I rewatched 2005 Doctor Who and just figured out why I never really loved Matt Smith as the Doctor.

He felt way too human and that made him a great character (my favorite in his seasons besides Rory, in fact) overall, but he seemed more like a Companion than a Doctor. Most of his time on the show felt like it didn't have a Doctor and that really messed up a lot of what was great about it.

I also noticed that Tennant wasn't as great as I remember. He was a fanboy and played the role like a fanboy. He was a better Doctor than Smith, but not by much.

Eccleston's Doctor held up, though.

 

I' ve watched most of Ecleston, half of Tennant, all of Smith and everything Capaldi so far. I think my favorite is Capaldi. Not just because of the actor in and of itself, but because it seems they finally want to go somewhere with the character. And because he finally acts his age (I' m not your boyfriend). Smith' s acting was fine, he was just stuck in a lot of bad episodes.

 

I really fricking love Smith, but I can understand why people might be a bit put off by him. Personally, Series 5 is my all-time favorite season, and nothing that's come out since then has -quite- lived up to it (Series 6 had the annoying as hell River Song Plot, Series 7 felt really disjointed). Series 8 is fantastic so far but I don't know that it's going to live up to it either. Maybe it's my fault for judging everything based on what is, imo, the perfect season.

Both Tennant and Smith were really human Doctors (Tennant moreso than Smith), but I really liked that. Capaldi is a bit of a jarring shift toward the more alien, and I really like that too.

 

I don't think I ever really watched the show for the Doctor but more for the companion, until Matt Smith -- maybe because Amy and Rory weren't really very well-done as companions. Don't get me wrong, I love Amy and Rory, but Amy's characterization in particular is just extremely erratic and a wallop of missed opportunities and excessively Doctor-focused man pain. Rory is flat which is okay since he's not really ever a major character. I think that's just how Moffat writes, whereas RTD had the more human element to his run.

Series 4 is my absolute favorite. David Tennant and Catherine Tate have such an amazing (non-romantic!) chemistry together and they hit this fantastic rhythm between humor and drama. I don't think there's an episode in it that I don't like. Series 5 does have a special place in my heart but it's so drastically different than 4 that I find it hard to compare the two.

 

I think my favorite thing about Capaldi is that the character development he's getting kind of justifies the humanness that I never liked about Tennant and Smith. For a long while he was trying to be human in an attempt to reject his Time Lord nature and right before regenerating he realized that he can't do that anymore. Ten and Eleven are much better in the context of Twelve, but I don't like them on their own.

Well, it's usually the companion's story rather than the Doctor's (Season 8 is clearly Doctor Centric, though), but I feel like it's still important for the Doctor to feel like the Doctor. Nine was great because it felt like he was beyond humanity but understood how to relate to humans on a personal level. Ten felt human, but he felt like he was somehow more than human. Eleven was just human, and it was really jarring.

That's why I think of Amy and Rory as a unit rather than individual characters. They're both awful if you think of them separately, but together they have a lot of depth that wouldn't show unless you look at one in the context of the other.

See, I thought Donna's arc was the most romantic of Tennant's run. It really gave a sense that adventuring with the Doctor is the highest point of the human experience.