Single-Line Pitches: The Fourteenth Doctor (Doctor Who)

Since we only have three episodes to work with here, it might seem silly to do a Single-Line Pitches for Fourteen’s tenure. But what can I say? If you read this blog, then you know I can be completist to a silly degree, plus I really loved all three of Fourteen’s episodes. So here we are! My Single-Line Pitches often focus on amusing bits, but these ended up being more heartfelt. I guess Fourteen and Donna just bring it out of me!

“The Star Beast” – in which Donna thinks she’s no one special, and the Doctor won’t stand for it

“Wild Blue Yonder” – in which the Doctor and Donna test how well they know each other

“The Giggle” – in which the Doctor comes home

 

Top Five Big Damn Hero Moments: The Fourteenth Doctor (Doctor Who)

*Spoilers.*

He might only be in three episodes, but I love the Fourteenth Doctor. And although his short run has a smaller proportion of big flashy moments compared to his predecessors, he shows his Big Damn Heroism in less showy ways that still have an important impact. Maybe more than any other Doctor, Fourteen expresses his heroic nature in an emotional way, and I kind of love that for him.

 

Stopping the Meep’s Ship (60^th Anniversary, Special 1 – “The Star Beast”)

The Meep is about to activate the dagger drive of the Meep’s ship, which will destroy London. The Doctor is bound and determined that he will stop it no matter what, climbing and racing about the control room to sonic every little thing that needs to be reversed. When the Meep deadlocks the controls, taking the sonic off the table, the Doctor resolutely announces, “I can do it by hand!” Even when the Meep lowers a barrier to bisect the control room, he goes into double time, ducking and sliding between the descending barrier to press every button and switch. And when he’s cut off, stuck on one side of the control room, he does the one thing he has left: at Donna’s insistence, he reawakens her metacrisis memories so she can cover the other side, even though they both believe it will be at the cost of her life. This wrecks the Doctor down to his core, but he does it, and then he finishes deactivating his side of the control room, able to stay focused on the task at hand while he fears his best friend on the other side is about to die. Here, we see the Doctor’s brilliance, his determination, and the enormous psychological toll it takes on him to protect humanity.

 

Holding Back the Not-Things (60^th Anniversary, Special 2 – “Wild Blue Yonder”)

As the Not-Things adapt and get better at copying, the Doctor has to be shrewder to stay one step ahead of them. When he’s alone with a Donna, it can be difficult for him to tell if she’s the real one, but when all four of them run into each other, he’s able to contrast the two Donnas and realize a vital clue: the Not-Things think in black and white, while humans like Donna can hold two contradictory thoughts in their head simultaneously. And once he has the real Donna at his side, he tricks the Not-Things by invoking a superstition about not crossing a line of salt. They’re unable to tell if he’s lying, so while the Not-Donna furiously counts the grains, he’s able to probe the Not-Doctor for information. Finds his friend, stalls a threat, and gets the baddies to do a little villainsplaining, all in a single scene? Not too shabby, Doctor!

 

Trusting the TARDIS (60^th Anniversary, Special 2 – “Wild Blue Yonder”)

Maybe a small moment in terms of the Doctor’s own actions, but I still love it. The Not-Doctor is racing to stop the robot from blowing up the ship, giving it a chance to enter the universe and wage destruction. The Doctor is chasing it but can’t catch up. He staggers to a stop in the middle of the corridor, hopeless for a moment. Then inspiration strikes, he says, “But if he runs out of time, the hostile action ends. And a time machine would know!” In the next instant, we hear the TARDIS, previously removed due to the Hostile Action Displacement System, rematerializing behind him. The Doctor turns, grinning with joy and relief as his time machine returns to him.

 

Confronting the Toymaker (60^th Anniversary, Special 3 – “The Giggle”)

When the Toymaker seizes UNIT’s galvanic beam, he’s in control of some serious firepower. The Doctor physically places himself between the humans and the danger. He at first urges them to get inside, away from the threat, but the Toymaker insists on having “an audience.” So instead, the Doctor does everything he can to keep the Toymaker’s focus on him instead of them, even offering himself up as an eternal playmate. When UNIT troops move in to try and shoot the Toymaker, he retaliates, making a game out of terrorizing them with the beam. The Doctor’s voice is so desperate as he again places himself in the way, shouting, “Your fight is with me!” There’s something so beautiful about that—a person with no weapons drawing the attention of a bored god to keep others safe.

