In the last of our interim retrospectives on the Fifteenth Doctor, Alice Hardaker finds charisma and a bar companion.

The Fifteenth Doctor is sassy, energetic and goes with the flow of his adventures, encapsulated in his hanging from the goblin ship in The Church on Ruby Road. From effortlessly accepting Ruby’s presence to making himself at home for six months off-screen in The Robot Revolution, Fifteen showed a warm and welcoming presence wherever he went, which makes his final words of “absolute joy” incredibly fitting.
A lot of the character wouldn’t work without the talent of Ncuti Gatwa. On paper, there is nothing charismatic about a cheeky “babes” being thrown into every conversation. But standing tall and with a swagger in his step, there’s a confidence to Fifteen that makes it work. You believe that he is calm, self-assured and in touch with his emotions, just like he told the Fourteenth Doctor in The Giggle.
Unfortunately, I found Fifteen never successfully expanded beyond this persona. Although we don’t see how he reached this point of contentment, there’s enough instant evidence of it that we quickly accept it. Darker moments, like torturing Kid in The Interstellar Song Contest, seem triggered out of the blue, with no real build up, and seem very out of character. Would he really exclaim “camp!” joyfully, immediately after the same event that allegedly upset him so greatly? While the manipulative edge Belinda criticises in The Robot Revolution suggests that something darker can be found within him, this is never picked up again.
The Fifteenth Doctor is capable of sudden switches which make his characterisation beyond ‘joy’ feel inconsistent. In The Reality War, he turns from not believing Ruby’s belief in the existence of Poppy, to suddenly giving his life on her word. Without further exploration, these shifts feel unearned or confusing. Maybe this is due to the significant amount of Doctor-lite episodes, or adventures which are resolved mostly by others (such as The Devil’s Chord, Rogue, and Lux).
I’ve found very few scenes where he feels especially ‘alien’. Which is fine, not all Doctors have to! But I miss the more light-hearted moments which draw out the Doctor’s alien otherness, like the Daleks gag in Joy to the World, or the proud but strange declaration that the policeman’s girlfriend will ‘say yes’ in The Church on Ruby Road. More could have been done. Nevertheless, I recognise in the Fifteenth Doctor an exceptionally kind and clever individual, whom I wouldn’t be surprised to meet on a night out in a gay bar, and in fact I have befriended several like him!