Reverse the Polarity

Jan. 11, 2013 at 11:22pm with 5,217 notes

Reblogged from doctorwho

doctorwho:

“A boy and his box, off to see the universe.”

Quote from Doctor Who Series 6: The Doctor’s wife

What I love about the Doctor’s regenerations is that he doesn’t just get a random new personality every time he changes; it’s clear how each regeneration is created in response to the last one. One was an old man, and his adventures eventually got too much for him and his body simply wore out, so we got the younger, more energetic Two. Two was forced to regenerate by the Time Lords, so Three wound up being influenced much more by their ideals; he was vain, arrogant, and rather stuffy at times. Yet he was also resentful of being stuck on Earth due to his Time Lord superiors and having to work for UNIT, and when Four came along he had his bohemian anti-authority attitude, as well as becoming the opposite of Three in many ways - old and stuffy became young and shabby, the “man of action” became someone who avoided violence as much as he could, and you also see Four being quite “alien” as we see him back in space instead of being defined by Earth. But Four’s life was long and increasingly dark, and in his final days he was increasingly doubtful of how he saw the universe, and in response Five was gentle, peaceful, and, to go along with this, even younger. But despite all of Five’s kindness his adventures wound up being gruesome and violent, and he was the first Doctor since One to lose a companion to death, as well as becoming the first Doctor to directly trade his life for a companion’s. After this seeming failure of his peaceful way of approaching the world, he practically did a 180, and Six was brash, confident, self-absorbed, and abrasive. This attitude wound up alienating the people close to him, and after an inglorious (and possibly humbling) death Seven emerged as a lighter personality, much more affable and able to form close relationships with his companions. Yet lurking beneath his front, which was almosttoo generically cheery and nice, was a scheming, manipulative chessmaster; he didn’t want to lose Six’s take-charge attributes, he simply learned to hide them better. But for all of his planning, Seven’s death was sudden and unexpected, as he died at the misguided hands of someone thinking they were saving him, and combined with the resulting amnesia this made Eight a more spontaneous figure, sensitive, romantic, and increasingly human. After being forced to fight a war and kill his own people, all of that rage was funneled into his regeneration, creating Nine - aloof, cold, and angry whenever he was forced to remember. Rose reminded him of what he had once had, he realized he could be happy again and, dying for her, became someone who would stay with her, giving us Ten, who was much more emotional, once again returning the Doctor to being more “human”. But his devotion to Rose made it extremely hard for him to cope with her loss, which led to him driving away Martha, and after losing Donna he started to become mad, yet, born from devotion, still clung to life because he couldn’t let go, and eventually only love for his companions led him to sacrifice himself. Eleven was born from both Ten’s madness and the possible realization that he was perhaps becoming too human and leading his companions to falling in love with him, acted once again like a crazy alien, trying to keep that distance despite how much he loved his companions, because he thought it would protect them. He is also quite a bit more obvious in his insecurities, after Ten had been broken down after developing a borderline god complex. So basically what I’m saying is, despite how we tend to view each Doctor as a separate character, it’s nice to see how he, as one man, still has development and is influenced by his past selves.

(Source: imperialdalek)