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Doctor Who - done with Season 3
*flails*
*flails some more*
I love Martha so much right now that I could EXPLODE FROM SQUEE.
Because ... the first two seasons felt, to me, very much like the story revolved around Rose getting ever more dependent on the Doctor and obsessed with him. This was like -- it was like -- I don't want to say the anti-Rose, because that's not very nice, but it was as if everything I hated about the Rose storyline ... we got the exact opposite of that with Martha. I was honestly DREADING what was going to happen to Martha at the end of the season, because I knew she left the show and what I saw as the two most likely scenarios were 1) Martha dies heroically saving the world and/or the Doctor, or 2) the Doctor, building up his inner armor still higher after the thing with the Master, abandons Martha the same way he abandoned Jack on the satellite, and flies off by himself. In fact, at several points during the finale, I was absolutely convinced that one or the other of those was about to happen.
BUT NO! She saved the world BY HERSELF, and then after all of that, had the strength and courage to walk away -- away from being compared to Rose, away from a man she loved and admired who wasn't willing to open up to her and apparently would never be. And I just loved her so much at that moment that there are no words for it. I really haven't liked the overt shippiness this season, any more than I did with Rose and the Doctor, although I'm kind of getting resigned to the apparent fact that in New Who, this just IS how they're going to frame the Doctor-Companion relationship (as a sexual one) and I'd better get used to it. And then there's the rather overt comparing of Martha with Rose, which is something I never remember happening with any other Companion ... oooh, best not to go there really, because I don't dislike Rose even though I'm very unhappy with her role in the show, quite a different thing. I don't want to build this up as a Rose vs. Martha thing and I'm trying very hard not to do that in my head. But, that final scene? Martha walking away, not bitter, not unhappy, looking forward to her future and giving the Doctor her phone with a hope to stay in touch? AWESOME. And the same thing with Jack -- he's been used and abandoned, spent all those years chasing the Doctor ... and, same deal, walking away with his self-respect intact, still on friendly terms but not in the Doctor's orbit anymore. They are free. They are themselves. They know who they are and what they want, what they need. And ... they are happy.
♥ ♥ ♥
This is what I want! This is what I wanted last season. People who care about each other, and respect each other (well, sort of, because I'm not really sure how much the Doctor actually does respect any of the humans around him, but otherwise...), and rely on each other in a crisis -- but aren't dependent on each other. They have families. They have lives. They have jobs. They have self-respect. But when it matters ... they can be there. My pet fantasy right now (not sure how likely this actually is, but oh well) is that they all stay in touch -- that Martha calls Jack at Torchwood every so often, or that he shows up on her doorstep once in a while when he needs medical help and can't go through the usual channels; that the Doctor, having learned from the Sarah Jane situation, drops in every once in a while and has tea with Martha and they get caught up, and she tells him about her kids and he tells her about seeing galaxies explode and about the stupid thing that his latest Companion did, and they laugh...
The thing is, I don't blame the Doctor for the way he treated Martha and Jack and pretty much every other human on the show. He's not human, and I think I've come to terms with that on New Who. It was a little easier with the old show because Tom Baker (et al) weren't that easy to empathize with. It is easy to empathize with the new Doctors and so I think I was having trouble with the idea that the Time Lords don't see themselves on the same level as humans. My husband jokingly compared the Master's ambitions on Earth to "becoming the king of the termites", and that's a bit of an exaggeration, but, really -- even though the Doctor respects life, values all life, he does not consider humans his equals, and the way that he acts reflects that. And I think both Martha and Jack did actually come to realize that, and to accept who and what he is: an alien with whom they would always have an unequal relationship, someone who would never put them on the same level as himself. That's not something they can change about him. They love him, but they both need more. And they have the strength and self-respect to go out there in the world and find it.
(There is no way to analyze Rose's role in the show, with regards to the above, without sounding like I'm bashing the writers, so I'm going to enjoy my squee right now and not think about it too hard.)
I was so braced for an emotionally devastating ending to Martha's and possibly also Jack's roles in the show that now I'm just suffused with a warm glow of happy show-love. And now I can read Doctor Who meta without fear of spoilers ... though, I'm sort of afraid to at the moment, because I know there's been a lot of wank in the fandom and some very bitter ship wars (which, I can certainly understand because canon itself must have poured some pretty intense fuel on THOSE flames), and, as with Supernatural fandom, I wonder if this might be a fandom I might prefer to orbit from a very safe distance.
I'll just be squeeing quietly in the corner.
*squees*
*flails some more*
I love Martha so much right now that I could EXPLODE FROM SQUEE.
Because ... the first two seasons felt, to me, very much like the story revolved around Rose getting ever more dependent on the Doctor and obsessed with him. This was like -- it was like -- I don't want to say the anti-Rose, because that's not very nice, but it was as if everything I hated about the Rose storyline ... we got the exact opposite of that with Martha. I was honestly DREADING what was going to happen to Martha at the end of the season, because I knew she left the show and what I saw as the two most likely scenarios were 1) Martha dies heroically saving the world and/or the Doctor, or 2) the Doctor, building up his inner armor still higher after the thing with the Master, abandons Martha the same way he abandoned Jack on the satellite, and flies off by himself. In fact, at several points during the finale, I was absolutely convinced that one or the other of those was about to happen.
