What is The TARDIS Test, you ask? Well, lucky for you, I'm about to go into detail about it. Basically The TARDIS Test can be applied to any of the Doctors and used to determine how appealing the character is/is going to be to you by determining whether or not you, or any viewer, as a character in the Doctor's universe, would get into the TARDIS and travel with him on his adventures after one introductory-style adventure. The TARDIS Test is made up of three categories:
- Is The Doctor Appealing or Put-Offish?: A big part of the desire that most companions have to travel with/continue traveling with the Doctor comes from how appealing you find the character. The Doctor is an interesting character, sure, but would he be an appealing person of you met him and spent the day with him? The Doctor is always a little off-putting due to his alien nature, but this can either make him more appealing by combining with his additional traits by making him seem mysterious and intriguing, if his additional traits are largely positive. However, if his additional traits are putt-offish and abrasive, the alien aspects to his character combine with them to make him very unappealing. This is a common complaint regarding the sixth Doctor, who was rude and condescending, and the seventh Doctor, who was manipulative.
- Do You Trust The Doctor With Your Life?: This one is a little more simple. The Doctor is always a little untrustworthy. Anyone who interacts with him in any real sense for more than a few minutes (slight hyperbole) can tell that his isn't telling you everything, and that he isn't willing to. However, when it comes right down to it, when the thick of things have been gotten into, the Doctor is typically the kind of person who you can take a single look at and tell that he will do anything is his power to get you out alive.
- Does Any Average Instance of The Doctor's Adventures Ignite Your Sense of Adventure?: Wow, that is a long category title. Anyway, it is long because this is the most complex one of the bunch. Basically what this category asks is, after one day with the Doctor, his attitude and adventurer's spirit and level of intrigue is enough to make you abandon your potentially very cozy life and go with him on a whim. As this one relies a bit on the answers to the questions asked in the previous categories, it perhaps isn't really its own category, but a sub-category of the two, but I think it is weighty enough to warrant its own bullet point, and this is my blog. As this relies much more heavily on a non-quantifiable concept that the previous two, it is hard to explain, and so I will try to explain it as I go.
Now that we've, more or less, defined The TARDIS Test, I'm going to apply it to the Twelfth Doctor for myself, citing examples from the good and the bad episodes so far this Series, and then I am going to decide if this is a version of the Doctor who would have me as a potential companion. The result, whether positive or negative, will be indicative of my opinion of the character, at least in this iteration. As for the first category, the answer is a resounding put-offish (that may be the silliest statement ever written), and here is why.
This version of the Doctor is older, outwardly, than previous versions, and while it is stated superficially that this means nothing, I respectfully disagree. The first time we see the Doctor in Series 8 he is raving like a man succumbed to senility. Then he develops into a cross old grump. And then he leaves Clara to fend for herself in historical London. And then he leaves Clara to face the clockwork droids all on her own with no indication that he is watching out for her. In short, he is an insufferable jerk in this episode. This theme continues all throughout the Series, with the Doctor saying rude things to Clara at every turn, and leaving her alone to solve her own problems, most obviously in Kill the Moon, when he could have helped her, and when helping her was clearly the better and safer option. Clearly his attitudes are radically different than they have been in a long time, and the fact that he also seems perfectly alright with taking no action at all just serves to add to the impression that the Doctor is tired and old.
There is one episode in which I feel that none of these annoying tendencies are obvious, and that's Robots of Sherwood, but really this episode doesn't feel like it was written for this Doctor at all, but the Ninth Doctor, who was similarly crass, but more fun and overall likeable. In fact it is due to this episode that I am convinced that writing this Doctor more like the Ninth Doctor MK II would make him infinitely more enjoyable, and go a long way toward redeeming him. Now, I give dues where they are deserved, and the mid-Series finale episodes which aired most recently did serve to redeem the Doctor a bit. Here the Doctor got over him "Am I good?" angst and actually acted proactively about something, reminiscent of when he took action to stop the Daleks all the way back in their initial debut, when he was still the First Doctor, but it was too little too late to make me forget all of the downright poor decisions and bad behavior that he exhibited all Series long.
As for category two, I feel that this Doctor does a poor job of making his companion(s) feel that they can depend on him. More than once this Series, as I mentioned earlier in the example from the premier, the Doctor this Series had a tendency to ignore the plight of his companions and leave them in situations which seemed unworthy of his attention at all. He left Clara to the Clockwork droids, he more than once allowed minor characters to die just to learn something new from their deaths, genuinely meeting the deaths of other with little interest overall, and he often did nothing in the face of the crisis of the week, allowing things to work themselves out. I would even call the last of those points a genuine running theme this Series: that too many of the crisis that the Doctor found himself involved in solved themselves.
In case you weren't counting, this means that the Twelfth Doctor is zero for two, so we all know where this is going. While I might, after the fact, lament that I had made a poor decision, if this version of the Doctor asked me to travel with him after a brief adventure, I would say no. I feel that I would find this version of the Doctor unbearable, infuriating, and even a little genuinely frightening. I would get into the TARDIS to save my life, but I don't think that I would stay there, especially if it meant potentially disrupting the life that I have. Meeting the Doctor might get me thinking about travel, and might inspire me to travel the world or the like, but I don't think that I would go with him on an average day. A Robots of Sherwood day maybe, but not really any other.
And so, by reading this, I think you probably have a pretty good idea what I think about this iteration of the Doctor so far. I don't feel like I need to go into any more detail than I already have. I generally don't like this version of the Doctor. While I admit that he has potential to improve if the writing governing him improves, and while I hold out hope, I go into the Christmas Special and the subsequent second half of Series 8 with some pretty extreme skepticism, which I just really can't help feeling. I still like the show. I am still a fan. However, if the character of the Doctor continues to develop as he has lately, it may drive me away from the show once and for all.
How about you? Do you like this version of the Doctor, or do you agree with my points? Do you dislike him, but for different reason? Let me know in the comments below. If you dislike this version of the Doctor, join me in keeping my fingers crossed that the fairy tale nature that seems to be a part of the upcoming Christmas episode is indicative of a positive shift in the Doctor's characterization, and come back later for more content.
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