I think I hate the Doctor

[Starkers]

And as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions...

 

[TedShatner10]

The Doctor is a good man, and often he's the best man in a room. He has a clear, strong sense of morality most of the time. But he's not perfect, and sometimes he's just a right bastard.

I agree with that assesment but we were not given the full low down on why the Doctor tried to compromise with the Famly (being "kind") when the Doctor was chased right into the TARDIS, with laser fire striking the TARDIS' console and the Family being able to track the TARDIS itself across the Universe. He seemed to be legitimately on the backfoot when he first ran into the Family (though he did not properly think through on how to avoid/defeat the Family until they had inflicted a lot of destruction).

But the 11th Doctor more obviously fucked up in "The Girl That Waited" when he rushed the TARDIS to that holiday planet without doing basic research, not expecting such a elaborate and dangerous quarantine facility.

 

[Starkers]

Oh come on now, Eleven isn't the first Doctor to drop him and his companion(s) in the doo doo by not being exactly sure where he's going...

 

[TedShatner10]

Yeah, that is a running character flaw with all the incarnations, but that time it seemed to have inflicted permanent damage on the relationship between Doctor and Rory (and Amy).

 

[Sci]

The Doctor is a good man, and often he's the best man in a room. He has a clear, strong sense of morality most of the time. But he's not perfect, and sometimes he's just a right bastard.

I agree with that assesment but we were not given the full low down on why the Doctor tried to compromise with the Famly (being "kind") when the Doctor was chased right into the TARDIS, with laser fire striking the TARDIS' console and the Family being able to track the TARDIS itself across the Universe. He seemed to be legitimately on the backfoot when he first ran into the Family (though he did not properly think through on how to avoid/defeat the Family until they had inflicted a lot of destruction).

I don't think there's any missing information. The Doctor and Martha encountered the Family (according to Martha's MySpace journal, she'd talked the Doctor into taking her to the previous year's EuroVision contest when they met them), the Family realized that the Doctor was a Time Lord whose biology could give them immortality, they set out to kill or capture him, he ran into the TARDIS with Martha, and he decided to hide from them as a Human rather than confront them because he was being "kind." That just is the lowdown.

Sometimes the Doctor is not rational and does not think things through. That's just all there is to it.

 

[VDCNI]

I haven't read the novel version of Human Nature in a while so I forgot how he treated the bad guys in that version, but the novel story was written for the Seventh Doctor, who was one of the darker, more manipulative incarnations.

From what I remember some of them just died as part of the plot and some were killed at the end as part of the Doctor's plan to defeat them. I don't think there was any eternal punishment?

Of course in the book he chose to become human for his own reasons - he wasn't trying to hide from the family. They had set up the whole change into a human process as a trap but for any timelord that was tempted, not him in particular.

 

[propita]

and is damn near ready to do the same to the entire crew of Bowie Base One in "The Waters of Mars" before he really loses it.

What I find most interesting about this one is that he realized that he had gone too far. As soon as the Ood appeared to him at the end of that story, he broke down and then ran away. The Doctor is always running away from himself. I guess he never learned his lesson.

Well, he says it himself in "The Sound of Drums:" He was one of the ones who ran away, and he's never stopped running.

Interesting when you remember his "Colonel Run Away" lines from "A Good Man Goes To War."