new who companion appreciation post!
I started working on this with the intention of getting it done for halfamoon... and as you can see that did not happen. But I decided to keep working on it (...veeery slowly) because there are in general not enough things celebrating the Awesome of all four of them, in my opinion. I was going to do a picspam, but since I have no particular artistic talent and no photoshop, I decided to augment it with lots of TL;DR about their individual awesome. Yay! All I ask is that you please don't use this opportunity to tell me why you dislike one or more of these companions. I know we all have our favourites. But there are lots of places where the steel cage match of companion superiority can occur, and I would like this post and its comments to limit themselves to why we love the ones we love. So, without further ado:
"The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life.
That you don’t just give up. You don’t let things happen. You make a stand. You say 'no'.
You have the guts to do what’s right when everyone else runs away and I just can't!"
Oh, Rose. Over two and half-ish seasons we see Rose go from being a nineteen-year-old girl stuck in a rut of familiarity to a woman who knows what she wants and isn't afraid to go for it. Early on, Rose's curiosity and bravery lead her to find trouble and love it. She's confident in herself even from the start of the series, and while travelling with the Doctor allows Rose the opportunity to do more than she otherwise could, she never doubts herself for being a nineteen-year-old shop girl from a council estate. She holds her ground even when she's frightened and uses her humanity as a counterweight to the Doctor's alienness. As time goes on, Rose refines these strengths and grows to be even even more capable, even more of a leader. She goes from stammering in front of the Sycorax to leading the entire team in The Satan Pit, investigating on her own in The Idiot's Lantern, saving the day by hacking at a council road with a council axe in Fear Her and then building a damn time machine to save the day with Donna Noble in Turn Left.
Traveling unlocks a joie de vivre in Rose that brings the guilt-ridden Doctor back from the brink after the Time War. Her warmth and spirit give him new motivation and help him realign his moral compass. She instinctively reaches out to people, whether it's a Dalek or a creepy guy in an alleyway on New Year's Eve. She bonds with people like Gwyneth and Raffalo and sees the things the Doctor doesn't notice.
People often tend to say that Rose is too selfish, and while I agree that selfishness is an aspect of her character, I don't believe it to be as serious a flaw as it is often made out to be. Rose puts herself first only when it comes to decisions about what she should do and how she should live her life. At the end of Rose, she turns down the Doctor's offer not because she doesn't want to go, but because she feels obligated to say for her mother and for Mickey. By the end of series 1, and then again and again in series 2, we see a Rose who refuses to allow other people to make decisions for her. She never apologizes for being a young woman from a council estate. She knows that she wants to travel with the Doctor and she commits to it, refusing to allow anyone else to guilt her about her decision or make that choice for her. When the universe itself takes that choice away from her, Rose builds a Dimension Cannon to go after what she wants. She takes charge of her own life, and while sometimes that means being a little selfish, I think that's very admirable.
"I spent a lot of time with you, thinking I was second best. But you know what?
I am good."
Martha Jones had the patience of a saint, and used it not only to put up with the Doctor at his worst, but to save the whole damn world. She's clever, rational and quick-thinking -- when Martha Jones' workplace suddenly winds up on the moon, her first thought is "how are we breathing?" Martha puts her brains to work in order to help people, both as a doctor and as a companion. She walks the Earth alone to single-handedly save the world, then laughs in the face of death and a genocidal maniac. She pulls the Doctor back from the ledge time and again throughout series 3, then has the sense and the self-awareness and the strength to leave. I recently saw her described as the only companion who helps the Doctor more than he helps her, and I think there's a lot of truth to that; she is absolutely vital to his mental health and survival. But I think her time with the Doctor teaches Martha to be just a little bit more selfish -- she spends so much of series 3 suffering quietly, swallowing down her own feelings in favour of helping others. By the end of series 3, though, Martha has learned to do what's right for her.
A lot of people didn't like Martha's unrequited love story, and I can accept that, but for me it only serves to emphasize her strength. For me, Martha's exit scene and her "getting out" speech are some of the strongest scenes in the series. She spends so long suffering quietly, and I love that at first she sticks to the "safe" explanation -- her family needs her -- but ultimately decides "no, screw that" and goes back in to clarify precisely how she feels. She finally realizes she doesn't need the Doctor's validation, and she leaves the TARDIS confident in herself and with the Doctor on speed-dial. Get it, Martha.
