Why I May Not Be Enjoying Eleven's Run So Far on Doctor Who

  Hey, guys. I'm still... misplaced at the moment. But, I managed to hijack borrow a computer to type this post I had sitting around. So, I copied from the "Notes" app of my iPod onto Blogger from my device, and revised it here. But enough behind-the-scenes...

I really like Doctor Who. I loved Nine (Christopher Eccleston's Doctor). I enjoyed Ten (David Tennant's Doctor), at least until "Waters of Mars" (Series 3 was a tad boring, too, at least until Captain Jack and The Master came in/returned).

  However, I'm not enjoying Eleven's (Matt Smith's) run as much. I recently finished "Cold Blood", but I'm just not as excited as I thought I would be to see the next episodes.

  I'm not sure why, so let's try and pinpoint the reason.

 1. Strong Opening

  I loved Eleven's first full episode, "The Eleventh Hour". It was a fun episode full of great moments. A great introduction. But everything else has felt, well, not as amazing as that first episode. The episode I was closest to liking so far was "Vampires of Venice".  It's almost as if the first was too good, in my opinion. So it set the bar too high for me.

 2. High Expectations

   I'm rather fond of Steven Moffat as a TV writer. After all, he wrote my all-time favorite Doctor Who episode(s): "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances" (AKA the episodes where I fell in love with Nine). And my favorite episode in series one of Sherlock, "A Study in Pink".  So, when I learned he was head writer for series 5-beyond of Doctor Who, I was pretty excited to get to series 5.

  But so far, none of his episodes (save "Eleventh Hour") have been fantastic. I know, Moffat's not a perfect writer and can't please everyone.  For example, the episode he wrote for Sherlock series two, "A Scandal in Belgravia", was probably my least favorite of that series (mostly because I wasn't 100% sold on his version of Irene Adler. But my least favorite episode of all is "The Blind Banker", just for the record).

I've just come to expect more from him, that's all.

 3. Eleven Isn't What I Expected

   I was expecting Eleven to be more, well, wacky. I was expecting more: "Bowties are cool!" and "Geronimo!" out of him. I guess I thought he'd be more of an adult child, if you know what I mean. More like the beginning of "Eleventh Hour". He's not as funny as I thought he was going to be.

   I was also expecting to looooove Eleven. After all, his first episode went well. Same with Ten. I liked his first episode(s). But in the end, Nine was still my favorite. It's like one of those times where you hear about someone and people say you're going to love this guy, so you think they're going to be awesome, and you build them up in your mind as being fantastic. Then you finally meet them in real life, and they just sort of fall flat of what you were hoping they'd be like. (Not to say you can't hear about people and they turn out to be as awesome as they hoped, I'm just saying sometimes this could happen.)

 Ironically, I thought I wouldn't like Nine, he didn't give me much of a good impression initially. Then I warmed up to him, juuuust in time for him to regenerate. *sigh* The TARDIS isn't always bigger in another Doctor's run...

 Funny, the Doctor I thought would be my favorite is not, and the one I thought I'd like the least is the one I love the most. Strange, how life works.

4. Spoilers

    Pintrest is a wonderful thing. It's introduced me (in a way) to people with the same interests as me, it's what got me to check out Sherlock and Doctor Who in the first place, and has piqued my interest in other things, like Supernatural. (Great, just what you guys need, for me to become a "SuperWhoLockian", or I guess it'd be "SuperAvengerWhoLockian", if that's considered official...)

  Unfortunately, as most people are further ahead in the show than I, a lot of the stuff pinned has spoilers for the show. Specifically, where I am right now.

   I can't just not follow or look at the pins, because there's no spoiler warnings (unless it's a video). And there's stuff on the Doctor Who boards about the other Doctors, and I don't want to miss out on them (especially stuff showing my man...erm...Time Lord Nine love). It is a quandary. (Oh, it's nice that this is probably the worst source of angst for me...)

   Besides, I'm curious in nature. It's my downfall in places like TV Tropes with those hidden, blocked-out spoilers.   Anyway, in short, I know who River is. I know who Amy chooses. I know about Rory's... Erm... "reputation".  Some of the ooh and ah is gone. Granted, spoilers aren't always bad (I knew about REICHENBACH! *scare chord* *thunder clap*, but I still nearly cried when I saw the end), but maybe the many Eleven spoilers have taken my enjoyment away.

   So, what's to blame for my dissatisfaction? Is it the bar set by the first episode? Hey, it kept me watching, didn't it? My standards for Moffat? Nobody's perfect. My expectations for Eleven? Eh, gave me something to look forward to, and incentive to power though "rough patches" ... Spoilers? No, the people can't always be careful to make sure everyone isn't spoiled. And guess after a certain period of time, it's shouldn't be so bad to spoil something that's been out there for a while. I just don't know. 

  But who knows? Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. I'm only almost done with series five. It could get better.

  Whovians of the Internet (especially the ones who've had similar thoughts to mine)! Tell me, does it get better? Please let me know!