Culturess’ Official Ranking of Doctors in Doctor Who
By Ani Bundel
Image via BBC
7. Eleventh Doctor: Matt Smith
When it comes to having trouble with badly written seasons though, no Doctor was as plagued as Matt Smith. The youngest actor ever cast, he had some great ideas in his characterization of the Doctor. He was the first of the reboot actors to really go back to the old Doctors and take his inspiration from them. His dependence on props, his “method in the madness” performance and his joy all come directly from Troughton. In his first season of the playing the Doctor, I felt one could look into his eyes and really believe the character was 900+ years old, which was not something I had ever gotten from Tennant or Eccleston.
Too bad it didn’t last. Moffat got Moffaty. River Song, a glorious character if there ever was one, got all twisted up with the companions, and suddenly the Doctor was not just romanticized, he was sexualized and going on dates. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst came when the companions that worked with Smith’s portrayal left, and Moffat, consumed with the oncoming 50th Anniversary, threw out basic good writing and character development, and left Smith with a cardboard companion to make inappropriate remarks over. Smith’s work should have put him higher on this list—the Seventh Season guaranteed he would never crack the Top Five.