Meta on the Doctor's Sexuality

[betawho]

Since this appears to be Meta Month, I thought I'd drop this in here.

Someone on another board asked me that if someone was going to retcon the Doctor as asexual how would I do it. This post is the result. It's probably not what a lot of people would expect.

My reply:

Okay, I'll give it a shot. If I was asked to come up with some reason why the Doctor would love Earth females, but still be asexual, in order to explain away recent developments.... Hmm...

Okay, the Doctor isn't human, he's a different species from a very long lived, and not very populous species, who also happened to be very staid, very authoritarian, and considered themselves "lords."

I'd say (I'm not writing this as a story, but as background information that could be seeded through the stories to create a new background understanding - the retcon - or another way of understanding his past and actions):

I'd say Susan was his granddaughter. She is actually his biological, flesh and blood, grandchild. But on Gallifrey, Time Lords generally marry for political purposes. Oh, regular Gallifreyans (like Andred) may marry for love, but Time Lords, as the social power on Gallifrey, create political and genetic alliances.

The young, of course, have decades of adolescence and young adulthood to experiment with sex. In a society that can regulate their own bodies so consciously, either biologically or technologically, it's likely that unwanted conceptions could be kept to a minimum, or simply eliminated by putting a block on young Time Lords and Ladies reproductive cycles until it became time to use them. All they'd have to do was put the female's eggs in temporal stasis and everyone could hump their brains out to their hearts content. Get their hearts broken, try every possible posture and kink and basically get it all out of their system before they're grown up and have to be taken seriously.

Just looking at the First Doctor, I bet he was a randy young sod. The First Doctor was not nearly as reticent as some later ones. And that "go to your room and invent a new screwdriver" comment could either be a flippant remark, or be reminiscence from when he was still very young and shy. I'd bet a 20-something equivalent Doctor was partying with the Shabogans and getting in trouble for being out after kerfew.

Basically, by the time the Doctor had gotten old enough to contract a marriage, for political reasons, or possibly for genetic ones, sex was probably old hat and nothing to really get excited about. At least not just as an activity for its own sake. If there was nothing special about the people involved I doubt he'd give it much thought once he'd sown his wild oats.

So, I hear you say, "that's not very asexual!" But if people are determined that the Time Lords have an inherent sexual nature, then it makes sense, being the stodgy old race that they are, that they'd want to get it out of the young one's systems as quick as possible. Let them make all those mistakes that just telling them will never make them believe, then let them settle down into responsible adults. People who can be trusted with Time, and not to think with their underwear.

Then, of course, I'm sure there were all sorts of classes at the Academy telling them "not to get involved with the natives!" I have no doubt that Time Lord society has had to deal with, and clean up, all the problems caused by careless Time Lords (I'm just going to refer to all Time Lords of both genders as Time Lords, for expediency's sake) getting romantically involved with the locals, having relationships and leaving heartbroken lovers behind, or leaving strings of time tots scattered across the cosmos to wreak havoc with the timelines.

Broken hearts and broken lives are a real pain. So I'm sure there were classes and lessons dealing with that. Time Lords went out into the universe to observe, not to shag everything that didn't move fast enough.

That assumes Time Lords are born with a sex drive. It's also entirely possible that they aren't much. At least comparative to humans. They may simply, as a long lived race that doesn't need to replenish its population much, be less interested in that sort of thing. In which case, the young may have had a few heartbreaks, tried a few things just to see what all the fuss was about, then got on with their lives.

Okay, skipping forward now to the Doctor's kids.

(This is my conjecture.) Time Lords are a fairly undemonstrative, straightlaced culture. It's understandable, considering it's a culture that is probably overburdened with old wise folks who have a tremendous amount of influence on the, probably, much smaller number of young in Time Lord society.

I'm assuming that children would be very valuable and protected and cherished in Time Lord society. If only for their rarity. It's possible that whole extended families could have hundreds of members but less than a handful of children.

So, the begetting of children would be a major situation.

Time Lords don't leave things up to chance. And I'm assuming that means the genetic traits of their children as well.

Also, in a society where women have an equal amount of power and responsibility as the men, and jobs to do, it's likely that most women would not want to take the risk, and time, and messy happenchance, of regular conception and childbirth. It's all so uncontrolled! It warps the body and the mind, stretching the body and hindering the reason with hormones and sore feet.

No, in this technological society, it's more likely that children would be gestated in artificial creches. That allows for a degree of control, safety, and freedom that natural childbirth does not.

