Bowie Base One - Earth’s
first offworld colony - to die to preserve the timeline ("The Waters of Mars").
With
his improved opinion of humanity, it is also to be noted that this
Doctor was the most human Doctor
of them all. While all
Doctors had been close to their companions in the past, this Doctor’s
relationships with his friends was far closer and more physically
expressive, regularly hugging his companions in celebration after
some narrow escape. On at least three occasions he was actually
kissed by various women shortly after meeting them, a degree of
interest that he had never before attracted in his previous incarnations
(Although the kiss was initiated by the women in all cases, it
is important to note that The Doctor didn’t pull away as
he might have done in previous bodies). In further contrast to
his ninth self’s refusal to discuss his early history, the
Tenth Doctor also appeared more nostalgic for his past, once giving
himself the alias of ‘Doctor James McCrimmon’ after
his second incarnation’s old companion Jamie ("Tooth
and Claw") and nicknaming a dodo he and his current companion
Martha Jones had rescued from an obsessed
collector ‘Dorothea’ after
his first incarnation’s companion Dodo Chaplet ("The
Last Dodo") (Although on neither occasion did he mention where
the names came from). During a brief meeting with his fifth incarnation,
the Tenth Doctor told his younger self before they parted ways
that he regarded the Fifth Doctor as his favourite past self, describing
the Fifth
Doctor as the point when he stopped trying to be old
and important and simply allowed himself to have some fun as he
travelled around in the TARDIS, even noting elements of his own
clothing that he had assumed from the Fifth Doctor such as his
trainers and ‘brainy specs’ (Suggesting that neither
Doctor actually needed to wear glasses but wears them to look smarter)
("Time
Crash").
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| School Reunion |
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Also
unlike previous incarnations, whose tastes in entertainment tended
to focus on the older styles of writing and art, the Tenth Doctor,
while retaining an interest in classical writers such as Shakespeare
(The
Shakespeare Code") or Agatha Christie ("The
Unicorn and the Wasp"), regularly expressed an interest
in more modern popular culture, unintentionally quoting The
Lion King shortly after his regeneration ("The Christmas
Invasion"), as well as commenting that he cried after reading Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows, later using Back to the
Future as an example of the complexities involved in changing
history ("The Shakespeare Code"). He was also far more
vocally expressive about his appreciation for the various locations
he found himself visiting, to the extent that he actually tried
to travel to locations for specific holiday purposes rather than
simply wandering around at random. On one occasion he made an active
effort to visit an alien castle when it had become a tourist attraction
rather than when it was in active use (Although he still got the
dates wrong in the end) ("Martha
in the Mirror"), while on another occasion he commented
that he enjoyed Easter as he so rarely managed to be present for
it due to the lack of a specific date when it was celebrated ("Planet
of the Dead").
Despite
his seemingly greater humanity, this Doctor could also appear chillingly
alien when facing his enemies, describing himself shortly after
his regeneration as a man who offered ‘No second chances’ ("The
Christmas Invasion"); when confronting the leader of The
Krillitane invasion ("School
Reunion"), The Doctor coldly informed
his foe that he had lost most of his former mercy due to his old
age, giving the Krillitanes one chance to leave before he destroyed
them. This idea of The Doctor showing cold contempt for his enemies
continued for most of his life, being particularly evident when
The Doctor destroyed the last of the vicious omnivorous race known
as the Racnoss by drowning them in the Thames even as the Empress
of the Racnoss screamed for him to stop killing her children ("The
Runaway Bride") - although it should be noted that Racnoss
are born starving and were known to devour whole planets to survive
-, or when he condemned The
Family of Blood to eternal imprisonment
after they attempted to steal his DNA to restore themselves ("Human
Nature/The Family of Blood"). Thanks to the influence of companions
such as Donna Noble and Martha Jones, however, The Doctor became
more humane over time, attempting to save The Master rather than
allowing him to be executed for his crimes (Although The Master
allowed himself to die to hurt The Doctor after he was shot rather
than allowing himself to regenerate) ("Utopia", "The
Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords"), leaving the newborn
Adipose to depart Earth in peace as he recognised they weren’t
to blame for the circumstances of their birth ("Partners
in Crime"), and proving unwilling to destroy a Sontaran ship
despite the knowledge that they would decimate Earth if he did
nothing ("The
Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky"). His commitment to saving the day was later noted by his eleventh incarnation’s companion Clara Oswald when the Tenth Doctor met his eleventh incarnation and the ‘War Doctor’ (The Doctor who fought in the Time War, his existence ignored by later incarnations due to their shame at his actions), Clara describing the Tenth Doctor as a hero where the War Doctor was just a warrior (Although she commented that ‘any idiot can be a hero’) while reaffirming her belief that the Eleventh Doctor was fundamentally a doctor first ("The Day of The Doctor").
