3."Bow-ties Are Cool"
Matt Smith's Doctor the Eleventh is very fond of his zaniness. It is one of the hallmarks of his portrayal, and even though we all try to pretend it isn't more than a little derivative of Tennant's own performance immediately prior as Doctor the Tenth, it is pervasive and perennial. However, something else our dear Eleven is fond of is stating the obvious, and telling the audience what to think; about him, about his accessories, and about the plot. From his first justification to Amy in the hospital for his neckwear, to his explosive turn with a Fez and River Song, to his self-aggrandizing and melancholy mirror monologuing as helpless children are threatened behind him in the latest Christmas special, Eleven loves nothing more than calling attention to his own antics. Why is this a problem? The problem with a character that has to consistently tell the audience what to think about their actions, is that they have to consistently tell the audience what to think about their actions. The actions themselves aren't weighty enough for us to figure out how to react to them on our own. It is true that this version of the Doctor may be a little bit more vain, and a little bit more in need of an audience than previous versions, but at what point does indulging that as a device become a crutch to the performance? Tom Baker as Doctor the Fourth didn't spend much time justifying his neckwear. Did Peter Davidson incessantly call attention to Doctor the Fifth's fondness for vegetable lapel decorations? Perhaps, when it was appropriate to the story, this came up. But when the dialogue of your protagonist in any given situation becomes so predictable you can just draw a diagram saying "____ are cool" and call it a script, you've gone too far. So how do we fix this? First realize that it isn't just bow-ties the Doctor tells us what to think about now. It's monsters, and time theory, and technology. The series now, with Eleventh not just informing us what something is (a function the Doctor must always perform) but also the way his companions or we the viewer should feel about it, is less like an adventure in space-time and more like an overwrought guided tour or a theme park ride. Let the Eleventh be zany. It's his thing. He's the kid who tries to hard in school to be funny. But stop having him stare out from the fourth wall as if to say, "You see what I just did there? It was funny and brilliant. It was so so funny and brilliant". It is, however, permissible for his final words to be "Regenerations are cool"