And I'd say that marriage alliances on Gallifrey were exactly that. As a high ranking Prydonian, the Doctor, who is himself a person of intelligence and charisma, desirable traits in a new Time Lord, would probably be considered both a good political as well as genetic catch.

So, the Doctor, as do most Time Lords at some point in their lives, enters into a marriage contract to ally his House with another. A child is contracted for both houses, combining the best traits of both families and cementing the political bond.

But, the Doctor isn't as uninterested as most other busy Time Lords. He'd probably be almost embarrassingly interested in the whole process. Haunting the creche every day, watching his child develop. And after it is born, spending far more time with his child than most adult Time Lords do.

I'd say that Time Lords, as very long lived, but not very populous people, would have developed a House structure so that each Time Lord can have the feeling of belonging to an extended family, many aunts uncles and cousins of varying degrees, from great great great,etc. uncles, to sweet little nieces only knee high in the creche, and everyone else being cousins of various ages that he may only barely know, barely tolerate, or have close ties to.

That extended family House structure would perhaps be something like a Noble House structure, where they have a "family seat" or "estate" (such as the Master mentioned having) which is central to the whole family, but is a much more complex arrangement than simply "mum, dad, and kids."

The children of the Time Lords, the "time tots" as Romana called them, would be the very pampered and protected and rare young of the Houses. Their parents may not even pay much attention to them, depending on personal inclinations, and how busy they were or how far ranging their jobs took them. So the "Family" looked after the children. Schooling, socializing, and building future political connections by being taken to the Citadel for educational and social outings, always protected, and probably cooed over by everyone.

The Doctor, being a bit different, and a very gooey sort of person, probably spent a lot of time with his own children, and probably all the children of his family, fascinated with the development of the young, of seeing his own child (or children, there's nothing that says he can't have entered into more than one political or genetic marriage - he may not even have known the women that well. There's nothing that says they'd have to live together or be "in love.")

So, the Doctor, being a bit of a hippie, would actually be a father to his children, or at the very least very involved in their lives, and I've no doubt he'd love his children extremely.

But none of this would seem like a cold or unnatural arrangement to him. Time Lords in general seem to be a fairly solitary sort of species, even among one another. So as his children grew up and made their own alliances he would see nothing wrong with that.

And, in the meantime, he's gone through the Academy, learned all the lessons of "non-interference" in the universe, and trained and learned all the different sciences, technologies, time mechanics, histories, laws, rules, Tardis maintenance, and generally everything an active time traveler would need to know.

I severely doubt Gallifrey, and the head Time Lords, would allow some irresponsible person to have access to a Tardis, and to the fragility of Time beyond Gallifrey's borders. To get access to a Tardis, official access anyway, would require the pilot or traveler to be someone the Time Lords could trust.

And that includes someone who's not going to be leaving little time tots scattered all across time.

So, the Doctor is indoctrinated in his society's way of doing things. Oh, people fall in love. They are people after all. But in their society, loving, and shagging are two different things. The overindulgence in sex is something for the young and foolish. And a bit boring and repetitive after a while. And procreation is an entirely different process, a product of technology and politics.

So, at some point, the Doctor has a falling out with the Time Lords. And, I'm assuming, somehow the rest of his children and grandchildren had died or been killed. He only had Susan left. And, for some reason, I think he felt he could not leave her safely with his extended family.

So he took his last remaining child, and ran away.

Now, here he is, out in the universe. All alone. The responsible one, responsible for his granddaughter. Responsible in a way he may not ever have had to be before with the backup of the Family, and House, and Creche to see to the young's welfare and education.

He has to set his granddaughter a good example. Out in the universe. All alone. He has to teach her what she can and cannot do out among these timelines. They can't change things. They can't be conspicuous. They can't draw the Time Lords' attention.

So, he travels, and raises his grandchild, and possibly, in the process, becomes far closer to her than to any of his children before. Living with her, day in, day out. Watching her grow and develop. Watching her become more intelligent, more inquisitive, braver and bolder, and gradually becoming a woman.

But there are no other Time Lords out here for her to fall in love with, to learn about life with, to grow and become a complete person. So, in the end, he forces a decision that, as her old grandfather he doesn't want to do, for his own selfish reasons, but for her, for his child, he will let her go. Let her grow. Let her experience life to the full.

And it hurts.

She leaves a hole in his heart and in his life that no one else can fill. But, there are others. Other lost young things who need someone to look after them. Someone to love and nurture them until they are old enough, and strong enough, to stand on their own two feet.

