Worst NuWho Doctor performance

Which performances from the New Who Doctors has been their absolute worst?

Eccleston - End of the World. That bopping around. Oh God.
Tennant - Army of Ghosts. "Eww ya gonna call?" Nuff said.
Smithy - The Cybercontroller thingy in Nightmare in Silver
Capaldi - The "arguing" in Robot of Sherwood
Pisstaker - Every second

Arachnids.

/thread

I agree with Iank about Matt's performance in Nightmare in Silver. Then there was Colemen aswell - when she assumed command of the soldiers.

Eccles when he was trying to do the "funny bits" RTD gave him to do. He looked uncomfortable and just a tad like Stan Laurel at times. I genuinely felt quite sorry for the chap.

Although i love the guy, Capaldi in Heaven Sent. He was so much better than that and every other bit of shit Moffat gave him to do. I am gob smacked Capaldi chooses to defend the guy from fan criticism.

The way Shit-at-ack-er plays the role like a Kindergarden or Nursery School teacher talking down to the kids in a class when trying to encourage them or excite their interest. Great technique if you've got the Play School gig but not as the Doctor in Dr Who.

IMHO.

Maxil did you like Matt smith at all in the role?

To be honest, barring Shittiker, I actually think all the other 4 actors are just as great actors, as the first 8 actors to play the Doctor. Whatever problems I had with their eras, especially Capaldi's, I believe that they do their damn best to save a script with their performances. But much like the past actors, there's at least one moment where they don't do their best:
Eccleston: The Long Game. I don't know if Eccleston's heart was in the script (although considering how milquetoast the story is, I don't blame him), but he just seems so bored throughout his performance.
Tennant: Yeah, I'm more of a defender of Tennant than most here, but I've gotta agree with Iank, with that moment in Army of Ghosts. That was such a cringey piece of dialogue and he makes it worse.
Smith: Yeah, Nightmare In Silver is easily his worst performance, and his performance as the Cyber-Planner may be the worst out of the 4 actors.
Capaldi: Him screaming out for 'Maebh's' name in In the Forest of the Shite. So annoying, and him screaming for her multiple times makes the sequences even more aggravating.

Doctor7 wrote:Maxil did you like Matt smith at all in the role?

I did. His performance in Eleventh Hour single-handedly got me back into the show after I had become increasingly bored with Tennant and the latter half of his era.

Yep agreed he fit the role very well I really got annoyed with how the tenth doctor was handled .

Pepsi Maxil wrote:

Doctor7 wrote:Maxil did you like Matt smith at all in the role?

I did. His performance in Eleventh Hour single-handedly got me back into the show after I had become increasingly bored with Tennant and the latter half of his era.

I liked 'The Eleventh Hour', but that was Smith's finest moment in the series - he was never that good again and from 'The Beast Below' the series nose-dived. Whittaker's episodes have been so atrocious that it's tempting to look back at previous NuWho Doctors and see them in a different light and in hindsight, be a little more forgiving. Yet it was the Smith/Moffat years that really turned me off NuWho in general and after Series 5, MS was playing a gormless caricature of himself/the Doctor. For most of his tenure, I couldn't stand him or many of the episodes he appeared in ('Night Terrors' and 'Nightmare in Silver' were horrible but I could go on...). Yes, I'd much rather watch Smith than Whittaker, but that's still not good enough. Sometimes it's easy to forget just how shitty things actually were.

iank wrote:Eccleston - End of the World. That bopping around. Oh God.

stengos wrote:
Eccles when he was trying to do the "funny bits" RTD gave him to do. He looked uncomfortable and just a tad like Stan Laurel at times. I genuinely felt quite sorry for the chap.

Yes, those bits are about all I'd seriously go after him for.

iank wrote:Army of Ghosts. "Eww ya gonna call?" Nuff said.

Please, enough. Notoriously awful. Mind you, Tennant was dreadful from the get-go; "Its a fahtin' hand!", "Oooo blood-control, mlerrrr!!!" Yes, thank-you, Timmy. Next!

For my part, though, I think I'd single out Tennant’s "final confrontation" stuff; the appalling over-compensating bouncing around the scenery and chewing everything in sight at the denouement of stories like The Satan Pit and Age of Steel ( one particularly brave GBer referred to the climax of Age of Steel as “The worst am-dram performance I’ve ever seen in prime time”) . That and all the hair-pulling, eye-rolling "Oh, oh, OOHH!!!" crap. Sod it, it wasn't so much a performance as a fit.

iank wrote:The Cybercontroller thingy in Nightmare in Silver

Oh god. Again, agreed. Lord please deliver me from "Mr Clever".


