Word Of The Day

I've been a Doctor Who fan since about the mid-1980's. I started with the Peter Davison Fifth Doctor when the original series was shown ad infinitum on the local PBS station. After Davison's run, it switched to Jon Pertwee's run as the Third Incarnation. After that came the other Doctors, but my favourite is the Third followed by the Fifth. And now we're up to the 12th Incarnation as played by Peter Capaldi.

The trouble with regeneration, as the Doctor has said, is that you never know what you're going to wind up with. The first four doctors had their alien quality to them, tempered with varying degrees of humour, but definitely arrogance. The fifth came along with a more youthful and reserved approach, which evolved back into a more alien nature in successive regenerations.

So far in the revived series, we've had a more cheerful and wonky series of incarnations, from the Ninth's sarcasm to the Tenth's ode to his own genius to the utter infatuation with life and the universe of the Eleventh.

Now we're up to Twelve, and in some ways we're getting back to basics. For the first half dozen actors, they brought their own ideas as to their portrayal. After that, it seemed that successive actors would state which aspects of the earlier incarnations they wanted to bring forward. Capaldi has said his will be more like the First and the Third along with the Fifth. After watching the first three episodes of the current series, I can definitely see the First and Third in him, but I'm not seeing what I saw in the Fifth in his portrayal so far.

But it's early days. I hope the success of the series continues and grows under Peter Capaldi.