neadods | Smith & Pertwee & Shakespeare

WD (non reaction post) lj user="neadods"> a href="http://neadods.livejournal.com/968506.html">talks about Matt Smith compared to previous actors playing the Doctor and the importance of Shakespeare (feel free to edit link text)

This is the non-spoiler Doctor Who post, wherein I expand on a conversation I just had with my roommate M about Smith as compared to other actors playing the Doctor.

If there's one thing that RTD introduced into the Whoniverse, it's major continuing angst. The Doctor is suddenly the last of his kind. Not only that, he's the one who committed the genocide, and he did it to (unsuccessfully, as we all find out) end a war.

Having turned a character once described as a "cosmic hobo" into this tragic figure, RTD then went out and hired a couple of Shakespearean actors to play him. And that was, in retrospect, absolutely key to their performance. Shakespeare's plays are stuffed to the gills with scenes where a character starts out intending to do X and ends up agreeing to do Y: "Richard you killed my husband, you monster... okay, I'll marry you." "But I'm loyal to the king of Scotland!... sure, I'll whack him, honey, anything you say." "I'll revenge my father's death... but not right now where I could do it easily, because there's still 2 hours of play left to go." "I love you more than a brother and your company is all I could ask for the rest of my life... but I'm totally ready to kill you to get that hot chick you just saw." "You just totally humiliated the hell out of me and took the one thing I said I'd never give you... let's have coffee and laugh about it." (Bonus points if you can name all the plays.)

There isn't a play where Shakespearean actors don't have to sell that whiplash with complete gravitas. And with that background, it becomes quite easy to sell a character who can flick from childlike enjoyment to worldshattering fury on a dime, as Eccleton and Tennant both did.

And then Matt Smith was hired. A lot of people have focused on his age as a problem, but I've been disappointed more by his lack of experience.

wendymr said she felt that watching him was like watching a teenager play Hamlet, and in retrospect, I think that's almost EXACTLY the problem: he doesn't have the specific acting experience of trying to sell characters who encompass that wide a range of emotion.

I felt a lot better about his performance tonight - that's as close to a spoiler as this post is going to get - but M didn't. She's just not picking up the vibe of someone who is centuries old.

But she's also not familiar with any Doctor before Eight. So I agree with her about not feeling the weight of centuries in Smith's performance, but y'know what? I didn't feel that for many of the previous Doctors either. Yes, I know they've all done Shakespeare as well, but before 2005 they weren't being asked to be both the man who can say "What's the fun of being grownup if you can't act childishly" *and* sell the concept of being the Lonely God of Fire and Ice and Rage. The closest any of them got to that was Sylvester McCoy, who got the personal whiplash of being hired to be the clown and ending up as the guy who could do a Xanatos Gambit better than Xanatos.

The others weren't asked to be that. So while Smith isn't necessarily in the mold of Eccleston and Tennant, but he's a pretty good fit with Pertwee, Davison, and C Baker, all of whom talked about centuries but didn't act like it. Especially Pertwee. Exiled, time- and planet-bound Three had plenty of grief and anger of his own, but it came out like Smith's - shouting and stroppiness.

So... Smith!=Eccleston or Tennant, but Smith=Pertwee. It's a bit of a pity for those of us wanting another Eccleston or Tennant, but now I've seen that in him, he's fitting more into the role of the Doctor for me.

And to end on a shallow note, Jon Pertwee's companions also all ran around in micromini skirts...

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From:

tempestsarekind.livejournal.com

Er. Richard III, Macbeth, Hamlet, Two Noble Kinsmen, and...um, All's Well That Ends Well? I don't know whether it says more about me or about Shakespeare that I can't place that last one with any degree of accuracy.

Anyway. I totally see what you're saying about the comparison of these actors, and I agree, up to a point. I think where we differ (and if I've already said this in comments on a previous post, my apologies) is that I just *don't* see the episodes asking Matt Smith to sell us the Lonely God as well, which means that I've been more satisfied with Matt's performance. Where we *could* be treated to a case of angst, we've gotten, "Bad day, don't want to talk about it." He gets angry or upset about things, but I ~~don't think~~ haven't been reading it as though it's supposed to be as dark as (particularly) Ten's fury in such a situation would be.

But that's just my decidedly less than two cents.

Edited Date: 2010-05-02 12:01 am (UTC)

From:

acroyear70.livejournal.com

i too am seeing that Smith isn't asking to OD on angst. In fact, I'm personally tired of the over-angst, and I think that kind of angst is a 1990s-early 2000s thing that, while peaking in the length of general suffering we've had since 9/11, is something we as a culture are finally letting go (though here in the states, that angst is being replaced by the "tea party" attitudes that any and all compromise or reasoning is deemed evil).

Angst ("emo") Doctor is RTD's vision, and Moffat's got a different one. After living through effectively 15 visions of the doctor so far (5 for Tom Baker alone, where each is more defined by the script editor than the producer), not counting Big Finish (which adapted additional and very successful visions for 6 and 8) and the novels (which took the tale end of 7 into a REALLY dark place I had difficulty following - the original Human Nature is actually one of the lightest books in the New Adventures canon), I can accept that the emo era is behind us.

if anything, I actually like the idea that (aside from River) there's not nearly so much of a dependency on "backstory" as there was in the RTD era. RTD created this world of something REALLY REALLY BIG happened in the past (but wouldn't tell us what it was) in order to be able to have those emotional buttons to push, and in the end he finally pushed them all. as such, i'm a little tired of having buttons pushed.

Moffat on the other hand is increasingly using the real classic series as his back story, with little references to things past (like the Earth burning from solar flares in the 51st century, a direct nod to Arc in Space).

that to me is something I'm finding far more enjoyable. rather than speculate on what nobody's ever seen, I'm getting to having the last 28 years of my Who-following (geek) life vindicated. ;)

if anything, the way Matt is delivering those references so nonchalantly is all the more interesting (even though to a degree it is likely because he doesn't actually know them all the way, say, Tennant might have). I see a degree of early 8 in him as well. This is (in Big Finish terms) kinda like early 8 meeting Lucie (who really met middle/later 8 as Paul's refined the character a bit). It is a combo that's working for me.

a wittie & learned lady which her many bookes do well testifie

Smith & Pertwee & Shakespeare

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