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| Human Nature/The Family of
Blood |
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Even
as The Doctor’s ruthlessness mellowed over time, his alien
nature remained particularly clear due to the methods he used to
find out important information during his adventures. Although
previous Doctors had displayed some level of telepathy in the past,
such as when the Second and Third Doctors had engaged in a telepathic
conference while pitted against Omega ("The
Three Doctors")
or the Seventh
Doctor knocked out Mordred simply by placing his
fingers to Mordred’s forehead ("Battlefield"),
the Tenth Doctor used his telepathic abilities on a far more regular
basis. The earliest example of this was when he examined the mind
of Reinette - a little girl who would become Madame de Pompadaur
in her future - to learn why a clockwork robot had travelled across
three thousand years and two galaxies simply to find her ("The
Girl in the Fireplace"), later occasions seeing him telepathically
questioning an Isolus - a space-dwelling being using a little girl
as a host - ("Fear
Her"), the catatonically-insane architect
of the Globe Theatre ("The Shakespeare Code"), and the
unusual telepathic race known as The Ood ("Planet
of the Ood"),
as well as hypnotising a man called Baris - a long-time fan of
his from the future - to believe that he was The Doctor as part
of The Doctor’s plan to outwit the ruthless Sebastiene’s
attempt to use him as the prey in a hunt ("The
Doctor Trap").
The most notable use of his telepathic abilities occurred when
he was held captive by The Master as his old friend took control
of Earth and captured The Doctor, simultaneously artificially aging
him so that he was physically a thousand; talking advantage of
a telepathic network The Master had created, The Doctor’s
companion Martha Jones travelled Earth for a year to tell the human
race about The Doctor, The Doctor subsequently drawing on humanity’s
faith in him after spending a year tapping into the Archangel Network
to rejuvenate himself ("The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time
Lords").
This
Doctor could also display a surprising mixture of emotional attachment
and detachment. While it was implied that he was in love with his
ninth incarnation’s companion Rose Tyler, spending a great
deal of time mourning her loss after she was trapped in a parallel
world ("The Runaway Bride", "Smith
and Jones"),
he never expressly told her how he felt, being too late to say
it during what might have been their last conversation ("Army
of Ghosts/Doomsday") and avoiding the opportunity to voice
his feelings again during their next meeting ("The Stolen Earth/Journey's
End") (Although his clone apparently
said the words in his place). His feelings for Rose also resulted
in him sometimes unintentionally hurting his next companion Martha
Jones despite her own feelings for him as he was unable to get
past his pain at Rose’s loss, although he was still clearly
fond of Martha as a friend. Even when he briefly turned himself
into a human to escape The Family of Blood - a race of non-corporeal
beings seeking Time Lord DNA to create new bodies and lives for
themselves -, his human personality relatively unchanged from his
own barring ‘John Smith’ conforming to the standards
and prejudices of the time he was in, such as his slight racism
towards his companion and his willingness to use weapons (Unlike
the Seventh Doctor’s version of Smith ("Human
Nature"),
who was drastically different from The Doctor personality-wise
in such details as his views on relationships but clearly retained
The Doctor’s core beliefs about violence), The Doctor forgot
to take the possibility that his human identity might fall in love
into account because it simply never occurred to him ("Human
Nature/The Family of Blood"). This emotional ignorance also resulted in The Doctor being put in a very awkward position when he proposed to Elizabeth I as part of a plan to try and expose a Zygon plot to invade Earth, only to learn that he had actually proposed to the real Elizabeth (He had assumed that she would reject the proposal due to the short amount of time they had spent together), forcing him to marry her as part of his plan to stop the Zygons ("The Day of The Doctor"), resulting in Elizabeth declaring The Doctor her sworn enemy ("The
Shakespeare Code") for having left her alone in a glade when they were planning to elope ("The Wedding of River Song"). Despite his emotional ignorance, The Doctor also demonstrated his own emotional pain on a larger scale when he revealed that
he was unable to get involved in some situations due to them being
fixed points in time - such as Pompeii ("The
Fires of Pompeii")
or the explosion of Bowie Base One on Mars ("The Waters of
Mars") - no matter how he might become personally invested
in events, his status as a Time Lord leaving him aware of when
he can or cannot influence the outcome of events for more reasons
than the events simply being recorded history (Although he attempted
to alter events at a fixed point in time during "The Waters
of Mars" after becoming too personally involved in the crisis).
