The Eleventh Again

Last night I was watching Doctor Who with a friend who'd never seen an episode. She didn't want to watch any of the classic ones so I was faced with the question, "What is the best introductory episode of New Who?" Not for the first time, I settled on "The Eleventh Hour" from 2010--I just now realised the episode had its tenth anniversary this past April. How funny I still think of this as "New Who".

What a little darling Karen Gillan was back then. More often than not one of the exciting things about the new companion is seeing how intensely beautiful she is--certainly there have been plenty of great, average looking companions but then there's Elisabeth Sladen and Louise Jameson, Freema Agyeman and Jenna Coleman, young women whose beauty is inordinately intense. It's hardly surprising Gillan was a model before becoming an actress.

And, of course, Matt Smith is a pretty young man. Which makes it a little strange that the Eleventh Doctor is really a symbol of Amy's childhood. Yet, then again, why shouldn't a young girl's ideal also be sexually appealing to her? There's plenty of the sexual humour of the Tenth Doctor era still left over at this point, with Amy having a job as a "Kiss O Gram", and then there's the scene where she's happy to watch him strip. But I like how his failure to reappear when she was a child is reflected in the brusqueness of her character as an adult. Of all the Doctors, Eleven might be the most kid friendly, especially with his TARDIS interior that looks like a toy shop.

Or a kid's idea of a toy shop, anyway.

That may be part of the reason I think this is a better introductory episode than "Rose". The 2005 episode that introduced the Ninth Doctor is the true beginning of New Who but if we're talking about an introduction to Doctor Who in general, the Ninth Doctor in his leather jacket and shirt is a bit of a tangent from the normal premise. Personality-wise, too, he's a bit different for reasons that are clear once you know a bit about the series' mythology.

The Tenth Doctor's debut and the Twelfth Doctor's aren't good introductory episodes because both deal with ongoing drama set up with carryover companions. The Thirteenth Doctor's intro is a bad choice because it's a lousy episode. So it really is just a choice between "Rose" and "The Eleventh Hour" if you pick a regeneration episode though it seems to me now that it might be more important for the episode to be the introduction of a companion than introduction of a Doctor. You need a character point of view who's meeting the Doctor for the first time. "The Runaway Bride" and "The Snowmen" I think are both excellent introductory episodes though they really need to be watched around Christmas time. On the same token, I'm a inclined to think The Face of Evil may be a better introductory episode for the Fourth Doctor for someone who's never seen the show than Robot.