And then when we next see her she's doing precisely that: arguing with the Doctor, telling him off when he treats her hypocritically, giving the Daleks an ultimatum, helping out an alien species and picking up an alien companion who dies tragically. I'm sad we didn't get to see more of her fabulous self on Torchwood, but I think the world is probably a safer place with Martha Jones defending it freelance. Dr Jones, you're a star.
"I'm Donna Noble. I'm a human being. Maybe not the stuff of legend,
but every bit as important as Time Lords, thank you."
Donna Noble is a force of nature. From her first appearance in The Runaway Bride, Donna is loud, brash, and unafraid to speak her mind. She stands up to the Doctor from the second they meet and never lets herself be awed by him. I think Donna, more than the other three, recognizes the Doctor as an alien first and foremost -- yet never places him on a pedestal because of it.
What I think is remarkable about Donna is the insight she has into the Doctor straight from their first meeting. She sees through the Doctor's bravado and his talk and spots his grief and his sadness, and she latches onto it. At the end of her very first episode, she sums up the Tenth Doctor in a sentence, rightly pointing out that he needs someone to stop him. That intuitive connection never really goes away; throughout series 4 she always knows when to push, when to tease and when to be supportive. Donna provides the small-picture contrast to the Doctor's big-picture worldview, and despite how it's set up in The Runaway Bride, that's not always a bad thing. The Doctor often gets so caught up in being the Last of the Time Lords that having Donna Noble: Supertemp there to provide a reality check can be massively important. She's brave enough to put her hand over the Doctor's to destroy Pompeii, and she's human enough to insist they save that one family.
She has (for most of her time on screen) no special powers or traits, nothing superficially extraordinary, but she does amazing things. Donna's story is about gaining confidence in herself and learning to believe that she -- a temp from Chiswick -- might be special. But more than anything I think her story is about her potential, and that's why I think, as sad as Journey's End is, she'll be okay. Right from Runaway Bride Donna displays some key companion characteristics: she's brave enough to leap out of a moving car on the motorway, she sees through the Doctor, when given the option to stay or go home she chooses to stay, she puts herself in the line of fire to try and protect a man she's just met after being verbally torn apart by the man she's engaged to, and then, probably most important of all, she knows when to make the Doctor stop. In Partners in Crime she investigates just as well as the Doctor does all on her own. And Turn Left is all about Donna's potential; in a world where she never met the Doctor she's still willing to die to make things right. Donna Noble: badass in any universe.
"Amy Pond, the girl who waited, all night in your garden. Was it worth it?"
"Shut up. Of course it was."
A lot of the series 5 promotional material described Amy Pond as "enigmatic", and I spent most of series 5 thinking, "well, no she's not". Amy, to me, seemed like a pretty open book: stubborn and fierce, because she's had to be, because for twelve years in her sleepy little town she's been the weird one with the imaginary friend; independent, because she doesn't trust people to stick around; daring, because when she was a little kid the scariest thing in the world was a crack in her bedroom wall; flirty, because, well, why not; immature, because she's spent fourteen years waiting for her imaginary friend to come back.
We first meet Amelia Pond when she is the most adorable 7-year-old ever, and fifteen minutes into her first episode she packs a tiny suitcase and breaks our hearts omg. I admit that I spent most of series 5 expecting that Amy's story would conclude with her "growing up" -- in this case, marrying Rory -- and deciding to go back home. But what I like about Amy's story is that in the end she decides no, thanks, she can do both; she doesn't have to decide between awesome space-time adventures and "real life", because awesome space-time adventures can be her real life. Being "grown up" and married doesn't mean she has to lose her childlike zest for adventure, and by the end of the season Amy knows that.
The Doctor calls Amy "the girl who doesn't make sense" and I think to some extent her story in series 5 is Amy making sense of herself. She's confident and brave and headstrong from the start, and yet she's unable to tell her fiance she loves him. You get the sense that she's independent because she thinks she has to be, because she doesn't want to rely on anyone else and because "people" always let her down. Traveling pushes Amy to be brave not just for the sake of bravado or appearances, the way I think she was for a long time, but brave because she trusts herself and -- perhaps even scarier -- trusts other people to pull through for her. I hope we get to see more of this Amy in series 6, that with a family and a husband and a Time Lord BFF behind her she can trust the world around her more, relax more and keep breaking down the walls she spent fourteen years putting up.
