Reverse Unpopular Opinion Meme: Something good about your least favourite Doctor. And maybe your favourite Doctor too, just so you have an excuse to talk about them if you like :D
oh interesting!
there’s a couple of Doctors I connect with less than others but I’m going to go with Ten for this (I know this is meant to be a positivity thing but for context - I don’t enjoy the jesus-figure writing, plus I associate him with being a teenager in the superwholock years and people trying to emulate that super-snarky-genius character gjfk)
only... I want to like him! because I really like David Tennant as an actor! I think he’s great in Broadchurch! at the end last year he got cast as a voice actor in my fave game/a spinoff show and I’m massively excited for it!! I was going to go for the ‘no missed opportunities’ version of this meme but you know what I’ll say it. I wish they had’ve let him keep his accent for Ten.
and writing decisions aside, there’s something about him that’s just very likeable. I see gifsets on tumblr and I think ‘oh, that’s such a good bit’. I rewatch episodes and I enjoy them. there’s a lot of episodes from his era that I genuinely love (I have very fond memories of just having gotten into Torchwood, going on holiday without access to the internet/without having bought the dvds yet, and just. rewatching The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End over and over for the Torchwood content ghfjkd). so whenever I rewatch I always feel like I dislike Ten in theory and because of the things I associate him with more than because of what he actually is.
& then my favourite Doctor is obviously Two. who very much is the Doctor to me. I remember earlier in Thirteen’s run a lot of people were wanting for her to get darker, and I was a bit like, no!! let me have a relatively happy fun Doctor again, please!! Two’s fun and friendly and has great found family dynamics with all his companions and he’s personable in a weird sort of way. like, he’s not necessarily likeable in the same way Ten is, he just carries on doing his own thing (sometimes oblivously) until people can’t help but go along with him. which now I think of it seems quite like Eleven (probably deliberately so and, hey, coincidence, Eleven was my favourite new series Doctor for a loong time) - like, that bit in A Christmas Carol where Eleven tells Kazran his bow tie is cool because he wears it and he doesn’t care what people think? Two is that, but not articulated so openly.
but then he also... isn’t entirely cuddly. he’ll send a fleet of Ice Warriors into the sun without a second thought. he doesn’t seem too worried about Salamander being sent into the vortex. he’ll bash a guy over the head and joke about it. and unlike later Doctors, he never seems to angst over it, like he can justify it to himself. his philosophy is probably the definition of ‘total tolerance requires some intolerance’. he figures it’s morally okay because he’s helping people. which is something that the Doctor doesn’t get to do much anymore, and I wonder if it’s because there’s still a little bit of ‘we don’t quite know what the Doctor is and he’s slightly untrustworthy’ about him. but it’s interesting. and it’s often been said that he settles down after meeting Jamie - and he does! and Evil of the Daleks very much shows Jamie as his moral compass. but for all that Jamie has a super strong set of moral codes, they also happen to include ‘it’s ok to bash someone over the head sometimes’. there’s literally a short story where Jamie almost throws someone out of the TARDIS because he thinks they’ve killed Two. so they probably feed into each other with that.
on the other hand Patrick Troughton’s portrayal of him is just so littered with tiny mannerisms and characteristics and he really shows how much input the actors got to have with those sorts of things in the early series, because he feels so organic. he’s kind to Victoria when she’s grieving, and he can relate to that grief. he plays cards when he’s cornered by soldiers. he’s from an alien planet and (badly) pilots a time machine but he hates computers. he’s vain and thinks he looks wonderful but is a complete mess. he’s alien in all sorts of ways, but still feels very much like a person.
