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Finished with Doctor Who Season 1
I loved the finale. What can I say ... I have this huge sappy weakness for "last stand" stories. Even if the Daleks STILL remind me more of giant salt shakers than something you'd run away from. (Being attacked by an army of shoulder-high, heavily armed salt shakers is nothing to sneeze at, though.) And Jack in Rambo mode, and the Doctor sending Rose home in the Tardis, and the origins of Bad Wolf ... much love, yes. Even if it's really, really best NOT to think about the time travel too much.
However, I'm starting to have, well ... problems with the way that the Doctor and Rose behave towards the people around them. Rose and the Doctor aren't bad people, but they're not particularly nice people -- it's not that they're deliberately cruel, but they just don't bother to care. Like leaving Jack behind on the space station (not that, I gather, it's a big deal to him or that he even minds; but it's the principle of the thing, dammit -- abandoning your allies on a space station full of dead people in a dead solar system is very bad form) or the way Rose has been treating Mickey, especially given how often he goes out of his way to help her.
Rose and the Doctor are very committed to high ideals -- saving the universe, that sort of thing -- but when it comes to the little, day-to-day things, like, say, behaving like decent human beings towards other people (aside from each other), they fail at it. Whereas, someone like Mickey, or Rose's mother, could care less about the fate of the universe -- what they do instead is protect and help the people they care about. It's a lot easier for me to sympathize with Mickey defending Rose's mom with a bat than to sympathize with Rose exploiting her boyfriend's affection for her in order to obtain his help chasing after the Doctor.
With the exception of each other, they're far more committed to their ideals than to the welfare of individual human beings. It seems like they're willing to give the people around them just enough information and assistance to really get them in trouble, and then turn them loose to fend for themselves -- like taking Rose's genius boy-toy from the museum to the year 200,000 and then abandoning him in an alien environment that he knows nothing about to sink or swim. I realize that the people around them are adults and are responsible for their own decisions, but at some point you *do* have responsibility for the effects of your actions on other people; it's not enough to fall back on the "Well, I know I talked him into it, but it's not my fault he said yes" defense. It's almost like they're little kids playing with toys -- getting what they want out of other people, but failing to notice the effects of their actions on anyone else.
They're willing to sacrifice themselves to save the universe, or apparently each other, but when it comes to anything beyond that, they're kind of self-centered, aren't they?
And sometimes they aren't even willing to take the saving-the-universe step, like the Doctor refusing to push the button to destroy the Daleks. Okay, I understand that he doesn't want to become like them -- that it's a violation of everything he believes in. But, at this point, he's not saving anyone but himself -- he's sacrificing the universe on the altar of his own conscience. The Earth is dead, everyone on the space station is dead; if he activated the device, all he'd be killing would be the Daleks (and himself). By pushing the button, he saves the universe; the only thing he stands to gain by not pushing the button is to keep his hands clean, at the cost of countless lives. Violating his own ideals to save the universe would be a tremendous sacrifice, but it's a sacrifice he wasn't willing to make; he chose himself and his own conscience over the lives of countless innocents.
Luckily Rose took the choice out of his hands, so there were no consequences for his failure to act. Convenient, that.
The ultimate problem here is that I'm finding it harder to empathize with the characters the more I see of them. I can't quite seem to sink into full appreciation of their devotion to each other when that devotion is generally at the expense of everyone else. Jack's comment about saving Rose, that "she's worth it" -- er, I'm not really sure that she is, actually, given that she's done very little lately except for single-mindedly pursuing the Doctor through time and stepping on whoever she has to in order to do that.
My, this has turned into a wee bit of a rant. ^_^ I'm certainly looking forward to seeing the Tennant episodes -- it's just that I'm having trouble right now emotionally engaging with the characters, because more and more they're turning out to be people I feel slightly skeevy empathizing with.
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LOL! You know, I'm really supposed to be doing other things than meta-ing about Doctor Who myself. heeelllllp...
I guess it never bothered me with Rose because I didn't get that 'pedestal' feeling from her. Or rather, when I did get it, it made sense.