"The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life.
That you don’t just give up. You don’t let things happen. You make a stand. You say 'no'.
You have the guts to do what’s right when everyone else runs away and I just can't!"
Oh, Rose. Over two and half-ish seasons we see Rose go from being a nineteen-year-old girl stuck in a rut of familiarity to a woman who knows what she wants and isn't afraid to go for it. Early on, Rose's curiosity and bravery lead her to find trouble and love it. She's confident in herself even from the start of the series, and while travelling with the Doctor allows Rose the opportunity to do more than she otherwise could, she never doubts herself for being a nineteen-year-old shop girl from a council estate. She holds her ground even when she's frightened and uses her humanity as a counterweight to the Doctor's alienness. As time goes on, Rose refines these strengths and grows to be even even more capable, even more of a leader. She goes from stammering in front of the Sycorax to leading the entire team in The Satan Pit, investigating on her own in The Idiot's Lantern, saving the day by hacking at a council road with a council axe in Fear Her and then building a damn time machine to save the day with Donna Noble in Turn Left.
Traveling unlocks a joie de vivre in Rose that brings the guilt-ridden Doctor back from the brink after the Time War. Her warmth and spirit give him new motivation and help him realign his moral compass. She instinctively reaches out to people, whether it's a Dalek or a creepy guy in an alleyway on New Year's Eve. She bonds with people like Gwyneth and Raffalo and sees the things the Doctor doesn't notice.
People often tend to say that Rose is too selfish, and while I agree that selfishness is an aspect of her character, I don't believe it to be as serious a flaw as it is often made out to be. Rose puts herself first only when it comes to decisions about what she should do and how she should live her life. At the end of Rose, she turns down the Doctor's offer not because she doesn't want to go, but because she feels obligated to say for her mother and for Mickey. By the end of series 1, and then again and again in series 2, we see a Rose who refuses to allow other people to make decisions for her. She never apologizes for being a young woman from a council estate. She knows that she wants to travel with the Doctor and she commits to it, refusing to allow anyone else to guilt her about her decision or make that choice for her. When the universe itself takes that choice away from her, Rose builds a Dimension Cannon to go after what she wants. She takes charge of her own life, and while sometimes that means being a little selfish, I think that's very admirable.
"I spent a lot of time with you, thinking I was second best. But you know what?
I am good."
Martha Jones had the patience of a saint, and used it not only to put up with the Doctor at his worst, but to save the whole damn world. She's clever, rational and quick-thinking -- when Martha Jones' workplace suddenly winds up on the moon, her first thought is "how are we breathing?" Martha puts her brains to work in order to help people, both as a doctor and as a companion. She walks the Earth alone to single-handedly save the world, then laughs in the face of death and a genocidal maniac. She pulls the Doctor back from the ledge time and again throughout series 3, then has the sense and the self-awareness and the strength to leave. I recently saw her described as the only companion who helps the Doctor more than he helps her, and I think there's a lot of truth to that; she is absolutely vital to his mental health and survival. But I think her time with the Doctor teaches Martha to be just a little bit more selfish -- she spends so much of series 3 suffering quietly, swallowing down her own feelings in favour of helping others. By the end of series 3, though, Martha has learned to do what's right for her.
A lot of people didn't like Martha's unrequited love story, and I can accept that, but for me it only serves to emphasize her strength. For me, Martha's exit scene and her "getting out" speech are some of the strongest scenes in the series. She spends so long suffering quietly, and I love that at first she sticks to the "safe" explanation -- her family needs her -- but ultimately decides "no, screw that" and goes back in to clarify precisely how she feels. She finally realizes she doesn't need the Doctor's validation, and she leaves the TARDIS confident in herself and with the Doctor on speed-dial. Get it, Martha.
