Doctor Who first intrigued me with its premise of a 900 year old time travelling alien known only as The Doctor, with a police phone box for a spaceship and a penchant for pretty young English girls as companions, and I was all like "What hahahaha this sounds ridonkulous, I must witness it for myself" and then half an episode later I was hooked. It doesn't always make sense, plot holes are a-plenty, and it is sometimes the biggest ball of campy cheese to ever inhabit my TV viewing slot. But there's something that keeps me sticking to it like a sticky thing that sticks. Maybe it's the British accents. Or the pretty people. Or both.
In any case, I found myself having lost interest in David Tennant's final season as the Tenth Doctor, and barely paid any attention to his replacement, Matt Smith. This was until I went through the Internets last week and found huuuge amounts of hate for the guy's portrayal of the Eleventh Doctor. So I decided to start watching the new season in order to make up my own mind. And then I got hooked again and I can't seem to be unhooked.
Why Matt Smith Is Awesomesauce As The Eleventh Doctor
1. Hair No, really. Look at it. Look at the hair. It's huge and shiny and ridiculous and I bet it smells of something lovely, like apricots. Yeah. Apricots.
2. 1950s Physics professor chic.
The costume is actually a nice touch, keeping in mind that the character is supposed to be an impossibly old man in a youthful body. There's the tweed jacket and grandfathery suspenders and the bowtie, and there's sort of an essence of Doctory-ness, something of the air of an old batty professorial type that simply feels right for the first time. And I never expected to see this with Matt Smith, considering the fact that the first time I ever saw him in an interview he was wearing a plaid shirt under a striped sweater, and the initial reaction was pretty much "DIE, PRETTY ENGLISH HIPSTER BOY".
3. Hair. Dear god, the hair. It's ridiculous. It's so ridiculous it's amazing.
4. He's the Doctoriest of all Doctors I've known (excluding the Classic Who episodes, which I never got round to watching).
Christopher Eccleston's Doctor was gruff and angry and bad ass. Tennant's was manic and touchy-feely and temperamental and a huge drama queen. And I still love them both, but Matt Smith seems to operate on a completely different wavelength, and I mean that in a good way. He's everything the Doctor should rightly be ; manic and insane and funny and passionate and so undoubtedly an alien. And it helps that he is also incredibly ridiculously natural. He seems to exude the very essence of Doctorosity from his bones. He bounces and bobs and yells and pokes stuff and eats fish custard and talks to himself and walks into trees. His quirkiness never seems forced or put on, and you sometimes have to remind yourself that he's acting. Uh huh. That good.
5. Hair.
6. He's so good it's enough to make you forgive the Flying Eyeball From Space and the Venetian Fish People.
Really. Let's not get into details, but Matt is charismatic and compelling and adorable enough to have me sit through some of the dumber episodes and not feel annoyed in the slightest.
7. HAIR.
8. Mad chemistry.
Matt Smith has chemistry with everything. With children, with animals, with his comely young assistant Amy Pond, with Flying Eyeball Aliens From Space, with priests and librarians and Prime Ministers and laptops and trees and bacon and Roman centurions and Van Gogh. The chemistry, it is good.
I also like the fact that for once, the Doctor's relationship with his assistant isn't based on romantic attraction or unrequited love like it has been for most of the new series. The Doctor and Amy Pond reads more like a strange dark fairytale, with Amy as Princess and the Doctor as the archetypal Wise Old Wizard. Their relationship goes all the way back to Amy's lonely tortured childhood, and it's far more parent-daughter than anything else. And you cannot imagine how much I dig this new dynamic.
9. The Drunken Giraffe.
This move should be included in all wedding receptions. All. And preferably, everyone should be drunk, or perhaps on cake-induced sugar high. And did I mention how much I love this Doctor's interactions with children? Enough to give you the warm fuzzies for years.
10. His head may be shaped a little like a badly-baked potato or something, but hot damn. He's strangely attractive even despite that.
And yes, there's already an episode with him in nothing but a towel. The BBC, it reads my soul.
I love David Tennant, being that he was my first Doctor and all, but I do have the fickle habit of adoring each new Doctor more than the last. In any case, I think Matt is doing a terrific job, and I look forward to the next few years of his reign, and I hope he keeps awesoming all over the place.
So The Album Leaf's Malaysian gig wasn't that great (Grace, if you're reading this, you didn't miss out on anything too epic) . It wasn't half bad, but it wasn't that great. As Sue Fyenn pointed out on the drive back home, that sense of post-gig euphoria was completely missing ; that urge to run to your computer and play the band's albums over and over again, trying to relive every note and nuance of the live experience.
The lights were terribly pretty, but there was very little crowd interaction save for some mumbled thank yous and a little bit of banter while waiting for a drum sample glitch to be sorted out. However, drummer Tim Reece was the single most epic creature of epicness I've ever witnessed. The guy was playing over ridiculously complicated drum samples most of the time and he never. Missed. A. Beat. I could barely take my eyes off him, and I don't mean that in a perverted way at all. You win at life, Tim Reece. You win at life. Violinist Matthew Resovich was a mad musical beast armed with loop pedals up to his knees, and sounded absolutely gorgeous. The bearded mastermind Jimmy LaValle chose to station himself at the far end of the stage, meaning I had to crane my neck a little to see him, and everytime I did my brain sort of went "Woah Jesus is playing keyboards in front of me". Because, you know. The guy looks like a very hip Cherry Cola-swigging Jesus.
See? (Cherry Cola not pictured).
The band was even nice enough to set up an autograph session after the gig, but we were a little too exhausted and bummed out to stay. It was perhaps a case of overly high expectations but we certainly weren't as blown away as we had expected to be. In any case their (or should i say his?) new album A Chorus Of Storytellersis about 50-ish minutes of very pretty electronic noise which is polite enough not to distract you from doing important things like assignments, so do give it a try.
But where The Album Leaf disappointed, the Scandinavians once again proved the true value of their Awesome. I went to bed on Tuesday night feeling rather meh and woke up on Wednesday to find that one of my most favouritest people on the planet had released a 5-track EP without so much as a word of warning.
I love surprise musics, and this itty bitty collection of 5 songs is just what I need to keep me content until Mr. Matsson releases his next album. Which should ideally happen tomorrow. Do yourselves a favour, peasants, and let this wonderful wonderful man -scraggly beard and all- into your lives.
Oh Kristian, our babies are going to be so awesome and Swedish. We'll go to Ikea and pick out furniture names for them and then sit around drinking green tea and then you can sing the telephone directory at me.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go write a 1500 word essay on why Lenin was actually a pretty swell dude.
