Anyone who griped about Ten/Rose drama should have hated [The Angels Take Manhattan], but from preliminary reactions I’ve seen, they love it. The Doctor was absolutely shameful here, turning into a simpering, self-absorbed man-child refusing to respect his companion’s wishes. Contrast this to how Ten behaved when he lost his companions. When he lost Rose in “Doomsday”, a woman he was actually in love with, he went catatonic a while, then found a way to contact her to give her one last farewell, and was very mature and realistic about it. When Martha left him to be with her family and basically told him to go fuck himself, he was okay with that. He didn’t put up a fight, he didn’t argue, he didn’t whine, he simply respected her decision and kept to himself how much it hurt him. When he lost Donna, he very pointedly tried to deflect any discussion about how he felt about it because he knew that making sure Donna was safe was much more important than softening his emotional blow.
And that is, in my opinion, why Ten is always going to be superior to Eleven, because the very fundamental core of Ten’s character, to his very end, was that the needs of normal, everyday people outweighed his own and he would suffer any loss, take on any burden to ensure they were safe. To Eleven, everyday people are an audience. They exist to tell him he’s amazing and clever and to be impressed with him, and if they don’t, he has no need for them. Ten worked towards solutions ideal for everyone else, Eleven worked towards solutions ideal for himself.
patches365: The Angels Take Manhattan (X)