History AlternativeCharacterInterpretation / DoctorWho

** Remember that in ''Doomsday'' when the Doctor says coming to the Parallel World would destroy both worlds the reaction of the 'compassionate' Companion is 'So?' Then in Journey's End Rose reveals the Dimension Cannon was built so she could come back. Her dialogue reveals it was built before the threat. So Rose was still going to potentially destroy both Worlds for a chance to see the Doctor. For this she gets her own human Doctor. Is she a massive KarmaHoudini?

** This video by Welshy outlines this interpretation of Rose. http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/teamt/welshy/welshys-top-tens/34767-welshy-top-ten-rose-moments There is also this shorter video. http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/teamt/welshy/my-problem-with/28965-my-problem-with-rose-doctor-who
** There is also this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW_xiQtGqHk

* Lest we begin to think that this is limited to the new series, the classic series also brings in alternative character viewpoints. Take, for example, the Seventh Doctor. The conventional view of the Seventh Doctor -- and certainly the one which carried primarily into the [[Franchise/DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse expanded universe]] -- is that he's TheChessmaster, a ruthless ManipulativeBastard who knows all the moves and has the winning gambit planned out before the game's even started, and who's willing to ruthlessly play his companions like pawns. However, if you watch his television episodes closely, you see that for a supposedly hyper-sharp chessmaster he seems to screw up a hell of a lot. Things that he didn't anticipate keep happening, meaning he has to compensate for them. People make moves he didn't expect and hasn't planned for. Sometimes it looks like the villain actually has won, until the Doctor essentially pulls a rabbit out of a hat to save the day. A convincing case can be made that the Seventh Doctor actually ''sucks'' at being a Chessmaster, but happens to be [[XanatosSpeedChess excellent at improvisation]] and for whatever reason is determined to make it ''look'' like he knew what he was doing all along.

** He's said repeatedly in both series that he left Gallifrey because he didn't approve of how the Time Lords treated time and lesser species. Yet he shows an awful lot of those Time Lord traits in early serials until he spends enough time stuck with the human intruders on his ship that he learns to like them and softens up. In later serials and in the new series, he seems to revert back to a bit of the old Time Lord FantasticRacism when he's in a ''really'' foul mood. So, did he always have the high ideals he shows (or claims) in the later seasons, or merely high ideals by Time Lord standards? Did he have them, then lose sight of them because Susan couldn't challenge him when he crossed the line, as other companions would down the line? Or does he just claim higher ideals and reasons to keep everyone's trust and assuage his own guilt over the violence that follows him wherever he goes? When he [[spoiler:excommunicates John Hurt from Doctor-dom]], is he ashamed of [[spoiler:his actions]], or merely hiding from them, pretending they don't exist so he can keep claiming to be the better man?

* "The End of Time" adds a bit of this for TheMaster, who up to that point had mostly come across as a CardCarryingVillain with extra FoeYay, with TheReveal that [[spoiler:the drumming that had been driving him insane throughout his new series appearances was implanted by the other Time Lords as a GambitRoulette to get themselves out of the Time War.]] Whether you think this is a StableTimeLoop or not (i.e., [[spoiler:the drums were the reason for his insanity in the old series as well]]) can change him from a borderline CompleteMonster who happens to be a victim to a WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds. [[spoiler:Though either way, the Time Lords were ''bastards'' for doing that to him.]]

### The trial seems to be unfolding on a future Gallifrey (though not specifically ''on'' the planet, since the 'courtroom' is a space station), possibly set during the much-alluded-to-but-never-seen Time War - thus explaining the [[FutureMeScaresMe Valeyard]], [[HaveWeMetYet Mel]], and footage from adventures the Doctor hasn't experienced yet. And really, committing genocide of the Vervoids, which the Doctor is ''ostensibly'' on trial for, is a much less punishable crime than [[FridgeBrilliance genocide over the Time Lords]] (which he also did).

** Phil Sandifer theorized on his TARDIS Eruditorum blog that "Trial of a Time Lord" did not merely place the Sixth Doctor on trial, but the ''entire show'' on trial, with the Valeyard representing the threat of cancellation. On a less downbeat note, the trial seems to be taking place on a future Gallifrey - possibly set during the much-alluded-but-never-seen Time War - thus explaining the [[FutureMeScaresMe Valeyard]], [[HaveWeMetYet Mel]], and footage from adventures the Doctor hasn't experienced yet. The rest of his theories are similarly metafictional:

### The classic "[[ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale constellation]] of Kasterborous" flub is the result of the Time Lords mapping their astronomy according to how ''Earth'' views their planet. This rapidly led to EpilepticTrees regarding humans being the secret precursors to the Time Lords. Wibbly wobbly, etc.

