Tenth Doctor


The Tenth Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the BBC science fiction television programme Doctor Who. He is played by David Tennant in three series as well as nine specials. As with previous incarnations of the Doctor, the character has also appeared in other Doctor Who spin-offs.
Within the series' narrative, the Doctor is a centuries-old alien Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who travels in time and space in his TARDIS, frequently with companions. At the end of life, the Doctor can regenerate his body; as a result, his physical appearance and personality change. Tennant's portrayal of the Doctor is of an outwardly charismatic and charming adventurer whose likable and easygoing attitude can quickly turn to righteous fury when provoked.
This incarnation's companions include working class shop assistant Rose Tyler, medical student Martha Jones, and fiery temp worker Donna Noble. He eventually parts ways with them all by the end of the 2008 series finale, "Journey's End", after which he attempts to travel alone for the duration of the 2008–2010 specials before being accompanied by Donna's grandfather Wilfred Mott on his final adventure in "The End of Time".

Overview

Executive producer Russell T Davies revived Doctor Who after a 16-year absence with the premiere of "Rose" in 2005. Following the BBC's announcement of a second series being commissioned, the story broke that Christopher Eccleston, who played the titular Ninth Doctor, would not be returning for the second series. On 16 April 2005, the BBC announced that David Tennant had been selected for the role of the Tenth Doctor. His first appearance in the series was for 20 seconds following the Ninth Doctor's regeneration at the end of "The Parting of the Ways". His first full episode as the Doctor, barring an appearance in a "" during the 2005 Children in Need show, was the 2005 Christmas Special, "The Christmas Invasion". He then appeared in the 2006, 2007 and 2008 series. Rather than a traditional series run, 2009 and early 2010 featured Tennant in a series of four specials. He also guest-starred in the 2009 two-part The Sarah Jane Adventures story The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith. Tennant also appears in two animated serials The Infinite Quest and Dreamland. In 2013, Tennant reprised his role as the Doctor for the 50th anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor".

Personality

The Tenth Doctor speaks with an Estuary English accent, rather than the Lancashire dialect that the Ninth Doctor used, the Received Pronunciation of most earlier Doctors, or Tennant's natural Scottish English. David Tennant told SFX magazine in 2006 that Russell T Davies had asked him to drop his natural Scottish accent, because he felt "we'd like to not go for another obvious regional accent, because I suppose they'd done that". In a 23 December interview on BBC Radio 1, Tennant explained that a line had been scripted for the Christmas special explaining that the newly regenerated Doctor had imprinted on Rose Tyler's accent, "like a chick hatching from an egg", but the line was cut from the final episode.
The depictions of the personalities of the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors shared certain similarities e.g. both being youthful, energetic, friendly, childlike, "good boyfriend Doctors", as Steven Moffat described them and, according to Mark Gatiss "very human Doctors" when compared to other incarnations.

Appearance

The Doctor complains that his tenth incarnation is not "ginger". However, this incarnation was happy to have sideburns and to have more hair than his previous incarnation. He wears his own brown hair in various ways throughout the series: unstyled in "The Christmas Invasion", a 1950s-style quiff in "The Idiot's Lantern", and flattened forwards in "The Runaway Bride" and "The Day of the Doctor", but mainly styled it in a spiked up fashion throughout most of the series, with this style being described by friend and later one-time companion Wilfred Mott as being a, "Modern style sort of hair. All sticky-uppy". He has dark brown eyes and is perceived by most, including companions and other characters such as his future incarnation as "slim and a little bit foxy".
His costume was unveiled on 27 July 2005. He generally wears either a dark brown or a blue four-buttoned suit, a shirt and a tie, a light brown faux-suede duster coat, and different coloured pairs of Converse All-Star sneakers, depending on his suit. According to an interview on Parkinson, David Tennant and Russell T Davies got the idea for the Tenth Doctor's costume from an outfit Jamie Oliver had worn on Parkinson just after Tennant had taken the role. David Tennant has commented that he would vary the combination of the buttons he fastened on his jacket in different episodes. Tennant thought the look was very geek chic.
The Doctor dons a pair of dark tortoise-shell rectangular frame glasses, an affectation borrowed from the Fifth Doctor. He also occasionally sports a pair of Red-Cyan 3D glasses, both as a joke and for practical reasons. The Tenth Doctor's costume became so popular that it has spawned numerous recreations, and has been cited by costume designer Louise Page as the costume she is most proud of from her time on Doctor Who.

