Unpopular Opinion Alert: Donna in 'Journey's End' = Perfect

[arabian]

I'm putting any and all thoughts behind the cut even though it's been a week, because it was a week ago on BBC one, but it will be a bit of time before it airs on the Sci-Fi network. (How anyone can wait that long is beyond me, but there ya go ...)

Comments

[wendymr]

But when did Sylvia actually SEE Donna be brilliant? She didn't actually see anything. She wasn't there at crucial moments, and she's also the type of woman - and, again, I know the type - who sees only what she wants to see. In her world-view, Donna is useless, worthless, has never amounted to anything and will never amount to anything, and she's seen nothing to change that view. Even if she had seen just one example, I'd argue that she'd explain it away as Donna just being in the right place at the right time, or it being something anyone could do - oh, and she'd also be standing there haranguing Donna for getting in people's way and making herself out to be important when she's just a useless unemployed temp. Sorry, but that's how Sylvia is shown to us in the episodes, and she's incapable of seeing her daughter through other people's eyes.

And, with everything I saw of Sylvia, and the understanding I have from my work of issues around abuse, I have no hesitation in calling her emotionally abusive. She's a bully. She undermines Donna, destroys her confidence, saps any ounce of ambition that Donna might have had. I see conditioned responses in Donna's reaction to her, too, that tell me she's heard it all before. It's not as vivid as Donna ducking any time her mother's hand comes near her might be (yes, that's another conditioned response, one to physical abuse, and I'm very familiar with that one too), but there are still clear signs of it in Donna. Bullying behaviour is ingrained, and bullies rarely, if ever, change their behaviour - and not without some kind of intervention, such as therapy.

So, no, I just can't believe for one second that Sylvia has remotely changed her opinion of Donna, or that her behaviour will change :(

[arabian]

We'll just have to agree to disagree then. As I said to afrocurl, when there is no concrete answer in canon and I can make it make logical sense in my brain then I'll happily accept the happy alternative. We just do see Sylvia differently and if I saw her the way you did, I would agree with your point of view.