### That the Daleks are bent on a HostileShowTakeover, continually crashing preexisting stories, which explains why every Dalek 'reveal' is treated as a twist/cliffhanger: They keep trying to wreck the show. On the other hand, were it not for the episode "The Daleks", the show would not have survived very long; This explains the Doctor's hesitance to prevent their creation in "Genesis of the Daleks", as doing so would erase him as well. Similarly, when the Daleks pop up in Totter's Lane at a chronological point before the show's premiere, they are trying to stop ''Doctor Who'' from ever going to air.

** Phil Sandifer theorized on his TARDIS Eruditorum blog that "Trial of a Time Lord" did not merely place the Sixth Doctor on trial, but the ''entire show'' on trial, with the Valeyard representing the threat of cancellation. On a less cynical (and metafictional) scale, the trial seems to be taking place on a future Gallifrey - possibly set during the much-alluded-but-never-seen Time War -- thus explaining the [[FutureMeScaresMe Valeyard]], Mel, and footage from adventures the Doctor hasn't experienced yet. The rest of his theories are similarly metafictional:

** Phil Sandifer theorized on his TARDIS Eruditorum blog that "Trial of a Time Lord" did not merely place the Sixth Doctor on trial, but the ''entire show'' on trial, with the Valeyard representing the threat of cancellation. The rest of his theories are similarly metafictional:

### The comments section invites additional theories, including that the Fourth Doctor's rebelliousness fell out of favor during Thatcher's three terms; hence, the peaceful, authority-loving Fifth Doctor was conceived as a reaction to that. The Sixth Doctor ushered in a return to the maverick hero; however, due to the negative connotations still lingering around conservative Britain, his behavior is that of a [[AnarchyIsChaos complete nutcase]].

** And is his first companion, Rose Tyler. A book dumb but brilliant girl who was loving and caring, and helped the Doctor recover from the pain of his war, but with human flaws? Or a BitchInSheepsClothing who cares nothing about her friends and family, cannot take responsibility and is unable to cope without the Doctor? Or a mix of both?
*** Remember that in ''Doomsday'' when the Doctor says coming to the Parallel World would destroy both worlds the reaction of the 'compassionate' Companion is 'So?' Then in Journey's End Rose reveals the Dimension Cannon was built so she could come back. Her dialogue reveals it was built before the threat. So Rose was still going to potentially destroy both Worlds for a chance to see the Doctor. For this she gets her own human Doctor. Is she a massive KarmaHoudini?

** Which in turn results in disaster for the UK for years to come, as first the Master and then the Children of Earth government succeed her. (Apparently by Eleven's time, ItGotBetter.)

* Lest we begin to think that this is limited to the new series, the classic series also brings in alternative character viewpoints. Take, for example, the Seventh Doctor. The conventional view of the Seventh Doctor -- and certainly the one which carried primarily into the [[DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse expanded universe]] -- is that he's TheChessmaster, a ruthless ManipulativeBastard who knows all the moves and has the winning gambit planned out before the game's even started, and who's willing to ruthlessly play his companions like pawns. However, if you watch his television episodes closely, you see that for a supposedly hyper-sharp chessmaster he seems to screw up a hell of a lot. Things that he didn't anticipate keep happening, meaning he has to compensate for them. People make moves he didn't expect and hasn't planned for. Sometimes it looks like the villain actually has won, until the Doctor essentially pulls a rabbit out of a hat to save the day. A convincing case can be made that the Seventh Doctor actually ''sucks'' at being a Chessmaster, but happens to be [[XanatosSpeedChess excellent at improvisation]] and for whatever reason is determined to make it ''look'' like he knew what he was doing all along.