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| Silence in the Library/Forest
of the Dead |
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Even
in his darkest moments, however, The Doctor’s compassion
for others remained evident. This was most keenly displayed in
his reaction to the discovery that his old enemy The Master - who
he believed had perished in the Time War along with every other
Time Lord - was still alive ("Utopia"); despite the long
history of animosity between the two, The Doctor was nevertheless
grateful to learn that another Time Lord still existed in the universe,
and his grief when The Master prevented himself from regenerating
after being shot in order to hurt The Doctor was particularly evident,
even after The Master had tortured him for the past year while
forcing him to watch as The Master enslaved humanity ("The
Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords"). Despite the brevity
of his time with her, the loss of his genetically-generated ‘daughter’ Jenny
had an equally great impact on him, The Doctor evidently mourning
all the chances that had been lost for the two of them to explore
their relationship as she died in his arms, appearing briefly tempted
to shoot her killer before he coldly informed the man that he would
never cross that line ("The
Doctor's Daughter"). He also demonstrated a great compassion
for the mysterious race known as the Ood, working to investigate
the reasons for their status as an apparent ‘slave race’ ("Planet
of the Ood") despite the fact that the Ood had nearly killed
him and his friends on their first meeting ("The Impossible
Planet/The Satan Pit").
As with some of his previous incarnations, The Doctor also displayed a certain casual arrogance more than once. Apparently due to his position as the last Time Lord - a prophecy he encountered about himself in this incarnation even referred to him as the 'Lonely God' -, The Doctor was also seemingly more aware of and willing to use his status against his enemies, prematurely ending the career of Prime Minister Harriet Jones after she destroyed a retreating alien ship despite history recording her as lasting for three terms ("The Christmas Invasion"), stating that he had 'earned the right' to speak for humanity during the Sontaran invasion ("The Sontaran Strategem/The Poison Sky"), and convincing the living darkness known as the Vashta Nerada to allow him to save everyone in the Library - a vast library that spanned an entire planet - by challenging them to look him up, the Vashta Nerada consulting the library's databanks and subsequently giving The Doctor a day to deal with the situation rather than attempting to kill him outright ("Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead"). This arrogance was further reflected in his attitude towards regeneration; where previous incarnations accepted regeneration as a necessity after the First Doctor accepted the need to change ("The Man in the Velvet Mask" and "The Tenth Planet"), the Tenth Doctor not only claimed to regard regeneration as death rather than life as it 'killed' everything he was at present ("The End of Time"), but actually sacrificed one of his regenerations while avoiding changing his appearance by channelling the energy that would have changed his appearance into his severed hand ("The Stolen Earth/Journey's End") (Although it could be argued that the scale of the current crisis meant that The Doctor took such action so that he wouldn't have to cope with post-regenerative trauma while trying to stop the Daleks). Despite this arrogance, he never lost his appreciation for the ordinary people he encountered in his travels, once informing the insane Professor Richard Lazarus that there was no such thing as an ordinary human as everyone was unique and incredible in their own way ("The Lazarus Experiment").
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| The Next Doctor |
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The
Doctor was given an uncomfortable view of his arrogance during
his last televised encounter with the Daleks - which included the
resurrection of Davros ("The Stolen Earth/Journey's End")
and his own near-regeneration after being shot by a Dalek -, Davros
confronting him with his past companions’ actions as Sarah
Jane Smith, Captain Jack Harkness and Martha Jones all threatened to destroy
the Dalek Crucible or Earth to stop the Daleks triggering the Reality
Bomb. Although The Doctor defended them on the grounds that they
were trying to stop the Daleks, Davros coldly taunted The Doctor
that he refused to carry weapons while turning his companions into
soldiers and allowing innocents to die in his name, a claim that
was apparently further reinforced when a duplicate of The Doctor
- created when he averted his regeneration by channelling the regenerative
energy into his previously-lost hand, allowing the hand to ‘grow’ into
a new Doctor after being energised by contact with The Doctor’s
current companion Donna - destroyed the Dalek army by triggering
their self-destruct systems. During his visit to Bowie Base One,
the first Earth colony on Mars, on the very day of its destruction,
The Doctor became so caught up in events that he saved three of
the colonists who would have died in the explosion despite their
deaths being a fixed point in time, defending his actions on the
grounds that his status as the last Time Lord allowed him to ‘rewrite’ the
old Laws of Time, until one of the colonists that he had become
friends with shot herself in order to ensure that the consequences
of her death - including her granddaughter piloting Earth’s
first faster-than-light ship in her memory - remained unchanged
("The Waters of Mars").
