Oh, see, looking back at my post I can see how it comes off like I’m making an argument (or plea) about characterization. That’s due entirely to my choice of wording. No, what I was actually trying to say there was that I am BORRRRRED of the “OMG is he a hero or a villain?!” game. It is not as clever as they think it is. It doesn’t make the show deeper or more complex. Mostly it’s responsible for adding mind-numbing crap dialogue into the middle of an episode when they could’ve been using that space for more alien shenanigans.
The “He goes psycho without a companion” thing drives me up the wall. I mean…really? The only line dividing the Doctor from the Master or Rassilon is that the Doctor’s got friends? The universe constantly exists one bad breakup away from annihilation or conquest by a guy in tweed? That might sound cool for about 30 seconds, till you realize that what it’s really implying is that the Doctor is actually an evil yet vastly impressionable little imp and humans are, yet again, the only thing standing between the universe and its total destruction by madman-in-a-box. That’s just annoying.
It is the ‘gun on the wall’ issue again. Are they in fact, at any point, planning on having the Doctor actually snap and run off to be a bad guy? If not, then it’s just blowing wind up our butts and wasting prime adventure-having time because they do not, in point of fact, intend to imply that the Doctor is sometimes ACTUALLY evil. He’s just a bit…top-heavy occasionally.
If they actually went through with it, I’d take it all back because hey, there’s something you don’t see every day. Alternatively, can’t overwhelming arrogance just be a personality flaw rather than an indictment? Can’t people chew him out for being a prick sometimes rather than for having supervillain tendencies? Because, let’s face it, the Doctor has ALWAYS been overwhelmingly arrogant, and it definitely does him some good to be reminded of that fact now and then. I mean. Holy crap. ’Hubris’ is Ancient Greek for ‘The Doctor.’
Speaking of which! Re: the ‘morally dubious’ bit. The Doctor is indeed a trickster, a liar, a hypocrite and a whackadoo, and furthermore I quite like him being a douche and a jackass sometimes. However, since…oh, about halfway through One’s run, he has consistently done his best to leave the universe a bit better off than he found it. I don’t think it requires perfection, a halo, or a big red S on your chest in order for a person to be a Good Guy.
But since you said you’re curious, why don’t we take a look at the other Doctors? Because it is pretty interesting actually, isn’t it? The First Doctor really was rather morally dubious, wasn’t he? He started out by telling the humans to go to hell whenever they opened their lower-class alien mouths at him, and he promptly attempted to bash in a caveman’s head with a rock. He didn’t really have a turnaround till Barbara raked him over the coals and told him to grow up, for God’s sake.
After One, though, the Doctor honestly was pretty much rocking the Good Guy vibe till Six. Two was crazy about it. Three was practically normal, for the Doctor (I think it was all that hanging out with the Brig). Four was relentless in his good-guyness: he had a chance to genocide the Daleks at the point of their creation and didn’t go through with it. He even had a little monologue about whether he had the right to rob a race of its future, while Sarah Jane leaned in over his shoulder, telling him, “DO IT DO IT DO IT.” (“Genesis of the Daleks”)
(It may be worth noting that Four was the Doctor I largely grew up with.)
Five, now, was often grumpy and snippy, but except for that jarringly cold moment where he stood and watched the Master burn to death (“Planet of Fire,” guys), he was always mostly on the straight and narrow. Oh, wait, but he DID try to genocide the Daleks, didn’t he? He engineered that virus that was supposed to kill them all. (Spoiler: it didn’t.)
And then Six. Um. Well. Six was a bit batshit. He really liked punching people. And. Well. He was Six. I like to blame it on Five dying while drugged.
And then Seven. Okay, Seven’s where it started swinging a bit darkside again. Machiavellian little chessmaster that he was, he did sometimes have that whole, “I conned you into this for your own good!” thing (I believe he said those actual words to Ace, once). And he genocided the Daleks again, using the Hand of Omega. (It didn’t take, of course.) There was another rock—>head-bashing incident with the Master in “Survival,” but they were both being possessed by the wild hunty-fighty spirit of the planet at that point, so that probably doesn’t count.
Eight…well, we never saw much of Eight. He seemed very sweet for the hour or two he was on screen. He did take himself hostage rather than so much as point at gun in somebody else’s direction. I’m not going into the radio plays. They’re not really canon, even if that is the only place McGann got to really develop his Doctor.
Then, of course, Nine, et al.
So it’s not like he was ever perfect. I—hahaha—oh man, I do not mean to imply that at all. (And also the Winchesters have a TOTALLY HEALTHY relationship. <—metaphor by way of gigantic sarcasm) And I rather HUGELY like that sometimes he’s a bit shady. And his personality changes, for pete’s sake. He could regenerate and come up evil at some point (the Valyard’s a thing, after all—don’t watch “Trial of a Time Lord,” I am not reccing that to you, you are my beloved friends and I wouldn’t do that to you). Talking about what the Doctor’s personality is “supposed” to be like is like telling the ocean what shape it’s supposed to be.
It’s just that they’re really riding the whole “is he good or not?!” thing for all it’s worth at this point, and it’s getting really old. (Especially the secret conspiracies to rid the nation/planet/universe of him because he’s terrifying and horrible. How many of those ARE there?! I just want to know so I can figure out when to take a break and do the dishes.)
Okay, except for the Silence. That does bug me. Here’s the thing about that: like I said, the Doctor can be a real hypocrite sometimes, but even if he’s standing there genociding the Daleks with one hand, with the other he’s activating the intercom to tell his Companions, “HEY YOU GUYS SHOULDN’T KILL, IT SUCKS AND IT’S A TERRIBLE THING TO DO.” The idea that he’d brainwash the human race into annihilating another species makes my face autonomously screw up with confusion.
So yeah. Since you asked. XD Talking too much about Doctor Who is a thing I do.