Honestly, I think some of you guys overrate Smith, I really do. He was better than Tennant, yes, in as much as he was a likeable screen presence, had an actual personality to draw upon and a degree of natural eccentricity but that’s faint praise, really, as he lacked gravity and the fact that, unlike Davison, he really did seem too young for the role had a lot to do with this. His poor diction also undermined his effectiveness (the news that he needed vocal training to play Prince Phillip in The Crown to prevent him saying “Wuzz” and “Wuzzn’t” is pretty pathetic, really. Basic requirements. If your actor isn’t capable of a classical delivery then get another one. I mean, how much more did it cost them?)

That said, Moffat’s writing of the character is often so inappropriate and jarring that it makes it difficult for any actor to successfully pull it off. During the original run, in a ropey story, the Doctor’s actual character remained unaffected so one could still enjoy the portrayal. In the new series, that isn’t the case and it becomes impossible to separate the actor from the material.

Capaldi - I just lately made the error of judgement to click on a video of the final speech from Twice Upon A Time on youtube (I avoided it at the time). Strewth, its awful. Not just the writing, which I expected, but also Capaldi's performance. OTT, overly-mannered and totally unnaturalistic. Honestly, he deserves a slap for that one, but he was probably suffering from stockholm syndrome by that time.

Also, the bizarre moment when the Doctor first encounters an ice warrior in Empress of Mars, suddenly drops his scotch accent and begins speaking in RP; "This could either go very well or very bedly" made me think, "What are you doing??" Seemingly, it was yet another of those acting/directorial choices in which someone, again, delivers a line in an oddly mannered and unnaturalistic way in order to be “funny” that infests NuWho and some other current film and television, and it was clearly meant to be “funny”.

Later, on perusing GB to attempt to find an explanation for what the “joke” that I, apparently, was missing actually was, I came across a post commending Capaldi for his “channelling” of Tom Baker and then thought “Oh god, that was it, wasn’t it?” Capaldi was actually doing a crap Tom Baker impression, and it was so good I didn't even recognise it. Come on. That kind of stuff is fine in your first story, when the Doctor has just regenerated but there’s no way you should be impersonating past Doctors in your third, and final, season. But then, the twelfth Doctor never did seem to know who he was, did he?  Rather symbolic of the identity crisis the character seemed to be suffering across his three seasons, I feel.

iank wrote:Pisstaker - Every second

Yes. That is all.

ClockworkOcean wrote:Arachnids

"Oooo, tea at Yaz's!!"

Fuck off.

UncleDeadly wrote:Later, on perusing GB to attempt to find an explanation for what the “joke” that I, apparently, was missing actually was, I came across a post commending Capaldi for his “channelling” of Tom Baker and then thought “Oh god, that was it, wasn’t it?” Capaldi was actually doing a crap Tom Baker impression, and it was so good I didn't even recognise it. Come on. That kind of stuff is fine in your first story, when the Doctor has just regenerated but there’s no way you should be impersonating past Doctors in your third, and final, season. But then, the twelfth Doctor never did seem to know who he was, did he?  Rather symbolic of the identity crisis the character seemed to be suffering across his three seasons, I feel.

Really? Capaldi was chanellling Tom Baker? I don't doubt you but I watched all of Baker in 2018 and all of Capaldi earlier this year and i never noticed that once. Colour me stupid.

I did however think Cappers may have been channeling Pertwee - specifically the costume and the hair in his final season.

Well, I didn't notice it either, until it was pointed out to me, so that's not surprising. The point is, it was a jarringly awful line delivery, in isolation, that's only exacerbated by the explanation for it.

Kaijuko wrote:MS was playing a gormless caricature of himself/the Doctor.

Yep.

Eccles in 'Rose' - particularly introducing himself.

Tennant's ooh-ing was annoying, but yelling "HOW MANY!!!!!?????" in 'New Earth' ruined a potentially strong scene.

Matt Smith - 'The Rings Of Akhaten' and the "Come ON then!" scene.

Peter Capaldi - the Robin Hood cell scene is bad but the viking 'Noggin the Nog' scene is perhaps worse!

Eccleston- He had some woeful bits in End of the World and World War III. Then again I think Laurence Olivier would've struggled to get anything decent out of that shite.

Tennant- For all that he was an annoying, shouty, adolescent version of the Doctor, for the most part I could always believe him as that character.

But I think it was The Idiot's Lantern where his performance was enough to make me go "oh fuck this!"

Smith- Actually nothing much comes to mind. I thought he played that character well. The faults lay more in the writing than his performance. At a push I'd say Curse of the Black Spot, and only because I didn't feel he was bringing his full game to that one.

iank wrote:Capaldi - The "arguing" in Robot of Sherwood

Oh God yes! That scene dashed my hopes in Capaldi very early. It was a scene where I just stopped believing in him as the Doctor, and just saw Malcolm Tucker in space.

Tennant in every episode he's in.

Do you need to ask?  Eccelston, Tennant, Smith, and Capaldi all had their numerous low points but nothing quite as bad as those we've seen from the silly, giddy Yorkshire girl - Doctor Who reimagined as a hyperactive dinner lady.