Doctor Who, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love School Reunion/Girl in the Fireplace
(Warning! Extreme Verbosity Ahead! Proceed With Caution!)
I'm going to perhaps not strictly follow the rules (they're more like guidelines, anyway?) because I want to briefly touch on Tooth & Claw and then I can't really address the things I want to address about School Reunion and Girl in the Fireplace without taking them together.
First, a couple things about Tooth & Claw:
Right, that brings us to School Reunion and Girl in the Fireplace. Keep in mind, I am a diehard Doctor/Rose shipper. I fell for Nine/Rose straightaway, and Ten/Rose pretty much cemented Doctor/Rose as my all-time, will-never-be-surpassed, always-and-EVER OTP.
As such, my first reaction to both SR and GitF was a resounding "WHAT THE FRAK?" except possibly even more colorful and with more ranting about the Doctor being mean to Rose and what were the writers thinking.
I made an effort to go back and find the awesome after making some realizations:
(1) Sarah Jane Smith is Freaking Awesome. After watching her last classic serial (The Hand of Fear) and realizing what a disservice Rusty & Co had done her by making it appear that she'd been harboring a Martha-like crush on the Doctor and expected him to return for her when in reality they really were just very good friends (and I'm a compulsive shipper! I'd see the subtext if it were there!) and she was all packed and announcing she was leaving when the Doctor got his summons to Gallifrey and got all distracted, I saw more fully what sort of point Rusty was trying to make about Doctor/Rose beyond "you wither, and you die."
(B) Steven Moffatt wrote Girl in the Fireplace. Therefore, it must be made of awesome. This is a fact; he also wrote the episodes that officially made me 100% in love with DW (The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, which I unfortunately did not have time to rave about here) and my favorite episode of S3 (Blink). He also wrote the series Coupling, which never fails to make me laugh out loud, and starred my current choice for Eleven, if DT ever insists on breaking my heart and leaving, Jack Davenport. So, as I said, if Steven wrote it, it must be made of awesome. I just have to look hard enough to find the awesome.
(III) Despite all the distractions - Time Lord angst, old companions, French courtesans - SR and GitF are, at their cores, all about Doctor/Rose. (This is KEY!)
When we left off in Tooth & Claw, the Doctor and Rose were still very firmly entrenched in their honeymoon period, as I mentioned earlier. I am fully convinced that most of the five tie-in novels I've read or listened to (The Stone Rose, The Feast of the Drowned, The Resurrection Casket, The Art of Destruction, and The Nightmare of Black Island) take place between T&C and SR. This is not just because Mickey figures in all of the ones that include modern-day London but not as a traveling companion (although that's a big clue, all things considered), but also because of how the Doctor and Rose act with each other (very honeymoony).
Even at the beginning of SR, we still see some of the honeymoon period effects in the easy way the Doctor teases Rose about being a dinner lady and the equally easy way she gives him hell over it. They are, in that scene, very much a well-functioning, deeply affectionate unit. TheDoctorandRose.
Of course, Sarah Jane's arrival and Mickey's elevated angsting about being "the tin dog" throw somewhat of a wrench into this well-functioning unit. The Doctor, quite in-character, is overjoyed to see Sarah again. Tennant's adorable fanboyishness shining through aside, the Doctor is naturally wildly proud of Sarah Jane for having made herself into a crack investigator. Even if he was never in love with her, he did love her - I think he loves all of his companions, or else they'd never get to stick around long.
At any rate, Sarah Jane showing up and both the reactions of the Doctor and Rose show us some interesting things about the Doctor/Rose relationship. Rose finally is forced to at least partially face, for real this time, what she might be risking aside from life and limb by traveling with the Doctor. RTD's Sarah Jane was abandoned by the Doctor and wasted years of her life waiting for him. Granted, this isn't really how it went and not really how the Doctor sees it, but it's the facts as they are presented to Rose by Sarah. It's like throwing cold water over Rose's head - puts quite a damper on the whole frolicking through space and time thing when suddenly you're worried you might get dropped off in Aberdeen and left behind if the Doctor sees something shinier than you.
And then she gets Lesson One on The Downsides to Being an Essentially-Immortal Alien: "I don't age. I regenerate. But humans decay. You wither and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone who you--"
The implication is, of course, that he was going to finish that with "love," which is supported by the heavy implication that the words to follow "Rose Tyler..." in Doomsday were "I love you." The Doctor is telling Rose that yes, he loves her. He feels for her what she feels for him, but he's got to angst about it a bit more than she does because, as he continues, she can spend the rest of her life with him (and it's telling in and of itself that he says she can, all things considered), but he can't with her, because she'll die on him (all my theories on Rose being as immortal as Jack aside *cough*). Poor Rose is now also forced to face up to the idea that as much fun as they're having now, someday, loving her might hurt the Doctor more than she would ever want to think about. Not to mention the fact that for him to continue on traveling with her despite inevitable pain later kind of implies some serious attachment there, which might be a little bit of a shock despite the honeymoon phase, which is by nature a bit on the giddy, personal-space-obliterating surface side.
But the main point, the main reason that SR really is all about Doctor/Rose is this: when she asks if he'll leave her behind, he says no. Emphatically, specifically. Without hesitating. "No. Not to you."
