As a child, I loved Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor, to the point where I (like much of the audience) vehemently rejected his replacement, Colin Baker. The fact that the creators INTENDED for us to hate the new Doctor so they could manufacture a redemption arc and make viewers love Sixie worked against them, and it was many years before the character could be rehabilitated. Having heard what the actor can do with good writing, I wonder what might have been back in ’84, leading to today’s Gallifreyan query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) likes to root for the unappreciated, because that’s where the really weird, fun stories are, asking: Which personage in all of pop culture is the most underrated character of all?
3 Comments
That’s a tough one. There are several i feel aren’t appreciated or given a chance but let’s go with Lando Calrissian this time. When you think about it, he had very important role but is almost never seen as prominent as other main characters from Star Wars.
I was thinking about the question and forgot that it was posted with a Doctor pic, because the character that came to my mind is Donna. I don’t think I was influenced!
She is one of my favorite companions because her time with the Doc wasn’t based on romance and it wasn’t a father-child relationship. Or a partnership. They were really best friends. I liked her because she reminded that Doctor of the meaning of humanity and the choices we make within our precepts of morality.
And she was f-ing funny!
Not sure why she doesn’t get much love other than she was a middle-aged woman. I like different.
There’s a segment of the population that got hooked on the romantic nature of the 9/Rose and quasi-romantic nature of the 10/Martha pairings, and Donna was the first major attempt to change that dynamic, leading people to like her less, as she inverts the formula that they may not even realize that they are responding to…