Bear in mind very importantly, Pertwee and Baker didn’t have anything to go on. Most of the older episodes had been junked by this time, so there was certainly a lot less material. The show was also in a fundamentally different place, with a fundamentally different fandom.
The connective tissue of this show is what makes people into fans - removing the potential for an actor to dive into the show’s history, grab some reference points (you don’t have to ape anything or copy wholesale, but I think knowledge goes a certain way with any actor) is I think, hamstringing the potential an actor has to connect with the fans and audience in a way where they’re not relying on the writer to do all the work for them.
I guess I don’t pay attention to some of the behind the scenes stuff, I have no idea which actors did/didn’t watch the show specifically to inform their performance. Did Eccelston do that?
Providing connective tissue should be, & I know I’m saying the same thing again, down to the showrunner/writer.
Again though, fundamentally different eras of the show with fundamentally different outlooks! I definitely see where you’re coming from, but very importantly neither of those eras were, at first, trying to be fundamentally connected to the past of the show. 3 and 4 weren’t always talking about or referencing the times they were 1 and 2. The closest thing we really have is the parellels between “last of the time lords” and “I’m stuck in exile on Earth”, which basically boil down to the same set of tools given to the show at that time.
I agree 100%, people are chosen (ideally) because their unique style matches the style the show is going for, not because they can mimic previous Doctors the best. I think this sentiment is more prevalent now because of 13’s era and Jodie having not watched the show, and Chibnall advising her not to. People hear that and latch onto it as a “justification” for why they don’t enjoy the era. “13’s era was so bad because Jodie just wasn’t a true fan” which is a wild belief because even Peter Capaldi, who would put many of us to shame as a fan, was involved in some real stinkers.
It’s interesting that the ‘they’re not a good Doctor because they didn’t do their homework’ argument is being trotted out again. I didn’t believe in when it was levelled at Whitaker and I don’t believe it now either, for Gatwa.
It’s nothing to do with classic and modern being ‘fundamentally different’. Each actor should be bringing their own take to the role and that, as @monkeyshaver says should come from the writing not from the homework. I really feel that that sentiment stems from a very ‘fannish’ way of thinking about who the Doctor is as a character and how best to ‘respect’ the show. I find it a bit insular.
Agree with your whole post but especially this. TCORR also laid the grounds for him to be a gadget maker with the antigrav gloves, but that never went anywhere.
Wrong, Capaldi is platonically perfect and never did a bad episode
Maybe I’m crazy and I’m happy to be on an island here, but an actor playing a part with an informed knowledge of the character’s history, personality and motivations will always be able to, for me, create a more convincing portrayal than just delivering lines written by writers, especially when the writers themselves clearly have very strong opinions over what they want the character to be and do. If we leave all of the fundamental character work to basically one person, we get…well, we get what we just got.
Insane that the idea that an actor would want to do research into their character is “homework” is getting trotted out as prevalent as the idea that an actor wanting to research the character they’re playing is a bad thing.
The flipside of this is that Capaldi - an actor who by dint of being a fan had already ‘done his homework’ is one of my least favourite Doctors because I think his characterisation fundamentally misunderstands who the Doctor is and, additionally, that also stems from the writing.
I intensely dislike Series 8 Twelve as I have said many a time. The Doctor that I see doesn’t hate soldiers and isn’t unnecessarily horrid to people for no apparent reason. Not even the First or Sixth Doctors were like that. The only one who came close was when the Third Doctor was being particularly arrogant towards Jo or the Brig and you know what, he’s also one of my least favourite Doctors.
I love the way Whitaker characterised Thirteen and I’ve really enjoyed the vitality and emotion of Gatwa. If they’d gone back and taken notes from 3 or 12 and added notes of that into their performances, I would have liked them a lot, lot less.
So your problem isn’t technically with “homework”, it’s just that there are parts of the show that you dislike? Which doesn’t necessarily undermine the point I was making, in that an actor will give a stronger performance when informed by a character’s history. You didn’t like the performance because it evoked Doctors you don’t like, but you can’t argue that Capaldi wasn’t one of the greatest actors to play the part, even if you didn’t like the particular portrayal. And I argue that out of that portrayal, he managed to evolve it into one of the kindest, warmest Doctors that we’ve had.
