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Subj: The next Doctor, relative youth and romance Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 05:50:01 am EST (Viewed 489 times) | Reply Subj: The new Doctor Who... Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 at 06:35:27 pm EST (Viewed 513 times) | ||||||
Here's an interview with the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith: I'm going to echo the masses by noting that a) I'd never even heard of this guy before, b) he looks way too young for the role and c) I'm not exactly blown away by what I've seen of him so far. My fear is that he was cast so that they could bring in a new Rose (or, worse yet, bring back the original Rose), and thereby permanently cement the Doctor/companion template of NuWho into an Edward/Bella "romance," which would attract a whole new wave of batchippers (and possibly even draw back in the "old" batchippers), and I do not want every new companion to be a teenaged or twentysomething girl who's yearning for a boytoy Time Lord who has a timey-wimey sparklepeen, thank you very much. That being said? There are ways to make this work, and with Steven Moffat at the helm, there's at least some outside chance of them happening. First off, if the casting of Smith as the youngest Doctor in history means that Eleven is following in the footsteps of Eight, Nine and Ten by being quasi-romantically involved with (almost) all of his companions, let's play with that. After all, Moff has already explored the timey-wimey side of time travel, so why shouldn't he explore the timey-wimey side of Time Lord aging, as well? If he wants to convince me that Smith really is centuries old, let him hook up with an older woman! I've already seen it said that Smith's casting automatically makes River Song "too old" for Eleven, to which I say, bullshit! Not even Sarah Jane (especially not Sarah Jane) should be "too old" for Eleven to look at in a romantic, or even sexual, way (even if she might feel awkward about looking at him in those same ways). Yes, it's a younger actor in the role, but it's supposedly the same character who got engaged to Cameca in "The Aztecs"! And yes, it would create a bit of cognitive dissonance to see a character who's outwardly so young hooking up with women who appear to be more mature than him, but much like the timey-wimey twists and turns that Sally Sparrow and River Song had to wrap their heads around, that's the point. Doctor Who should be a show that broadens our minds, by making us see the world, and even ourselves, in ways that we might not be used to, and it'd be a sad commentary on our society if it turned out that we could handle the timey-wimey pretzels of comprehension involved in time travel, but that we were still uncomfortable with seeing a younger-looking guy stepping out of the TARDIS with a relatively older gal on his arm (especially since the character of the guy in question is still supposedly old enough to be the distant ancestor of any human woman, regardless of her age). Will any of this happen? Who knows? We've been lucky with David Tennant, who's had astonishingly good chemistry with women his age and older (he and Lis Sladen sizzled onscreen together, and his rapport with Catherine Tate was so wonderful that I remain convinced that Ten and Donna were "friends with benefits," no matter how often they denied their couplehood), and if Smith is similar to Tennant in this regard, we could still be seeing some smoldering hot stares exchanged between Eleven and River Song, or Eleven and Sarah Jane. But as of now, I can't really get any sort of read on this new guy. I'm trying not to be negative here. That having been said, if Eleven hooks up with somebody like an 18-year-old cashier named Willow Taylor, I'll join everyone else in calling bullshit on it. | |||||||
