Take it away, Keith. . .

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I am now going say something that violates all the rules of the Internet and blogging.

I have no opinion on the casting of Matt Smith as the Doctor.

Yes, he’s replacing the incredibly popular David Tennant. That doesn’t concern me in the least, because he’s the eleventh guy to play the part (thirteenth, if you want to toss Peter Cushing and Richard E. Grant in there). There is nobody on television more replaceable than whoever is playing the Doctor. The folks who have been saying that Tennant was impossible to follow in 2008 were the same ones saying that Christopher Eccleston was impossible to follow in 2005. They were wrong in 2005 and they were wrong in 2008.

As for Smith himself, I must again violate a sacred Internet tenet by saying I’m going to reserve judgment until I, y’know, see him in the role. Or any role, as the only work of Smith’s I’ve seen is The Ruby and the Smoke, and I have no recollection of it, due to TR&TS having bored the living crap out of me.

But Smith impressed Steven Moffat, which is really what counts. A hallmark of Moffat’s prior productions, Coupling and Jekyll, has been picture-perfect casting. Also, there are few writers who have shown the care and understanding of Doctor Who that Moffat has, and this goes all the way back to 1996 when he had a brilliant short story called “Continuity Errors” in one of Virgin’s Who anthologies, Decalog 3: Consequences (which also had a story by some hack named DeCandido—wonder whatever happened to him?), through to The Curse of the Fatal Death and his magnificent episodes of the 21st-century TV show. I think we should give him a little credit based on what he’s done to date.

Yes, in his pictures Smith looks like an emo teenager, but that’s a big look right now, and one that has probably gotten him work. Besides which, if you look at some of David Tennant’s publicity photos from 2005, he looks like a mod poofter. In fact, take the suit off, and Tennant still looks like a mod poofter. But he’s been a most excellent Doctor, despite being the second-youngest person to take on the role.

Well, third-youngest now. And that’s another thing. The last time there was a hue and cry over how will they ever replace this incredibly popular Doctor who’s won over the hearts and minds of so many fans (Tom Baker), he was replaced with the youngest person ever to play the role (Peter Davison). It’s tradition! Or, uh, something.

In any event, I’m going to not play by the rules and refuse to form an opinion until it’s an informed opinion.

So there.

Keith R.A. DeCandido is the best-selling author of many many many novels, comic books, short stories, novellas, eBooks, and nonfiction in a wide variety of media universes, most recently the novel Star Trek: A Singular Destiny and the ongoing Farscape comic book from BOOM! Studios. He was the first native-born American citizen to write official Doctor Who prose fiction with his short story “UNITed We Fall” in 1996’s Decalog 3: Consequences, which also had a short story by some guy named Moffat (wonder whatever happened to him?), and his story “Life from Lifelessness” was in the Short Trips anthology Destination Prague; he also edited the 2008 Short Trips anthology The Quality of Leadership. Read his regular ramblings at kradical.livejournal.com.

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Post from: SF Universe