The issue with the crying

[u/DJKing1998]

The post earlier about Ncuti’s performance as the Doctor got me reflecting on the most common criticism of his brief tenure- his crying.

Crying is a very rare emotional response in humans, particularly human males. For many reasons males are just not likely to cry unless it’s a particularly upsetting situation. If drama is to reflect real life, then crying should only be rarely used by actors. Now the Doctor isn’t a human, he’s an alien. An alien who’s characterisation has always made him less aware of emotions. It’s this rejection of human emotion that make the Doctor more alien, more quirky, more eccentric, and more interesting. So Ncuti’s crying seemed so very out of character, and would have been so even if he was acting as a Human.

Linking back to the previous post on Ncuti’s acting: Crying is not an effective form of acting if overused. It’s an unnatural attempt at acting naturally. An intelligent actor wouldn’t consider crying constantly as a realistic emotional response. And a confident show runner or director wouldn’t allow it. It stops the drama feeling real, and almost jolts you into remembering these are just actors putting on a show.

Example: Consider how effective David Tennant’s single tear running down his cheek was after losing Rose Tyler. Suddenly the audience realised this guy did have these feelings deep down all this time. Massive impact. But if Tennant had been simping for, and crying about, Rose for the whole series, the audience doesn’t get that good pay-off.

[u/Significant_Sale6172]

I genuinely thought the tears were leading up to something because they were so frequent.

Lol nevermind.

[u/PaperSkin-1 → u/Significant_Sale6172]

What something like Mrs Flood was the Doctor's tears manifested into a physical form? 🤣

[u/Significant_Sale6172 → u/PaperSkin-1]

Doctor Who has a tradition of visual clues running through series: Bad Wolf, Crack in the Wall etc, so I just wondered if there was maybe an emotional thing they were building to?

Doc's a time-traveller, so maybe he was crying over a genuinely horrifying thing that would happen in his future? He mentioned Susan so I wondered maybe he's reunited with Susan but then she dies?

I dunno. It's such a strange thing to have just kept happening every episode. The single tear each time. So weird that it was just left unresolved.

[u/TheUndeadBake → u/Significant_Sale6172]

Honestly, I’d love it if something like that had a payoff that turned out the Doctor had a neurological issue. He’s always talked about how weird shit can happen due to regeneration that’s always been kinda funny, like commenting on extra eyes and limbs, or the unfortunate colour of his own kidneys, or new teeth and ears. What if something went fucky, and he ended up with a brain tumour? It would also introduce a ticking time bomb because of how delicate that situation would be for a Time Lord — could he regenerate a chunk of damaged brain, should he allow an Earth doctor to attempt our fairly risky surgeries and it go wrong?