I Love When Eleven Gets Sort of Dark

Like his entire face just drops, and instead of looking like a young man, he finally looks like he’s had 1200 years of shit piling up, and he can’t take any more. His voice gets loud and he slurs words together, and when he yells he leans in close. Then at the end of his spiel the Doctor’s voice turns soft, and he gives that terrifying warning look. 

It’s really magnificent. 

Now I know that ostensibly Eleven is a darker Doctor, and is meant to be darker than the previous ones. He should be, because of what he’s gone through and because he’s one step closer to being the Valeyard (I know it was only a possibility, but after so long with fandom believing in that as a future, it would be a mistake not to do it. Plus, that’s an awesome villain.) I can point you to ways that he is darker and colder than the other Doctors, too, but for the most part it’s not acknowledged on the show as being dark.

It bugs me, though, when people try to make out that Eleven is a darker, scarier figure than other Doctors, when he’s a fluffbunny. Fear is relative of course, but the concept that his actions are darker in a dangerous way…well…let’s have a look at what Eleven’s done so far in his time:

He’s…

Gotten an alien fugitive who took hostages arrested.

Almost killed a space whale to protect a ship full of humans (but did NOT, and he was hardly cold and calculating about it, he threw a tantrum).

Let the Daleks go free instead of risking Earth.

Accidentally gotten a psychotic monster killed.

(He rewrites someone’s entire life in front of them, but remember this is portrayed 100% as a good thing)

Allowed humanity to fight back against the Silence and made certain the Silence were aware of this and could flee instead of being destroyed.

(He lets a little child wander and die in the streets of America because he doesn’t feel like going there, but again this is portrayed as 100% reasonable and good)

Rid his TARDIS of an evil creature that devoured Time Lords and their TARDISes.

Staged a bloodless take over of a military stronghold to rescue his companion (which then failed miserably and got many of his people killed, but that was not his intent)

Erased an alternate timeline of his companion to preserve the original timeline of his companion (It’s actually backward and horrific since old!Amy is the original and young!Amy is the alternate timeline, but again the text misidentifies which one is the original and therefore doesn’t address it properly)

Redirected missiles to kill a man who committed genocide, killed in front of him, shot his friends, and tried to kidnap and enslave a human being and friend. Which, as it happened, was also the only feasible way to keep the missiles from blowing up the ship full of the last dinosaurs.

Threatened a man guilty of horrific war crimes with a gun to save a town full of people after being provoked and compared to him. I do not grasp why people (including Amy) honestly think this was so horrible.

He then proceeds to:

Reverse killing a third of the population

Do nothing (not even try) to the monsters of the week, even when his companions are killed.

Erase a villain’s memories to make him a good boy again.

In comparison Nine:

Stands and watches a person slowly explode and ‘die’ even though this person is pleading for him to save them and his own companion is standing next to him begging him to stop.

Is complacent in the apparent genocide of the Gelth by Gwenyth.

Fires missiles at the Slitheen family, killing all but one of them.

Tortures a Dalek and has to be talked down from blowing it away even after it’s reformed.

Has to be convinced by Rose to go and save Jack’s life even though Jack is the one who prevents the bomb from dropping on all of them.

Builds and then very nearly fires off a delta wave that would wipe out every single human on Earth (He doesn’t, but he does build a machine and get right up to when he has to press the button before he can’t do it. Eleven is still just starting to program what he has to do to kill the space whale because he’s busy with his tantrum, and barely hesitates at all to allow the Daleks to go when the Earth is threatened.)

Ten:

Kills an entire army of Cybermen by making everyone inside the suits self aware again and able to feel the excruciating pain of the conversion, until their emotional and physical anguish is so intense they explode die. (Compare to Eleven, where Craig—not him—feels love for his son so intense he just overloads their systems and causes a feedback blah blah kills them with love)

Sends millions of Cybermen and Daleks and even some partially-converted Cybermen into the void, which is like a living hell and a fate worse than death

Commits genocide by drowning Queen Racnoss and all her children

Locks the entire Family into eternal living hells to give them ‘immortality’

Commits genocide on the Pyrovilles by killing everyone in Pompeii and has to be convinced to go back and save anyone at all, even the friends he just made

Erases his companion’s memory over her begging him not to.

Allows most people on the Mars base to die before he finally intervenes because he goes completely insane, at which point he’s willing to break time and screw over Earth’s future because he’s on a power trip, rather than because he wants to save people (He calls them ‘little people’)

Condemns his entire species to war and death again, even when faced directly with his mother, and therefore the fate of everyone he loves in the war.

This is obviously skipping all the times he just kills his monster of the day as a matter of course, obviously…but  then again, more often Eleven doesn’t kill the monster of the week than Nine and Ten did. This is why people get the mistaken impression that the Doctor ‘doesn’t kill’, so the Silence, Solomon and the other Doctor were all such terribly over the top things, when previous Doctors, even pre-Time War versions, would do most if not all of the things he does. (I’ll tell you right now, they’d all handle Solomon the same way)

So, tell me again how Eleven is the darkest Doctor? Is it because he throws tantrums like a five year old when he doesn’t get his way, and he’s nasty and rude to his companions like a child without a mother around because none of them know him well enough to know when he steps out of line he needs to be smacked? For all of his foot stomping outbursts when things don’t go his way, he’s done far less dark and deadly things than Ten and Nine did in the same or more time as them.

And the scarier part about Ten and Nine? When you’ve really awoken the Oncoming Storm you don’t get a heads-up with grand-standing and shouting and giddy introspection about the sensation of rage, you get silence. No raging, no ranting and raving, no egotistical remarks about who can play them, just quiet efficiency that leaves you with a horrific fate far longer lasting and far worse than death.