Doctor Wholmes Part the Third: The Alien

     You reach a certain point in your life where you find that you just can't relate to people anymore. At least, you do if your mind works like the subjects we've been taking a look at over the past weeks. This manifests in the most alien of incarnations that we've looked at so far: The Eleventh Doctor and Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock. On the surface, these two are nothing alike, but deep down, the similarities are striking.

     The Eleventh Doctor is a wild-man. From his manic first moments of crashing into the garden of a seven year old and demanding wide and varied foodstuff to standing down an array of assorted alien warships with a (questionably silly) shouty speech, he's non-stop movement. All gangly limbs running and jumping and licking things like a gazelle on meth marking its territory against things much bigger and meaner than him.

     Cumberlock, on the other hand, is quiet and reserved, unless he's giving a (sometimes deserved) withering tongue-lashing. He's dignified and poised (except when he's a homeless junkie). He's sane and rational (except when he's throwing a man out of a window four times for threatening a friend). He's calm and collected (except when she's concerned). Maybe those differences weren't so broad after all.

     But the main crux of my argument here is that despite all their differences, these two are the most similar of the comparisons we've looked at so far because they are so different from baseline normality. They come across as different and alien. Their minds work in a way that is utterly unfathomable to most, and they express themselves in such a way that they would stand out in nearly any crowd. They say inappropriate things not to get a rise out of people but because that seems like the logical thing to say at that particular point.

     And, while the Doctor has let people think he was dead before, Eleven is the first to fake his death on such a scale that the Universe forgot who he was (resulting in that incredibly cheesy Dalek chant of "DOCTOR WHO? DOCTOR WHO?"). Considering the Sherlocks we've looked at before, Cumberlock definitely has the more spectacular death scene, especially considering I barely remembered RDJ's at the tail end of A Game of Shadows. And finally, the Doctor gets a proper mystery in Clara Oswald. The type of mystery that Holmes would tear his hair out at.

Next time..?