Review of The Doctors Revisited – Tenth Doctor
It still feels really weird to me to think of David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor as an “old” or “past” Doctor. Since it was his episodes that cemented my fandom, and I don’t think of myself as having been a fan for very long, even though it’s been five years now, at a gut level I can’t help but think of them as quite recent. Yet it’s been nearly four years since Tennant’s last appearance. So it was with a strange combination of “walk down memory lane” and “didn’t we just get these episodes?” that I watched as BBC America Revisited my Doctor.
Whether it’s because this Doctor isn’t yet very far removed, or some other reason, the list of interviewees in this episode is longer than any other: Doctor actors David Tennant and Peter Davison; Companion actors Freema Agyeman, Noel Clarke, and John Barrowman; Companion family member actors Camille Coduri, Bernard Cribbins, and Jacqueline King; supporting character actors David Morrissey, Dan Starkey, and Adam Garcia; writers Neil Gaiman and Tom McRae; and producers Marcus Wilson and Steven Moffat. All had glowing things (as always) to say about this particular Regeneration, and how he differed from all who came before.
The Tenth Doctor was a starkly different man from the Ninth. Less someone suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, he had an easier manner—like someone you’d know, it’s pointed out—and was someone the audience could relate to, in terms of both fashion sense and mode of speech. Yet the darkness was still just under the surface. He doesn’t cut his enemies much slack (“no second chances”), nor the friends who have disappointed him. As Tennant himself put it, “He can destroy a government by whispering in someone’s ear. That’s the essence of the Doctor. That sums him up.”