Appearances

Television

The Ninth Doctor regenerated into the Tenth Doctor at the climax of the first series finale, "The Parting of the Ways"; he re-introduces himself to his companion Rose Tyler in a called "Born Again". In the 2005 Christmas special, "The Christmas Invasion", he is in a comatose state for most of the episode, following his regeneration. After eventually waking up, he defeats the alien Sycorax and saves Earth; in the process, he loses a hand, which regrows owing to his recent regeneration. Amongst other second series adventures, The Doctor and Rose save Queen Victoria from a werewolf in "Tooth and Claw", resulting in the creation of the anti-alien Torchwood Institute. In "School Reunion", The Doctor shares an adventure with two former companions, journalist Sarah Jane Smith and robot dog K9, before taking on Rose's boyfriend Mickey as a second companion. The TARDIS slips through a crack in the Time Vortex causing them to be stranded on a parallel Earth, where they encounter the Cybermen in the episode, "Rise of the Cybermen". After saving parallel Earth, Mickey decides to stay and help stop the Cybermen around the world despite The Doctor telling him he can never return in "The Age of Steel". He and Rose become stranded on a planet orbiting around a black hole in "The Impossible Planet" where The Beast is waiting, with a Torchwood team. While there, in "The Satan Pit", The Beast taunts The Doctor and Rose about Rose's death. During the 2012 Olympic Games in "Fear Her", The Doctor picks up the Olympic flame and carries it to the end, starting the Games. The series finale takes place in contemporary London, where modern-day Torchwood is the scene for war between the evil alien Daleks and parallel-universe cyborgs the Cybermen; saving the Earth costs The Doctor Rose, who is stranded in a parallel universe, along with Mickey and her mother, in "Doomsday".
In the closing scene of "Doomsday", a mysterious bride called Donna Noble inexplicably appears in his TARDIS. The 2006 Christmas special, "The Runaway Bride" sees The Doctor and bride-to-be Donna save the Earth; Donna saves The Doctor from going too far in his revenge against the alien Racnoss and declines his offer of companionship. In the third series, The Doctor takes on Martha Jones as his new companion. Together, they witness the mysterious Face of Boe prophecy to The Doctor that "you are not alone", in "Gridlock". They are rejoined by former companion Captain Jack Harkness in a three-episode adventure beginning with "Utopia", where presumed-deceased archenemy and fellow Time Lord The Master becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and enslaves The Doctor for one year. Martha's plan sees The Doctor infused with the world's psychic energies, and he easily defeats The Master, who seemingly refuses to regenerate and dies in The Doctor's arms. Following this adventure, in the dénouement of series finale "Last of the Time Lords", Jack and Martha both depart the TARDIS, and The Doctor is shocked to see what appears to be the RMS Titanic crash into it. Set moments prior, another Children in Need mini-episode, "Time Crash", features a brief encounter between Tennant's Tenth Doctor and the Fifth Doctor, containing meta-humour surrounding the fact David Tennant had watched and loved Davison's Doctor as a child. In parallel with the third series, Tennant lends his voice to the animated serial The Infinite Quest.
The 2007 Christmas special, "Voyage of the Damned", sees The Doctor and a waitress, Astrid Peth, save the Earth from the impending crash of the starship Titanic; Astrid dies heroically, and The Doctor encounters Wilfred Mott for the first time. In the premiere episode of the fourth series, "Partners in Crime", The Doctor is reunited with Donna Noble, Wilfred's granddaughter, who becomes his regular companion. In "Planet of the Ood", the alien Ood prophesy the Tenth Doctor's demise. Martha accompanies them for three episodes; in two, entitled "The Sontaran Stratagem" and "The Poison Sky", The Doctor battles the war-hungry alien Sontarans, and last of which sees him become a father of sorts to Jenny, in "The Doctor's Daughter". He meets archaeologist and future companion River Song for the first time from