 

Going “Home” (60^th Anniversary, Special 3 – “The Giggle”)

After the bigeneration, Fourteen asks his successor, “How’s it going to work?” with two of them in the TARDIS, and when both Fifteen and Donna intimate that he needs to stop and rest, he is not ready to hear it. He argues that he’d go stir-crazy staying in one place and that giving up the TARDIS would physically hurt (fortunately, Fifteen is able to finagle it so he doesn’t have to do that last one.) But softly, his best friend explains, “I’ve worked out what happened. You changed your face, and then you found me. Do you know why? […] To come home.”

This might seem like an odd thing to call out as a Big Damn Hero moment, but it is so brave to change your life, to do something you’ve never done before, to take care of yourself when you need to. It’s written all over Fourteen’s face how difficult this is for him, and while he comes to understand the points that Fifteen and Donna are making, that doesn’t make it easy. But he does. After Fifteen has flown off in his TARDIS, I love that Fourteen is able to get to a place where he can tell Donna, “The funny thing is, I fought all those battles for all those years, and now I know what for: this.” The Doctor is out here being a Big Damn Hero to himself!

Favorite Characters: The Fourteenth Doctor (Doctor Who)

*Fourteen-related spoilers.*

I was confused but intrigued when Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor regenerated with David Tennant’s face again. I wondered about the “reason” behind it and speculated about shenanigans, whether due to all the Doctor’s recent body upheaval through the Master’s interference or because of some plot from the Toymaker. I definitely wondered how he regenerated into new clothes, but that was a question the show never even referenced, let alone answered.

Then the 60^th anniversary specials (finally) rolled around. And what do we see in these episodes? Sure, there’s some wondering about how/why the Doctor’s “old face came back,” but really, Fourteen is just the Doctor. Same Doctor we’ve always had, and despite the repeat face, not even a carbon personality copy of Ten, which I really love. There are some specifics that they uniquely share, which is understandable, but to some extent, the “allons-ys!” feel a bit like the Doctor putting on an old coat that doesn’t quite fit anymore.

He maybe expects to be exactly the same, which might add to how surprised he is when he catches himself off guard with some of the things he says, like admitting to Shirley that he loved Donna or agreeing with Donna that Sir Isaac Newton is “hot.” The Doctor always has differences between regenerations, but this time around, they seem to startle him more than usual. That’s an interesting detail to me.

But really, it’s inevitable that Fourteen isn’t Ten, because he’s had so much life to live since then. A huge amount of stuff has happened to the Doctor just in the last ten episodes of the show, never mind everything that they went through as Eleven and Twelve. At this point, the Doctor has lived so much more than Ten: lost so many more companions, rediscovered Gallifrey and then lost it again, learned a shocking truth about a past that’s been hidden from them, and was told that the destruction of half the universe was because of them. We feel that, all that weight and loss and running, throughout the episodes.

That’s hard on the Doctor, and we see the toll it’s all taken on him. However, we also see how Fourteen is better equipped, not just to survive all that pain, but to be the Doctor who actually (eventually) listens when Fifteen tells him they can’t keep going like this. That’s because Fourteen is the most emotionally-open Doctor in a long time. When Donna gets her memories back, his voice gets husky as he tells her, “It killed me, it killed me, it killed me,” to have lost his best friend. When they get stuck on the edge of the universe, he kisses Donna’s hand and promises he’ll get her home. And when he realizes the Toymaker is the one wreaking havoc on Earth, he admits his fear that he doesn’t know if he can save Donna this time. So when Fifteen, and Donna, tell him that he’s run himself ragged and needs to take time to heal, he doesn’t want to believe it, but he ultimately listens and lets himself be cared for. And that’s huge!

Say what you will about the bigeneration, but I can’t be mad about it, for several reasons. First, it means we get that lovely meeting between Fourteen and Fifteen. That hug! Fifteen’s speech about all they’ve been through! My god! Second, it means that Fourteen doesn’t have to regenerate after having lived for only a few days, which I’d been worried about. Honestly, whether we ever see him on the show again or not, I’m happy that I can imagine him off on his own smaller adventures. (And it means there could be novels? Or comic stories? Or audiobooks? David Tennant and Catherine Tate have already done Big Finish stories together as Ten and Donna, what’s stopping them?) And third, I just love that Fourteen’s happy ending is making a home with his best friend. As an aromantic asexual who pictures the Doctor on the ace spectrum, it makes me feel so warm and fuzzy that Fourteen’s whole run is a celebration of platonic love, with him and Donna pretty much spelled out as platonic soulmates in their final scene. My heart!