And then when we next see her she's doing precisely that: arguing with the Doctor, telling him off when he treats her hypocritically, giving the Daleks an ultimatum, helping out an alien species and picking up an alien companion who dies tragically. I'm sad we didn't get to see more of her fabulous self on Torchwood, but I think the world is probably a safer place with Martha Jones defending it freelance. Dr Jones, you're a star.
"I'm Donna Noble. I'm a human being. Maybe not the stuff of legend,
but every bit as important as Time Lords, thank you."
Donna Noble is a force of nature. From her first appearance in The Runaway Bride, Donna is loud, brash, and unafraid to speak her mind. She stands up to the Doctor from the second they meet and never lets herself be awed by him. I think Donna, more than the other three, recognizes the Doctor as an alien first and foremost -- yet never places him on a pedestal because of it.
What I think is remarkable about Donna is the insight she has into the Doctor straight from their first meeting. She sees through the Doctor's bravado and his talk and spots his grief and his sadness, and she latches onto it. At the end of her very first episode, she sums up the Tenth Doctor in a sentence, rightly pointing out that he needs someone to stop him. That intuitive connection never really goes away; throughout series 4 she always knows when to push, when to tease and when to be supportive. Donna provides the small-picture contrast to the Doctor's big-picture worldview, and despite how it's set up in The Runaway Bride, that's not always a bad thing. The Doctor often gets so caught up in being the Last of the Time Lords that having Donna Noble: Supertemp there to provide a reality check can be massively important. She's brave enough to put her hand over the Doctor's to destroy Pompeii, and she's human enough to insist they save that one family.
She has (for most of her time on screen) no special powers or traits, nothing superficially extraordinary, but she does amazing things. Donna's story is about gaining confidence in herself and learning to believe that she -- a temp from Chiswick -- might be special. But more than anything I think her story is about her potential, and that's why I think, as sad as Journey's End is, she'll be okay. Right from Runaway Bride Donna displays some key companion characteristics: she's brave enough to leap out of a moving car on the motorway, she sees through the Doctor, when given the option to stay or go home she chooses to stay, she puts herself in the line of fire to try and protect a man she's just met after being verbally torn apart by the man she's engaged to, and then, probably most important of all, she knows when to make the Doctor stop. In Partners in Crime she investigates just as well as the Doctor does all on her own. And Turn Left is all about Donna's potential; in a world where she never met the Doctor she's still willing to die to make things right. Donna Noble: badass in any universe.
"Amy Pond, the girl who waited, all night in your garden. Was it worth it?"
"Shut up. Of course it was."
A lot of the series 5 promotional material described Amy Pond as "enigmatic", and I spent most of series 5 thinking, "well, no she's not". Amy, to me, seemed like a pretty open book: stubborn and fierce, because she's had to be, because for twelve years in her sleepy little town she's been the weird one with the imaginary friend; independent, because she doesn't trust people to stick around; daring, because when she was a little kid the scariest thing in the world was a crack in her bedroom wall; flirty, because, well, why not; immature, because she's spent fourteen years waiting for her imaginary friend to come back.
We first meet Amelia Pond when she is the most adorable 7-year-old ever, and fifteen minutes into her first episode she packs a tiny suitcase and breaks our hearts omg. I admit that I spent most of series 5 expecting that Amy's story would conclude with her "growing up" -- in this case, marrying Rory -- and deciding to go back home. But what I like about Amy's story is that in the end she decides no, thanks, she can do both; she doesn't have to decide between awesome space-time adventures and "real life", because awesome space-time adventures can be her real life. Being "grown up" and married doesn't mean she has to lose her childlike zest for adventure, and by the end of the season Amy knows that.
The Doctor calls Amy "the girl who doesn't make sense" and I think to some extent her story in series 5 is Amy making sense of herself. She's confident and brave and headstrong from the start, and yet she's unable to tell her fiance she loves him. You get the sense that she's independent because she thinks she has to be, because she doesn't want to rely on anyone else and because "people" always let her down. Traveling pushes Amy to be brave not just for the sake of bravado or appearances, the way I think she was for a long time, but brave because she trusts herself and -- perhaps even scarier -- trusts other people to pull through for her. I hope we get to see more of this Amy in series 6, that with a family and a husband and a Time Lord BFF behind her she can trust the world around her more, relax more and keep breaking down the walls she spent fourteen years putting up.