9. The Doctor Is Sullen And Tortured By Guilt....Again...
So, it might not make sense to point out that Matt Smith's portrayal of the Eleventh Doctor stomps on everyone else's comedic opportunities, and then also say that he is too brooding, but somehow he manages to do it! Actually, this problem seems to have more to do with the writer's than with Smith this time. Once again, as of the latest Christmas Special, we see The Doctor withdrawing from the world, tortured by the impact of his actions and the harsh realities of...I dunno...existence. He is literally pouting on a storm cloud he built to live on. He has a fun lesbian lizard lady that looks out for him, and we're all excited by that, but isn't it weird that we are more excited by that than by the main character himself? Why is this a problem? The problem is that it feels rehashed. It doesn't feel like meaningful growth, especially not when you place it within the context of The Doctor's journey since season One of the reboot. It can be argued that this exact place is where we met Eccleston, who carried his demons only in his eyes, and never spoke of the deep wrongs he was trying to right. What worked about meeting the Doctor at the point of his despair, was that we got to see, and believe, how Rose helped him to heal. So, when he started to go that dark way again when Rose was taken from him as the Tenth, we, as an audience, really bought that he had a reason to return to despair. And then Donna snapped him right out of it, which made us love her through an entire season of crap Martha. And of course, at the close of the Tenth's life cycle, he was definitely a dour boy, and with good cause! But in the end, we saw him embrace hope and choose to make the difference he could. It felt like catharsis. Now we have the Eleventh. Did he get upset when he found out he collapses all of history in season 5? Nah, he just wanted to figure out the mystery! He did seem weirdly guilty about Amy though. Huh. And in season 6, when his mind games ended up both causing and saving the Universe from, again, total collapse, did he seem perturbed? Nah, he just figured he'd lay low (though...that lasted all of three lines of dialogue). But he did seem kind of sulky about Rory being jealous of him huh? And then Season 7, after losing the Ponds in what amounts to a filler episode, but still going to live with three completely amazing fan-favorite friends, he is soul-crushed and butt-hurt to a deeper, darker level than Ninth Doctor was about that whole Time War genocide thing? He even put the emo-punk skin on the Tardis interior! It just makes The Doctor feel brittle, small, and self-important. And worse, it seems to discount all that he has been through up till now. How can we fix this problem? This one is tricky. If you make The Doctor get over Amy too quickly, you risk invalidating her importance (which, by the end, she wasn't really. Which is why they could reasonably off her in a filler episode. But...thank God that's in the past now), but if you leave him wallowing in overt self-despair over it, you risk making The Doctor small at best, and at worst, internally inconsistent. So the solution is to let the Doctor bury the pain. Don't have him talk about it. Don't have him bludgeon us about the head with it. Give us a single long shot of The Doctor stopped in his tracks by a red-head, or have an alien dignitary offer him fish-flavored custard. Little things that stab the Doctor, and then let him bear that pain with dignity. Sure, at some climax moment he could have a break down, but build it, craft it. Hide it. Let the Doctor wear his pain like a mystery again.