#the amount of trust the doctor has in steven is downright unusual. a very rare honor to get to pilot the ship and use all these other things

[demigodofhoolemere]

Alright, here’s where I come in to campaign for my best guy.

I feel like in a lot of these DW polls, characters from the modern series overwhelmingly dominate the classic characters because a lot of people who haven’t seen the classic run just vote for who they recognize. Steven, who seems to be widely well-loved among the Classic Who fandom, had a pretty darn close fight in the first round with Nardole, who I tend to see receiving some pretty mixed opinions, so I’m fairly sure it’s not just that y’all love Nardole that much (I personally like him, but that’s not the point).

If you have not watched Steven’s time on the show, please let me introduce you to a wonderful character.

Steven Taylor is a space pilot from around the 24th century. We meet him on the planet Mechanus, where he had a crash landing and has been imprisoned for two whole years by robots that have been keeping him locked up like a specimen in a zoo. This man has gone TWO YEARS with no human company, only a stuffed panda (his mascot, Hi-Fi 🐼) and the Mechonoids outside. He’s clearly been isolated far too long when we meet him, noticeably a little loopy in some moments, but has generally kept his sanity remarkably well and is absolutely thrilled to finally see fellow human beings again.

Fun fact: Steven is part of the club of a rare few characters in the show’s history who see the inside of the TARDIS before properly seeing the outside. He technically did see the exterior, but in a haze amidst a lot of chaos where he wasn’t really registering it (and promptly passed out), and was first properly aware of his surroundings when already inside — so rather than the ‘it’s bigger on the inside’ moment, he instead gets to laugh at fellow companion Vicki for trying to convince him that it’s much smaller outside.

His first outing as a traveler in the TARDIS is a fantastic story that includes a great little arc for him as he learns about the reality of time travel and also adjusts to interacting with people again. Steven is initially quite cynical about everything, not fully believing that they’ve really traveled in time, and gives the Doctor and especially Vicki a fair bit of grief over it. This includes one of the funniest moments in the show’s 60 years, imo:

Steven starts out having a hard time playing with others, getting into disagreements with Vicki and the Doctor as well as the local villagers. There’s an interesting shift over the course of the story as he has to learn to work with Vicki, trust and go along with what she and the Doctor say, and, in one of my favorite moments, humble himself and meet the villagers at their level. After having gotten into a pretty heated argument with some of them earlier, he is later faced with the leaders wishing him and Vicki well in their travels, offering kind ‘God be with you’s. Steven stops for a moment, having a very hard time saying thank you but seemingly cut to the core by their kindness and Vicki’s gentle prompting, and finally brings himself to thank them and reply with a ‘God be with you’ of his own. I consider this a defining moment for the character that informs his characterization from this point forward. It’s from this moment on that he is able to return to who he once was before his isolation, and truly work well with people again. Steven will always maintain his sarcasm and a certain level of cynicism, but they are now positive traits rather than negative ones, and at his core he is ultimately a good, humble man who cares for others.

From here on out he’s actually a wonderfully friendly man — which is one of the first things I think of him as, making his first story all the more interesting upon a rewatch because you can see even more how damaged he was at the beginning.

Steven quickly proves himself a very loyal person, willing to go the distance for his friends and often putting himself in harm’s way for them, from traveling to Troy with the intention of being captured so he could break Vicki out from inside to offering to make the last move against the Toymaker so that the Doctor and Dodo could get away. He is noble and upstanding to the last, always considering the welfare of anyone around him, including those who may not deserve it. He has a strong distaste for anything unfair, and one of my favorite traits of his is how baffled he is by inequality or prejudice of any kind. We see multiple times in the show and his audios that he just cannot fathom why anyone would make judgments based on ridiculous things like appearances. (In the audio An Ordinary Life he gets to punch a racist, it’s great).

Steven is grounded, honest, and trustworthy, caring very deeply for others. While he can come off as aggressive or argumentative, he's actually very friendly, kind, and genuine, and willing to hear other options. Where he does get argumentative, it is because he is absolutely just and has a strong sense of right and wrong, willing to butt heads with anyone including the Doctor if he feels that something is wrong. Over time he becomes more and more cautious, and by the time Dodo is traveling with them, he’s the picture of a protective older brother who will take care of his newfound little sister at all costs, especially after everything he’s lost up to that point. In case anyone doesn’t know, I won’t detail exactly what those losses are, but… oh boy. It’s a wonder this man is even standing after seeing the things he’s seen.

He seems to have a reputation for being angry and impatient, but as far as I’m concerned, the dude honestly has the patience of a saint considering everything he goes through. As if being isolated from all human contact for two years wasn’t enough, literally every single story after his first outing continues to pile on the pain in some way or another. Steven nearly dies of oxygen deprivation, nearly dies again when he’s stabbed with a sword and starts bleeding out and losing consciousness, suffers an absolutely OUTRAGEOUS amount of loss in extremely rapid succession, nearly dies again after having caught a spreading illness, gets stuck playing the Toymaker’s games under threat of becoming one of his dolls forever, and goes a whole story with people pointing guns at him all the time and also nearly gets hanged by them (and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that half the time those guns are pointed at him, it’s to force him to sing). That’s not even close to truly covering everything else that happens within each of those stories, let alone in his audio stories, and not to mention his plain old terrible luck in more mundane ways. If anyone has a right to express frustration sometimes, it’s him, and frankly it’s incredibly entertaining when he does, but he’s honestly a lot more chill than people give him credit for. Steven takes all of this constant grief pretty well all things considered, and manages to go through even the worst of events with the ability to get back up and smile.

He has a great sense of humor (so many funny lines that I quote all the time) and is also, frankly, adorable. Steven can get flustered and awkward at times and I love him.

TLDR: Ultimately, Steven is just about the most long-suffering guy in the world, going through absolutely gutting heartaches and a truly disproportionate amount of peril and misfortune, and he still comes away a wonderful, decent human being who keeps moving forward and loves the people around him. In his final story, the people he will end up staying with define him this way: “The man we need must inspire trust. His judgments must come from his heart even more than his head.” And they were certainly right that Steven is that kind of a man.

Bonus, because I can, look at his great hair

and what is perhaps the best picture of Steven ever taken. You’re welcome.

Now everybody go vote Steven.

Round Two: Doctor Who Tournament

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