Well then. Here we go.
As the entire internet is loudly aware, Matt Smith is the eleventh ‘Doctor Who’. In the space of an evening the news has crashed the main Doctor Who fandom message board, totally dominated Twitter and other social networks, wiped out my mobile battery and overshadowed the actual premiere of ITV’s ‘Demons’ with some casting news for a series that won’t screen ’til next year.
While others will fervently disagree with the casting of a very young, fairly unknown actor, I’m excited about it. As well as the usual names, big and small, populist and culty, that were doing the rounds, I had my own mental list of possible candidates, and Smith wasn’t on any of them. When he appeared on ‘Doctor Who Confidential’ tonight I gaped, then laughed. Here was an actor I knew from the adaptations of Philip Pullman’s Sally Lockhart novels, but whom I would never have considered. He hadn’t dropped into any of my mental categories for possible Doctors.
Perversely, this makes me more excited to see Matt Smith’s eleventh Doctor than if they’d gone for one of my private picks. This is not a decision that was taken lightly. Head Writer Steven Moffat, Producer Piers Wenger and the layers of BBC management must have seen something in Matt Smith that put him ahead of a potential list of, well, virtually every actor in the country, a quality that made him a better pick for the role than not only the kinds of middle aged character actors who used to play the part, but also a lot of more obvious Eccleston or Tennant-a-likes.
And it’s that quality, that something that made him The One (or, strictly speaking, The Eleventh) in spite of the fact that he’s not a star, that he’s very young for the part, that he’s got a long neck or very thin eyebrows or a huge fringe or whatever else may, on first glance, be held against him… that’s something I’m keen to see on screen.
We’ve got a year of David Tennant’s tenth Doctor to go, of course (and many people’s selective memory has now wiped out the fact that HE was met with scepticism when cast as the Doctor), and I’m looking forward to how that plays out, and how Russell T Davies ends his run on the show.
But already, in that very fannish way of always looking further forward than is really, strictly necessary, I’m also thinking about Matt Smith, wondering about what his Doctor will be like, and what Moffat and co have in store for both the Doctor and the audience.
