Hello and welcome to In Too Deep Into Doctor Who, where I over-analyse each of the Doctors to find out which is best.
The way this is going to run is very simple: I take ten categories and give each Doctor points 1 to 10 along the way. Now some of this may seem familiar since I will be repeating myself, but I plan to have this be a be all and end all look at my favourite fictional character. So join me each week as work out which of the Doctors in my absolute favourite.
Since the Doctor used up two regenerations and has a third (future?) one, best look at their characters separately and combine them as one big Other.
The Characters
The War Doctor: A gruff veteran of a war that’s been going on for far too long, he’s a very interesting character. While having gone through a lot the element of the Doctor is still hidden there, buried deep. A great character that we don’t get to see more of. 8/10.
The Valeyard: A Doctor made up of only evil impulses. Interesting concept, rather flat character by the end of it. That doesn’t mean he’s awful, just ultimately rather forgettable in terms of who the character is. 4/10.
Meta-crisis Doctor: Since he’s a copy of Ten, he gets half of Ten’s points since he brings nothing new to the table. 5/10.
Final Tally: 17/30, aka 5.6/10
The Costumes
The War Doctor
It’s pretty much the same costume the Eighth had, something that straddles the line between 8 and 9. And it works. I don’t know if it works perfectly, but it works. It makes him seem like a man who has been at war for far too long. It’s serviceable, but not really memorable. 5/10.
The Valeyard
Black Time Lord robes. It’s a nice contrast to the character wearing white in the story… but on the whole it looks rather silly out of context. It’s not terrible, just rather boring. But while it does contrast the Sixth Doctor nicely, it just can’t come out on top. 2/10.
Meta-Crisis Doctor
… It’s just a blue version of the Doctor’s suit. How… exciting… Yeah I was never a fan of the costume change that 10 had because it doesn’t really bring anything new to the character. It’s just a blue version of what we’d seen before. Neat, but ultimately uninspired. 1/10.
Final Verdict: 8/30 aka 2.6/10
The Introductions
The War Doctor
The Story: I’ve already gushed about how good the story is, so lets look at the Doctor himself in it. He is, in a nutshell, Old Who fans that criticize all the stuff in the modern series. All the posturing and catchphrases and the like. He is meant to be a homage of the old and a critique of the new. Ultimately it ends up working well for this character. 7/10.
The Doctor’s Introduction: “What I did, I did without choice. In the name of peace and sanity.†What an opener. An incarnation that did something so terrible he couldn’t call himself Doctor any more. And while yeah, it was pretty obvious he was from the Time War, it was still a huge surprise. Add to that his first scene with The Moment, reflecting on all that had happened to him and what he was about to do… Yeah simply great. 10/10.
Overall: The Day of the Doctor is the story of the War Doctor. Plain and simple. It’s about him learning and growing as a character. It works well and leaves the audience wanting more of him. 7/10.
Final Verdict: 24/30 aka 8/10
The Valeyard
The Story: The Doctor is on trail for his crimes of meddling and who turns out to be the prosecutor but himself! Specifically the distillation of all the evil in the Doctor between his 12th and final regeneration. And the story that we have here is… well it’s a neat concept let down by bad execution. The idea of an evil Doctor could have been used more than it ultimately was. 4/10.
The Doctor’s Introduction: It’s a great twist when we learn who the Valeyard is, changing the game so dramatically that everything we thought we knew gets shifted back on itself. Suddenly we have a reason why the Valeyard is doing what he’s doing. It all sorta makes a little bit of sense. It’s a nice twist, but that’s about it. 4/10.
Overall: It’s a concept that has sadly not been explored since. A pity really, since it could have been done really well. 2/10.
Final Verdict: 10/30 aka 3.3/10.
The Meta-crisis Doctor
The Story: Journey’s End is a crossover that rivals The Avengers in my books. Not in terms of action or scope, but in that everything from the last four years feels like it’s been building up to this. Likewise the brilliant twist of having the Doctor not regenerate but grow a new person is a very clever one indeed. 7/10.
