“The best thing about playing [the Doctor] is that… he cares.”

 

It’s safe to say that Christopher Eccleston—and his Doctor—are the reason I’m such a big fan of Doctor Who.

Sure, the writing can be witty and engaging, which I love, and the show has a knack for making me care about side characters, even if they only last an episode (which they almost always do), but the reason Doctor Who is a success for me is the Ninth Doctor. No ifs, ands, or buts.

He was given a fantastic backstory that built on a lot of history, most of which I’m still not familiar with, and still Christopher managed to make playing the Doctor seem… effortless.

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Nine is very much a product of the mysterious Time War, and in many ways, he is sort of broken. He’s cold and not very emotional—except for his almost desperate optimism, which is just another way of hiding just how close he is to just fucking losing it. We see hints of it in End of the World and The Unquiet Dead… all the way up to Dalek, when just the presence of an old enemy is enough to throw his entire moral system into disarray.

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And then… Then there are the moments when he remembers just how lucky he is—not just to be alive, but to do the things he does, to see the things he does, and sometimes… just sometimes, he gets one really good day.

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Here we have a man that has lost everything, just everything, and he still manages to appreciate the good stuff. Whether it’s being excited about humankind’s first contact with alien species—official first contact, anyway—to just a friggin’ banana.

In Rose he is well and truly alien—he enjoys the human race, saves us when he needs to, but he is very much apart—all about the Big Picture… By Father’s Day, he reveals that he values (even admires!) the most average day-to-day life; regular people doing regular things, achieving regular goals.

To the point where in Parting of the Ways he can’t destroy the Earth even if it means a Dalek victory. There’s no missile like there is in World War Three, no standing coldly by as the Last Human rips apart. Just a concession that he’s tired of killing. He doesn’t want his legacy to be one of genocide. He’s done it before, and he just can’t do it again. He cares too much.

And what I love most about this is that it makes sense. This same situation wouldn’t play out the same way in a pre-Time War Doctor. Only a Doctor who already knows the costs could do this, only a Doctor who was slowly re-humanizing himself could do this.

After all—the Doctor must ask himself—what’s the Big Picture without the Little People? What becomes of a Doctor who becomes a little too much of a Dalek?

Now we know where that line is drawn.

And now the Doctor becomes a new man.

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You were, Nine. You really, really were.

 

 

 

Other goodies:

For a nice mini-essay comparing One and Nine, see here.

For a Nine-oriented Tumblr, see here.

And for a nice vid of Christopher Eccleston talking about his work on Doctor Who, see below.

 

Christopher Eccleston on Doctor Who

 

See you guys for the Children in Need special and The Christmas Invasion, which are up next.