Get the Flash Player to see this player.

who?

Monday 5th January 2009

A lot of people are asking me for my thoughts on the casting of Matt Smith as the next Doctor Who (oh alright, the next The Doctor. Happy now?); my initial reaction is that I'd never heard of him and he looks about 15.  Of these two thoughts, the first is irrelevant and so is the second. I don't pay that much attention to the telly these days (I think I did actually see that Philip Pullman thing he was in with Billie Piper, but neither it nor he seems to have made much of an impression) and his youth makes no odds when the whole point of The Doctor is that he looks centuries younger than he is. Looking 879 years less than your age really isn't that different to looking 867 years less than your age. Besides, by the time he actually starts he'll only be two years younger than Peter Davison was when he took over.

My next reaction - apart from surprise that it wasn't Paterson Joseph after all - is that the fact that he looks about 15 aside, it's actually a less radical choice than many of us were expecting; they're going from a young skinny floppy-haired white bloke to a very young skinny floppy-haired white bloke.  Some of the most effective recent casting decisions have been the most audacious (not many people would have thought of Daniel Craig for James Bond before it happened) so in that regard it feels a bit of a letdown, but here's the thing...

I've come to trust the DW gang in most respects.  I mean, five years ago, as far as anyone who wasn't working on putting New Who together was concerned, Billie was just an also-ran pop starlet turned slightly icky child bride. Who knew she was going to be one of the best actresses to come out of British TV for twenty years?  So if Steven Moffat says he's the one and RTD concurs, I'm not going to argue. Besides, like I said, I haven't seen enough of him to assume he isn't.

Re-watching the interview on Doctor Who Confidential (which I stayed in to see before hurtling off to Cardiff, appropriately enough) I notice encouraging things.  It's an interesting face, chiselled and yet somehow squashy, like someone left Heath Ledger's waxwork out in the sun.  When you get a look at his eyes (who the hell was lighting him?) there's a hint of the old-soul-in-a-young-head thing you really need from a Doctor, and he has extremely expressive fingers.  And looking at the PR shots of him standing in front of the old Police Box, he kind of looks right. 

Anyway, congrats to the young snipe.  I'm already 15 months older than David Tennant anyway, so the idea of being thirteen years older than the incumbent Doctor Who doesn't terrify me in the slightest.  Honest.

 

 

[ Fixed link ]

Bookmark and Share
[ Back to the Blog index ]