Matthew Kilburn writes the first of three articles observing the Fifteenth Doctor’s character, originally published in The Tides of Time 50.
This is an article begun on the cusp of revelation. I started writing it less than two days after the release of Wish World, and more than five days before the multi-platform screening of The Reality War. Rumour suggested that the era of the Fifteenth Doctor might be over, and rumour was right. This is only a provisional retrospective – not an exhaustive examination of the Fifteenth Doctor’s character, but a look at some points, see what made Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor distinctive, and sense some of how, why and how far they all worked.
My first impression of the Fifteenth Doctor was overwhelmingly positive. On his arrival in The Giggle, he was almost immediately in charge of the situation on the UNIT helipad, possessing a confidence that the Fourteenth Doctor lacked while not underestimating the seriousness of the crisis into which he had been born. He was physically more demonstrative than any of his predecessors. Hugs were definitely available.
The Fifteenth Doctor demonstrated emotional literacy and self-awareness. He seemed to be the counsellor Doctor, talking through their history with the Fourteenth Doctor and giving him licence to retire and recover. It appeared that he would be the beneficiary of the therapy he prescribed for his predecessor. In The Church on Ruby Road alone, his intuitive managing of the curious policeman after the incident with the giant snowman, his affinity with Carla’s fostering and his brief attempt to talk the Carla of the Rubyless timeline into being less mercenary, and his concern for the fate of babies Lulubelle and Ruby, all spoke to a Doctor in whom empathy and compassion were prioritised over social awkwardness and introversion often seen in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Doctors. He is exceptionally comfortable with very small children, as demonstrated by the hug he offers in Space Babies – and how much more forceful that episode would seem if it had been premiered a week or so after The Church on Ruby Road as originally hoped. The Bogeyman in Space Babies too survives because of the Doctor’s ability to join empathy and intellect, which he does with physical heroism and personal warmth.
The universal empathiser version of the Fifteenth Doctor never quite goes away, but it’s joined in The Devil’s Chord by a Doctor who can’t bear trauma so lightly. The Doctor’s reaction to learning who Maestro is is fear. While the Fifteenth Doctor seemed to take bigeneration in his stride in The Giggle, The Devil’s Chord recontextualises it as being “ripped in half,” having a soul split in two. This serves the immediate purpose of showing how dangerous Maestro is, but it changes the Fifteenth Doctor, perhaps in a way it might not have done had there been four or five episodes of the Fifteenth Doctor before The Devil’s Chord rather than two. There’s an argument to be made that the Doctor’s panic in The Devil’s Chord weakens Boom, a study of the Doctor’s fear which might again have been carried off more successfully in another context; while there is something of the earlier empathiser Doctor in the way the Doctor relates to Mundy, Splice and the hologram of John Francis Vater, this is less noticeable than the return of the sceptic, acerbic Doctor of Steven Moffat’s Twelfth Doctor scripts, musing over rationalism and faith in a way the Doctor of Russell T Davies’s stories doesn’t generally need.
Music is a signature of the Fifteenth Doctor. He understands singing as communication and as a creative expression of the intellect; that Ruby can almost keep pace with his song to the Goblin King in The Church on Ruby Road helps confirm her status as fellow traveller-designate, and ‘There’s Always a Twist’ in The Devil’s Chord represents his steering the unspooling of the musicless reality created by Maestro. In the first Fifteenth Doctor series, music represents hidden truth: whether the mutual attraction of the Doctor and Rogue, expressed in a Kylie Minogue song, or the Shepherd’s Bell Carol encapsulating the mystery of Ruby’s origins and its fascination for Sutekh. Perhaps it’s a sign of the Doctor’s personality breakdown in The Interstellar Song Contest that he can’t treat his own crisis through music; and he and Belinda are pushed to one side by Cora’s song of the Hellians rather than acting as its enablers, which is only right in the context of the episode.
The ice in the Doctor’s heart might distance him from music, but that he recognises it is a sign of his ability to recognise his emotions, and manage them up to a point. This Doctor’s expression of emotion can be controversial. While the fact the Fifteenth Doctor cries seems unremarkable to the extent I don’t especially notice when he cries, others feel that his tears cheapen emotional moments.
The Fifteenth Doctor shows a great amount of patience. He seems to investigate Ruby cautiously, only intervening in her life when she is in danger. On Missbelindachandra One, he spends six months getting to know the planet and its people and preparing for an insurrection, contrasting somewhat with the Eleventh Doctor who is bored by the slow progress of events in The Power of Three (2012). This is a reminder that the Fifteenth Doctor is not only curious about people, but actively seems to set out to like people, and is more comfortable in social settings than any of his predecessors. He dances with an enthusiasm unprecedented, whether in the club seen in The Church on Ruby Road or the formality of elite display enjoyed in Rogue.
The Fifteenth Doctor seems much more accepting than the Tenth Doctor of being the Last of the Time Lords, despite repeated trauma; he seems to manage it through regarding every living person and living thing as unique, the first and last of their kind. “No-one else like me exists, and that is true of everyone,” he tells Poppy in Space Babies.
It’s this uniqueness that the Doctor chooses to be happy about. When he compares notes with the Thirteenth Doctor in The Reality War, she is impressed by his emotional self-expression and resolves to do better. Perhaps it’s his determination to find joy in the universe that makes his moments of anger all the more terrible.