** With [[DavidTennant Ten]] in particular, the question is, "Does he mean well?" Many are convinced he's being intentionally written as an egotistical {{Jerkass}} who demands the attention of others and refuses to give anything in return, running roughshod over people's lives and never feeling the need to explain himself or ask permission.
** Ten's regeneration scene: one of the most moving and emotional scenes in the franchise's history as he desperately hangs on for as long as possible, or an act of spite against his next incarnation, forcing him to be born in a crashing TARDIS? Or just scared out of his wits of dying?
** Perhaps the Tenth Doctor's strident pacifism is a form of detached arrogance fitting with his god-complex. He pompously berates the "little" lifeforms for using violence (frequently in self-defence) because, as a Time Lord, he has no way of seeing things from their perspective or at their level (or at least no way that sticks after he reopens the fob watch). There's a hint supporting this theory in the episode "The Christmas Invasion" from 2005: Ten berates the Prime Minister for destroying a Sycorax ship. The Prime Minister measuredly responds by telling him that Earth needs to defend itself because the Doctor is "not always [there]". Ten petulantly rejects this and sets events in motion to force the Prime Minister from office.
*** And despite his pompous attitude, Ten is ''not'' the pacifist he sometimes claims to be. He can get quite nasty. Either by losing his temper or worse, while telling you how sorry he is.
** Ninth Doctor: Emotionally unstable, battle-scarred Woobie LastOfHisKind? Or egotistical, violent KnightTemplar?
*** And is his first companion, Rose Tyler. A book dumb but brilliant girl who was loving and caring, and helped the Doctor recover from the pain of his war, but with human flaws? Or a BitchInSheepsClothing who cares nothing about her friends and family, cannot take responsibility and is unable to cope without the Doctor? Or a mix of both?
** Is the Eleventh Doctor more like an old man with a child's personality and a young man's body, or a child with an old man's wisdom and memories and a young man's body? And for that matter, how much of his eccentric, playful demeanor and silly mannerisms is a pasted-on StepfordSmiler coping mechanism and how much is just his natural state?
** InUniverse, the Eleventh Doctor episode "The Pandorica Opens" gives us an idea of how the Doctor is seen by species he doesn't save every week - particularly the AlwaysChaoticEvil ones, but possibly also the no-worse-than-humans ones as well: [[spoiler: he's a world-ending demon who must be shut away for all eternity before he destroys the entire universe]].

** On the companion side of things, Amy Pond has been getting a lot of this. Is she a quirky girl/young woman who never quite fit in and has found someone like her in the Doctor? Or a somewhat unbalanced, obsessive woman who can't relate to anybody easily because she's just spent ''that long'' devoting her life to waiting for the Doctor? How much of this is directly because of her abandonment by the Doctor, and how much is just her?
*** And then there's the issue of how she had a psychic parasite living in her house and actively absorbing her memories from her formative years through to adulthood...
*** Then there's the fact that [[spoiler:the crack in time in her house ''deleted her parents from history'', but in such a way that Amy would still exist.]] Just ''thinking'' about that kind of temporal anomaly is enough to muddle someone's brain. Imagine ''living'' it.
**** On top of that, [[spoiler: the crack kept pouring the Universe through her dreams.]] The Doctor says that affected her memory; did it affect anything else?
*** And now she [[spoiler: remembers all sorts of complicated events that never really happened; what would ''that'' do to your mind?]]
**** And others can't help but interpret her as a [[BitchInSheepsClothing horrible]] [[BrokenBird person]] due to that time she tried to seduce the Doctor the night before her wedding ''with her wedding dress hanging on the wardrobe.'' And does she really deserve Rory's UndyingLoyalty when it takes near-death experiences for her to show him affection? She had a terrible case of cold feet about the wedding and at the end of the series is pretty open to kissing the Doctor in front of him. She can also been seen as having an attachment disorder.
***** Then on top of that, the show throws the possibility out there it was pure adrenaline and not in character for Amy. And this brings us to Rory- how much does he actually like his relationship with the openly-flirty Amy? Is he just willing to put up with it because he loves her ''that much'', or does he not mind much as long as it stays at the flirting level? In general, series 5 is... ''debatable''.
****** Also, does Rory's love for Amy border on LovingAShadow? She's (on the surface at least) a beautiful and funny young woman, and Rory is clearly amazed by his good fortune but at times seems pretty willfully ignorant of her flaws. And then he waited 2000 years for her, and that's got to be hard to live up to.
** This carries on another of Eleven's major companions, River Song. Is she an egotistical psychopath who cares more about herself and the Doctor than doing what's good? Should she be pitied because of his twisting path and time-line which has blasted every possibility of a normal life from her? Is she too dependent on the Doctor, to the point where he's her only reason for being, and if that's true, should we interpret this as just part of her character, or [[GirlsNeedRoleModels a bad thing]]?
** There's also differing interpretations that are not so much based in morality/likability considerations. For example, fans have a wide range of differing opinions on how big an impact sharing his first post-regeneration moments with young Amelia shaped the Eleventh Doctor's character, and whether he defines himself largely by his relationship with her or whether she's just a well-loved companion like Martha or Donna.
** Lest we begin to think that this is limited to the new series, the classic series also brings in alternative character viewpoints. Take, for example, the Seventh Doctor. The conventional view of the Seventh Doctor -- and certainly the one which carried primarily into the [[DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse expanded universe]] -- is that he's TheChessmaster, a ruthless ManipulativeBastard who knows all the moves and has the winning gambit planned out before the game's even started, and who's willing to ruthlessly play his companions like pawns. However, if you watch his television episodes closely, you see that for a supposedly hyper-sharp chessmaster he seems to screw up a hell of a lot. Things that he didn't anticipate keep happening, meaning he has to compensate for them. People make moves he didn't expect and hasn't planned for. Sometimes it looks like the villain actually has won, until the Doctor essentially pulls a rabbit out of a hat to save the day. A convincing case can be made that the Seventh Doctor actually ''sucks'' at being a Chessmaster, but happens to be [[XanatosSpeedChess excellent at improvisation]] and for whatever reason is determined to make it ''look'' like he knew what he was doing all along.
** Similarly, the Sixth Doctor; is he just an arrogant, pompous bully? Or is he maladjusted and riddled with psychological issues from a difficult regeneration -- including PTSD -- that he never fully manages to overcome?
** Or the First Doctor: is he condescending and prickly because he's a weary, SeenItAll old man who doesn't have patience for stupid apes and their limited minds, or because he's a rebellious young man who wants to appear mature and important and his treatment of humans is due to the fact that he simply doesn't know any better?
** The Doctor in general: is he closer to several different people who all share the same unbroken set of memories but who have entirely separate personalities, or one person with one overarching personality, whose changes in characterization between regenerations is due to different aspects of that single personality being emphasized or downplayed depending on the incarnation? Viewers who lean heavily towards the second theory tend to be rather befuddled by fans who like one incarnation but dislike another.
** "The End of Time" adds a bit of this for TheMaster, who up to that point had mostly come across as a CardCarryingVillain with extra FoeYay, with TheReveal that [[spoiler:the drumming that had been driving him insane throughout his new series appearances was implanted by the other Time Lords as a GambitRoulette to get themselves out of the Time War.]] Whether you think this is a StableTimeLoop or not (i.e., [[spoiler:the drums were the reason for his insanity in the old series as well]]) can change him from a borderline CompleteMonster who happens to be a victim to a WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds. [[spoiler:Though either way, the Time Lords were ''bastards'' for doing that to him.]]

