Doctor Ranking

Not exactly a meme, but redneckgaijin did a post in which he ranked his preferred Doctors, and I thought I'd do something similar, albeit somewhat less linear.

Dishonorable Mention: The "extra Nines," Rowan Atkinson and Richard Grant. The second for presumably obvious reasons, and the first because I hate Atkinson with the fire of a thousand sentient and wounded suns.

Insufficient Data: One and Two. I simply haven't seen enough of their runs to judge them accurately. The impressions from what I have seen are that I rather like One but am frustrated by the limits of the medium at that point, and that I simply don't care for Two at all - but it's possible that watching more (and better) Troughton could win me over.

Doctors I actively dislike: None. The only one even close to this category is Two, and as I said above, that's probably because I've only seen a few episodes and they weren't very good ones.

Doctors for whom I love the performance and hate the writing: Six, Eight, and Eleven. The glimpses we got of Colin Baker when the script he was given wasn't complete shite were compelling. Paul McGann never got to show us what he could do outside of a poorly-paced regeneration episode. I think if I were watching Matt Smith acting in Moffatt stories edited and arced by RTD, I'd be enjoying him a lot. The problem here is really more that they're forced into crap plots with bad dialogue and (in the first and third cases) companions I periodically would like to set on fire.

Doctors I feel kind of "meh" about: Seven. I never really got into him, although again, the problem isn't McCoy's performance (or Aldred's, either). There's a lot of Seven in Eleven, and I'm not fond of those character traits in that incarnation, either.

Doctors I like but don't love: Five. Not his fault; he came after Four. I wasn't going to settle for the pretty blond guy from All Creatures Great And Small after that. The writing was also uneven, even on the Doctor Who scale of things. I really liked having a non-pair Team Tardis, though.

Doctors I love dearly but would like to give a nice hard kick in the ass much of the time: Three and Ten. Three was - well, on the upside, he's the one who caught Sarah Jane. But I do wonder if one of the reasons Nine was doing the working-class bloke thing was if the aristocrat's impulses Three manifested so thoroughly were so disgusted with himself after the Time War, they de-classed that incarnation. Three had entirely too much tendency to disappear up his own alien ass. And Ten was similarly self-absorbed, although possibly with much better reasons.

Doctors I love with few reservations: Four and Nine. Four probably got this without earning it, both by being my first Doctor and for being the core of my favorite Team Tardis, Doctor/Sarah/Harry. He's an egocentric dick, yes, but he's a kind egocentric dick, and tends to rub your face in his *experience* rather than his *cleverness*. Nine, on the other hand, pushes all my hurt/comfort buttons beautifully, and Doctor/Jack/Rose(/Mickey on the home team) make a great Team Tardis, too. I doubt it's accidental that they're on opposite sides of a "pick your regeneration companion carefully" incident. And I suppose Nine is a first doctor, too, in a way, after so very long. It was when he shouted "Everybody lives!" that I saw Four in him, and fell in love again.

Doctor Ranking

Not exactly a meme, but redneckgaijin did a post in which he ranked his preferred Doctors, and I thought I'd do something similar, albeit somewhat less linear.

Dishonorable Mention: The "extra Nines," Rowan Atkinson and Richard Grant. The second for presumably obvious reasons, and the first because I hate Atkinson with the fire of a thousand sentient and wounded suns.

Insufficient Data: One and Two. I simply haven't seen enough of their runs to judge them accurately. The impressions from what I have seen are that I rather like One but am frustrated by the limits of the medium at that point, and that I simply don't care for Two at all - but it's possible that watching more (and better) Troughton could win me over.

Doctors I actively dislike: None. The only one even close to this category is Two, and as I said above, that's probably because I've only seen a few episodes and they weren't very good ones.

Doctors for whom I love the performance and hate the writing: Six, Eight, and Eleven. The glimpses we got of Colin Baker when the script he was given wasn't complete shite were compelling. Paul McGann never got to show us what he could do outside of a poorly-paced regeneration episode. I think if I were watching Matt Smith acting in Moffatt stories edited and arced by RTD, I'd be enjoying him a lot. The problem here is really more that they're forced into crap plots with bad dialogue and (in the first and third cases) companions I periodically would like to set on fire.

Doctors I feel kind of "meh" about: Seven. I never really got into him, although again, the problem isn't McCoy's performance (or Aldred's, either). There's a lot of Seven in Eleven, and I'm not fond of those character traits in that incarnation, either.

Doctors I like but don't love: Five. Not his fault; he came after Four. I wasn't going to settle for the pretty blond guy from All Creatures Great And Small after that. The writing was also uneven, even on the Doctor Who scale of things. I really liked having a non-pair Team Tardis, though.

Doctors I love dearly but would like to give a nice hard kick in the ass much of the time: Three and Ten. Three was - well, on the upside, he's the one who caught Sarah Jane. But I do wonder if one of the reasons Nine was doing the working-class bloke thing was if the aristocrat's impulses Three manifested so thoroughly were so disgusted with himself after the Time War, they de-classed that incarnation. Three had entirely too much tendency to disappear up his own alien ass. And Ten was similarly self-absorbed, although possibly with much better reasons.

Doctors I love with few reservations: Four and Nine. Four probably got this without earning it, both by being my first Doctor and for being the core of my favorite Team Tardis, Doctor/Sarah/Harry. He's an egocentric dick, yes, but he's a kind egocentric dick, and tends to rub your face in his *experience* rather than his *cleverness*. Nine, on the other hand, pushes all my hurt/comfort buttons beautifully, and Doctor/Jack/Rose(/Mickey on the home team) make a great Team Tardis, too. I doubt it's accidental that they're on opposite sides of a "pick your regeneration companion carefully" incident. And I suppose Nine is a first doctor, too, in a way, after so very long. It was when he shouted "Everybody lives!" that I saw Four in him, and fell in love again.