10. The Doctor's Speech
The Doctor is a non-human life form with a millennium's worth of Earth years under his belt. He's spent a significant chunk of his life wandering the universe and seems to know virtually everything there is to know about countless planets, species and cultures from all across time and space. Admittedly he's had a lot of interaction with Earth and is much experienced in the ways of its people but, in the end, he's still a thousand-year-old alien. Since 2005, some of the Doctor's more colloquial language has been enormously at odds with the age and history of the character. Eccleston had the whole 'fantastic' and Northern thing and was overly conversant with ubiquitous nuances of early 21st century British life such as chips, baked beans and telly. Tennant had 'Allons-y', lots of fast talking and a whole bunch of oddball gobbledygook. Smith's words have a generally younger flavour and, at times, make it difficult to see him as anything but just another young bloke from Northampton. "Oi! Don't diss the sonic!", he yells defensively in The Hungry Earth. Hartnell would be turning in his grave. Why it's written that way is obvious. I get it. It just wouldn't do for the leading man not to seem
über cool. But there's something about the way it's executed, particularly with the eleventh Doctor, that doesn't always gel. At times it's grating, even cringeworthy. It's as if like they're trying just a little bit too hard to make the Doctor sound more appealing to a Gen Y audience that's already drowning in a sea of memes and colloquialisms. The likelihood of someone with such a vast experience of space and time ever speaking in the vernacular of a Gen Y English lad is certainly debatable. What isn't debatable is whether the age of the actor playing the role should make any difference. Short answer: no. The actor's age is immaterial. The bottom line is that the Doctor isn't a 29-year-old bloke from Northampton and shouldn't speak with the ever-changing contemporary nuances of one. With an older actor in the role, reverting to more traditional, less contemporary and far less generation-specific language would be one of the smartest changes Moffat could make. Capaldi's Doctor please don't be one of those embarrassing Dad-like figures who uses the words and phrases of the young folk just to sound cool. That strategy is rarely successful.