Doctor Who Update - High Hopes

My wife and I sat down and watched the first episode of series 4 Doctor Who (first episode if you exclude the Christmas Special “Voyage of the Damned”, which I do). My initial thoughts? It was awesome!

I don’t know what anyone else thinks, but I love Donna as the new companion. It’s quite a refreshing difference from the crap we went through last year with Martha. It got me thinking about the companion dichotomy with the Doctor. With Rose, we had someone that grew to love the doctor, in pretty much the romantic sense of the word. It had time to develop, and you felt like some sort of chemistry had occurred. But it didn’t start out a love interest. Rose first and foremost wanted adventure and a new start in life. Her love of the doctor grew as the show went on.

When Rose got stuck in that parallel dimension, in steps Martha as the new companion. Basically, it’s like they tried to pick up the love angle where Rose left off. So Martha jumps into the show adamantly in love with the Doctor. It was cliche, to say the least. Here Martha is in love with someone she doesn’t even know. She even admitted to that in several episodes, but I just still didn’t buy into it. I had a hard time suspending my disbelief for that. But with all that, we had to deal with Martha’s jealousy, anger, mood swings, skepticism… etc., etc. I know, I know, everyone liked Martha, but I had a difficult time with her as a companion. I had high hopes for her, but I just didn’t like the direction the writers had taken her character.

So now it’s series 4, and we have Donna as the companion regular (played by British comedian Catherine Tate). She was first featured in the Runaway Bride Christmas Special. And now she makes her return. Her character comes back better than ever.

I’ve said this many times before, and I’ll say it again: Tennant always works better with older actresses like Sophia Myles and Elisabeth Sladen. This is odd, because Tennantt looks very young, and retains all his boyish charm, but is nearing his 40s. His last two companions were 20-somethings. This isn’t a bad thing, but it always seemed like he developed a better chemistry with the older guest stars. It made the blossoming young-love of Rose and Martha look very odd.

But Donna and him have that chemistry. They work off each other’s jokes, and they’re having lots of fun along the way. It’s a nice fresh start, because Donna isn’t looking to jump the Doctor, she’s along for the fun and adventure. I hope they keep it this way. I hope we can have at least one companion this upcoming series that isn’t crazily in love with him.

This is going to be a fun series.

Also, here’s a Catherine Tate sketch with David Tennant.

And here’s one of my favorite scenes from the first episode of series 4 (The Doctor and Donna are spying on the episode’s baddies, and finally see each other for the first time since “The Runaway Bride” Christmas episode).

~ by daniel on April 28, 2008.