5. His Fourth Incarnation
Having successfully diagnosed The Doctor with a schizoid personality disorder under the previous heading it's probably worth us looking at a few obvious facets of this derangement so that we can recognise how it has always been with him, especially when he was in his fourth incarnation. Some enduring features of this all too common illness are aggression, fantasising, depression, mood swings, deceitfulness, mistrust, impulsive behavior, exaggeration and anxiety, to name but a few. Well, that's most of Four to a tee and what wasn't true about him from that list was certainly true of his other incarnations! Some of them were more evident back then and some have come to the fore of late. Take deceitfulness, for example. You might argue that refusing to tell someone your real name, as in The Name Of The Doctor, does not amount to deceitfulness; rather it's straightforward refusal. But hey, where's the problem? It's just a name for heaven's sake and as his closest companions are always saying, "Rule one: The Doctor always lies." If the eleventh incarnation had pathological deceitfulness overwhelming him and the first mistrust, then the fourth was the moodiest, most impulsive alien ever. Him and the second that is: all the time tootling that recorder of his in a miasma of thoughtfulness, no doubt plotting the downfall of the next alien out there that in his words needed, 'to be fought'.
Paul Hammans
Hello, I'm Paul Hammans, terminal 'Who' obsessive, F1 fan, reader of arcane literature about ideas and generalist scribbler. To paraphrase someone much better at aphorisms than I: I strive to write something worth reading and when I cannot do that I try to do something worth writing. I have my own Dr Who oriented blog at http://www.exanima.co.uk
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