RECASTAWAYS - FROM TENNANT'S DOCTOR TO SMITH'S

A bad habit picked up by the Eleventh

When he was hanging around with Stan Laurel.....

Because of the carolers and the purveyors of "Christmasey" products, the Tenth Incarnation of the Doctor knew what season it was; he just didn't know the year.  When he asked a young lad as to the date, the boy thought him to be as thick as a whale omelette, but did tell him that it was Christmas, 1851.

We never saw the Doctor physically make contact with the boy, but it may have happened.

The moment of contact probably occurred in the edit between his first sprint upon hearing Rosita's cry for the Doctor to the shot where he was running down the alleyway.  The lad had wandered off just before that but had to be in the general vicinity in which the Doctor was running.  So he would have been in the way and thus the Doctor had to nudge him aside.

I'm going to make the claim that the unnamed lad would grow up to be Jim Taylor, a character from the TV adaptation of Philip Pullman's "Ruby In The Smoke".

This period mystery marked the TV debut of Matt Smith (the main reason I find this choice irresistable), who would go on to become the Eleventh Incarnation of the Doctor.

Allowances do have to be made for the age of Jim Taylor, however.  First off, we can dismiss his age in BookWorld, where he was but a lad of thirteen - Smith just can't pull that off.  But the lad in 1851 is about 8 to ten years old which would mean that Smith would have to be playing Jim a few years older than he really was, perhaps even as much as a decade.  (That is, if the year of 1872 is the date for "Ruby In The Smoke" as it is in the book.)  At least that age could be considered pozz'ble, just pozz'ble.

One other problem does come up in making this suggestion.  Even though allowances are made for aging when it comes to recasting, it's hard to believe that this cherubic face would one day resemble Matt Smith's.  Especially when it comes to my personal bugaboo about physical features - the nose.

(Remember what the Doctor said upon finding out he had a snout like Jim Taylor's?  "I've had worse."  Even so, it's hard to believe it would go through that much of a change.)

Have no fear, the Toobmeister is here with a splainin.  During the rampant destruction caused by the giant Cyberman (which somehow must have been covered up by the Torchwood Institute), the lad - that is, Jim Taylor - was seriously injured.  He recovered, to the point you would never have known he had been in that disaster, but he was never going to look as he did as a young boy again.

BCnU!