Character Rants: Eleven and Flippancy
Eleven has never been my favorite Doctor. LET'S BE CLEAR THO THAT IT ISN'T ANYONE'S FAULT. Matt Smith is such a joy to watch perform and he has a charm in that role that is just amazing. Mans had me cackling and giggling and awing and sobbing. He was excellent.
No the reason that this guy is my least favorite is solely because of the character he is at this point in the story. LET'S BE CLEAR ROUND 2 THIS IS NOT A WRITING THING. IN FACT THE WAY HE IS WRITTEN IS PROBABLY ONE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS IN THAT PART OF THE SERIES. This is simply a, oh you are at a very unfortunate part of your character development, thing. However. Because of ALL of these things. This man FASCINATES me
Like out of all the Doctors, Eleven is the one I most want to like, study. Put those scenes under a microscope and dissect them like I'm back in 9th grade biology. This man is weird, and sad, and so incredibly repressed and downright scary I could write books about him and it would take YEARS before I got bored. Today though, I wanna talk about how he, compared to his other selves, just....doesn't give a crap.
When I watched Ten's regeneration into 11 I was so incredibly thrown by the tonal whiplash of David Tennant being near tears and then Matt Smith showing up kissing his legs, and grinning and gleefully crashing. This was the second regeneration I had ever watched since I'd never seen classic who. The first was Nine into Ten and that had the added benefit of Rose being there to slow down the pace with which things happened a little, and the crash happening after the two of them talked a little bit with each other. Eleven just appears in a burning room, and does not talk about any of his previous life or even the last five hours of his life and just...kinda forcefully reinvents himself. The thing that just stuck out to me in that moment, watching him run around, the thing that kinda sent shivers down my spine? ...he didn't seem to care? Like a lot of stuff was happening a lot of stuff was going on and yeah regeneration does things to the brain so he's gonna be a bit hyperactive and loopy for a while but....it felt different.
Like even with Twelve who still keeps up a somewhat flippant vibe, he feels the necessity to, at the end of his debut episodes, take care of a couple of things, set some things straight, have a conversation with his companion about, what just happened and the stuff that preceded it. In his own way of course. Eleven doesn't dwell on anything; he just grabs Amy and goes.
This though, is what makes him scary to me. Because that minor introduction to how unserious he is makes him that much more threatening. They gave Ten a family and made him more human in multiple senses of the word. Then they took it away and Eleven proceeded to become the most alien of the New Who doctors at the time. He caries him self with that air of superiority he has always had but now the care, the seriousness is just kinda loosely there. Like if you put a gun in front of Doctors Nine-Fifteen, in my head, Eleven is the first to use it or at least threaten to, not because he's more violent but because dude just cannot be bothered. You're interrupting his joy and whimsy. All he has left is his joy and whimsy. Let him keep pretending nothing is happening dawg. Ten and Nine's response to many things was rage and while Eleven gets angry frequently, he will just stare at you in this calm unnerving way while he figures out exactly the best way to absolutely destroy you. Mans planned a whole attack to get Amy and Rory's baby back and the second I watched someone drop dead I went "oh this is a completely different guy now"
I would have to seriously look at the series again to be sure but I'm pretty sure that out of every Doctor, Eleven has one of the highest kill counts. Bro. Does. Not. Care. He doesn't have the energy anymore. Y'all taught him caring leads to End of Time. He can't do it no more. ("How many children were on Gallifrey that day" "...I don't know.")
Except he does, cause he's the Doctor. He's the Doctor and he picks up companions like old women pick up stray cats. He cares but it hurts and he distances himself from that care because what else is he supposed to do? Feel that pain again? I can't stop thinking about how surprised he was at the fact that he could happy cry. Mans is trying to fully disconnect from his emotions. And failing cause he's him. But not completely, which leads to terrifying moments and devastating consequences.
The Doctor who entity from Matt Smith's era that scares me the most is not the Weeping Angels. It's the Doctor himself.
This doesn't even like, encompass all my thoughts about him I swear I literally could write like an academic style textbook breaking down my speculations on this mans psyche. But Tumblr is free so this is you guys' problem now
