An older Doctor...

[WillsBabe]

I'm not disappointed that we have a young Doctor. But it would be nice to see an older Doctor - late 50s early 60s. I don't see why someone that age couldn't cope with the production schedule. The reason I'm thinking this is because Patrick Stewart, for an example of an older, physically fit actor, does long stints in Shakespeare leads and he can pull it off. I don't think age is necessarily a bar from that point of view. However, I do suspect that a younger actor will appeal to the "target" audience more. And in any case, to young 'uns watching the show what they see as older isn't necessarily older to some of us. I'm thinking of Steven Pacey in Blakes 7. When I saw Blakes 7, Steven Pacey was older than me buy a goodly few years and therefore seemed "older", now I realise he was barely in his 20s and just a kid!

 

[Jim Steele]

I really don't care how old the actor is, as long as he can convince me that he's over 900 and knows what happens at the end of the universe.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Do you think an older Doctor (maybe someone in his 50's) would work on this show? Why do you think they've been avoiding it, so far?

I think that the producers believe that a younger doctor would be more appealing to a new, younger Dr. Who audience.

Moffat was honest in the Doctor Who Confidential; he wanted an older actor. But Matt Smith sold him better than anyone else he saw (and pretty much right off the bat), and that's the direction he and Piers Wenger went. They didn't pick a young actor because they felt that would appeal to the audience. They picked a young actor because they felt he was the right actor for what they wanted.

 

[bismarck_1892]

Do you think an older Doctor (maybe someone in his 50's) would work on this show? Why do you think they've been avoiding it, so far?

I think that the producers believe that a younger doctor would be more appealing to a new, younger Dr. Who audience.

Moffat was honest in the Doctor Who Confidential; he wanted an older actor. But Matt Smith sold him better than anyone else he saw (and pretty much right off the bat), and that's the direction he and Piers Wenger went. They didn't pick a young actor because they felt that would appeal to the audience. They picked a young actor because they felt he was the right actor for what they wanted.

So they say, but we shall see that "direction" soon enough. I have a feeling it will have a lot to do with attracting a new, younger audience.

 

[DWF]

I think that the producers believe that a younger doctor would be more appealing to a new, younger Dr. Who audience.

Moffat was honest in the Doctor Who Confidential; he wanted an older actor. But Matt Smith sold him better than anyone else he saw (and pretty much right off the bat), and that's the direction he and Piers Wenger went. They didn't pick a young actor because they felt that would appeal to the audience. They picked a young actor because they felt he was the right actor for what they wanted.

So they say, but we shall see that "direction" soon enough. I have a feeling it will have a lot to do with attracting a new, younger audience.

Here's Moffat's own words on the subject.

[From ‘Doctor Who Confidential: The Eleventh Doctor’] There's a lot of contradictions I think, in the part of the Doctor; he is very, very old, but he looks young. He behaves very childishly, but he also behaves in a very sort of magisterial way. I think you need somebody who is old and young at the same time. That means if you cast someone in their fifties, that's fine, but they've got to have something very, very youthful about them, like Jon Pertwee did. Although he was an older man, there was something quite young about him.

We've cast a young man, a twenty-six year old. One thing [laughs] I was very emphatic about, and I remember being quite sort of brutal and argumentative in a meeting at the Beeb about this, and saying 'There are too many young people on this list,' I said, 'I'm not really convinced there's all that many people that young who can play this part; I think we're looking for somebody in their forties, late thirties, you know. David is a unique case, he could play it at that age but, no, he should be an older man'. Of course, I've just ended up casting a twenty-six year old in the part!

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Just because Moffat was the man behind Press Gang, that doesn't mean that he's going to skew the series young.

Seriously, there's no evidence that the series is going to go young just because the new Doctor is young. Tennant has said he was tempted to stay when he was told what Moffat had planned for season five. But then he decided to stick to his guns and leave. Not because the series was going in a new direction, but because he felt like it was better to leave on top than to stay too long.

 

[bismarck_1892]

I hear what you are saying, but I lot of it can simply be "hollywood" talk. Only time will tell.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

There isn't really any more running in a RTD episode than there is in the average Who story from the past. It's more obvious and memorable because it's being done to the FAST FAST FAST standard of modern television rather than the electronic theater standard of the classic series, but significantly more per story? I don't think so.

Also, they're probably able to get away with more plausible running now because they're not so likely to run out of set as before.

Personally, I'd like to see an older Doctor. Patrick Troughton has slowly replaced David Tennant as my favorite. I think part of it was that Troughton was just eccentric enough to be an alien, just smart enough to be the hero, but also just frail enough so that he's the only Doctor that I can really buy being put in genuine jeopardy.