BUT NO! She saved the world BY HERSELF, and then after all of that, had the strength and courage to walk away -- away from being compared to Rose, away from a man she loved and admired who wasn't willing to open up to her and apparently would never be. And I just loved her so much at that moment that there are no words for it. I really haven't liked the overt shippiness this season, any more than I did with Rose and the Doctor, although I'm kind of getting resigned to the apparent fact that in New Who, this just IS how they're going to frame the Doctor-Companion relationship (as a sexual one) and I'd better get used to it. And then there's the rather overt comparing of Martha with Rose, which is something I never remember happening with any other Companion ... oooh, best not to go there really, because I don't dislike Rose even though I'm very unhappy with her role in the show, quite a different thing. I don't want to build this up as a Rose vs. Martha thing and I'm trying very hard not to do that in my head. But, that final scene? Martha walking away, not bitter, not unhappy, looking forward to her future and giving the Doctor her phone with a hope to stay in touch? AWESOME. And the same thing with Jack -- he's been used and abandoned, spent all those years chasing the Doctor ... and, same deal, walking away with his self-respect intact, still on friendly terms but not in the Doctor's orbit anymore. They are free. They are themselves. They know who they are and what they want, what they need. And ... they are happy.
♥ ♥ ♥
This is what I want! This is what I wanted last season. People who care about each other, and respect each other (well, sort of, because I'm not really sure how much the Doctor actually does respect any of the humans around him, but otherwise...), and rely on each other in a crisis -- but aren't dependent on each other. They have families. They have lives. They have jobs. They have self-respect. But when it matters ... they can be there. My pet fantasy right now (not sure how likely this actually is, but oh well) is that they all stay in touch -- that Martha calls Jack at Torchwood every so often, or that he shows up on her doorstep once in a while when he needs medical help and can't go through the usual channels; that the Doctor, having learned from the Sarah Jane situation, drops in every once in a while and has tea with Martha and they get caught up, and she tells him about her kids and he tells her about seeing galaxies explode and about the stupid thing that his latest Companion did, and they laugh...
The thing is, I don't blame the Doctor for the way he treated Martha and Jack and pretty much every other human on the show. He's not human, and I think I've come to terms with that on New Who. It was a little easier with the old show because Tom Baker (et al) weren't that easy to empathize with. It is easy to empathize with the new Doctors and so I think I was having trouble with the idea that the Time Lords don't see themselves on the same level as humans. My husband jokingly compared the Master's ambitions on Earth to "becoming the king of the termites", and that's a bit of an exaggeration, but, really -- even though the Doctor respects life, values all life, he does not consider humans his equals, and the way that he acts reflects that. And I think both Martha and Jack did actually come to realize that, and to accept who and what he is: an alien with whom they would always have an unequal relationship, someone who would never put them on the same level as himself. That's not something they can change about him. They love him, but they both need more. And they have the strength and self-respect to go out there in the world and find it.
(There is no way to analyze Rose's role in the show, with regards to the above, without sounding like I'm bashing the writers, so I'm going to enjoy my squee right now and not think about it too hard.)
I was so braced for an emotionally devastating ending to Martha's and possibly also Jack's roles in the show that now I'm just suffused with a warm glow of happy show-love. And now I can read Doctor Who meta without fear of spoilers ... though, I'm sort of afraid to at the moment, because I know there's been a lot of wank in the fandom and some very bitter ship wars (which, I can certainly understand because canon itself must have poured some pretty intense fuel on THOSE flames), and, as with Supernatural fandom, I wonder if this might be a fandom I might prefer to orbit from a very safe distance.
I'll just be squeeing quietly in the corner.
*squees*
no subject
I imagine that it's probably similar to how Transformers or Knight Rider is over here ... I mean, if you mention Transformers to people our age, everyone knows what it is, even if they haven't watched cartoons since they were little kids. (Even before the movie came out, I mean.) And everyone remembers playing with Transformer toys, and vaguely remembers David Hasslehoff and that black car. It's just part of the cultural landscape.
Ah, but both of those times seem to be operating in a 'fixed timeline' universe (such as what's in Gargoyles. It's the most logical way to handle timetravel, but can be difficult from a storytelling perspective because it's restrictive).
Oh yeah, I know -- the "everything that's happened in the past has already happened, including visits by time travelers" school of time travel. Which honestly makes the most sense to me as far as pure logic goes. I went ahead and worked some of what you said here into the Martha story that I wrote last night, because I still don't think this is necessarily incompatible with the Doctor coming back to check on past Companions, it just means that he'd have to be very, very careful and smart about it.
...it's what Jack means, when he's talking about waiting for a version of the Doctor who would coincide with him
*brain explodes*
*scrapes up brain*
See, this is why talking about time travel isn't good for me. *grin* I'm fascinated by it, and by different ways of doing it in the media, but honestly there's no way it isn't sort of a deus ex machina ... not really sure if that's the right term in this case, but I think the rules change a little bit depending on what the writers want the plot to do.
Stargate time travel really makes the most sense to me (to the extent that something like this can make sense); it uses fixed timelines that branch into parallel universes when something changes. So, for example, if you go back in time and shoot your grandfather, you are now existing in the fixed timeline where you shot your grandfather. You, personally, aren't affected, even though in this timeline you'll never be born, because you're the "you" from the other reality in which you were born. The timeline that you came from still exists, but you can't ever get back to it.
Basically, you can change anything you like in the past; it's just that if you jump back to the future, you'll find yourself in an altered future. There isn't one true reality, just an infinity of different ones. In fact, the "current" Stargate reality has been changed several times; it's no longer the same timeline as of the premiere episode. Paradox is virtually impossible. The downside, though, is that you can't ever truly "save" someone (or the world) by changing the past. The best you can do is create a new future in which the person you're trying to save survives whatever killed them in *your* timeline, but the version of them that you knew is still dead.
Comment limit ahoy!