When I began these Doctor by Doctor
articles, it was 2013, running down to the series' fiftieth
anniversary. I had originally intended to continue with the twelfth
Doctor in 2014, but decided that I wanted to see more of him before I
wrote about him in depth. Now, with the thirteenth Doctor's debut
series imminent, it's time to do the old boy justice.
Peter Capaldi is the second Scottish
fanboy to achieve his life's ambition to play the Doctor. A man who
once, in his teens, headed the Doctor Who Fan
Club and used to write in to the Radio Times about
the series. Capaldi had, almost twenty years before finally becoming
the Doctor, been one of the many who auditioned to be the eighth
Doctor, and it's entirely possible to imagine him in that role. He's
one of the very few actors who could have played the Doctor as a
young, dashing romantic and a cantankerous old man, and he brings
tremendous charisma to a version of the character that could very
easily have been quite unlikeable.
The odd thing about the twelfth Doctor
is that he is characterised quite differently throughout each of his
three seasons. Of course, there are flashbacks and forwards to other
elements of his character throughout, but it's still possible to
divide the twelfth Doctor into three distinct periods. In series
eight, he is angry, harsh, unapproachable. In series nine, he's the
rock and roll Doctor, punky and spiky and unpredictable. In series
ten, he's older, a fatherly figure and teacher. Humour and anger and
extraordinary grumpiness comes and goes throughout his long, long
life, but that's the general pattern.
This could be seen as an inconsistent
characterisation, but the fourth Doctor had distinct phases to his
character as well. In fact, the gradual shift from the exceptionally
prickly Doctor of series eight to the more likeable, more
compassionate Doctor of series ten could be seen as the sixth
Doctor's journey done right, or even a return to first principles for
the Doctor, the same journey he went through in his first few seasons
back in the monochrome days.
Let's go back to the twelfth Doctor's
beginnings, in the closing moments of “The Time of the Doctor.”
To begin with, the twelfth Doctor is over-the-top and silly, much
like most of his incarnations in the moments after a regeneration. As
usual, his new brain takes a little while to settle down. Acting on
some subconscious impulse, he takes the TARDIS to London in the
nineteenth century (via an awkward encounter with an oversized
tyrannosaur) to where he feels safe,
with his trusted allies the Paternoster Gang. While there, he pieces
his new personality together while piecing together the mystery of
the half-faced man.
An immediate
mystery to the Doctor himself is his new choice of face. By now aware
that he is selecting his own faces, albeit subconsciously, he is
baffled as to why he's picked this scowling, gaunt visage, with its
attack eyebrows. We're given two explanations, both valid and true,
and both go back to his previous incarnations. During the events of
“The Day of the Doctor,” the Doctor faced up to his past as the
Warrior, and finally stopped running from his past. He finally
stopped pretending to be a fresh-faced young man, and accepted that
he was an ancient being with terrible things in his past. Perhaps
more importantly, Clara had seen him as this: an old soldier with
blood on his hands, and had accepted him as such. Finally, he could
let the mask slip. The eleventh Doctor had revelled in his youthful
looks and had embraced his flirtatious, and often quite shallow,
relationship with Clara.
It may seem odd
that the Doctor would regenerate to become physically older. As Clara
says, “he doesn't look renewed.” However, it's easy to forget in
the hullabaloo of the regeneration that the Doctor spent nine
centuries on Trenzalore, growing old and infirm, watching those he
protected age and die around him. We only see the tiniest glimpses of
the Doctor's life on Trenzalore, and almost all of these moments are
in the presence of Clara, for whom he puts on his mask. The Doctor
grows ancient in Christmas Town, and has finally accepted his own
mortality, only to have a last moment reprieve from the distant Time
Lords. After all those centuries, the Doctor was prepared for his
final moments, ancient and withered, and Clara was there at the very
end. Apart from his brief “reset” before fully regenerating, the
Doctor becomes considerably younger in his new incarnation, but still
allows himself to appear middle-aged and mature. He can be forgiven
for thinking Clara will accept him like this. Of course, she does in
time, but to begin with she is completely thrown. It's
understandable, of course; every time she saw the Doctor as old and
grey, she got her young Doctor back. This time, the old man is there
to stay.
“You don't see
me, do you?”
Of
course, we later learn the other reason that the Doctor decided on
the face of Peter Capaldi. In “The Girl Who Died,” there's a
sudden and jarring flashback to “The Fires of Pompeii,” a then
eight-year-old episode in which Capaldi played the Roman citizen
Caecilius. The twelfth Doctor barely remembers much of his time as
the tenth, if his tenuous recognition of the clockwork robots and the
SS Madame de Pompadour
is anything to go by. And yet, this one experience with Donna in
Pompeii is etched into his memory. The face of Caecilius, the man he
saved, is there in the mirror, as a reminder to be compassionate, to
think of human lives when history is on the brink. Because the Doctor
knows, as well as his companions know, that without that reminder, he
can so easily become a monster.
