Hmm - I had this post on deck and ready to go for the Sunday Who Review yesterday, but somehow, I wound up posting a movie review instead. Getting ahead of myself?
After
Twelve’s first season, I enjoyed writing a post on various similarities I saw
between him and past Doctors. It was
interesting to think about, since Twelve was billed as such a departure for the
show, especially in series 8. Thirteen
is in a similar boat, albeit for different reasons: while Twelve’s more cantankerous tendencies
are what made him stand out, Thirteen’s gender is her most noteworthy
difference from the Doctors who came before her. Despite some talk I’ve seen online about how
Thirteen “doesn’t feel like the Doctor” or that the show “isn’t Doctor Who anymore,” I see plenty of
parallels between her and the Doctors of past years.
As
Thirteen starts coming into herself in “The Woman Who Fell to Earth,” the
earliest impressions I got were strong Ten and Eleven vibes. Even though both of them have some pretty
stark differences from each other, there’s something about their humor that
feels like a throughline shared with Thirteen.
That motor-mouth habit with a strong tendency to veer off into
non-sequiturs. Whenever Thirteen is
going on about some ridiculous past experience she had or talking to herself at
a mile a minute, that’s when those flashes of Ten and Eleven come through.
There’s
also a gentleness to Thirteen that, by turns, reminds me of Five and Eight
(this post features a lot of Doctor groupings that only sort-of go together –
not altogether sure why.) For me, these
two, along now with Thirteen, are maybe the nicest Doctors overall, but again,
that doesn’t always look the same way.
In fact, I always seem to forget how downright ornery Five can be at
times until I rewatch his stories, but the general impression he often gives is
of being pleasant but slightly unmemorable.
And that’s probably the most critical thing I can say about Thirteen’s
characterization, that there are moments when she feels sort of blandly
nice. But most of the time, she feels
more like Eight, warmly kind and filled with a joy you can’t help noticing, and
I like that.
Circling
back to Five and Eleven, and throwing
in Two for good measure, I’m reminded of various Doctors who often have
multiple companions that they regard more like odd little space families than
anything else (well, in Amy and Rory’s case, that’s more literal!) I don’t think Thirteen is quite there yet
with Graham, Ryan, and Yaz, or at least the show needs to do a better job of
demonstrating that, but it’s obvious that a family vibe is what it’s going for. I’ve always liked depictions of TARDIS
families, and I’d like to see the show continue to push that angle.
Thirteen
is very science-minded in a hands-on way, which is reminiscent of Three but
looks very different on her. Whereas
Three is most at home in a lab, Thirteen more often seems to prefer a workbench
– she’s both techy and a tinkerer with a flair for engineering, which makes her
come off less high-brow intellectual and more enthusiastic gearhead. I love that she builds her own sonic
screwdriver, and I just generally enjoy it whenever she sciences something
together out of spare parts to save the day.
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