Personality
The Fifth Doctor was far more vulnerable, sensitive, and reserved than his previous incarnations and often reacted to situations rather than initiating them. Frequently, he made decisions by flipping a coin. Unlike his more authoritative predecessors, he treated his young companions as parts of a team, and often willingly participated in situations under the leadership of someone else who had the strong command presence that he apparently lacked. However, the Fifth Doctor's boyish appearance, nervous energy, and charm all hid the fact that he was a Time Lord of great age, compassion, and experience. He could decipher the ingredients of a drink by smell alone and rosemary made him sneeze.
This Doctor greatly abhorred violence and often hesitated about taking matters into his own hands. For the first time, indecision weighed seriously on the character, and it had its consequences - yet this Doctor was also one of the most courageous of his incarnations. He was willing to take chances with companions like Turlough and Kamelion, who were originally threats, even as he pretended to be unaware of it at first in order to grant his companion the opportunity to do the right thing. He was also willing to make enormous personal sacrifices (Mawdryn Undead) simply to keep his word and liberate others from suffering. It was perhaps the awful realisation that his very existence begat violence and the weight of companion Adric's death on his conscience, and perhaps Tegan's near emotional breakdown as well, that led him to sacrifice his own existence to save his last companion, Peri. In an episode of Doctor Who Confidential, Steven Moffat said that "this Doctor takes the emphasis off the eccentricities and turns it into a pained heroism of a man who is so much better than the universe he is trying to save but cannot bear to let it stand."
The Fifth Doctor was the last to use the sonic screwdriver in the original series, having been destroyed during The Visitation. The Seventh Doctor and subsequent Doctors were later seen using versions of the tool in the television movie and the revived series. In "Time Crash", the Fifth Doctor declined to borrow the Tenth Doctor's sonic screwdriver.
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Famous quotes containing the word personality:
“The monk in hiding himself from the world becomes not less than himself, not less of a person, but more of a person, more truly and perfectly himself: for his personality and individuality are perfected in their true order, the spiritual, interior order, of union with God, the principle of all perfection.”
—Thomas Merton (1915–1968)
“A personality is an indefinite quantum of traits which is subject to constant flux, change, and growth from the birth of the individual in the world to his death. A character, on the other hand, is a fixed and definite quantum of traits which, though it may be interpreted with slight differences from age to age and actor to actor, is nevertheless in its essentials forever fixed.”
—Hubert C. Heffner (1901–1985)
“Fundamentally the male artist approximates more to the psychology of woman, who, biologically speaking, is a purely creative being and whose personality has been as mysterious and unfathomable to the man as the artist has been to the average person.”
—Beatrice Hinkle (1874–1953)