Personality with the Doctor is always… interesting (shall we say?). Core traits are always present, but swathes of the personality change (and rightly so) from incarnation to incarnation. That’s a big part of what makes the character so fascinating. It’s not like recasting James Bond. Each one is as new and individual as much as a continuation of the same person. The broad brush central traits (to borrow from Allport’s psychological approach) largely come from the writing and the now gestalt knowledge that the Doctor is ridiculously clever, always curious, has a strong sense of justice, and is an eternal wanderer. There’s ever a ‘restlessness’ to the character. All of that is broad enough that any good actor should be able to embody (and, I believe, always has) without needing to “do their homework”. The secondary traits that make each Doctor unique (Pertwee’s suave action hero, Tom’s whimsy and detached wisdom, Capaldi’s reflectiveness - has ever a Doctor been more introspective?, Whittaker’s optimism coupled with social awkwardness) - those are definitive for each incarnation anyway.
You might think that, I couldn’t possibly comment.
But you are coming from a point of view of disliking Whitaker and Gatwa’s characterisations and blaming it on them not ‘doing their homework’.
I don’t really see the difference (except the oft-seen dance of trying to make subjective opinions, objective by suggesting the people ‘in charge’ have fundamentally misunderstood how to make the show successfully whereas all us fans, well, we’ve been here all along so we know what is the right and true way).
The issue with doing your homework is each Doctor is different in their own way, so which Doctor do you focus on, and is that Doctor the one the writers had in mind? With good writing, good directing, and good acting, you really shouldn’t need the actor to do their homework, aside from maybe a few episodes you want them to draw inspiration from. But personally I just don’t see how Jodie or Ncuti being fans and doing their homework would have negated the faults with their eras, which imo is strictly on the writing. Everyone wants each actor to feel like the Doctor, but regardless of the acting, you need to writing to open up opportunities for those big “I am the Doctor” moments.
And let’s not forget that Terrance Dicks basically thought every Doctor was the same charactr regardless. And look how much we love his work (except Warmonger, obviously).
Also like just by the way. Ncuti Gatwa had seen some Doctor Who prior to taking the role. Like unless you’re talking specifically about watching as research here, in his interviews it is clear he has seen at least Tennant and Smith in the role
I never said I disliked either of their portrayals! I think people are misplacing me saying “This additional thing could only have improved the eras and maybe it was a mistake to enforce it” with “This is the fundamental reason it all failed.” I just think Jodie and Ncuti were deprived a pretty fundamental tool (in my opinion) when it comes to the task of “building a Doctor Who.” I’m not mandating that they absolutely had to do this, but I think the showrunner mandating that they absolutely shouldn’t also shut off a lucrative avenue of thought.
If I wanted to tie it into a fundamental reason this all failed, I’d say that especially 15, given that he also had the most Doctor-lite episodes and probably the shortest run of any Modern Who, was not given much of an opportunity to show who their Doctor was. I don’t necessarily buy it in its entirety, but there’s enough of a general rumbling of that opinion for something to be there. I don’t think that just being a fan makes me know what the “right way” is, but having been both an actor and a writer in my life, I have some thoughts about what things went wrong and what didn’t. And unfortunately, the evidence backs me up a little bit - the show had never been more successful than when it was being helmed by people who had a connection with its history.
If you’re not positioning yourself with the faceless majority for whom these parts of the series didn’t work for, I’m not sure what stance you are arguing from.
I think that knowing about the history of the show and the character of the Doctor is important for portraying them, because the doctor is a character with a lot of history, and every new era doesn’t just exist in isolation, otherwise it might as well be an entirely different show. But knowing about the past shouldn’t prevent there from being change and new ideas. Personally I think 12 is the only new who Doctor to strike this balance perfectly. Maybe that’s because capaldi is a fan, or it could just be a coincidence as tennant also is one, and his era(s?) are my least favourites in the whole show.
/j