 

[Starkers]

I hear what you are saying, but I lot of it can simply be "hollywood" talk. Only time will tell.

Irrespective of why Smith was cast, it's likely down to more than his age. Let's face it, if Moffat fucks this up after the golden goose RTD laid (apologies there!) then the Beeb and Moffat are both somewhat screwed, so whilst reading between the lines it's easy to imagine the BBC wanted a younger actor, one still has to hope that Smith was chosen because he was the right actor.

Personally I can't wait to see Smith in the role, just annoyed that (regeneration apart) we have to wait a bloody year for it!

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Irrespective of why Smith was cast, it's likely down to more than his age. Let's face it, if Moffat fucks this up after the golden goose RTD laid (apologies there!) then the Beeb and Moffat are both somewhat screwed, so whilst reading between the lines it's easy to imagine the BBC wanted a younger actor, one still has to hope that Smith was chosen because he was the right actor.

I have a difficult time imagining how Moffat "fucks this up" with the fifth season. His shelf of Hugo Awards should be an indication that Moffat knows what the hell he's doing as a writer. His long-running series, like Coupling, shows that he knows what audiences want. Moffat and Wenger are going to do fine. They're inheriting a show that's a fucking franchise. They're not the showmen that RTD is, but really no one is. I suspect we're going to get some reinvention of the series, but we're not looking at a reinvention on the scale of the Troughton-to-Pertwee era or the reinventions of the Tom Baker era.

If they -- Moffat and Wenger -- believe in Matt Smith, I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They're professionals, and they were selected for the job because they know what they're doing. Doctor Who a year from now is still going to be recognizably Doctor Who.

 

[Starkers]

Actually my point was that Moffat and co aren't exactly going to go out of their way to fuck this up by hiring someone based soley on his age, I was bloody defending them!

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Sorry, I didn't mean to misread you.

 

[Newspaper Taxi]

Alot of people dismiss the idea of having an older Doctor again because the Doctor wouldn't be able to handle the production lifestyle...So I ask this: Could the production style be changed to accomodate an older Doctor?

 

[bismarck_1892]

Alot of people dismiss the idea of having an older Doctor again because the Doctor wouldn't be able to handle the production lifestyle...So I ask this: Could the production style be changed to accomodate an older Doctor?

I don't follow the production argument. There are more than enough older actors in Hollywood whose schedule is far greater then that of a British TV show. A season here is two seasons in England, for example. 23 or 24 episodes vs. 12 or 13.

 

[DWF]

Alot of people dismiss the idea of having an older Doctor again because the Doctor wouldn't be able to handle the production lifestyle...So I ask this: Could the production style be changed to accomodate an older Doctor?

I don't follow the production argument. There are more than enough older actors in Hollywood whose schedule is far greater then that of a British TV show. A season here is two seasons in England, for example. 23 or 24 episodes vs. 12 or 13.

Yeah but the older actors on those American shows aren't carrying the show by themselves. Richard Dean Anderson was probably the most active of the older leads on television, you won't be seeing John Noble running around and firing sub machine guns anytime soon.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

^Plus, you can go the Ian Chesterton route and have a younger, more traditional "hero" do the heavy lifting while the Doctor is more of an eccentric instigator.

 

[DWF]

^Plus, you can go the Ian Chesterton route and have a younger, more traditional "hero" do the heavy lifting while the Doctor is more of an eccentric instigator.

Which is pretty much Joshua Jackson's role on Fringe, but I don't think that'd work any longer on Dr. Who. As long as Moffat was blown away by Matt Smith I'd like to see just how good of an actor he really is.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

^The thing I'm interested in seeing with Smith is how he's going to be different from Eccleston & Tennant. While I can see the subtle differences between Eccleston & Tennant, I feel like they are probably the two most similar to each other of all the Doctors. Tennant took what Eccleston did and just made it younger and more energetic, to the point of being obnoxiously manic at times. He pushed the hyperactive Doctor to such an extreme that it will be impossible for anyone to try to top that. IMO, the actor who succeeds Tennant MUST take things in a different direction or else we'll just end up with a poor man's Tennant replacement. I presume Moffatt & Smith are doing just that but I'm anxious to see how.

Personally, I'd be kinda interested in seeing a distracted, almost zen Doctor (think Charlie Crews on Life) counterbalanced by a much more involved, proactive companion.

 

[DWF]

I didn't think Tennant was much like Eccleston at all, he was closer to Davison's Doctor IMO.

 

[Starkers]

Sorry, I didn't mean to misread you.

Thanks, sorry for the grump response

Re the similarities between Eccleston and Tennant...frankly I can't see much similarity in then, other than they're obviously playing The Doctor.

I'm expecting Smith to be a lot scattier if nothing else...I fear he might be another gurner though