My dear friend Sara asked me in the previous post what I felt about the appointment (ooooo that sounds official) of Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor. 

And it occured to me that I actually feel quite vanilla about the whole thing.  I think if Mr Eijofor has been given the role, I would have been quite excited.  If it had been James McAvoy, I would have been over moon.  But that’s about it.  Too be honest, other than the actual excitement of finding out who will be the next Doctor, with all the resultant tooing and froing and Betfair odds, I don’t really have an opinion on the decision to choose a 26 year old with strange, slightly intimidating looking hair.

Of course, the fact that I don’t much have an opinion isn’t going to stop me from wittering about it.

Grant Watson, also in the previous post, makes the interesting point that this is a very dull decision.  That Matt Smith is basically in terms of looks a David Tennant clone.  (That’s not exactly what Grant said, but that’s the sentiment.  But Grant please correct me if I’m wrong here).  Lawrence Miles says much the same thing on his blog.  But Lawrence ties into his Steven Moffat just wants to be liked theory (a theory which assumes that Lawrence knowing anything about Moffat’s psychology other than that one time at the tavern where he treated him a bit bad… or something). 

Anyway, on the surface I think that Grant and Lawrence are right.  Spot on actually.  Matt Smith doesn’t seem like a brave or even vaguely interesting choice.

Watching Doctor Who Confidential though gives an indication of why they might have chosen him.  Yes, he’s young, but he this weird, slightly off kilter sort of face, with deep set eyes and strange hair.  And when he talks, his face jumps in all sorts of interesting directions. He also has very expressive fingers, oddly enough, reminding me a bit of McGoohan in the Prisoner.  OK, that’s a pretty long bow, but just have a look at them fingers.

I also think that we have to give Moffat and co just a little bit of credit.  If someone older had come in and blown them away, I’m sure… no I’m positive that they would have chosen that person.  Forget what Lawrence says about Moffat wanting to be liked.  I mean, of course he wants to be liked, no-one who works in the creative field wants to be reviled and hated (well, unless their a little insane or can bankroll their own projects).  But I also think that he has some creative integrity and I bet if you had a one on one chat with the Moff man, a private conversation and totally off the record, and you asked him, "Hey Steven, did you choose him to keep the fangirls happy."  Or, "Hey Steven, you did because you were scared of changing RTD’s template to radically", I bet he would turn to you and say – "No, he really was the best actor for the role."  And unless Andrew Pixley proves me wrong in twenty years, I stand by that.

Only time will tell if Matt Smith has the chops to do the job.  I hope he does.  But if he doesn’t and the shows popularity disappears down a sink hole… well then we’ll know that Lawrence was wrong and it was quite a brave and made decision after all.