But they're not Time Lords. They learn and age and develop so fast. Just as he gets to really love them, they go away. Fly off to start their own lives. But, since they do live such bright and fiery lives, there's always another, then another.

And at some point, they stop being replacements for his granddaughter, and start becoming friends in their own right.

He starts getting younger. Out among the stars, in dangerous situations, outside the boring safetly of Gallifrey, he meets danger more often, and meets his death more frequently, and as a result, he starts to regenerate younger, stronger, more able to deal with the stresses of this new life. One of the blessings of an adaptable biology.

But, he's still the same old man from Gallifrey. Oh, he's young by his own people's standards. But they are old men living for thousands of years, yet living the same day, over and over, learning nothing from the same boring routines. While he, out here in this vast, wild universe, must learn and adapt and become wiser and more wiley every day just to survive. No boring routine for him.

And he loves it!

And it's even more fun if he brings along someone to share it with. Orphans and stow aways and outcasts. People like him, who, as often as not, have no more family of their own. So he takes them with him. He likes taking care of people. Especially young people. Because they keep him alive and vital and interested. Their wonder in the universe is a wonder in itself. And, frankly, he likes being the wise old man who can show off to them. It's a boost to his ego. And he knows he's got enough ego to enjoy that.

So they become his family. Sisters and daughters and nieces. Brothers and sons. Cousins and clanmates and friends. They fill the lost space in his soul, that absence of his large extended family back on Gallifrey. The feeling of belonging, even if it's not on the more intimate terms that his young human Companions seem to be searching for.

And some do find new homes, new families, new lovers, husbands and wives. And it hurts a little, because he knows he has no place in that tight little group, so different from his own world's notion of family. But he wishes them well, because he loves them all. And he can watch them on their way, cry a bit inside for the hole they leave in his heart, but console himself with the knowledge that, he lives in time. They're never dead. They will always be there if he wants to go back, he knows he won't. Not much. He has to give them the space to live their own lives. But, just sometimes, maybe they'll accept a visit from an old codger who's just passing through. Relive some old times. Tease an old man about how he reallycan't sing in the shower and that his nut-roast rolls are awful.

And then one day he meets a new young woman while in a new young body for the first time. A body younger than he's had in a long time. And one she apparently thinks is just like hers. And he can't remember. Something has gone wrong. There's a hole where his memory should be. He knows he's different, but why? What is it?

Then it comes to him, in a flash of light. He's the Doctor! Yes! In fit of jubilation he kisses her. She gets a dazed look on her face and asks him to kiss her again. Why not? He wants to celebrate! He's the Doctor! He's a Time Lord! He has his memory back!

But, Oh no! The Master!

The Master has laid another trap for him, and as usual, the young people around him get drawn into his wake as he tries to deal with this new crisis. Grace refuses to believe him, thinks she's going mad, doesn't really believe he isn't human. She relates to him as the human she assumes he is, even after seeing his x-rays, even after seeing the Tardis.

But then, she's partially under the Master's influence. By the time everything has been resolved she's been put through the wringer, lost her lover, lost her job, even lost control of her mind to possession by the Master, and if the Tardis hadn't been able to temporally rescusitate her, she would have lost her life.

After everything is done, he can only be grateful that someone of Grace's strength and intelligence and resourcefulness had been there to help him. She'd been being taken advantage of in her old life. Perhaps, this shakeup was what she needed. Something to remind her of her potential.

In the end, he can't resist asking her to come with him. It had been a long time since he had anyone travel with him. And she'd love it out there.

But she turned the tables on him. Brilliant Grace. And asked him to stay with her instead. Stay with her? Oh if only she knew. The Master was the least of the monsters he would bring to her door. No. His life was out in the stars. And she would do great things.

He kissed her goodbye, kissed her for his life. As he stood looking at her from the doorway of the Tardis, there in the rain. He knew he'd been blessed to have a guardian angel there to watch over him, when he couldn't watch over himself. Life was funny like that sometimes. He'd be saved by a total stranger. As if the universe wasn't done with him yet.

And how he wished it had been.

Gone.

All of it gone. No more Gallifrey. No more Family Estate by the mountain. No more silver leafed trees. No more fields of red grass for young Time Lords to run through, dreaming of the day when they'd do great things.

Horrible things.

And he couldn't even die.

The moment passed. He wasn't the type to kill himself. Not deliberately. Besides, it would be an even greater betrayal of all that had gone before. He was the last. The least he could do was continue to live. To remember them.

