I hear that Waters Of Mars is really good. Any truth to that?
Best of a bad bunch in my opinion.
Yeah, the final Tennant specials were all kinda weak, IMO.
"The Next Doctor" starts out brilliant but kinda peters out once we learn Jackson Lake's identity.
"Planet of the Dead" is a solid story with some decent production values but doesn't really feel special enough to be a special.
"Waters of Mars" has a really scary monster but also some of Tennant's worst overacting. Plus, it spends the entire episode building up to the Doctor going dark, which only lasts for a few minutes before he realizes his mistake and repents.
The End Of Time. So. Much. Melodrama.
I didn't like how he kept referring to regeneration as death. It isn't. It's a rebirth. Nine and Eleven welcomed the change, what was Ten's issue?
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Overall I enjoyed a fair amount of episodes during Ten's era and my issues with him lie with the way he was written rather than David Tennant's portrayal.
I realize I am in the extreme minority, and I'm okay with it. I honestly thought I would love Ten, because he's so popular. I wanted to. But popularity does not always equal love.
Well, it's nice to find someone else who was as exasperated with Tennant's writing and his regeneration as I was.
I always felt like Tennant's mopey mood in "The End of Time" was bad form on RTD's part. It felt like he was salting the Earth for his successors, making it that much harder for the hardcore Tennant fans to accept any other Doctors. And it seems like that worked! I still know some fans that never totally accepted Smith and are still moping about wanting Tennant back almost 6 years later. (Granted it did take me about 2 years to get over Amy & Rory's departure and finally get used to Clara.)
A Texan and a Highland Scot would not be able to understand each other very well. I have witnessed that one, where a Califorian had to translate English to English.
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cun-LZvOTdw[/yt]
Both James Marsters and Alexis Denisof do a very good job. Marsters is a little too far, but when I hear his American voice it's wrong. I think Denisof nails it though.
Marsters was good although not always the most convincing. His accent started to fade during the final season of
Angel.
Denisof was spot-on, possibly to his current annoyance.

I met Denisof at the Phoenix ComicCon this year. I swear, every other sentence that anyone else ever said to him was, "I can't believe you're not really British." (BTW, I also met James Marsters back in 2010. If you ever have the opportunity to meet either Marsters or Denisof, please take advantage of it. They are 2 of the nicest, most charming people I've ever met. Denisof has a killer smile!)
But, for my money, the most shocking accent revelation for me was when I realized that Jamie Bamber (Apollo from
Battlestar Galactica) isn't really American.
Colin, quite understandably, refused to come back to just shoot the season-opening regeneration scene (the firing had happened in between seasons). So his replacement, Sylvester McCoy, was forced to don Colin's (FAR too big on him) costume and a curly blond wig and be shot from the back lying on the floor of the TARDIS console room until he could be flipped over (with swirly regeneration fx hiding his face until the wig could be cross-faded out).
Which almost would have worked had they also used the swirly FX to hide the really bad join between the wig & McCoy's head.
But Mao gave him permission to use his first name. Of course the Doctor also knew Kublai Khan, Nero and Robespierre.
I guess I need to rewatch "The Reign of Terror." While I know Robespierre was in it, I don't recall him & the Doctor ever meeting.