Which One?

Dear Wal,

I've been struggling with a very important question for the past week or two. Which Doctor do I like best, the Tenth or the Eleventh? Now don't come after me with teeth bared and claws unsheathed over this one, this is just my honest opinion. I know how wild you crazy fans can get. First of all, let me tell you the story of how I was introduced to Doctor Who.
My mother used to watch Doctor Who when she was in college. She watched mostly episodes with the Fourth Doctor (The guy with the giant scarf. He is the fourth, isn't he? I'm such a noob.) Every once and a while she would start talking about it, and I didn't really understand what this whole business of Doctor Who was. One day Dad was flipping channels and he came to a channel with an add on for the new Doctor Who with Matt Smith, and she got super excited. I thought it looked pretty cool too. So I decided to find this show for her on Netflix for Mother's Day (One of my few great ideas for gifts. But that's a rant for another date.) and so we started watching it. Unfortunately, I didn't understand how the whole regeneration business worked and we ended up starting with the Ninth Doctor. Ew. It took me a while, but I finally figured out that season five was the one we needed to be watching. It was awesome. A great place to start watching Doctor Who. Matt Smith was ridiculously brilliant as the Doctor.
A while later, just before season six came out on Netflix, I met someone at school who was completely obsessed with the Tenth Doctor. I was a little bit more informed about how Doctor Who works at that point, so I decided to go back and watch all the episodes with David Tennant. I was obsessed enough to watch all the Ninth Doctor episodes as well, which meant I wasn't completely in the dark as to who Jack and Rose were. It wasn't half bad, but by the end I was glad it was over.
Let me tell you something about me and obsessions with fictional characters. When I start to like a character or a series of books or a TV show or whatever I go all out. I don't just watch all the super popular stuff. I watch absolutely everything I can get my hands on. I've seen all the Batman movies from the ninties. Twice. I've seen Batman: The Animated Series at least twice all the way through, Batman Beyond at least twice and Justice League and Justice League Unlimited at least three times. Not to mention the comic books, most of which that I own I've read at least three times or more depending on the book. I couldn't bring myself to watch the Adam West show though. Anyway, the point is that naturally I was going to watch or read everything Doctor Who I could get my hands on. Hence why my reading list of late has been dominated by Doctor Who books.
I'm getting sidetracked. After I got deeper into the David Tennant episodes, I started to like him as the Doctor almost more than I like Matt Smith. I tried to get Mom into those episodes as well but it didn't work. Partly because she has a job now and partly because she considers him a decent Doctor but not nearly as good as Matt Smith. I do have to agree that Matt Smith is a much better actor, but there are other factors. For one thing, the Tenth Doctor seems so much easier to connect with. I know that this isn't how I should be describing the Doctor, but he seems so much more human. I think we see a lot more of how the Doctor feels about what he does, and about the Time War in particular, with David Tennant as the Doctor. The episodes with the Tenth Doctor were much more concerned with his personal conflict and focused more on Earth. With the Eleventh you see a lot more of other civilizations and less of just saving Earth from aliens, and all of the highly complicated wibbly wobbly timey whimey stuff is completely brilliant. I have composed a chart comparing the two so I don't ramble on for another three hours. Here:

	Tenth	Eleventh
Story	Tends to repeat-a lot of saving Earth from aliens (but it’s still pretty good). Much more focus on the lives of companions-hence the parallel universe where Rose’s dad wasn’t dead, Dona’s and Martha’s families. There are a couple of episodes that were just fantastic, like the one with the Weeping Angels, the one with a world without the Doctor, and the one where he visited Midnight.	Tons of paradoxes, complicated storylines and more concerned with preserving the flow of time than with saving the world from aliens. I still can’t wrap my head around how the Doctor and River are moving in opposite directions. He’s a Time Lord with a machine that can go anywhere in time and space, you can do so much more with that than just save the world from aliens.
Companions	Deeper characters, definitely. We never see anything about Amy and Rory’s families (Although that’s not necessarily the focus with those two.) They just ran off with the Doctor, they don’t even seem to miss home or consider ever going home.	Amy and Rory are brilliant, though. They don’t have complicated love lives, and Amy never really honestly fell for the Doctor (As Rose and Martha and Jack did. *sigh*) which, in my opinion, is a plus. He doesn’t even think on the same level as a human. It just doesn’t work. Another thing, just two companions is much easier to keep track of than the five the Tenth Doctor had, not to mention their families.
Doctor	As I said before, much easier to connect with than the Eleventh. He’s more serious at times, which can be a relief after the Eleventh’s silliness, but he seems contradictory at others. He destroys more than he saves, and he knows it and it deeply affects him. I don’t see as much of that in the Eleventh Doctor.	Matt Smith is undoubtedly a better actor, and a very believable Doctor, but as I said before we don’t get as much insight into what he thinks. However, I like that he spends more like fixing time than screwing it up as the Tenth did several times (Mars). When he’s saving the Earth or any civilization, he honestly tries to do it without destroying lives. (With the exception of the Daleks and the space whale.) The Eleventh Doctor is also completely hysterical. Much more funny and more memorable (as far as quirky moments go) than the Tenth.

Tada.

/endrant

P.S. I wrote this yesterday. Aren't I efficient.