It does make sense ... but ... it still doesn't feel balanced to me. I don't know, it may be that it IS just me, but I keep feeling like the other characters' reactions are more skewed in a pro-Rose direction than they really ought to be, considering her behavior.
And now I'll bring up "Dead Like Me" again *g* because as far as "right" ways to address this sort of situation, I really liked the way that DLM did it, as opposed to being kind of ambivalent about the way DW is doing it. The thing about "Dead Like Me" is that, as with Rose, there was never any doubt that the other characters cared a lot about George (the teenage main character), but there was also no doubt, in the context of the show, that her immaturity put them at risk and put her relationships with them at risk -- and that, if they loved her, they couldn't let her get away with it. It's sort of hard to describe in more detail without spoiling the whole show, but there was one whole arc which dealt with her accidentally creating a rift between herself and the person on the show she was closest to -- kind of an older mentor/younger protege relationship like the one Rose has going with the Doctor. In that case, George felt smothered by his "fathering" her, and she reacted by being very petty and pushing him away. And his reaction to that was enough hurt and anger that he just pulled back completely, leaving her bereft. This was followed by several episodes of George basically flailing around in shock, because she'd always just kind of assumed that he'd be there for her no matter what, and then she took him for granted one too many times and suddenly, he wasn't.
What I'm feeling with DW is that Rose just isn't *seeing* the consequences of her immaturity and that the show itself is not giving her a chance to do so. "Father's Day" is, honestly, a good example of the opposite, because in that episode she does discover the extreme downside of acting impulsively and taking the Doctor for granted -- even though at the end, things are basically put back like they were before, and it doesn't really seem like she's learned anything from the experience (except, obviously, that messing with the space-time continuum is Bad). And yes, I do agree with you that I can totally sympathize with her wanting to save her father. I'm not unsympathetic towards Rose; I just sometimes feel that the show is a little TOO sympathetic towards her.
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The thing is, I guess, with Rose, is that while she has moments of self-centeredness, I never found them to be such a major flaw in her character that it made her unsympathetic. I guess...I can see the point of learning such lessons, but I didn't think that the show needed to dwell on them, because I didn't find Rose so terribly selfish as to be off-putting. Such as with Mickey - he's the one who leaves her, the second time around; she and the Doctor give him the chance to come along, and he turns it down. Later when she's bothered by the idea of him dating someone else, I didn't read that as her hypocritically accusing him of cheating, but rather that she's upset by the idea of things changing at home, the same discomfort everyone faces when they grow up and leave home and find that they can't go back again. And I liked the way she and the boys welcomed Mickey into their circle as best they could. (And for that matter, it's Mickey who proposes cheating with his current girl to go off with Rose to a hotel... Rose uses him, but Mickey completely lets himself be used.)
She loves the Doctor, and sometimes she can get carried away with that, but I didn't get that feeling that she only cares for him to the exclusion of anyone else. Rose can be so caring of people (and others) she barely knows - she's got a lot of the basic heroic nature in her: protect the weak, help out those in need, give sympathy. With Gwenyth, with Harriet Jones, with the lone Dalek - she's more willing to open her heart than the Doctor, and sometimes it gets her into trouble, but it's worth it...
(wow why I am still awake? must...turn...off...brain!)
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You're definitely right that Mickey's no paragon of virtue himself, by any means. But ... I dunno, I feel like the show acknowledges that a lot more than it dwells on Rose's equally glaring flaws.
And I'd forgotten about her with the Dalek. Bear in mind, too, that I'm only just now working through my opinions on the characters and figuring out who they are. It took me half a season to start liking Dean on SPN, and then I fell for him like the proverbial ton of bricks.
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Ahhh, yes, really am sorry to just go off on you like this - part of it is I haven't really gotten involved in the fandom as a whole (Who-fandom is scaaaary!) and so while I've seen debates, I haven't joined them...but I've been tempted to, and then with you, I know I can have a genuinely friendly debate, and I do enjoy those much, so...I go off! ^^;;
And also, with Rose, there's only so much time to like her, much less than you get to see of Dean, so...(I honestly didn't realize I was so defensive of the char...this show's infected me! Beware the Who-virus!)
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