Tennant also got lucky - he got most of the best scripts because RTD was still the showrunner. When Moffat took over, his tedious "character dies, then... comes back again!" trope and his "let's make this story so big that the Doctor doesn't just save the universe and all of time, he saves, well... a great big donut as well!" pretty much killed the series and then it became very PC and thus unwatchable. A great actor needs great scripts - which is, sadly, why the Capaldi years were such a huge disappointment and why the current Doctor seems so tedious.