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Post by sherlock on Jul 19, 2018 17:32:41 GMT
A long-running debate. The show is called Doctor Who, so it seems self-explanatory that it be the Doctor. However 'Doctor Who' is itself a question-one asked by the companions. Therefore is it their perspective the show focuses on?
Who is the lead?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2018 17:44:51 GMT
Perspective is an interesting one .I think that Doctor Who is reinvigorated when he sees the universe through the eyes of a companion but Doctor Who is the lead.
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Post by constonks on Jul 19, 2018 18:00:33 GMT
I think it really depends on the story. For instance, Rose is absolutely the lead in Rose, but the Doctor is the lead in Boom Town. Other times it's hard to say who has the A-plot and who has the B.
Although I'd say over the 55 years, there have probably been more stories where the Doctor is the lead.
Heck, there are stories with no companion at all (The Deadly Assassin, Valhalla, Dark Horizons...) - and stories where neither the Doctor or the companion is the main protagonist (Blink, Who Killed Kennedy, The Flywheel Revolution...).
So yeah, I'd say it's a case by case basis, but both are absolutely important. Just depends on the story you want to tell.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2018 18:00:46 GMT
It honeatly depends which era but usually its 50/50. Some cases itll be more in the companions favour seeing the doctor through their perspective like ace and clara whilst sometimes its more the doctors show ala 12 and bill and 4 and leela. Cases like ten and donna and four and Romana are probably the best tho as theres seemed more balance giving each protagonist a place in the spotlight
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Post by charlesuirdhein on Jul 19, 2018 18:04:07 GMT
The Doctor is the lead. Having a show with someone else's perspective doesn't make that person the lead.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2018 18:05:06 GMT
Perspective is an interesting one .I think that Doctor Who is reinvigorated when he sees the universe through the eyes of a companion but Doctor Who is the lead. I'd go with this. To misquote the Sixth Doctor 'There have been many companions, but only one me!' I like that characters like Clara, Rose, Bill etc have their story, but their story is finite, whereas the Doctor's goes on. So yes, for me, the Doctor is very much the lead.
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Post by newt5996 on Jul 19, 2018 19:11:41 GMT
I’d argue that the lead changes from episode to episode as unlike a movie where you kind of have to have one protagonist, each episode is essentially its own story so we’ll get episode where the lead is the Doctor, the companion, both, or occasionally neither.
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Post by barnabaslives on Jul 19, 2018 19:25:11 GMT
I think The Doctor is the lead because that's the title role and the returning character, although the companions are nearly as important and there's room for stories are that are more focused on them, just as there's room for the occasional story without a regular companion.
I think the New Series has probably lost sight of this a few times and put too much focus on companions, which probably invites a lot of investment in someone who isn't sticking around for the long haul. I'd have been as happy if the last ten TV companions where all versions of Romana, but the show doesn't seem to work that way.
You can even have a companion as dynamic as Donna and it's wonderful, but going as far as Amy doing opening voice-overs as if the show were actually called Amy's Imaginary Friend, or having every character that pops up have some extraordinary connection with Amy, that's when I sort of stop and say, "Wait, whose show is this supposed to be again?" :-)
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2018 19:27:49 GMT
It's Doctor Who; the character of 'The Doctor' - or 'Doctor Who' if you prefer - is the leading role by definition. Seeing stories through the perspective of the companion, or any other character, doesn't make that the leading role in the show itself.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2018 19:55:29 GMT
The Doctor is the lead role, the companion is the audience surrogate, it’s really not difficult.
In Torchwood, Jack is the main character, but the audience follows Gwen as the audience surrogate character.
In Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, Coulson is the main character, but the audience follows Skye/Daisy- she is the audience surrogate.
Just because the plot of a series may begin to revolve around the audience surrogate after an amount of time, it doesn’t make them the lead character. The audience surrogate is never the first person credited. The audience surrogate is never the biggest face on the poster. Don’t conflate narrative focus with top billing. It’s not the same thing.
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shutupbanks
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There’s a horror movie called Alien? That’s really offensive. No wonder everyone keeps invading you.
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Post by shutupbanks on Jul 19, 2018 22:14:41 GMT
I'd argue that the Doctor is the lead and always has been. However, in this modern age where viewing television has become a complex task more akin to reading a really long book, it makes sense to have the lead character be a part of an ensemble. If you look at the evolution of Star Trek, the Classic series featured Kirk and his two co-stars Spock and McCoy with several supporting characters. As the movies developed from that series the co-stars began to take more part in the stories which reached a peak in 3 and 4 where they were contributing as much to the story - almost - as Kirk, Spock and McCoy. This led to TNG where there was a lead - Picard - but an equally important ensemble of characters who had just as much development and backstory as he did. Follow this through to DS9 and Voyager in which Sisko and Janeway were nominally the main characters by virtue of their command positions but were not the main focus of the series.
