Everything has its Time Lord
This season has certainly inspired much thought and looking back it’s difficult to argue that that wasn’t intended. Other people have pointed out the recurrent themes of power in naming (the Shakespeare Code) or seeing (Blink) a thing, of hope and the will to survive and how the latter can be both a virtue and the most (im)mortal of sins. I still think all the threads never quite ravelled for several reasons that in the end boil down to two things.
Thing One
Biased here but one of the qualities I liked most in Martha Jones was the healthy scientific scepticism she was able to bring to all issues other than the Doctor himself. It’s true that faith is a powerful force and that aspect of the Doctor’s Tinkerbell apotheosis I could have adjusted to. But even faith needs an editor and Martha’s missionary activities showed no sign of one. I don’t know how they could have arranged it without giving away the ending but if we’d heard her convince people to believe in something specific the Doctor could do rather than just in Him it might have worked. Taking him on trust is more or less exactly what they did with Harold Saxon (and that half of the storyline was convincing without imbuing the Master with rejuvenating floatiness).
Thing Two
One problem I have with the Doctor is the long standing one of what he and the Time Lords are supposed to represent with respect to less ‘advanced’ civilisations. Somehow this connects with the feeling in the finale that if, as was implied, the Master did what he did to humanity entirely to spite the Doctor the episode really needed a Joan to point that out.
The other problem is related but not quite the same. I think it first began to bother me in the Lazurus episode, the one that quoted The Hollow Men. In fact on re-reading did they ever strip-mine that poem for the latter half of the season from stuffed heads, to eyes dared not met, to stone images, dying stars, “life is long” and maybe even prickly pears although I suppose the toclafane were more like apples geometrically speaking. Maybe the other famous Eliot poem is more relevant to them. The line about seeing his head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter most literally but also the whole:
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
As the end approaches the mind regresses to the childish point at which it no longer understands the finality of death. What the last humans did to themselves in a frenzy of self-preservation maybe only became evil when the Master brought them back to a time with more left to do than play on the beach.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Thing two isn’t that, however, it’s the Doctor. Both in Lazurus and by his actions against the Family Ten argues against eternal life but without applying the same reasoning to his own kind. It’s an odd thing about the series that’s been there from the beginning, in most children’s stories the child becomes the hero and to facilitate that at some point the mentor has to die. In Who the mentor has somehow become the protagonist and instead of dying regenerates, getting progressively younger (although not entirely linearly) with each incarnation. Will he be bringing his own head in upon a platter by the end?
Thing One
Biased here but one of the qualities I liked most in Martha Jones was the healthy scientific scepticism she was able to bring to all issues other than the Doctor himself. It’s true that faith is a powerful force and that aspect of the Doctor’s Tinkerbell apotheosis I could have adjusted to. But even faith needs an editor and Martha’s missionary activities showed no sign of one. I don’t know how they could have arranged it without giving away the ending but if we’d heard her convince people to believe in something specific the Doctor could do rather than just in Him it might have worked. Taking him on trust is more or less exactly what they did with Harold Saxon (and that half of the storyline was convincing without imbuing the Master with rejuvenating floatiness).
Thing Two
One problem I have with the Doctor is the long standing one of what he and the Time Lords are supposed to represent with respect to less ‘advanced’ civilisations. Somehow this connects with the feeling in the finale that if, as was implied, the Master did what he did to humanity entirely to spite the Doctor the episode really needed a Joan to point that out.
The other problem is related but not quite the same. I think it first began to bother me in the Lazurus episode, the one that quoted The Hollow Men. In fact on re-reading did they ever strip-mine that poem for the latter half of the season from stuffed heads, to eyes dared not met, to stone images, dying stars, “life is long” and maybe even prickly pears although I suppose the toclafane were more like apples geometrically speaking. Maybe the other famous Eliot poem is more relevant to them. The line about seeing his head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter most literally but also the whole:
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
As the end approaches the mind regresses to the childish point at which it no longer understands the finality of death. What the last humans did to themselves in a frenzy of self-preservation maybe only became evil when the Master brought them back to a time with more left to do than play on the beach.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Thing two isn’t that, however, it’s the Doctor. Both in Lazurus and by his actions against the Family Ten argues against eternal life but without applying the same reasoning to his own kind. It’s an odd thing about the series that’s been there from the beginning, in most children’s stories the child becomes the hero and to facilitate that at some point the mentor has to die. In Who the mentor has somehow become the protagonist and instead of dying regenerates, getting progressively younger (although not entirely linearly) with each incarnation. Will he be bringing his own head in upon a platter by the end?