The Doctor (10)

The Tenth Doctor is a Time Lord from Gallifrey, one-time wandering adventurer, universal problem-solver and temporal tourist. Now, he's stuck in New York and works as an Assistant Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Colombia University.

Appearance
The Tenth Doctor is 6'1" and skinny as a rail. His friend Donna once complained that you'd get a papercut if you hugged the man. He is almost always seen in a suit and tie (the blue suit, thanks to his canon point, as the brown one is in the TARDIS, which he hasn't found yet), with burgundy Converse All-Stars on his feet, as odd as that may sound. On fancy occasions, he'll be found in a simple tux with black Converse. From time to time, he can be found wearing rectangular, dark tortoiseshell glasses.  He has brown hair that tends to stick straight up like a odd-looking cockatoo, and his eyes are large and brown, under thick eyebrows.

Personality
It is said that the Tenth Doctor is the most human of the Doctors, and that's both a good thing and a bad thing, as it seems to bring out the best and the worst in him. He is loving and friendly, but has a temper that will flare into a full-blown rage at any moment. Everything he feels, he feels it completely, much as a human would. His love is endless, his joy incredible, his anger boiling and his sorrow crushing. While this has been true to a certain extent for some of his other incarnations, it is never so evident as with the Tenth.

At this point in his story, Ten is quite horribly broken. An incarnation that started out his life with joy and love began to lose everything and everyone he cared for, until one day he just decided that enough was enough and he went traveling on his own. Like most things in Ten's existence, he exiled himself for the good of others and to protect his hearts from the pain of losing someone. As he told Christina when he turned down her request to take her along with him, "People have traveled with me and I lost them. Lost them all. Never again." Unfortunately, this goes against Donna Noble's absolutely correct advice that he never travel alone, because he needs someone to stop him. You see, when Donna first met the Doctor, he was in a bad emotional state from recently losing the girl he loved and he coldly committed genocide against the Racnoss. It took her "bringing him down to Earth", so to speak, to shake him out of it.

Without a companion, he loses his tether and that perspective that a companion brings. At first, he seems mostly stable, going on adventures as usual and making friends. However, it all changes when he lands on Mars, where he has to stand by and watch people die. At first, he tries to do what he's "supposed" to do. He tries to walk away, but as he listens to the people of Bowie Base One dying, one-by-one, that final thread he was holding on by snaps and he takes a dangerous step towards the path that the Master was on. He decides that, as the last Time Lord, Time itself should obey him. The only thing that separates him is that even when he goes off the rails, it's to save lives, not to dominate and destroy. Even then, he gets blinded by the power, declaring himself the "Time Lord Victorious" and the "winner" of the Time War. It's only when Adelaide Brook commits suicide to put to rights what the Doctor broke that shakes him out of it and makes him realize with horror that he's gone too far. He thinks that surely this means his end is coming, just like Carmen told him.

And now, Ten is a man running scared from something he can't avoid: his own death. He's pulled back from the cliff's edge, but only just. Wracked by grief, guilt and fear, he's been traveling around the universe, doing anything he can not to answer the call of the Ood. In a way, he hasn't changed so much that old friends wouldn't recognize him, but there is a certain light gone from him. He seems more reckless than before, and more desperate; a man clinging to life by his fingernails, knowing just how much of this life he's wasted. And now, it's too late. Death is coming, whether he likes it or not.

And then came New York. The fact that he can avoid his death for now and the fact that he has friends here, and been reunited with Rose, makes him a lot more relaxed, most of the time. For the most part, he's back to his old self again and now has what seems like all the time in the world to deal with his guilt.

Misc/Links
Character journal: keepsrunning