The Doctor’s Introduction: He grows from a hand, fully naked… and the only other ‘big’ thing he does is kill all the Daleks. Very dark Doctor, very dark. However as far as introductions go, it’s a weak twist at best. 1/10.
Overall: Remember what I said not a few paragraphs ago? Here we have a being created between the Doctor’s 12th and Final regeneration (at least in terms of cycle). Did the Doctor know this and exile his clone on purpose, in the hopes of avoiding the dark future? Did this clone end up eventually breaking back into the prime universe and back on himself, ending up in a courtroom. The Master possessed the body of a human in The Keeper of Traken, could not this Doctor have done the same thing to a Time Lord? Quite simply: Could the Meta-crisis Doctor, who the original says is bloody-thirsty and whatnot, be the fated Doctor all along? While I’d love to give my own theory ten out of ten, at the end of the day we have barely a few scraps to get by on. 3/10.
Final Verdict: 11/10 aka 3.6/10.
Final Ranking: 14.9/30 aka 4.9/10
The Companions
This is easy: They don’t have any. Sure I could make the case that the Valeyard had a companion in an audio story (a What If where he won), but I don’t remember her nor can I be bothered looking up such an unimportant character. Likewise you could make the argument that Meta-Crisis Doctor had the same ones as Ten (or that the War Doctor had the Tenth and Eleven Doctors), but there’s no real need. 0/10.
Best Story/Worst Story
Since each character has only appeared in one story each, and I’ve already summed the story up, I’m just gonna give the same scores I did before.
The Trial of the Time Lord: 4/10.
Journey’s End: 7/10
The Day of the Doctor: 10/10.
Final Tally: 21/60 (since this is both best and worse, ergo combining the scores), or 3.5/10
Best Speech/Moments (Television only)
The War Doctor
He doesn’t really get much time to speak, but he gets a few lines that show off his nature. Lines like “Time Lords of Gallifrey, Daleks of Skaro, I serve notice on you all. Too long I have stayed my hand. No more. Today you leave me no choice. Today, this war will end. No more. No more.†Or “Great men are forged in fire. It is the privilege of lesser men to light the flame. Whatever the cost.†Or even “I don’t suppose we’ll know if we actually succeeded. But, at worst, we failed doing the right thing, as opposed to succeeding in doing the wrong.†There great little moments, but little ones nonetheless. No big speech, just a few good lines. 3/10.
Expanded Universe
So far The War Doctor is only going to be in one book, while the Valeyard has been in one book and one audio drama. As far as the expanded universe goes, the official brief actually was “Ignore the Valeyard, he’s too complicated and boring to be usedâ€. As such both characters are doomed to obscurity, only to be brought out when fanfiction writers want to play about. 0/10.
Regeneration
Since we only have one, lets look at what we got.
The War Doctor
The Story: Recently voted the best story “of all time†(which is a stupid phrase, but I won’t go there), The Day of the Doctor is still one of my favourite stories of all time. However the fact that the War Doctor regenerates is solely to justify the canon beyond anything else. Nevertheless the story is still the best. 10/10.
The Final Moments: A nice nod to the First Doctor’s regeneration and the first episode of the Ninth Doctor… and that’s about it. 1/10.
Overall: This just existed to justify the War Doctor as being “canonâ€. Nothing more, nothing less. 1/10.
Final Verdict: 12/30 aka 4/10.
Overall
Three stories: One good, one bad, one in-between. I don’t know how much of this I could recommend though, since a lot of it is tied into the greater Doctor Who story and continuity. 3/10.
Final Verdict: 26.6/100
So there you have it. My look at this Doctor. If you disagree with anything, or have anything to add, feel free to leave a comment. Tune in next week for my take on the next Doctor on the list. Till next time.
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