Dr Who Quotes: Matt Smith - Top Ten Quotations on the Eleventh Doctor

Doctor Who - Matt Smith

Look Back in Hunger:
Revisiting his Dazzling Debut Season in Series Five of Dr Who

Photo copyright BBC TV

When Matt Smith was first announced as the successor to the seemingly irreplaceable David Tennant, as The Doctor, the earliest critical responses were " Who?" and "Far Too Young!"

In fact, he was deemed so young that Jan Etherington in The Telegraph was moved to write, "I've got jars of chutney that have been around longer than the new Doctor Who." 

As it turned out, a mature jar of pickled vegetable matter is a marvellous metaphor for Matt's take on The Doctor: an idiosyncratic blend of different textures and subtle sensations, sweet yet acidic, fruity yet spicy, hot yet soothing, smooth and chunky, potent and wildly invigorating, dark and deeply mysterious, aged and yet so fresh ... but not to everyone's taste.

So, has the 'Branstons of Time Lords' lived up to the legends of his ten predecessors?

Matt not only took over the mantle of The Doctor and ran with it ... but already has been glowingly referenced in direct comparison to all ten previous ten incarnations - from Hartnell to Tennant - of the world's favourite Time Lord.

Not only has Matt been positively likened to the earlier Doctors but he has been compared to a mindblowing myriad of multi-faceted memes: an adventure-seeking archaeologist, a 1930s Hollywood comedian, a scholarly TV quiz geek, a tropical island tourist attraction, a proto-gothic anti-hero, a foppish English thespian, a diaper-wearing children's cartoon character, a desert-dwelling rodent, a young know-it-all TV doctor and a blusteringly belligerent TV chef - making Matt the perfect popular culture chutney. And quite possibly, the best all round Doctor yet.

To celebrate Matt's fabulous first year and first season as The Doctor, here are some of our favourite quotations and reviews about him from Series Five.

"The Tenth Doctor's first action in defence of the Earth was to pick up a sword. The Eleventh doesn't look like he could even lift a sword."

Stuart Ian Burns on BehindTheSofa.org.uk

"Both Chris and David were quite cool Doctors, and while Matt certainly isn't short on cool, he has an amazing clumsiness. He's halfway between Indiana Jones and Stan Laurel."

Steven Moffat 

"The previous Doctor, David Tennant, smouldered his way across the space-time continuum. Smith is more of a geek-chic Time Lord. Floppy-haired and bright-eyed, he looks as if he has wandered onto the set by mistake on his way to appear for one of the more crusty colleges in University Challenge. Reading physics, of course."

Roland White in The Times 

"Early signs suggest that Doctor 11 might be special. Tall and gangling, with a weirdly handsome face - he looks like an Easter Island statue at the NME style awards - Smith appears to possess the requisite eccentricity, and the ability to suggest an ancient mind inside a youthful body, that the role requires."

Paul Whitelaw in The Scotsman 

"With his long, ascetic face, rather like Mervyn Peake's sketches of Steerpike in his Gormenghast novels, the 27-year-old Matt Smith has all the makings of an interesting Time Lord."

Gerard Gilbert in The Independent 

"There is much of both Davison and Troughton's Doctors in Smith's performance, with some lovely, quiet moments. However, when this Doctor gets angry, there's more than a hint of McCoy coming through, and that's not really a good thing."

Brian J. Robb on TotalSciFiOnline.com

"Whether you see him as an old head on young shoulders, or simply a bent shoe coincidentally on the same coat hanger as a tweed jacket, the Eleventh incarnation is an exhilarating bundle of energy and floppy fringes. The Time Lord equivalent of Hugh Grant crossed with a Rugrat."

Chris Alpha on TheOodcast.com

"Smith seems a perfect piece of casting: he looks like a boy who might grow up into William Hartnell."
Matthew Sweet in The Independent 

"Matt Smith is right for the part, isn't he? Look at him. He's got Patrick Troughton's hair and Jon Pertwee's nose and Tom Baker's eyes. He's also got a wonderful meerkat perkiness, a way of moving that's just a tiny bit out of sync with everyone else."

Mark Smith on HeraldScotland.com 

"He's kind of like the Doogie Hauser of Time Lords."

Lisa Fary on PinkRayGun.com 

"Is it the sherry talking, or is Matt Smith looking more and more like a stretch version of Gordon Ramsay?"

Phil Hogan in The Observer


These dozen quotations about Matt Smith form a very small part of the 2000 quotes about Dr Who to be found in The Quotable Doctor Who book - Volume One from Blue Eyed Books


. Retweet using this button