Howling:Serious/Comedic

Stillnotginger 01:40, February 15, 2010 (UTC)

I noticed that many of the script writers for Series 5 are known for writing comedies. Will Matt Smith play The Doctor in a comedic manner?

There has always been comedy and jokes in Doctor Who but in the classic series there was a definite Serious/Comedic alternation to how the actors prtrayed The Doctor in relation to the audience. It is widely regarded that Hartnell, Pertwee and Davison all did the roll seriously while Troughton, Tom Baker and McCoy all played up the comedy. I don't know what the opinion of Colin Baker's Doctor is in relation to this idea and there was only the one McGann movie.

Looking at the new series I feel that Tennant fell on the serious side of the line despite many of the scripts being inhearintly funny and that Eccleston played up the comedy more than Tennant did. So will this pattern continue into the Smith era? ====

Most of the script writers for season 31 are the same script writers as have been writting for the show the last five years. But to answer the question, most Doctors are ptrayed both serious and comedic. Eccleston's potrayal was frequently comedic, but he also potrayed the Doctor in a very serious manner at times, too. Delton Menace 10:16, February 14, 2010 (UTC)

Wrong Stillnotginger. Eccleston was not as comedic as Tennant. Considering he was characterized as the Doctor who was wounded by the time war. Tennant was much lighter in the way he played the character. Just watch the epsiode Dalek or Father's Day with Eccleston and compare it to how Tennant played the role through seasons 2-4. Eccleston's Doctor was the Doctor "with issues". In Journey's end, The Doctor tells Rose, "you made me better". The last episodes Tennant had were darker yes, but watch seasons 2-4 and compare it to season 1 and honestly tell me that Eccleston was a comedic character.


 * Well, that certainly is a strong opinion and your position is very clear [please remember to add signature]. I agree that the Tenth Doctor was more light hearted and more easy going than the Eigth Doctor; however, the nature of this forum is not about the characters portrayed, rather it is about the actors and their relationship with the camera and the audience. Which one used more comedic devices? In relation: Bud Abbot had a lot of funny lines but he was the straight man to Lou Costello's jester; similarly The Three Stooges all took themselves seriously but engaged the audience with clownery, buffonery and slapstick. There is no denying series' 2 through 5 contained a great deal of wit and gags, moreso than in series 1, but does this mean the actor was also more comedic?


 * Eccleson did some things just for the camera, for example, observing his ears,reading a book in a flash and commenting on a tabloid (DW: Rose (TV story). Look at the manner he used when answering the police box phone in DW: The Empty Child. These are some examples of prop comedy. He sometimes bulged his eyes when there were no other characters in the scene; again, humourous in relation to the audience and not to other characters within the narrative. Compare this to Tennant and his frequent use of eye glasses, enjoyable to watch but completely within character and not meant as a joke. We saw Catherine Tate and Tennant often proclaiming "we're not a couple" - a running gag which was presented in a serious manner to other characters.


 * I wish I still had copies of Doctor Who: The Sixties and Doctor Who: The Seventies, books which illustrate the alternation of serious and comedic in the classic series. Re-reading those would make it easier for me to define my position. [Wait, it might have been this book: [] (which I can't find a page for in this wiki and do not have a copy)


 * Hopefully there is enough starting material for further discussion of the concepts presented. For now, I maintan my stance that Christopher used a more comedic approach then did David, just as Troughton and Tom Baker did when compared with Hartnell, Pertwee and Davison. --Stillnotginger 02:53, February 21, 2010 (UTC)

I think the comedy was just part of the Doctor's personality. Some Doctors were just more carefree than others, and appeared comedic. But they were all serious at times, Troughton, Tom Baker, and McCoy all had their serious moments. Just because a writer is famous for writing comedy doesn't mean they couldn't write a serious script, although it is likely to be slightly more funny than others, like some of the Douglas Adams scripts in the 70s. TemporalSpleen 16:34, February 20, 2010 (UTC)

I think the initial question is a good one. While every Doctor has humorous stories and dramatic stories, and uses humor within the dramatic stories, there is definitely a sense in which Hartnell, Pertwee, and Davison were dramatic; Troughton and Tom Baker were comedic; and McCoy started off comedic and then changed a year later. (As for Colin Baker--he was more action than comedy or drama. The word that always comes up when people talk about him is "violent." So, I don't know how he fits in.) It's not so much in the stories, or even the lines they get, as in whether the use the moves of comic actors.

Anyway, on those terms, Eccleston was comedic--in the same way as Tom Baker during the Hincliffe-Holmes era, he used all the tricks of a comic actor, and he used them to get across a character who uses humor as a way of dealing with the horror of the world around him (without often crossing into black humor).

But classifying Tennant as serious doesn't really work. Yes, he did the thoughtful and understated Davison thing, but he was also full of broad, over-the-top comic moves more reminiscent of Tom Baker during the DNA year or McCoy in his first year. There were even moments when he was on the verge of stepping out of character and breaking the 4th wall, although he usually made it seem like the character was actually stepping out to comment on himself.

In fact, McCoy is probably the best antecedent for Tennant. Not McCoy's first year as the bumbling oaf mixing metaphors, or his second year as the deep and inscrutable completely-alien alien, but the character he was finally figuring out how to play at the end. He could suddenly turn off the comic mannerisms in a way that was almost scary--and Tennant did this even better than him.

Anyway, I think it's way too early to guess how Matt Smith will play the character. Go back and look at Tennant's first performances, or McCoy's, or Hartnell's, and they're nothing like what the character eventually became. And that's despite the fact that Tennant was absolutely sure of how he should play the character when he started; he just changed his mind as he gradually made the character his own. --99.33.25.56 09:34, February 25, 2010 (UTC)