{"id":1107,"date":"2009-01-04T02:13:10","date_gmt":"2009-01-04T07:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/?p=1107"},"modified":"2009-01-04T02:13:10","modified_gmt":"2009-01-04T07:13:10","slug":"meet-matt-the-new-meatermnew-doctor-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/2009\/01\/04\/meet-matt-the-new-meatermnew-doctor-who\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Matt, the new meat&#8230;erm&#8230;new Doctor Who."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/stills\/who\/smatt-mith.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/stills\/who\/matt-smith.jpg\" alt=\"Matt Smith IS the Doctor...whether you like it...or not!\" class=alignright \/><\/a>A few folks seem to be waiting for me to weigh in on the choice of relatively unknwon 26-year-old actor Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor, and I kinda wanted to wait until I&#8217;d seen the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/logbook\/doctor-who\/\">Doctor Who<\/a> Confidential episode that introduced him.  (By the way, if this episode of DWC doesn&#8217;t pull that particular show&#8217;s highest rating ever, I&#8217;m going to eat the nearest hat.)  The interview with him on DWC doesn&#8217;t seem to have inspired much confidence in some quarters, but I really don&#8217;t think that interview is going to be the best display of what this guy&#8217;s bringing to the part.  Look at it this way: after going for a dark-horse, one-in-a-zillion audition for one of the most prominent character roles in television, anywhere, you suddenly get the call that you&#8217;ve got the part, you get to sign a boatload of contracts (probably including more NDAs than anyone this side of a military covert op), and then you get rushed into a deer-in-the-headlights interview for inclusion in a mini-documentary that&#8217;s being slammed together at high speed so the BBC can beat the tabloids at their own game.<\/p>\n<p>I wouldn&#8217;t expect to see Matt Smith &#8211; or anyone else for that matter &#8211; at his best in such a scenario.  I do, however, remember seeing him in The Ruby In The Smoke with Billie Piper, and looking back, it may or may not comfort anyone reading this to know that I felt like he &#8220;read&#8221; older on the screen than he actually was when that was made.  The same may also be true with Doctor Who.  We just don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n<p>One very significant thing that I took away from the DWC episode is that Steven Moffat (the new showrunner, for whom this is a dream job that I don&#8217;t think he&#8217;s likely to rush into and screw up) talked at great length about wanting to hire a 40-something actor, and yet he and the other new producer were knocked out by this guy&#8217;s audition.  If Smith&#8217;s audition performance was impressive enough to make an avowed Doctor Who traditionalist like Moffat do an about-face on his casting plans, then isn&#8217;t anyone the <em>least<\/em> bit curious as to what Smith might be bringing to the table?  I&#8217;m curious to say the least.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a really bold move for the BBC to reveal Smith over a year before we&#8217;re going to actually see him in the role; of course, Doctor Who fandom being Doctor Who fandom, this means there are more than 12 months worth of &#8220;emo Crispin Glover Doctor&#8221; gags to look forward to.  Yay?  If I had a dime for every time I was uncertain about a new incoming Doctor, or a Doctor I hadn&#8217;t seen before&#8230;I&#8217;d now officially have a dollar.<\/p>\n<p>On a more humorous note, while I was bracing myself for the day when Doctor Who would be younger than me, I wasn&#8217;t quite ready for <em>10 years<\/em> younger than me &#8211; when I was watching <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/logbook\/doctor-who\/the-five-doctors\/\">The Five Doctors<\/a><\/em>, the eleventh Doctor was in diapers.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of guys in diapers, Evan spent so much time sleeping today that I was worried.  I suppose he&#8217;s recovering from the fight his body had to put up against whatever stomach bug bit him on Thursday, but&#8230;yeah.  I admit, I&#8217;d creep into his room and check to make sure he was still breathing.  He was sleeping <em>that much<\/em>.  Hopefully it&#8217;s all uphill from here; it&#8217;s not like him to be lethargic, and he was in a pissy mood all day &#8211; I could tell he was bothered by the absence of his own energy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few folks seem to be waiting for me to weigh in on the choice of relatively unknwon 26-year-old actor Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor, and I kinda wanted to wait until I&#8217;d seen the Doctor Who Confidential episode that introduced him. (By the way, if this episode of DWC doesn&#8217;t pull that particular show&#8217;s highest rating ever, I&#8217;m going to eat the nearest hat.) The interview with him on DWC doesn&#8217;t seem to have inspired much confidence in some quarters, but I really don&#8217;t think that interview is going to be the best display of what this guy&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-and-baby-makes-three","category-television-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}