While I was traumatized by Tom Baker’s Doctor in childhood, I’ve happily sampled the introduction of each new Doctor since the Christopher Eccleston reboot in 2005. After two or three episodes, I tend to tune out, checking back in at key or particularly acclaimed installments. For those keeping score, David Tennant’s Doctor was the one I watched the most of in total, though I stuck with Matt Smith for the longest in the beginning .
So there’s no question that Russell T. Davies, who previously ran the franchise from 2005 to 2010, is introducing Gatwa’s Doctor in a way that’s designed to be welcoming to a demographic who fell in love with the actor on, without catering to viewers for whom the idea of a Scottish-Rwandan Doctor is somehow a bridge too far.
This is a character who has been traveling across time and space for countless generations, and one valid interpretation is to have him express familiarity and exhaustion with every new oddity that crosses his path. But my own preference is something closer to the sheer joy that Gatwa’s Doctor evinces at everything fresh, and the amazement with which he greets every cosmic coincidence.