And life got busy again, and he pushed the memories aside. It was pathetic, but it was the same response he'd always had, if he didn't go do something, he'd go mad.

So he went and did something. Then he did something else. And eventually the numbness wore off. And then one day he went to blow up some Autons and he met a girl.

A bright, sassy spark that brought back all the joy of all the sassy Companions he'd had in his long life. She made him laugh, and she made him think and she forced him to engage with her. She refused to be ignored.

And so he looked at her. And realized what he'd been missing, what he needed. The one thing he'd made for himself over all the lonely years when he was outcast from his home, when he didn't even want to go home, and still had that option.

Family.

She stuck to him like the irritating, essential, burr of family. And she brought all her own annoying tag along family with her. Mickey the Idiot, Jackie, even Pete. She refused to let him be alone any more.

And he needed that.

He needed her. And all her wildly annoying life. Her brilliance, her spark, her compassion, he needed her like oranges needed the sun.

She made him belong. And even when he died and came back with a new face, and shocked the ¤¤¤¤ out of her, after she got used to it, she still accepted him, and she drew him even further into her family.

That's what he needed. To belong. Except. The way he needed to belong, was not the wayshe needed him to belong. She was looking at him and starting to see him through the eyes of her own culture. A culture which came with strings. Lots and lots of strings.

He loved her. He did. He loved her more than almost anyone else who still existed. But it wasn't her kind of love. She needed the strings.

They'd only strangle him. And eventually he's start to fight them, fight the constraints of them. Even though her strings weren't meant to bind and stifle, they would. He wasn't Mickey. He didn't need her the way a human man would. He couldn't give her the life she wanted, that she needed. In many ways she was like his granddaughter, needing to strike out and start living her own life, making her own mistakes, finding her own joy. And, for Rose, one of those joys would be family. A Human family. It was the kind of life he could never have. It would kill him, and kill her in the process.

Fortunately, thank god, she never pushed it. She was compassionate enough to understand that while he did need her and love her, and valued her above virtually the whole universe, it wasn't that kind of love. Even though he knew, for damn certain, that Jack had been whispering suggestions and "helpful tips" in her ear.

Then, fortunately, the universe came to his rescue again. An accident at Christmas turned out to be the very Christmas gift that Rose needed. A metacrisis. A version of himself that was human. And more than that, was part Donna. Donna, who wanted more than anything else to have someone to love her and build a family with her. That Doctor could respond to Rose like she wanted. Could take and tangle those strings around himself and be happily bound.

But it meant giving up Rose. Again. Another one. Yet more family lost.

He blamed this damned body. And the Time War. And human expectations. Humans weren't Time Lords. Time Lords understood intimacy. They had to, even Time Lords would go mad without that sense of connection to another person. But it wasn't the same for Time Lords. At least not adult ones.

So many people had thought that Time Lords were cold. Unfeeling. Distant.

But they were looking at Time Lords from the perspective of people who lived a few decades at best.

True intimacy grows over centuries, not years. To a Time Lord, a lover means far more than the fiery gropings that humans seem to define it as. He shook his head and grinned. They all, even Jack, took such pity on him. Poor lonely Doctor. Poor cold Time Lord, unable to appreciate a pretty girl, unable to connect with someone in that most intimate of ways.

Puppies.

Oh, flirting is fun, and bodies are quite nice. But offering a Time Lord what humans had to give was like offering a gourmand a lick of ice cream. To a man raised to expect a sundae with a thousand flavors, layers and nuts and glazed fruits and whipped cream and banana, a lick wasn't enough. Oh, to people to whom an ice cream cone was the ultimate experience, it was a generous offer. But...

He didn't want that.

To humans, sex was the ultimate experience of intimacy.

To a Time Lord, sex was for kids.

Yeah, there weren't any other Time Lords left. That would put a kink in any long term intimacy plans. It wasn't really a problem. Even on Gallifrey, with all the Time Lords trodding on each others toes, it had still taken someone special. It had never been just a matter of "oh, you're cute!" not among a race that could change its face, and age, and gender in a heartbeat.

What he really needed from his human friends, was, friends. A sense of family, of belonging, of knowing he had someont to fight for, and with, and, well, with. (Jamie was forever trailing sandwich crumbs throughout the Tardis, and he'd never clean up the bathroom after one of his boisterous baths. He couldn't remember how often he'd told him to mop up afterwards.)

