Saturday, 26 October 2013

Doctor Who - Celebrating Christopher Eccleston As The Ninth Doctor

Doctor Who – Celebrating Christopher Eccleston As The Ninth Doctor

I’ve just finished watching Series 1 of the modern Doctor Who – you can see all the episode reviews elsewhere on my blog, or you can read the series overview for a general review of it. As you’re no doubt aware, this was Christopher Eccleston's sole series as The Doctor, so it’s time to pay tribute to his work.

With David Tennant following him, and Matt Smith being the most recent Doctor (before Peter Capaldi takes over), Christopher Eccleston tends to get forgotten a bit. In a way it's understandable - he was the first to play The Doctor in modern Who, he was only in it for one season, and Tennant and Smith are more alike than either is with Eccleston. It's completely unfair to him though, because there are so many strengths that he brought to the role:

His strengths as an actor
First off, Christopher Eccleston is an absolutely fantastic actor. If you've seen him in anything else you'll know this, and there were moments in Series 1 that were some of the best acted in the whole of Who history. The two moments in particular that come to mind are firstly when The Doctor is shouting at the Dalek in Dalek, and is taken aback when he is told 'You would make a good Dalek'. You can see on his face just how badly he is struck by this, and it's from this point on that he slowly starts to try to forgive himself for what happened in the Time War. Secondly, there's the part of the finale when the Daleks taunt him about having to destroy Earth to stop them, and he tells them that he can't and chooses to be a coward, unable to do again what he did once before with the genocide of both the Daleks and his own people. These two moments are two of the highlights of the series, and the emotion running throughout helps to show why this programme is so special.

Fantastic!
Whilst the Ninth Doctor doesn't have the same manic energy as the Tenth or Eleventh, there's still plenty of excitement in him. Whenever you see his manic grin from ear to ear, like a school boy in a sweet shop, you smile along with him, no matter what he's getting excited about.

He's Northern
I'm not highlighting this just because I'm Northern too - it's because there's something just so wonderful about his Northern accent and mannerisms make him so different than all the other Doctors, past and present. There's the grumpy side and the sarcastic side in particular that make me laugh every time, perfectly reminiscent or plenty of people I know, and not what you expect in a science-fiction show.

His chemistry with Billie Piper, Camille Coduri and Noel Clarke
Aside from the Dalek moments mentioned above, one of the main highlights for me was the relationship that The Doctor shared with Rose, Jackie and Mickey. He and Rose worked so well together, him the veteran of the stars and her the wide-eyed newbie, but in many ways his relationships with Jackie and Mickey were even better, just because they were so damned funny. I still laugh thinking about Jackie meeting him in the pilot, talking about how there's a strange man in her bedroom, and his reaction to it. It really is comedy gold.

Without him, there'd be no Tennant or Smith
Well, David Tennant was the strong rumour to play the role before Eccleston llanded it so maybe that's a little untrue, but certainly I can't imagine Matt Smith getting the role of the Ninth Doctor. The fact that Eccleston's Doctor is that bit more subdued was essential for re-introducing the character to modern audiences. Can you imagine Matt Smith as the first Doctor following the show being off the air for 16 years? I absolutely love Smith's performance, but I just don't think anyone quite that manic and eccentric would have worked first time - it feels like a natural progression for The Doctor to get a little more manic each time he regenerates at the moment, and the fact that we expect Peter Capaldi to be a more serious Doctor and therefore breaking this mould is fine because of the dark theme that we expect the 50th Anniversary Special to have. A Doctor coming straight out of the horrors of the Time War had to be that bit darker like Eccleston, and I think Tennant is much better having that ever so slight removal by starting in Series 2.

The Final Word
Christopher Eccleston was a different Doctor to Tennant and Smith, but for all the right reasons - he introduced us to a Doctor who has just committed double genocide and is at odds with himself, and he allowed this pain to ease in time for Tennant to take over. He was equal parts grumpy and excited, and provided us with some of the best-acted moments in Who history. He's a remarkable actor, and though it's undoubtedly a shame that we didn't get to see more of him than just a single series, perhaps we can look back at his impact on the series now and appreciate it all the more for this reason.

2 comments:

  1. It's Eccleston, not Ecclestone.

    Broadly I agree with what you're saying, but I never quite took to him in the way I took to Tennant and Smith. I do appreciate him much more when rewatching, but he wasn't odd enough for me. Tennant's introduction, on the other hand, won me over immediately - even with his one minute at the end of Parting of the Ways, he had convinced me he was the Doctor more than Eccleston ever did.

    In a way though, im glad he was in it and only did one season. Imagine that they had started with Tennant - with his popularity, the show may have died when the news fans rejected him leaving. By introducing the concept of regeneration at such an early stage, Eccleston was able to make the concept of change a key part of the makeup of the relaunched show.

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  2. Well if you've ever seen Bernie Ecclestone, it's easy to mix him and the Ninth Doctor up...although how we've only just noticed after reviews for the entire first series...!

    There's a much more subdued quality to his performance than Tennant or Smith, and as I think of The Doctor as that kind of manic character then Eccleston isn't ever going to quite hold the same esteem with me. It's probably the same reason why people love Tom Baker so much - a lot of the older Doctors would be closer to Eccleston, with their 'BBC English' performances (not that Eccleston is like that - just nearer than Tennant and Smith). You would expect Peter Capaldi to be nearer to Eccleston's type of performance, so I'm expecting a much different Doctor with the 12th than the 10th and 11th were to each other

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