Worlds Enough and Time

-"What dark Doctor story would you want exploring?" for thymejot

The first time I watched Waters of Mars I was so disappointed at how quick Ten’s moment of darkness was, I thought Family of Blood had a longer moment for Dark!Doctor. I thought WoM’s dark moment was under cooked.

Moffat also wanted to explore the Doctor’s dark side but in a different way than RTD did and season 5 — Moffat’s best Eleventh Doctor season IMO delved in how other beings see the Doctor: “There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior. A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.

I thought this was the most fascinating and darkest view of the Doctor we’ve ever had because in a lot of ways that is the case. RTD and Moffat were really interested in the consequences of the Doctor sauntering in a world, ‘fixing’ things and unknowingly making things worse.

The Consequences of Satellite Five is the start of RTD’s exploration of this, and Moffat took that and ran.

As fans,we thought we would get Dark Doctor in Twelve unfortunately, the writers hadn’t calibrated writing for Peter Capaldi and what could be conveyed as a careless and alien disregard for humans came off as mean and cruel. Again, as conversation, I really love how series Nine was in conversation with series four (and the Year of Specials), and how the loose trilogy of Face the Raven, Heaven Sent, and Hell Bent addressed the Donna issue and the Doctor going too far.

It was dark but I thought it didn’t play out as dark (probably at this point I was as pissed off with the Time Lord High Council as the Doctor was).

Peter Capaldi can certainly play the Doctor intense but I also see him as one who is so full of emotion, he’s a live wire trying desperately not to seem like he is.

Strangely, I don’t know why, and I know some people don’t see it but there’s a quality about Jodie Whittaker’s acting. In the quick blink and you’ll miss it moments, in the grins and the long look of a side-eye that makes me feel she can play a Darker Doctor. Something about Thirteen being very aware of their capacity for being dangerous while looking like someone so friendly calls for a story that explores her darker side.

I don’t have a specific story in mind but something that explores that aspect of Thirteen she’s so desperately trying to down play and not show the Fam is so fascinating to me. In series 12 this is what I really, really want the writers to go deep on.