Yawn

[avevale_intelligencer]

So, for anyone who hasn't already found out, David Tennant has confirmed what we've all known for ages, that he is leaving nuWho after the specials. Speculation is rife all over LJ about who will/should replace him: I've commented here and there that someone who is capable of playing the Doctor would be nice. As in older, not a sexpot, damn well upper class British thank you so very much, not prone to sexual entanglements with other species, and able to convey that s/he is not a doormat or a scapegoat. I have had the hangdog look up to here.

We'll see what happens.

Comments

[deviant-gent.livejournal.com]

... someone like David Morrisey, perchance?

See the pics for The Next Doctor. His outfit looks awesome, if it is indeed him.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I was going to make a similar comment, but you beat me to it!

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I think that's a tease. The costume looks like the sort of thing the real Doctor used to wear, but for that very reason they'd never use it. It's in period for the episode.

And he's still too young for my taste. If it were my decision, I wouldn't be looking at anyone much younger than me (fifty-four next birthday).

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Hmm, as for age, the ages of the actors when they became The Doctor were as follows (in decreasing order of age):

William Hartnell was 54
Jon Pertwee was 51
Patrick Troughton was 46
Sylvester McCoy was 44
Christopher Eccleston was 41
Tom Baker was 40
Colin Baker was 40
Paul McGann was 37
David Tennant was 34
Peter Davison was 30

(information from IMDB; ages may be off by a year because I only looked at the year of birth and season start, I didn't go down to actual birth and season start dates). Going by those it seems that William Hartnell is the only one of whose age you approve...

David Morrisey was born in 1964, which makes him 44 now, above the median age of 40.5 (also above the mean which is 41.7).

[aunty_marion]

Thanks for that! It confirms my long-held but vague impression that the Doctor was genuinely (mostly) getting younger every regeneration, though one or two of them buck the trend... - it would be interesting to see that list in chronological order by Doctor, with start *and* end ages. So - depressingly - going by that, the next actor would probably be aged about 27. Which IMHO is FAR too young.

Hang on, how old is the lad who'd playing Merlin? Given that Gaius looks very like Hartnell (in that wig...), there's a crossover (including T.H. White's Merlin!) handover looming there...

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Actually it goes 54, 46, 51, 40, 30, 40, 44, 37, so a case could be made that it was on the way up again before the interruption, and that McGann was a blip caused by unrelated factors.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Actually YOYYOOYOY, almost equal younger and older (they couldn't be exactly equal because there have only been 9 changes), and very evenly distributed.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

The curve is more apparent if you stick to realWho.

And individuals age at different rates. Troughton looked older than his years at the time; Davison looked younger than his.

Anyway, we can go round and round indefinitely on this. I think older actors are generally better for that part, for reasons I've already stated. If you don't, that's fine: I don't necessarily expect anyone to agree.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Ah, but when I was younger I could tolerate younger Doctors. :)

Seriously, I thought at the time that Davison, Tennant and McGann were all too young for the role. Eccleston had so many other problems for me that his age was entirely overshadowed. The others, apart from Hartnell, mostly managed by sheer presence to make age irrelevant to their portrayal, which is the ideal...but in general, you can only be ageless if you've aged a bit. Otherwise you're just young. Tennant is still young. It doesn't matter how many times his Doctor says "I'm so old now" and such like, he is callow and unfinished and easily cowed and just not right.

The pictures I've seen so far of David Morrissey look young in the same way, though that may just be the character he's playing, and it's unfair to judge a performer on a still picture. But I believe there was a conscious decision to make the Doctor more accessible to yoof, and I think it was a wrong decision, and casting someone--okay, not necessarily someone in his or her fifties, but someone capable of playing him as the timeless alien that he is, would go some way to redress that mistake.

They won't, though.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I think the rot set in after the first three. None of the others really gave me that "timeless alien" impression (mostly neither timeless nor particularly alien) so I stopped expecting it long before NuWho.

[aunty_marion]

I think I successfully suspended disbelief for Tom Baker (though I haven't seen all the episodes by a long chalk - I was out of reach of a TV for a lot of the mid-70s and early-80s!), but I think the rot really set in with Colin Baker.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Baker T was fine as far as I was concerned. Davison would have made a better fist of it if he'd done it at the age he did Campion (38, so not that much older); he'd perfected that "still small voice of authority" thing he does. Baker C didn't get a fair shake due to other factors, but he's grown into the role quite nicely on audio. And again, I was fine with McCoy.