Doctor Who: Why I adored Doomsday...
I was thoroughly and completely wrecked by the most recent episode of Doctor Who. And I loved every second of it. Love on a Joss scale, which RTD did achieve for me before in Queer as Folk (UK), but I was thrilled to see him do again here.
A graduate from the Joss School of Pain, I rather like it when shows can rip my heart out. It means that they matter to me, that they've reached me on an emotional level. I want the things that I watch to make me feel. Laugh, cry, burst into song, whatever, as long as it is genuine, true emotion. I want shows that are capable of breaking my heart (they don't always have to, but they need to have the depth of character where it's possible).
Now, I already knew that Rose could cause me to react on that deep of an emotional level, but Doomsday is the first time where the tenth Doctor has been able to reach me as deeply. I felt his agony here as surely as I felt Rose's. The show isn't ending for me, with the end of Rose, because now this Doctor has shown to me his depth of emotion.
There are people who are upset at the way that Rose left. Some people are upset because she was forced to leave, some because she didn't choose, others for altogether different reasons, I'm certain. As many reasons as people dissatisfied, I expect.
I adored the way she left -- I couldn't have imagined it any other way, not without her dying.
Slight digression here -- I read a story where Rose sorta forced the Doctor to settle down, but I just couldn't buy the premise. Rose loves traveling and she loves the Doctor as who he is. She doesn't want to change him, she just wants to be with him, help him to be less lonely.
Because that was Rose's purpose. She was his shield against the loss of his world and his people. She wanted to know about him. She refused to just give up. She wanted to comfort him and help him remember that just because his people were gone, it didn't mean that all people were gone. For her to leave him, at any point in her journey, would have been a betrayal of her character as we knew it.
"Better with two." Rose said that quite early on, but she meant it. And not just any random two -- she means them, Rose and the Doctor, companions and fellow travelers. Joy is multiplied by sharing and sorrow is divided.
For her to choose anything other than standing by his stand as the world came tumbling down, that would have been a betrayal of her choice in Parting of the Ways, and all her promises before and after that she would be there to guard against his loneliness. She said it, she meant it, and everything she saw only made her more resolute. The Doctor needs companions, the show has always made that clear, and Rose sees it. And she wanted to be there to hold his hand, because she knew that she would never willingly let go of it.
She would never choose to be safe when he was in danger.
But the people who loved her would save her from death. They didn't keep her from her choice, they just kept her from dying in the execution of it. I have no quarrel with that, and I doubt that Rose holds it against them.
I never, for one second, thought that we were supposed to think that she was suicidal. She was devastated and there will always be a part of her that loves him and that waits for him to find her, I think, but that doesn't make her anything other than someone who has lost their first true love. I don't think that love is something that only happens once per person -- I think she could very well fall in love again. It would be a different kind of love, of course, but there's nothing wrong with that.
They love each other, and she knows. Oh, he didn't get a chance to say it, but it was clear. She knows. And he burned up a sun just for the chance to say goodbye to her.
I loved the moment with the wall, where they were so close, but an entire universe away, but I also loved the beach scene. If Rose showed how much she loved him by staying to fight, coming back to fight, he showed how much he loved her here. Searching the universe for a hole and for the power to peer through it so that he could say goodbye. Just to say goodbye, but it mattered so much to the both of them. To see that she was safe, to show her the same -- to let her see him and to see her, even if they couldn't touch (which was, by the way, agony. So much of their relationship was bound up in touch -- in hands and in hugs).
Rose will always miss him, but the pain will fade into a quiet ache over the years. And she'll be stronger for it -- no bored shopgirl anymore, not Rose Tyler. She knows things now and, more importantly, she knows the strength of her own convictions, knows that she's strong enough to stand up when the world's ending.
They had so much happiness together, so many moments when they just enjoyed knowing each other and caring about each other. Golden memories to warm lonely nights and to remind each other that such companionship exists. The agony of separation was intense because the joy of love was just as powerful.
She loved him -- in two bodies (with different personalities). She stayed with him to the end of human endurance and the edge of her own death. She came back when he tried to keep her from harm, refused to let him face the trials of life alone if there was anything she could do to stop it.
He loved her. He believed in her strength and courage. Wanted her safe, and was both terrified and amazed when she wouldn't allow him to keep her so. He died for her and loved her past his death.
They adored each other. Rose couldn't have chosen to leave the Doctor and still be Rose. Russell says it right, in the Confidential. Rose would have spent the rest of her life in the TARDIS, given her own choice. The only thing that could keep them apart is an entire reality, the void of hell between. I find it all intensely romantic and quite beautiful. For me, it all fits together wonderfully (except for Girl in the Fireplace. That episode still makes absolutely zero emotional sense in the context of the series arc). The love story of Rose and her Doctor is one of the most gorgeous that I've ever seen.
I am grateful to have seen it.