Who Is It!

My huge backlog of Stuff to Watch, like my Book Pile, just never seems to dwindle. This weekend, I realized that, in addition to the DS9 videos and the DVDs and etc., etc., I still had some Doctor Who videos that I'd nearly forgotten about. I've got something in the nature of a Doctor Who video exchange going with a friend of mine. I lend him the episodes I have and he doesn't, he lends me the episodes he has and I don't. (Needless to say, between the two of us, we've still only got a small fraction of the show's run. There's a lot of Who.)

Anyway, this time he's lent me some Peter Davison episodes ("Snakedance," "Warriors of the Deep," "Resurrection of the Daleks," and "Planet of Fire," if you're curious). I really am very fond of the Fifth Doctor era; I think Davison got some of the best scripts in the history of Who. I know a lot of people aren't that thrilled with Davison's Doctor: I've heard him dismissed more than once as "wimpy" or "dull." But, personally, I don't think he's remotely dull. His characterization is simply a bit more subtle, his personality a bit more subdued than the previous Doctors'. Frankly, after the wildly exaggerated, larger-than-life personality of Tom Baker's Doctor, it's a bit refreshing. (Don't get me wrong, there. I adore the Fourth Doctor. But a little variety is a good thing.) I also very much like the sense of vulnerability we get in the Fifth Doctor. It makes him a bit more... well, perhaps "human" isn't quite the right word, but I believe it does help keep him interestingly 3-dimensional. And it works marvelously well with the kinds of stories he got. Often they featured considerably more moral ambiguity (or at least moral complexity) than is usually typical in Doctor Who, as well as taking a rather more realistic view of the negative emotional consequences of all the terrible, violent things one inevitably encounters in the course of any Exciting Space Adventure. Not only is that interesting in itself (at least as far as I'm concerned), it provides a lot of opportunity for the Doctor to worry over the mental state of his companions, or to angst over whether or not he's done the right thing. Again, I think it adds layers of complexity to his character, and I think that's great. (One of the (many) reasons I so love the Doctor is his wonderfully complex nature.)