his perspective in the two-parter, "Silence in the Library" and "Forest of the Dead"; she dies, but he stores her consciousness to a hard drive to live on forever, after accepting that one day she will come to mean a lot to him. After Donna encounters Rose in a parallel world in "Turn Left", The Doctor realises that Rose's words to Donna — "Bad Wolf" — must herald the end of the world. In finale episodes "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End", The Doctor and Donna reunite with former companions Rose, Sarah Jane, Martha, Jack, and Mickey to save the universe from Davros, the creator of the Daleks. The Doctor was fatally wounded during the event, aborting in mid-regeneration to maintain his current self while transferring the residual energies in his previously severed hand. This resulted in a metacrisis that created a half-human Doctor who would live with Rose in the parallel universe while imbuing Donna with a Time Lord's mind, forcing The Doctor to erase his companion's memories to save her life and leaving her with her family. A Doctor Who Prom mini-episode, "Music of the Spheres", features a lone Doctor composing his musical Ode to the Universe before being interrupted by the small alien Graske.
In lieu of a 2009 series, Tennant appears as the Tenth Doctor, without a regular companion, in several special episodes over the course of 2008 and 2009, the last of which aired on New Year's Day, 2010. In the Christmas special "The Next Doctor", The Doctor mistakenly believes he has met a later incarnation of himself in an amnesiac Londoner, with whom he saves Victorian-era London. "Planet of the Dead" features jewel thief Lady Christina de Souza as The Doctor's one-off companion, and The Doctor is presented with a prophecy of his imminent death, with a woman telling him 'he will knock four times'. Tennant makes a crossover appearance in a The Sarah Jane Adventures two-parter, "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith", in which a powerful being known as The Trickster also alludes to the Tenth Doctor's impending demise. In "The Waters of Mars", The Doctor tries to alter history and avert the death of one-off companion Adelaide Brooke ; when she commits suicide, he begins to feel his mortality weigh down upon him. In the animated serial Dreamland, The Doctor is joined by two one-off companions in 1950s Roswell, New Mexico. In the two-part send-off "The End of Time", The Doctor confronts the Ood about their original prophecy and is led to contemporary Earth where, in the second part, the again-resurrected Master restores Gallifrey and the Time Lords to existence, although he redeems himself by assisting The Doctor to defeat Time Lord President Rassilon before disappearing alongside the other Time Lords. However, Wilfred finds himself trapped in a chamber that is about to be flooded with radiation. He knocks on the glass door four times, fulfilling the prophecy of the Doctor's death. The Doctor sacrifices his life to save Wilfred, exposing himself to 500,000 rads of deadly radiation and triggering his regeneration. He holds it back and is shown visiting several companions. He gives Donna a winning lottery ticket on her wedding day, buying it with money he borrowed from her late father in the past, saves Martha and Mickey from a Sontaran sniper, saves Sarah Jane's son Luke from a car, introduces Jack to a romantic interest, and finally, just before regenerating into the Eleventh Doctor, he informs Rose in 2005 that she is about to have a "great year". As he begins regenerating once in the TARDIS, his last words are "I don't want to go".
Tennant reprised the role for the show's 50th anniversary in "The Day of the Doctor", appearing alongside the Eleventh Doctor and a forgotten past incarnation, the War Doctor, played by John Hurt. In the special, in which we view scenes from the Tenth Doctor's time taking place between "The Waters of Mars" and "The End of Time", The Doctor unintentionally marries Queen Elizabeth I while luring out a Zygon. He helps the other Doctors in saving Gallifrey at the Time War's conclusion, but will not retain memories of the event. His final words are, once again "I don't want to go" after being told that he will die on Trenzalore.

