Two Thoughts on Journey's End
While I was watching Journey's End and putting together my screencap review, I noticed two things I found interesting.
First, Ten was not at all upset with new!Ten for creating the weapon that would turn the reality bomb on the Daleks in the "biggest backfire in history." He's only upset when it's destroyed, since they now have no way of stopping the reality bomb. Since the initial weapon would have produced the same effect of a genocide, I think it's not the act of killing the Daleks that bothers Ten, but when. To kill the Daleks after the reality bomb has been disassembled and they are not an active threat to the people around him, is wrong to Ten. He finds it much more morally defensible to foil their plans again and again instead of launching a preemptive strike. Perhaps he continues to hope that the Daleks will eventually learn and evolve. While new!Ten sees the death and destruction that they will cause and doesn't care so much about their redemption but rather about the lives that will be lost.
Second, though Ten is wounded by the sight of his companions ready to destroy themselves or even the whole Earth, he is incapacitated by the thought of people sacrificing themselves to save him. It's the knowledge that Harriet Jones died to bring him through the Medusa Cascade that breaks him and leads him to remember all those who have also laid down their lives for him. When I watch that scene, he's clearly miserable when talking to Martha and Jack but he can barely stand once he thinks of the dead in his wake. I think this feeds into his actions with Donna and Rose. It's not so much that he's filled with self loathing for turning people into weapons, it's more that he can't allow them to die for him if there is *anything* he can do to prevent it. One more death would be more than he could take. He's so completely determined that they not die, that there is nothing that they could say to change his mind. So he ends up looking very high handed and controlling, but his actions come out of a place of desperation.
First, Ten was not at all upset with new!Ten for creating the weapon that would turn the reality bomb on the Daleks in the "biggest backfire in history." He's only upset when it's destroyed, since they now have no way of stopping the reality bomb. Since the initial weapon would have produced the same effect of a genocide, I think it's not the act of killing the Daleks that bothers Ten, but when. To kill the Daleks after the reality bomb has been disassembled and they are not an active threat to the people around him, is wrong to Ten. He finds it much more morally defensible to foil their plans again and again instead of launching a preemptive strike. Perhaps he continues to hope that the Daleks will eventually learn and evolve. While new!Ten sees the death and destruction that they will cause and doesn't care so much about their redemption but rather about the lives that will be lost.
Second, though Ten is wounded by the sight of his companions ready to destroy themselves or even the whole Earth, he is incapacitated by the thought of people sacrificing themselves to save him. It's the knowledge that Harriet Jones died to bring him through the Medusa Cascade that breaks him and leads him to remember all those who have also laid down their lives for him. When I watch that scene, he's clearly miserable when talking to Martha and Jack but he can barely stand once he thinks of the dead in his wake. I think this feeds into his actions with Donna and Rose. It's not so much that he's filled with self loathing for turning people into weapons, it's more that he can't allow them to die for him if there is *anything* he can do to prevent it. One more death would be more than he could take. He's so completely determined that they not die, that there is nothing that they could say to change his mind. So he ends up looking very high handed and controlling, but his actions come out of a place of desperation.