I'm going to deal with 3 questions:
1. How do I define the 10th Doctor?
2. How does he compare to the 9th Doctor?
3. Do I like him?
Before I pass judgment on the 10th Doctor, I need to explain and understand him. To talk about Ten, I think it is impossible not to talk about Rose, and to talk about Rose, I think I'm actually going to have to go back to Nine first.
Specifically Nine's relationship with Rose because it's very different. And the defining episode for it is Father's Day. Because in my eyes he is, up until then, largely filling in as a father figure and mentor for Rose, who hasn't had a father since he died while she was a baby. His treatment of Mickey and Adam (*shudder*) seems more like a father disapproving of boyfriends rather than any sort of love triangle situation to me.
In Father's Day, Rose gets to meet and connect with her actual dad, and he ends up feeling lost and literally threatening to leave her there out of desperation. Rose no longer needs a surrogate father figure because she's had the chance to meet her real father and he hasn't let her down.
The Doctor Dances is, according to Moffat, a metaphor for the Doctor having a love life. Dancing itself is a metaphor for sex in it. I think that two parter shows the Doctor attempting to find how to redefine his relationship with Rose now that she no longer needs a father. I think it's worth noting that he refuses to 'dance' with her during the episode though because he's trying to resonate concrete and only learns to dance at the end once Jack is there and even says he thinks Jack wants that dance. I.e. I still don't think it's gone romantic yet.
They're on a more equal footing but conversations like "why do all the good looking ones disappear?" "I'm trying not to be insulted." "I mean... Men." "Great. Thanks." Sounds like friends who don't think of each other that way. He's still trying to figure how what she needs from him now she doesn't need a dad through the rest of the season. He also has an unbelievable amount of sexual tension with Jack, particularly in Boom Town.
He at the end of season finally works out what he thinks Rose needs - "I think you need a Doctor" *smooch* - and regenerates into David Tennant. Nine has no one left, Rose becomes his family and his only family and he will become whatever he thinks she needs him to be and he decides she needs him to be her boyfriend - her equal who keeps her happy and does anything she needs and she can be attracted to.
Madame Vastra says Eleven was young to flirt with Clara, which to me is wrong because he regenerated before he met Clara, but I think Ten was young to flirt with Rose. Basically the Doctor became Ten to try and be the perfect boyfriend.
So then I think the next most important thing to note is that love is what ROSE needs, not the Doctor. He knows he can’t live a life with her like the Metacrisis Doctor - “that’s the curse of the timelord” - and that’s why he never can bring himself to say I love you even by S4 and never defines it as that sort of relationship. But he pretends for her. And to be someone who can fill that role - he needs to be human. And that is Ten's most defining trait: he is constantly trying to be human rather than time lord.
That’s why he can be so immature with Rose, so dismissive of people sometimes but so supportive of his close friends, so emotional about everything, and why he makes so many mistakes. “Tell Rose... oh she’d know” is a defining line in their relationship for me because it’s less about the fact she’d know what he means and more that he doesn’t. And Ten's most interesting moments are the ones where he can’t hide that he’s not human, and where he can’t deal with it: When Rose brings up getting a mortgage together and he has no response for example. When he has to explain why he left Sarah Jane behind even though he’s sort of become a Doctor who couldn’t do that anymore.
Some people criticise the Girl in the Fireplace as out of place in S2 because Ten has another relationship when the rest of it he’s basically with Rose. For me it fits perfectly thematically as the Doctor exploring whether love is possible for him and realising it really isn't, at least not with someone ‘normal’. I think he learns from Madame de Pompadeur that he can’t commit to loving Rose, and without that experience I’m not sure he would have made the same decision to let her to go in S4.
Once he’s lost Rose, he continues trying to be human anyway, to be the man she would have wanted. And it goes terribly terribly wrong for him. He ruins Martha’s life and realises he’s treated her awfully because he’s been too busy trying to be ‘human’. S3 Ten is in many ways the definitive Ten because he’s not trying to be ‘Rose’s Doctor’ anymore, he’s trying to be ‘his Doctor’. But his Doctor is a Doctor looking for somewhere to belong and someone to belong with, and trying his best to be human so he can fit in and find that.