He didn't desire his human friends. He knew they thought that was weird. He looked like a hot young guy. But looks weren't everything. And they all wanted to kiss him. What was it about this body? And, okay, he'd led Martha on. He'd wanted her to travel with him, and he'd deliberately played on her sensibilities. He wasn't proud of it. He wasn't a child, he knew what he was doing. But, after Rose, he was scared, kind of scared. He wanted someone around again, he needed that feeling of belonging, of meaning something to someone. As he told Donna, he needed a mate. A friend.

And, Martha had been brilliant. Transplant her on the moon in the middle of a workday and she keeps her head. Oh, yeah. That was someone who could handle his life. And they'd hit it off right from the start. She'd be fun to travel with, she asked all the right questions, sheappreciated the wonders of the universe.

But, he wasn't sure if she'd stay if he just asked. And then, she'd got the wrong idea about that kiss. And yes, he'd used the puppy dog eyes on her, because he knew Rose couldn't resist them. Then it had all sort of gotten out of control.

He hadn't meant to use her that way. Sometimes he forgot what he looked like to her. He'd get distracted and say something stupid, and then at other times he'd have to use Rose to keep Martha at arm's length. It wasn't nice.

It was no wonder she'd left. Good on her. He deserved it. He was being an ass. He was being insecure. 900 years old, you'd think I'd learn. But part of it was this body's fault. It made it too easy. These girls expected him to behave that way, and he was enough of a chameleon to pick up on that. He was also old enough to know better. He was actually amazed that Mickey had never punched him out.

Donna at least had understood.

Ah, Donna, like a sister and a cousin, all wrapped up in one. She didn't put up with any of his bull, and she was immune to this "skinny" body. Okay, he was vain enough for it to hurt, but it was probably good for his soul. It had surely been good for his relationship with Martha. Bless Donna.

God, Donna.

She'd understood, she'd had the same drive. That need to belong. To be a family. And then the library happened. To both of them.

Donna had lost her imaginary family. And he'd lost River.

River.

Oh River.

Does anyone else really understand? Jack would probably go crosseyed if he knew what we'd got up to these past centuries.

It would confuse the hell out of him. Because, for all that he's immortal now. He's human. He thinks in human ways.

But River is part Time Lord. She was born with the vortex in her soul.

We meet out of order, first to last. We have to treat each meeting as our first, and our last. But time, is timeless.

Most people look at me and think I'm asexual. They look at River and think she's the sexiest thing on two feet. And they wonder how that could ever work.

But they're looking at it with human eyes.

River and I are two faces of the same coin. They look at her and see the human face, sensual and Earthy. They look at me and see the alien, distant and inept.

What they don't see is underneath. Soulmusic.

Humans love so close to the surface. To the skin.

They just don't have Time to learn the deeper dance.

So, Am I asexual?

Yes, in human terms. I'm more interested in family than flesh. I come from a race that sloughs off bodies like corn husks, where lives and relationships are measured in millenia.

So, am I interested in humans' hot little flashdances? No. I'll leave that to Jack. I no more need human sex than I need to swim upstream to spawn like a salmon. It's great for salmon, it's not for me.

But, that doesn't mean I don't love. I love family. Whether it is the one I was born to, or the ones I make. The agonies and ecstasies I'll leave to the children. (And wouldn't Jack just choke to hear me call him children.)

But I also come from a race of epic love stories.

What? You thought humans had the monopoly?

Give me a couple of centuries and I'll tell you one.

Oops! Sorry, I forgot. You're only human.

But then, I'm a lover, not a fighter.

Make of that what you will.

(Okay, this is probably going to get me kicked off the internet. I had no intention of making this this long. But you did ask for my version of a "retcon" of how to make the Doctor "asexual." This may not have been what you had in mind. Because it portrays the Doctor, not as "asexual" as we think of the term, but as sexual in a way beyond human.

I don't think what the Doctor is, as a person, as a being, would be limited to small human definitions. I think he's much grander and more mysterious than that. But, when humans look at him, they can only see within the human range, within the range of their own understanding. Humans would think he'd need to either be sexual, or be asexual. With no other option.

For the purposes of his relationships with humans, he would be seen to be asexual.

But that's by a human's definition of sexual.

For the purposes of Doctor Who as a TV show. I'd just concentrate on his need of a feeling offamily. Because it is that feeling that has carried the series along for so long, and it's something that everyone of all ages, genders, orientations, nationalities, and creeds can understand. Everyone wants to belong.

I hope this offered something interesting.