5. Eccentricity
There's been a general sense of silliness that's pervaded over the past few years and sometimes it's left adult viewers feeling like they'd just watched a kid's show. Consequently they didn't watch again. Much of the silliness has revolved around the Doctor's eccentricity. The Doctor is eccentric and eccentric is good, but eccentric and silly aren't the same thing. Let's not give the 12th Doctor silly obsessions with revoltingly mismatched food, with the coolness or otherwise of bow-ties and various styles of hat, or with using inane made-up words and phrases which, inevitably, will only become the fodder of geeky fans, merchandisers and internet memes. Eccentric is as eccentric does. If done well, an eccentric character should never need to constantly remind the audience how very eccentric they are by specifically pointing out all the eccentric things they do. The fourth Doctor didn't have to ceaselessly remind us how cool ridiculously oversized scarves were for us to know, innately, that he was eccentricity personified. The Third Doctor didn't make a big deal about wearing velvet and frills to prove how terribly eccentric he was either. And, personality foibles aside, the fact that the sixth Doctor so sincerely believed that he looked good in the technicolour dreamcoat and the rest of that wonderfully disgusting outfit said more about his eccentricity than anything else he ever did or said. Capaldi's Doctor lighter moments are one thing. Child-like, or childish, silliness is entirely another.