Human Nature and the Family of Blood is the most important story for Ten because he gets everything he ever wanted: he gets to be human BUT to be human, he doesn’t get to be him anymore. That’s why he won’t change back at the end because he now knows its impossible to be human and the Doctor. He’s realised it too late though and loses Martha soon after.
Which leads us to Ten in S4 - a Doctor who isn’t trying to be human anymore but has had ‘the human experience’. Ten meets Donna again and he can see through the mask she has of someone loud and rude to see she’s actually kind but afraid and insecure. Because he’s exactly the same. The vain arrogant Tenth Doctor is a mask hiding the kind, insecure, afraid Time Lord inside. And that’s what makes them best friends. (The idea that the Doctor is always the same insecure and afraid person on the inside is something I get from Listen and worth exploring another time)
It also gives him his wish - he gets to be part of the human race but not because he’s become like one of them but because he’s found one of them like him. But then he loses Donna too. Because there can’t be a human like him. Or because people like him can’t have a happy ending. And it is heartbreaking because they both made each other better. Then Ten in the Specials year slowly descends into arrogance and inhumanity and loses the kindness that Donna reminded him was inside leading to Waters of Mars.
Quite a lot’s happened by the End of Time. But he’s only gone from 900 to 906 by the time of his death. As far as he was concerned he had a whole long life still ahead of him to learn from his mistakes and become the perfect Doctor. And then that lifetime is ripped away from him before he’s become the man he’s been trying to be since he regenerated and he falls back on those human emotions he learnt from the start. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R8MFD8dszI
He realises that fake humanity is too ingrained in him in this regeneration - he’s ‘lived too long’ - and now he’s broken his promise as a Time Lord to never be cruel or cowardly. So he gives in and regenerates, even though it will hurt him like a human being - "it feels like dying" for a Doctor like Ten.
Facing his last ever regeneration, he goes for one last tour of everyone he ever loved (in his own way) - his companions, his ‘family’ - because he knows that he won’t have that chance next time because there isn’t a next time. And finally he faces his death like a human being would - he doesn’t want to go. There’s nobody there watching to look strong for. And that, in my opinion, is the journey of the 10th Doctor, as the almost-human Doctor.
Eleven is born then as the ‘ultimate’ Doctor - the final Doctor who’s learnt from all his previous incarnations to become the most Doctor-y Doctor ever, that the entire universe is afraid of. But that's a disccussion for another blog.
So if that’s who Ten is to me, then do I like him? Yes and no. He has picked up a lot of traits from humanity that make him, quite frankly, a bit of a dick. Most of these you can see he has learnt directly from Rose: Arrogance, not taking things seriously, being insensitive. But I also really feel for him because he’s trying so hard.
And he’s also picked up much of the best of humanity, equally a lot from Rose: curiosity, excitement, loyalty. And he learns from Martha how to be a good person and hero. Then he helps Donna so much and she helps him so much. And two very flawed people become brilliant people together. But then he loses her and that has got to be the most tragic ending in the show because both of them lose that.
And if it was just that Ten was perfectly human then he’d be incredibly boring. But he’s not, he gets it wrong and doesn’t understand key parts and that makes those moments when the mask slips absolutely fascinating.
I think on an out of universe note, David Tennant redefined who the Doctor is for the world and many things we take for granted now really came from his very risky portrayal. With four years to get to know him, it’s hard not to learn to love him, particularly portrayed by such a charismatic actor.
But because he’s trying to be the nice friendly perfect boyfriend doctor, those moments when he’s not nice cut a lot deeper than any other Doctor.
Christopher Eccleston gives us a Doctor that is simpler with an arc over one season and I fell in love with from the start, and he is very alien. But he only gives us one year and it’s hard to imagine with another 3 years what would have happened but I don’t think he would have had as interesting a journey as a character.
So I’m not sure there is any one year where I can say Ten was better than Nine but I think, as you would expect, his four years add up to more. And when I think of the Doctor from when I was a kid, I think of him. He was my Doctor. So, while loving Nine to bits, Ten scores higher.
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