Spoofs

David Tennant has also made numerous cameo appearances as The Doctor outside of Doctor Who, frequently in spoof appearances. Singer and actress Charlotte Church spoofs Doctor Who alongside an actor playing the Tenth Doctor in her own The Charlotte Church Show. In an appearance on The Friday Night Project in 2007, Tennant plays a female companion to the Tenth Doctor on the Pink Planet, where they are confronted by the alien Gay Lord. When the show became The Sunday Night Project, Catherine Tate appeared in a skit playing the Tenth Doctor. Tennant starred opposite Catherine Tate in her own The Catherine Tate Show special as Lauren Cooper's teacher Mr. Logan, who Cooper teases for his resemblance to The Doctor; eventually, he reveals himself to be the Tenth Doctor and shrinks Cooper into a 5" Rose Tyler action figure. In the final episode of Extras, a brief scene shows The Doctor and an unidentified Wren companion attacked by Schlong, a slug-like alien played by Andy Millman. The Tenth Doctor is also featured in political satire; in a 2007 episode of Dead Ringers, when faced by the question of Gordon Brown's succession, Tony Blair regenerates into David Tennant after promising "New Labour is all about renewal", later vowing 100 more years of power. Tennant modifies his first line in "The Parting of the Ways", to "New Labour, that's weird" and proceeds to address the public in a Tony Blair impression resembling Culshaw's. Tennant also guest-voiced his incarnation of The Doctor in an episode of Family Guy. He later played the role in full costume for a sketch with The Muppets in a live performance at The O2 Arena in 2018.

Literature

As the face of the Doctor Who franchise for 2005–2010, the Tenth Doctor appears extensively in Doctor Who spin-off media; in the majority of these series, the character simply takes after the place of the Ninth Doctor, and in turn is replaced by the Eleventh following the debut of the 2010 series. Novels featuring the Tenth Doctor are all published by BBC Books. The character appears in New Series Adventures novels spanning from The Stone Rose to The Krillitane Storm. A number Decide Your Destiny novels were published between July 2007 and March 2008, as well as five books published as a part of Quick Reads Initiative, a government-sponsored adult literacy project. BBC Children's Books released their own 10-part series, The Darksmith Legacy, supported by an interactive tie-in website. Additionally, short stories are frequently published in Doctor Who Magazine, The Doctor Who Storybook series, the BBC website, and annuals and suchlike; one example is the story "The Lodger" by Gareth Roberts, later adapted into an Eleventh Doctor television episode of the same name. National newspapers The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times have each published one Christmas-themed Tenth Doctor short story. Additionally, the Tenth Doctor appears in a novelisation of his The Sarah Jane Adventures crossover appearance. The Tenth Doctor also appears extensively in comic books, replacing the Ninth Doctor in those published in Doctor Who Magazine, and the younger-audience Doctor Who Adventures and . American comic book publisher initially published a 2008 Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones miniseries between January and June 2006. This was later followed by a truly ongoing Tenth Doctor series in July 2009, set during the 2008–2010 specials and lasting sixteen issues before relaunching with the Eleventh Doctor. In stories set after "Journey's End", The Doctor is accompanied by numerous one-off and recurring companions who do not feature in the television series.
Outside of Doctor Who literature, penciller Georges Jeanty includes a cameo of the Tenth Doctor and Rose in a panel of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight story arc "No Future for You". The Tenth Doctor was utilised in the American satirical political cartoon strip, This Modern World. Arriving in 2003, the Doctor hints to Sparky the Wonder Penguin that in five years' time, the next President could be a black man, with the middle name Hussein, whose father was a Muslim. The character also appeared in a story arc of the webcomic PvP, in which character Brent Sienna hallucinates materialising in the TARDIS.

