Okay, I hadn’t bothered to look him up until I read these, but when I saw his face I immediately went “oh hell yeah! Angus Flint is the next doctor!” And yeah, he was freaking awesome in Local Hero as well.
LawMonkey:
So, synthesizing this thread: Matt Smith was the best of doctors, Matt Smith was the worst of doctors, Moffat is the greatest of showrunners, Moffat is the most despicable of showrunners, Tennant shall never be eclipsed, Tennant is a blot on the franchise whom we must strive to forget, RTD was the savior of the franchise, RTD was a Dalek-obsessed nitwit–in short, the Moffat-Smith era is so much like the RTD-Tennant era that some of its noisiest authorities insist on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. Yes?
Yeah, pretty much, except in my experience you could plug any Doctor, any showrunner, and any regular villain into those slots.
What_Exit:
Also a really good actor can often make bad material better. Peter O’Toole made a career of this. Alan Arkin and many excellent character actors have all done the same. I feel Tennant made the most of any script handed to him. He could make the weaker episode he had good. But don’t go by Doctor Who for him, check him out in The Decoy Bride or Fright Night . The first is a piece of fluff that the 2 stars made a very nice movie out and the second should have sucked based on the script and plot but Tennant and Colin Farrell made it a fun movie at least.
Fright Night is a terrific watch just for Tennant: he’s obviously decided to play his character as the anti-Doctor, and so you get Ten if he were a camp, foul-mouthed, chain-smoking, cowardly drunk. FUCK OFF YOU COW!