So true. And that’s not to mention the fact that Benedict Cumberbatch could pass for Matt Smith’s brother.
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but the Doctor has always had the manic-tic thing, particularly when he’s been excited about something. it waxes and wanes depending on the actor portraying him, but it’s the one enduring trait that i love that they keep returning to.
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To be fair, Conan Doyle’s “manic” was “high as fuck on coke”. He also did not consider it a positive character trait in any way.
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To be even more fair, Holmes lost the coke habit very early on – it’s only really in the second novel. A later short story confirms Watson convinced him to quit. And when he does indulge, he flops back in his armchair to enjoy. He does not solve cases high. It’s explicitly stated in The Sign of Four he gets high because he doesn’t have any work, and that he uses drugs as a substitute for work.
Doyle also has Holmes working days at a time. Coke doesn’t last that long.
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However, he does his thinking with the aid of a killer load of nicotine. At the time of writing the alkaloids were the big thing in medicine and biology, and Doyle’s frequent references to them reflects the obsessions of the time. Except that the idea of criminalising them for the greater profit of private prison companies had not yet arisen.
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But…but…but…but…
Tradition!
In this country you can only change one thing at a time, or a member of the Royal Family will die.
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I hope its not the sole one people like.
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Which one would that be? Just curious…
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The one who prints Canada’s money from her summer house in Ottawa.
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they’ve had aliens. what about the always hilarious Strax, and the lovely (lesbian!) Madame Vastra? they were essentially companions, and were very popular.
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MISSY: I am that mysterious adventurer in all of time and space, known only as Doctor Who. And these are my disposables, Exposition and Comic Relief.
NARDOLE: We’re not functions.
MISSY: Darling, those were genders.
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I haven’t seen many of the classic episodes, but Tom Baker did travel with Time Lady Romana for a while, and I recall some weird barbarian lady as well.
Those are good secondary characters, but I’m not sure they rise to the level of companions.
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well, possibly. but if Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart can be listed as a companion (and not just a secondary character), i don’t see why they don’t qualify as companions. does Jack Harkness count as an alien? he even got his own spinoff!
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He was before my time, I’m probably out of my depth there.
What I’m really getting at is the fixation on the time and place where the series is being made. It’s kind like all those improbable references to “late 20th century Earth” in Star Trek. I understand that modern British characters provide a vehicle for exposition, but it would be so much more fun and interesting to see how, say, a character from the 12th century would process future technology and aliens.
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That runs into the issue of being really easy to turn into a continuous “fish out of water” running gag. As much as I liked Leela in the old days, there’s a point where “they don’t understand it/think it’s magic/react completely differently because they don’t know the technology” gets really old. It’s bad enough sometimes with the present day companions being treated as backwards yokels due to not knowing something.
It’s possible to do it right if the character actually grows into the place (like, say, John Crichton in Farscape was able to), but even with the longer story arcs lately Doctor Who is still more of an episodic show.
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yeah, he’s super early. but anyway – i get what you’re saying. i guess i don’t mind the late 20th century/early 21st century fixation, really. as you say, it provides a vehicle for exposition – “write what you know,” essentially, lol. they travel back in time enough to get the perspective of that time gawking at the future people, anyway.
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I’m so glad that a female Doctor came AFTER the Moffat era. I can’t even imagine how horrible he would have done with her.
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Jamie did well with 2
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Yes, but as far as I remember he didn’t really act like someone from the time period he was supposed to be from most of the time. Aside from a few references like the “McCrimmon piper” and some disbelief that he was really travelling around, he mostly just plugged along. They had him in a spacesuit wandering on the moon almost right away, and they didn’t even have to explain what the suits were for.
It’s a bit of a balancing act. On the one hand, overdoing it gets extremely tiresome. On the other hand, if you’re going to go to the trouble of pulling in someone from a time period that long ago, it sort of loses its point if they aren’t at least given a reason for becoming knowledgeable.
I seem to remember one of the other companions in the old series going through a similar jarring change in competency, though I can’t remember which offhand. I just remember them suddenly going from “what is all this” to “ok, I’ll just fly the Tardis for you” and not even an indication of a period of study inbetween.
(I’m actually going through #2 right now, and just finished The Moonbase today. So it happened to be fresh in my mind. 
)
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