'Even so, the contracting of a new lead actor means more than a facelift for the protagonist.'

Philip Purser-Hallard celebrates the eleventh coming of Doctor Who

By the time you read this, the media furore over the recent announcement of Matt Smith’s casting as the youngest ever Doctor Who may have started to die down.

The Doctor’s ever flexible persona has, of course, been vital to the series’ adaptability over the past few generations.

It’s allowed it not simply to outlast the failing health of its original star, but to survive for over 45 years (give or take the odd 16-year hiatus).

Even so, the contracting of a new lead actor means more than a facelift for the protagonist.

Other media heroes – James Bond and Sherlock Holmes spring to mind – have been played by multiple actors, but still have well established, clearly defined personalities within which any new star is obliged to work. The Doctor is a less limiting figure.

His overarching character can be summed up in a handful of lines.

He’s a scientist of great intellect; a traveller (though sometimes forcibly grounded) who delights in exploration.

He’s an idealist, taking the side of the underdog against authority; but also self-righteous and fallible, putting his loyalty to his friends ahead of weightier moral imperatives.

Within these broad parameters, each recasting has brought a radical revision of the character. William Hartnell’s crusty paterfamilias had been through many mutations before emerging four Christmases ago as David Tennant’s fast-talking charmer.

The Hero with Eleven Faces

This protean quality puts the Doctor in the company, not of Holmes and 007, but of older, more malleable figures – the heroes, not of modern genre media, but of myth and folklore.

His wisdom (especially in his more venerable incarnations) is reminiscent of Merlin’s, while his revolutionary politics recall those of Robin Hood.

It’s hardly a coincidence that the BBC’s recent stabs at duplicating the Doctor’s success in the Saturday-evening timeslot have involved (sadly inept) revamps of both these earlier British folk-heroes.

The Doctor may not quite be a hero with a thousand faces, but he’s become an archetype nonetheless: a recurring pattern, a template capable of expressing itself in many, widely divergent ways.

Even as myth, the Doctor’s precise significance is difficult to pin down. His clever, often non-violent use of wits to defeat his enemies suggests Trickster gods such as Anansi or Coyote.

In his perennial wandering, he could be seen as equivalent to the Flying Dutchman or Ulysses. Since I’m writing this piece for Surefish, I’ll be making a different identification.

The Eleventh Coming

Perhaps the ultimate mythic archetype is that of the dying and resurrected god – a deity such as Osiris, Adonis or Baldur, originally associated with the fertility of the land, whose annually recapitulated death signifies barrenness and grief, and whose subsequent revival brings a resurgence of life.

Most Christians believe that a version of this myth was played out, once at least, in historical reality.

Unlike other archetypal figures who are reinterpreted from generation to generation, the Doctor’s various rebirths occur before our eyes.

He dies repeatedly, usually sacrificing his life to save the world, and is then born anew in a transfigured body.

The actual identity of the actor is largely irrelevant, of course – unless they happen, like Christopher Eccleston, to have previously played the Son of God.

As yet Matt Smith’s brief CV contains no such credit.

The ‘Who’s the new Doctor Who?’ ritual may not occur yearly, like the ancient fertility rites which these pagan myths commemorate, nor our own celebrations of Christmas and Easter, but it’s a recognisable and recurring process nonetheless.

The fact that it’s one in which the media take such reliable and keen interests suggests that the ancient impulses which created these myths may not be altogether dead.

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