To begin with, the twelfth Doctor is a particularly difficult person
to be around. Given how hard Clara has found it to adjust to his new
appearance, you'd think he'd go a little easy on her, but no, he's
spectacularly hard to love early on. There's an understanding,
though, between them, and she copes with his abrasiveness as long as
it isn't directed at her too much. Clara acts as a buffer between the
Doctor and everyone else in the universe. To the outsider looking in,
it would like he just doesn't really care about anyone else, but it's
quite the opposite. The Doctor cares intensely about everyone he
sees, suffering or in trouble. So, he puts up barriers: his attitude,
his anger, his face, those eyebrows. Everything is designed to keep
the rest of the universe at bay. However, get past those barriers, become someone the Doctor cares about, and he'll become fiercely, even frighteningly loyal.
“She's my
carer! She cares, so I don't have to.”
It's no surprise, really, that the Doctor has started to put these
barriers up between himself and the universe. He's just spent
centuries in one place, far longer than we've ever seen him stay put
before, doing his best to defend a town from a war arguably of his
own making. He's seen countless people grow old and die, while he
himself has carried on, and even when death seemed certain, he
regenerated again. Is it so strange that after all that he has become
unapproachable, even a little callous? Equally, he has begun to
seriously question himself, asking Clara if he's a good man,
concerned that he's grown cruel during the centuries. Of course, we
know the Doctor is a good man, albeit one who has the capacity to
turn the wrong way at any moment. He needs people with him to keep
him thinking clearly; too much time alone and he can become cold,
alien, and obsessive. He has a distinctly odd morality: he'll speak
passionately about how he hates to hear pigs crying over their fate,
but will happily eat offal. He'll lecture of remaining detached, then
punch a racist in the face. He'll go to the end of time to save his friend, then shoot an ally in cold blood. He'll express sympathy for Davros, one of his most hated enemies, but use his plans against him and destroy his creations horribly. It's never quite clear what he'll do
next.
His aggressive dislike of the military perhaps stems from his time on Trenzalore as well. He still carries immense guilt for his actions in the Time
War, even though he no longer has the burden of Gallifrey's
destruction on his back, but there's more to it. After the events of
“Day of the Doctor,” the Doctor had finally begun to come to
terms with his actions in the War, and he was suddenly pitched
directly into another. On Trenzalore, he was mayor and general at
once, standing over those who went into battle. Danny Pink isn't
wrong when he identifies the Doctor as an officer, one who gives
orders and lords over the lower ranks. The Doctor's hatred of
soldiers is his own self-hatred turned outward, and Danny's
observation cuts him to the core.
Perversely, this comes in the episode at which he is most like the
eleventh Doctor, with a lot of his previous self showing. The Doctor
is daffier when he's pretending to be the Caretaker than at any other
time since his regeneration, and is still prone to occasionally
forgetting, it seems, that he no longer looks like Matt Smith.
Fittingly, he's hilariously convinced that Clara has fallen for a
teacher who bears a passing resemblance to his former self. Instead,
she falls for a former soldier, someone who the Doctor disapproves of
on principle, and unfairly mocks because of it (unfortunately, the
fact that Danny is played by black actor Samuel Anderson adds a
racial subtext to the Doctor's superior attitude, that was surely
unintentional).
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Jacob Dudman has proven himself to be something of a phenomenon. Going from YouTube fan performer to the main reader for Big Finish's new series audiobooks. His impersonations of the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors are spot on, and his Twelfth Doctor is getting better every time I hear it. BF has released four Short Trips featuring Twelve so far (plus a subscriber exclusive) and three of them have been read by Dudman, plus he is the main reader and performs as the Doctor in their Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctor "Chronicles" series. I'm sorely tempted to get The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles and The Twelfth Doctor Chronicles just on the strength of this latest release.
The Doctor has
taken her to Athenia, a far future colony where human and AI beings
called Galateans live together. Here, a robotic recreation of Alan
Turing continues to live and work, free to be who he wants to be.
However, there's conflict brewing between the humans and Galateans,
with the old problems of two groups of people blaming each other for
their problems because they don't like those who are different. Into
this steps the Phantom Piper – the very same psychopomp feared by
Jamie McCrimmon – the King of the Dreamspace. A demonic and
brilliantly realised monster, the Piper foments and lives off
warfare, and uses the Child of Time Chiyoko to bring himself and an
army of phantoms to life. The symbol on the TARDIS is the final part
of the code, and the Piper has manipulated the Doctor into bringing
it to Athenia so that he can achieve physical existence.
The final release of the Target line –
for now – is the most up-to-date it could be, with Paul Cornell
novelising the 2017 Christmas special, right up to the first, and so
far only, appearance of the thirteenth Doctor. Unlike Rose or
The Day of the Doctor,
Twice Upon a Time
isn't covered by the scriptwriter, but by one of the most celebrated
authors of the novel line. Cornell shot to Who stardom
with the early New Adventure Timewyrm: Revelation
back in 1991, being one of the first writers who really looked into
what made the Doctor tick. It makes sense then that Cornell takes on
this introspective regeneration story.
