Thoughts on the Thirteenth Doctor

 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.