One more thing I wanted to mention about Fourteen. I can’t swear to it, but I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve watched David Tennant on Doctor Who since seeing a lot more of his work through Other Doctor Lives, and in particular, since seeing Good Omens. I’ve said before that Crowley is the role that unlocked Tennant as an actor for me, and after watching season 1 of that show, I remember wondering how I’d react the next time I watched his performance as Ten. But it just so happens that, in recent years, I’ve mainly watched the earliest of classic Who and the latest of new Who, so my first post-Crowley viewing of David Tennant on Doctor Who has been as Fourteen, not Ten. I still think it’ll be interesting to go back and watch Ten’s seasons again, especially after Fourteen’s all-too-short run, but I know for sure that his return this time around has been quite a triumph for me.

Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials – “The Giggle” Spoilery Thoughts

*Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers.*

We’re a little bit out from “The Giggle” by now, and we’ve gotten our first full story with Fifteen beyond the regeneration. So I’m not quite as caught up in the whirlwind of it as I was after it first aired, but I’ve watched the episode again since then and I still have plenty of thoughts on it.

First, let’s talk about the Toymaker. This story does a good job of showing why he’s a big deal while also balancing his odd mix of creep factor and outright silliness. I love when the Doctor confronts him, shouting, “I don’t understand why you’re so small! You can turn bullets into flowers! Think of the good you could do.” He’s very rattled by the Toymaker, because his realm is governed by rules the Doctor can’t grasp, and Donna is shook when he tries to get her to leave his side and go back to the TARDIS—it makes her realize just how serious this is.

And Neil Patrick Harris covers all these different sides in his performance as the Toymaker. Like I said in my review, he seems to be channeling his Count Olaf a bit, complete with over-the-top hammy accents, but he’s really good at switching off the absurdity to suddenly go cold and menacing. I liked his whole speech about all he’s done, especially the line, “I gambled with God and turned Him into a jack-in-the-box.”

The Doctor and Donna remain magnificent throughout, as they have across all the specials. I can’t say enough about what a wonderful choice it was to revisit Donna’s ending and bring her and the Doctor back together. In this episode, as the Doctor frets that the odds are against him with the Toymaker this time around, I love the advice Donna shares with him: “My dad used to say, dice don’t know what the dice did last time. Games don’t have a memory. Every game starts from scratch.” And her, and Mel, refusing to leave the Doctor’s side as he’s about to regenerate, is simply lovely. Mel puts it beautifully, saying, “You’re gonna be someone else. It doesn’t matter who, ‘cause every single one of you is fantastic.”

Which, of course, leads us to the bigeneration. The nervous-geek part of my brain gets a little edgy about it, because it’s such a radical introduction of new canon, but from a character perspective, I kind of love it. Fifteen pushing himself out of Fourteen makes for an interesting visual, and I love the detail that, after the bigeneration, each of them is wearing half of Fourteen’s outfit. How can you not love Fifteen out here as a newborn Doctor saving the world in his underwear?

Ncuti Gatwa establishes himself instantly. I’ve seen complaints that the bigeneration undermines Fifteen’s entrance, that he’s overshadowed by Fourteen sticking around, but I don’t feel that way at all. Fifteen is confident, playful, and caring. I love that he instantly feels so much older and more settled than Fourteen, guiding him through their separation and just holding his predecessor when Fourteen is overwhelmed by not having been able to save everyone. And of course, he’s the one to realize that Fourteen needs to rest and recover from all their cumulative trauma, staying with Donna while Fifteen goes off into the universe. His speech of everything they’ve experienced, all the heavy things they’ve kept on running through, is excellent. This line especially stands out to me: “We fought the gods of Ragnarok, and we didn’t stop for a second to say, ‘What the hell?’”

Multi-Doctor specials are usually characterized by a lot of sniping and bickering, because different Doctors always seem to get on each other’s nerves—evidently, it’s only when they’re together that they realize they’re a lot to handle! But this encounter is different than any multi-Doctor interaction we’ve gotten before. Seeing Fourteen receive the love and support he can only fully get from himself, because they’re the only ones who truly know what it’s like to be them, is gorgeous. This might be one of my favorite new Doctor introductions of all time, so well done!