David Tennant's voice
sovietusername
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As anyone whose seen David Tennant while not playing the Doctor will know, he actually has quite a broad scottis accent yet in Dr Who he always adopted a weird half english accent/slas voice thing. He changed how he spoke basically and I'm just not really sure why? Why couldnt the Tenth Doctor have the same accent as David Tennant? The conversation must have been weird, "David, we want you to do an English accent when playing the Doctor." Er... why? I know RTD said something about not wanting to seem as if they were just touring the regions and going for people from all over but wasnt the whole point behind the casting of people such as Christopher Eccleston to move on from the Classic Series where all actors playing the Doc tended to be quite posh and come from down South (although there were obvious exceptions e.g. Sylvester McCoy). McCoy spoke in his native Scottish accent, why didnt Tennant, after all, the Doctor isnt English, he's a Time Lord? Also, was it a choice of the production team or did Tennant personally decide to talk differently?
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I'd presume they just stuck with that accent.
Sylvester McCoy could use his accent, so it's not exactly unprecedented. And Amy Pond of course afterwards.
I DONT KNOW
According to this interview with David, Russell asked him to drop the accent and he went along with it
http://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-news/top-stories/i-agreed-to-drop-scots-accent-for-doctor-who-tennant-1-488554
Just watched that again on youtube, it's priceless, thanks for the reminder!
no problem. I just went back to watch it again, and came across this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&NR=1&v=3s4Czla6tXc
Look out for Ood Sigma!
haha! how uncomfortable does Timothy Dalton look?!
This has got to be one of my all time favourites
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7JWY_oYlps&feature=related
He does a bit doesn't he, but it just adds to the humour.
I've not seen that new one before - brilliant (or fantastic, as CE might say) better than Victoria Woods redition
For whatever reason the team decided to give him a "mockney" accent. Personally I don't like Ten's outfit (bloody suit), but I understand that the production team had their own ideas about that.
It's not that an actor changing his accent is unacceptable, it's the reasons for it. If David Tennant played Winston Churchill, I'd expect him to change his accent. But in this case, I can't see much reason to change his accent. It's not as if his accent is thick Glaswegian.
My point was that producers have all sorts of reasons to change an actors appearance etc. The voice is just one part. Why would you need a reason for the accent change, but not a reason for a hair colour change? Or different clothes, or eye colour (lenses)? Anyway, a reason had been given! RTD wanted the next Doctor to be from London, because Doctor 9 had been from the North. It's like giving him a suit instead of another leather jacket. He wanted to make him different. In David he had an actor that he liked and who the ability to provide a London accent, so he chose him.
To hammer the point home again, the voice, accent are all part of a actor's tool. They can and should be changed. Even Matt Smith changes his voice (to fit into his role), he has not quite the same way of speaking as his Doctor.
They may have been thinking of the overseas audience partially. Tennant's accent is not as thick as they come but might have been too strong for Americans to understand him properly.
See that's what I was looking for. If that had been scripted in, Tennant had prepared for it, and then the scene was cut before filming, that would make sense. Absolute sense.
Just looking for a reason for the accent. Not debating that he can't do an accent or that the show is in any way diminished because of it. Just that if the main reason behind changing it was, 'appeal to larger audience', that would have been irritating.
That woulsn't have made any sense at all. If it worked like that then the 6th Doctor would have had an American accent as he was with Peri when he regenerated.
I'm not sure how that helps you though. Having decided to make him do Estuary accent for whatever behind the scenes artistic or "business" reasons (which may have included reasons that irritate you), the writer made up a brief in-universe explanation for it. The motives of the production team don't change just because they think of something to throw in the script about it.
I'm glad they cut the explanation. We've never been given a scifi technobabble reason for his accent before. As with his appearance, his voice should just be "because". Which is why I loved ninth Doctor joking it away.
I'm not fussed about his voice or the reason for it. But I do like his natural voice. The BBC are using it for a lot of nature documentaries. They famously export these to America, so I'm guessing the makers of those don't consider it an overseas hindrance.
I'm glad they cut the explanation too, it doesn't make much sense to me.
What I'm getting at is that I was worried the reason for putting on an English accent was that a Scottish accent wasn't good enough. Because it sounded Scottish. If they had a reason planned, then cut it, it shows that there was a story-based reason behind it (albeit a bad one) rather than simply 'he must sound English!'
When I read that , I heard this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7oXxacwvhE
at 16 seconds
But that is what happened. If I recall correctly RTD first made the decision that he must sound southern English. And then having already made the decision that he will not sound scottish but will instead sound English he, at some point afterwards, used his imagination to think of an in-story excuse for it. At the point at which RTD decided DT should not use his Scottish accent there would have been no such "reason". RTD thought it up afterwards.
Sorry if that's not to your liking, but it is what happened. RTD said something about avoiding a tour of the regions.
However, at no point has RTD or anyone else said that a Scottish accent isn't good enough or anything like. Simply that at the time they wanted the Doctor to sound Lahndahn regardless of what accent the actor had. Same result, presumably if he'd been from Norfolk, Wales, Somerset or Venezuela.