Audio drama

As is the case with the BBC Books novels, the Tenth Doctor replaced the Ninth as the face of the Doctor Who audiobook series, beginning with Pest Control in May 2008 and ending with Dead Air in March 2010. The majority are read by David Tennant, save one read by Michelle Ryan and two by Catherine Tate. A number of Tenth Doctor novels were also abridged to become audiobooks, again featuring David Tennant's voice alongside other cast members such as Freema Agyeman and television series guest stars such as Georgia Moffett, Reggie Yates and Anthony Head; the last of these scheduled is Judgement of the Judoon, for December 2010.
On 26 October 2015, it was announced Tennant would reprise his role for, a series of full-cast audio stories produced by Big Finish Productions. The first volume of stories had the reprise of Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, consisting of Technophobia, Time Reaver, and Death and the Queen, which were released in May 2016. The second volume of stories saw Billie Piper reprise her role as Rose Tyler alongside Tennant, the stories consisted of Infamy of the Zaross, Sword of the Chevalier, and Cold Vengeance, which were released in November 2017. A third volume has been announced for release in May 2019, once again with Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, in the stories No Place, One Mile Down and The Creeping Death.
A series of audiobooks featuring the Tenth Doctor was also produced by Big Finish, The Tenth Doctor Chronicles. The first volume, read by Jacob Dudman, was released in April 2018, with the stories The Taste of Death, Backtrack, Wild Pastures and Last Chance.
Other characters from the tenth doctor era have reprised their roles for Big Finish. In 2018, Camille Coduri narrated two short trips set on Pete's World with the Metacrisis Doctor: The Siege of Big Ben and Flight into Hull. The characters of Jenny and Lady Christina de Souza received their own boxsets in 2018 as well as "The Tales of New Earth". Beginning in 2016, Big Finish have also released two boxsets titled "The Churchill Years" in which Winston Churchill encountered the Tenth Doctor.

Video games

The Tenth Doctor appears alongside his fellow incarnations as a playable character in the 2015 toys-to-life crossover game LEGO Dimensions. He is shown wearing his duster coat and brown pinstripe suit. The character uses voice lines taken from the BBC archives. His TARDIS interior is a location that players can explore.
He, as well as the Thirteenth Doctor, appears as a playable character that users could purchase for free from the Avatar Shop within Roblox for a limited time, which also featured the Pting as a shoulder accessory, and the TARDIS in the form of a backpack. These items were added as part of a sponsorship between the Roblox Corporation and the BBC to promote the series finale of Series 12.

Reception

The Tenth Doctor has been extremely popular amongst the Doctor Who fandom. He received critical acclaim for his complexity and humanity and is considered one of the greatest incarnations of the character. The BBC went as far as to consider ending the show in 2010, thinking it would fail without Tennant. In 2006, readers of Doctor Who Magazine voted Tennant's Doctor "Best Doctor" over perennial favourite Tom Baker. He also won the National Television Awards award for Most Popular Actor in 2006 and 2007, and the award for Outstanding Drama Performance in 2008 and 2010. In a poll conducted by Radio Times in March 2007, Tennant's Doctor was named the "coolest character on television". IGN ranked the Tenth Doctor the best Doctor in 2011. In 2013, IGN again ranked Tennant as the best Doctor, along with the Daily Mail and Radio Times, with Billie Piper also being voted as best companion. Users of Plusnet also voted David Tennant as the best Doctor in 2013. Users of DoctorWhoTV also voted Tennant as 'Ultimate Doctor' in 2013. Voters on Digital Spy also rated Tennant as the greatest Doctor in 2013 with 50.05% of the votes, and again in 2015. A poll in November 2013 revealed that Tennant was considered the greatest Doctor with 33% of the vote, a clear 10% lead over 2nd place, Tom Baker.
Readers of The Telegraph voted Tennant as the greatest actor to play the Doctor in 2014.
Jenna Coleman, who played Clara Oswald and appeared with Tennant in "The Day of the Doctor", said that he was her favourite Doctor, along with Tom Baker. Writer Terry Pratchett considered Tennant's portrayal to be the greatest Doctor.
In 2016, Digital Spy readers voted the Tenth Doctor the best TV character of the 21st century.