A definite top-tier Doctor for me. Like Peter Capaldi and Twelve, Matt Smith gets major props for making Eleven so consistently-winning despite serious writing issues. Even when an Eleven-era episode makes me want to shake my fist, the Doctor himself is still wonderful (almost always, but when he’s not, I tend to be mad at the writers instead of him for, say, putting a sexist remark in the Doctor’s mouth – boo!) This is the Eleventh Doctor.
Within the first ten minutes of his first episode, I was all about Eleven. At their best, the Doctor is an incredibly-interesting blend of seemingly-disparate traits, and Eleven’s blend is especially potent. He’s immediately all over the place, a perpetually-delighted puppy with ADHD who takes in absolutely everything around him with near-perfect recall. He’s, of course, a super-genius with a talent for deductive reasoning (despite the characters themselves being so different, Eleven does get a bit Sherlock-ish when he’s working things out,) the smartest person in any room who hops between cheerily pointing that out and unassumingly wowing people in the most unexpected way. He’s also a 1,000-year-old alien who’s lived and felt every one of those years, wearing a body that belies that age, experience, and wisdom. He takes honest joy in the universe, and he’s seen skies burn, he makes friends like they’re going out of style and he’s alone in all of time and space. In short, he’s got a lot going on.
It’s that young-old dichotomy that I find most interesting about Eleven. Pretty much all Doctors have it, but the writing really leans into it here. This Doctor, in spite of his genius and general awesomeness, can feel about eight year old at times. He takes time to appreciate simple joys like fish custard and snowmen, he all but squees with excitement when he encounters something amazing, and boredom puts him in utter agony. With his young face, it would be easy to stick with this idea, of the Doctor having all the exuberance and immaturity of a child mixed in among his considerable talents. But that’s not the whole story. The writing doesn’t explicitly explore the other side as often, but Matt Smith plays the hell out of it in more serious moments. When he turns it on, he feels every inch the 1,000-year-old Time Lord, a man with the weight of centuries on his shoulders. He can switch at an instant to gravitas, to authority, to the kind of exhaustion that can only come after running and fighting through multiple lifetimes.
And for my money, it’s hard to match Eleven pound-for-pound when it comes to genuine affection for his companions and other people he encounters. Yes, he has his distracted or dismissive moments, and he gets annoyed with people now and again, making snide remarks or giving lectures depending on his mood. But when he aims the full force of his love and appreciation in someone’s direction, there’s nothing quite like it. Whether it’s a longtime companion like the Ponds, a friend like Craig, or someone who passes in and out of his life in the space of a few hours like Rita from “The God Complex,” whether the gesture is big or small, he has a particular way of making people look through his eyes and realize just how special they are. It’s so open and artless when he does it, a Doctor with a heart as big as the sky. While there’s always going to be danger and problems and sadness, there are moments when the Eleventh Doctor seems like he wants to pull the whole universe into an embrace, and I just love that.
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