Despite
his initial enthusiasm in this incarnation, The Doctor became increasingly
melancholy in his later years, even deliberately avoiding taking
on further companions after the circumstances of Donna and Rose’s
departures left him heartbroken - Rose living out her life in a
parallel world with his ‘clone’ while Donna’s
memory of her travels with him were erased to save her life -,
despite Sarah and Martha reminding him that his other past companions
remained his family. Regardless of this desire for solitude, he
continued to develop strong bonds with those he met on his travels;
one of his most interesting friendships was with nineteenth-century
mathematics professor Jackson Lake, who briefly became convinced
that he was The Doctor after exposure to an infostamp containing
information about The Doctor’s life that the Cybermen had
acquired from the Daleks’ databanks ("The Next Doctor").
On another occasion he formed a strong friendship with aristocrat-turned-cat-burglar
Lady Christina de Souza, working with her to save a group of people
on a bus that accidentally went through a wormhole to another planet
that had been generated by a race of manta-ray-like aliens - Christina
even kissing him after the bus returned to Earth -, but in the
end he declined her request to travel with him ("Planet of
the Dead"). He once went so far as to take June, a university
student who had helped him deal with aliens attempting to blow
up the Acropolis, on a brief trip to ancient Greece as thanks before
the two found themselves pitted against The
Slitheen , but in the
end the two amicably parted ways once the crisis was solved, June
feeling ill-suited to a life as The Doctor’s long-term companion
("The
Slitheen Excursion").
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| The End of Time |
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As
time went on, The Doctor also began to become increasingly aware
of his own approaching death, beginning with his confrontation
with Jackson Lake - Lake’s initial belief that he was The
Doctor reinforcing for the Tenth Doctor the idea that he too would
regenerate some day ("The Next Doctor") -, and then being
reinforced by the cryptic warning from a psychic that someone was
coming for him from the darkness ("Planet of the Dead").
His own epiphany after being confronted about his arrogance after
the suicide of his new friend Adelaide Brooke - The Doctor having
saved her after telling her that history recorded her death, Adelaide
coldly informing him that nobody should have that kind of power
- left The Doctor horrified at how he had almost begun to take
steps to become the monster he’d always fought, his subsequent ‘vision’ of
an Ood revealing to him that his end was coming. Although he subsequently
learned of The Master’s latest resurrection with the aid
of Wilfred Mott - Donna’s grandfather -, he was too late
to halt The Master’s triumph as he used alien healing technology
to turn the entire human race into duplicates of himself by overwriting
their DNA with his own... and, with this amplification of the drums
The Master had always heard in his head, the Time Lords who had
planted that signal in the young Master's mind on the last day
of the Time War were able to escape the time lock that had imprisoned
them in that time frame, the Lord President vowing that he would
see creation end as the fury of the Time War annihilated reality
rather than allow Gallifrey to fall and the Time Lords to die.
Although The Doctor was able to destroy the transmitter that would
have brought Gallifrey back into the universe - The Master subsequently
sacrificing himself in an enraged attack upon the President as
the Time Lords returned to Gallifrey, this action resulting in
humanity being restored as the template ‘snapped’ -,
The Doctor was subsequently forced to expose himself to a lethal
dose of radiation in order to save Wilf, beginning a gradual but
inevitable cellular collapse. As his body began to die, The Doctor
paid a last brief visit to each of his incarnation’s companions
- saving the now-married Mickey and Martha from a Sontaran, rescuing
Sarah Jane Smith’s son Luke from a car accident, pointing
the depressed Jack Harkness towards a likely partner, leaving Donna
a winning lottery ticket on her wedding day, and even briefly dropping
in to the Powell Estate to see Rose before she met his previous
self -, before he finally regenerated in the TARDIS, his current ‘song’ coming
to an end even as the Ood appeared to him one last time to assure
him that the story would continue.
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