* ''Series/DoctorWho'' is an example of Alternate Character Interpretation within a series, thanks to being portrayed by [[TheNthDoctor eleven different actors]] (in canon, anyway) and a slew of writers, directors and producers over five decades, the Doctor has received every interpretation imaginable, from eccentric wanderer, to a literal god, and everything in between. Not to mention the various speculations on the nature of the Doctor's relationship with various companions.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'' is an example of Alternate Character Interpretation within a series, thanks to being portrayed by [[TheNthDoctor eleven different actors]] (in canon, anyway) and a slew of writers, directors and producers over more than four decades, the Doctor has received every interpretation imaginable, from eccentric wanderer, to a literal god, and everything in between. Not to mention the various speculations on the nature of the Doctor's relationship with various companions.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'' is an example of Alternate Character Interpretation within a series, thanks to being portrayed by [[TheNthDoctor twelve different actors]] (in canon, anyway) and a slew of writers, directors and producers over more than four decades, the Doctor has received every interpretation imaginable, from eccentric wanderer, to a literal god, and everything in between. Not to mention the various speculations on the nature of the Doctor's relationship with various companions.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'' is an example of Alternate Character Interpretation within a series, thanks to being portrayed by [[TheNthDoctor eleven different actors]] (in canon, anyway) and a slew of writers, directors and producers over more than four decades, the Doctor has received every interpretation imaginable, from eccentric wanderer, to a literal god, and everything in between. Not to mention the various speculations on the nature of the Doctor's relationship with various companions.

*** And is his first companion, Rose Tyler. A book dumb but brilliant girl who was loving and caring, and helped the Doctor recovery from the pain of his war, but with human flaws? Or a BitchInSheepsClothing who cares nothing about her friends and family, cannot take responsibility and is unable to cope without the Doctor? Or a mix of both?

** Phil Sandifer theorized on his TARDIS Eruditorum blog that "Trial of a Time Lord" did not merely place the Sixth Doctor on trial, but the ''entire show'' on trial, with the Valeyard representing the threat of cancellation. The rest of his theories are similar metafictional:

### That the Daleks are bent on a HostileShowTakeover, continually crashing preexisting stories, which explains why every Dalek 'reveal' is treated as a twist/cliffhanger: They keep trying to wreck the show. On the other hand, were it not for the episode "The Daleks", the show would have survived very long; This explains the Doctor's hesitance to prevent their creation in "Genesis of the Daleks", as doing so would erase him as well. Similarly, when the Daleks pop up in Totter's Lane at a chronological point before the show's premiere, they are trying to stop ''Doctor Who'' from ever going to air.