Or look at Buffy The Vampire Slayer: she's the main character but there are times when other characters play a larger part than she does. It doesn't invalidate her role as main/ title character, it just reinforces the other characters.
Doctor Who is still Doctor Who. But the supporting character - the co-lead who also has their name in the credits as a main character - also has a big part to play in the success of the show. If Doctor Who has changed focus on its characters - and I'd argue that the role of companion is still essentially the same as it ever was - I'd argue that it's because the nature of television has changed.
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Post by omega on Jul 19, 2018 22:24:41 GMT
I'd say the Doctor and the companions are co-leads. Ideally they'll both be influencing different threads of the story, having a distinct role in events or their own emotional journeys. It's common for them to be split up in order to tackle different strands of the narrative. The dynamic can be different, but both characters are equally important. Notably stories with no companions tend to have one main strand, and few subplots.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2018 23:44:02 GMT
I'm in the co-lead camp. The best Doctor and companion teams tend to share whatever story their experiencing, each character complementing the other. Outside of the ones already mentioned, I very keenly remember one scene from Pyramids of Mars with the Fourth Doctor and Sarah: A large part of what made that team so good were that they acted as foils to one another. The differences in one always revealed something meaningful about the other. Sarah's horror reveals the Doctor compassion, the Doctor's coldness reveals her loyalty.
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Post by omega on Jul 19, 2018 23:53:37 GMT
I'm in the co-lead camp. The best Doctor and companion teams tend to share whatever story their experiencing, each character complementing the other. Outside of the ones already mentioned, I very keenly remember one scene from Pyramids of Mars with the Fourth Doctor and Sarah: A large part of what made that team so good were that they acted as foils to one another. The differences in one always revealed something meaningful about the other. Sarah's horror reveals the Doctor compassion, the Doctor's coldness reveals her loyalty. The different dynamics are half the fun. Be it the Second Doctor and Jamie, or the Third Doctor being paternal towards Jo, Fourth having an intellectual equal in Romana and a student in Adric, Seven mentoring Ace, Rose helping Nine recover mentally or Ten and Donna being just mates, it adds flavour to story. In the audios Sixie and Evelyn are simply amazing together, Erimem gives the late Fifth Doctor TARDIS team a friendly family feeling and Hex provides the emotional heart for Seven and Ace. The companion can drive the story just as much as the Doctor, and be just as interesting to follow. Companions can also open up a part of the story where the Doctor can't. In Dalek, it's Rose's compassion that releases the Dalek and in turn leads to the Doctor realise how like a Dalek he's behaving. Jo's well meaning suicidal tendencies saved the Third Doctor a few times, a role only she could have served.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2018 0:20:34 GMT
I'm in the co-lead camp. The best Doctor and companion teams tend to share whatever story their experiencing, each character complementing the other. Outside of the ones already mentioned, I very keenly remember one scene from Pyramids of Mars with the Fourth Doctor and Sarah: A large part of what made that team so good were that they acted as foils to one another. The differences in one always revealed something meaningful about the other. Sarah's horror reveals the Doctor compassion, the Doctor's coldness reveals her loyalty. The different dynamics are half the fun. Be it the Second Doctor and Jamie, or the Third Doctor being paternal towards Jo, Fourth having an intellectual equal in Romana and a student in Adric, Seven mentoring Ace, Rose helping Nine recover mentally or Ten and Donna being just mates, it adds flavour to story. In the audios Sixie and Evelyn are simply amazing together, Erimem gives the late Fifth Doctor TARDIS team a friendly family feeling and Hex provides the emotional heart for Seven and Ace. The companion can drive the story just as much as the Doctor, and be just as interesting to follow. And we tend to feel it when either party are given the short end of the stick. There's a very discernible absence. The Sixth Doctor and Peri's dynamic on audio clips along in a way that it was never really allowed to on television. Both are given something to do and allowed to spark off each other and those around them. Same is true of the Seventh Doctor and Mel. It's that line from way back in The Edge of Destruction: "We learn about each other, so we learn about ourselves."
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Post by jasonward on Jul 20, 2018 0:46:13 GMT
I find the question strange, whilst the philosophical discussion about perspective is interesting, I think it would be to try and stand the show on its head if you were to say the companion(s) are THE lead.
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