"Acting" like the Doctor

[Mark_Nguyen]

Ah, but we Canucks love the method.

Get some REAL Jelly Babies, for starts. They're not too tough to find and what Who fans you run into will adore the authenticity.

And as with any mimic, you have to find the defining characteristics of your target and amp them JUST enough to make it stand out, so people will say "Oh, you're acting just like HE would!" and look over the aspects of your actual character that you won't be able to weed out.

For ANY Doctor, the costume is where it starts. Like various alien character actors will always tell you, you inhabit the alien with his prosthetics and how it changes how you act. So, you may literally want to trip over the scarf and sweat your brow in the hat for a couple days and see how that affects you. Then imagine wearing that outfit for centuries.

The Tom Baker Doctor is played larger than life - the first one to get REALLY eccentric. So watch some source material, pick out some things that you think make that Doctor THE Doctor, and play to that.

And as referenced above, a couple of beer won't hurt either.

Mark <--- actor

 

[The Badger]

The real knack to doing the fourth Doctor: whenever anyone says anything to you, especially anything that's slightly unexpected or surprising, pause for two seconds, then suddenly turn to face them and exclaim "WHAT????"

^Is true.

Also, if asked anything puzzling, shrug your face. That is, tip your head slightly to your left, lift your eyebrows and turn the corners of your mouth down for a second.

 

[milo bloom]

David Tennant actually channels a very good Tom Baker at times, even doing the occasional drawn-out "Well..." before going into an explanation of something and the intense [highlight]stare[/highlight] whenever he discovers a horrible secret.

.

The wife and I are doing Who backwards (we started with Eccleston, and are dipping into Classic when we can pick up the DVDs), and we were just watching a Baker story not long ago when he did something that was totally Tennant, and I figured it was something David must have incorporated into his Doctor.

 

[Meredith]

Practice the "Large toothy smile"

 

[Iamnotspock]

The wife and I are doing Who backwards (we started with Eccleston, and are dipping into Classic when we can pick up the DVDs), and we were just watching a Baker story not long ago when he did something that was totally Tennant, and I figured it was something David must have incorporated into his Doctor.

Yeah, there's a lot of Baker in Tennant's performance (and touches of Davison, as acknowledged in Time Crash), and a lot of Troughton in Matt Smith's. Colin Baker would incorporate bits of his predecessors and challenge fans to spot them.