Finally, we end SR with the Doctor making adjustments to his rules because Rose thinks he should - he offers Sarah Jane a chance to come back aboard the TARDIS, and it's clear that this is largely due to urging on Rose's part.
And in the end, Sarah Jane sums up what we the viewers, and Rose herself, were supposed to learn in this episode: "Some things are worth getting your heart broken for." It isn't going to be easy to be in love with the Doctor or have him be in love with you back. But it's worth it, it's absolutely worth every single moment.
Even the ones when you're strapped to a table and he's off having banana daiquiris with drunken Frenchmen and their mistresses.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Girl in the Fireplace is absolutely All About Doctor/Rose.
I know, I know. "But what about that Reinette girl? Isn't it All About Her?" Well, yes. Sort of.
But this is where the Awesome kicks in, at least for me: if SR was meant to show us and Rose what Doctor/Rose is going to be like/could be like for Rose, then GitF is intended to do exactly that for the Doctor. In SR, he broaches the subject of the relative finger-snap-shortness of a human lifespan. In GitF, he (accidentally, I suppose) illustrates it.
To Rose, everything happens in the space of a few hours - I would say no longer than a single twenty-four hour period, but most likely even less than that. Reinette's entire life passes by in that time. She lives, she loves, she dies. And it doesn't even take long enough for Rose to need a nap.
The Doctor falls for Reinette, yes. But (a) she's actually similar to Rose in a number of very important ways having to do with courage and a desire to live a better life than the one she was born with and (b) Reinette has a slight advantage thanks to the short time in which the Doctor experiences everything, in that he never has the chance to over-think, never has the chance to come to think of her as so indispensible to his continued happiness that taking the risk of upsetting a balance by introducing snogging and/or shagging into the equation would be intolerable. Not to mention, she successfully knocks him off-kilter, first by surprise!snogging and second by surprise!mind-reading.
What I realised, once I went into the episode looking at it through the lens of "What Awesome Thing is Steven Moffatt trying to tell me with this story" is that Ten/Reinette is essentially a super-fast-forwarded version of Doctor/Rose.
They meet, she surprises him with her ability to handle Alien Stuff and her ability to worm her way into his hearts. He saves her life, she saves his (because really, he'd have died if he were stuck on the slow path). He wants to show her the universe, she wants to see it. This could all be the Doctor and Rose rather than the Doctor and Reinette I'm describing here. And when Reinette dies before the Doctor is ready, we are shown the slightest hint of what it will be like for him when Rose dies. Because he'll never be ready to lose her, but she's human. And in a space of time that, for him, is practically the blink of an eye, she will die. She will be lost to him.
Besides, if that parallel isn't enough for you or doesn't fly for you for whatever reason, there's always this one simple fact:
He goes back to Rose. He prioritizes Rose.
Yes, he was the one who jumped through the mirror in the first place in order to save Reinette. But that's what the Doctor does. He's a Time Lord, and Time Lords preserve timelines. He's the Doctor, and the Doctor saves people. Rose knows that. The Doctor knows that she knows that. I don't think it's a decision he made lightly, but in the end he chose what he had to choose.
And he was thinking of her. The first thing we see the Doctor doing after saving Reinette isn't having banana daiquiris or dancing (literally or euphamistically) with Reinette or exploring the palace. No, instead, the first thing we see him doing is standing at a window, staring out at the stars and, if the editing of Rose doing the same fading into him is any indication, thinking of Rose.
The first thing we see the Doctor doing after his trip through the fireplace (his offer to Reinette is absolutely a part of that trip, lol) isn't stroking the TARDIS, or shaking Mickey's hand, or checking up on the spaceship. It's hugging Rose - looks like one of their better hugs, too, all tight and clinging and grinny.
And yes, he shuts Rose out at the end (although honestly, if Mickey hadn't dragged her away I think she'd have gotten it out of him, possibly leading to enjoy-it-while-you-can snogging and/or shagging, but that's beside the point). But really, considering that right on the heels of seeing Sarah Jane again he's been given an object lesson in the fleeting nature of human life, is it any wonder he'd want to distance himself just a tad from Rose?
Having been thus educated on just how emotionally dangerous for both the Doctor and Rose their relationship is going to be, they can decide whether or not it is worth the risk. And so can we. And that's very important. To truly understand how wonderful the honeymoon period really was, or how wonderful the post-Mickey happy time is, or how absolutely devestating Army of Ghosts/Doomsday is, one has to understand just how much they're risking, just how much they're taking on by loving each other. Just how much they stand to lose if/when they are torn apart.
And that, my friends, is how I came to actually love School Reunion and Girl in the Fireplace. Maybe not as much as I love some of the more obviously D/R episodes... but still. They are really quite excellent, and serve a very important purpose in the overall D/R story. And I wouldn't want to go without them.
... I'm starting to think that after all that verbosity and tl;dr-ing, I might owe you guys a picspam. Hmm.
I'm going to perhaps not strictly follow the rules (they're more like guidelines, anyway?) because I want to briefly touch on Tooth & Claw and then I can't really address the things I want to address about School Reunion and Girl in the Fireplace without taking them together.
First, a couple things about Tooth & Claw:
- New Earth and Tooth & Claw together constitute what I like to think of as the Doctor and Rose's "honeymoon period." After the regeneration, Rose's acceptance of Ten and his new openness to her created a lot of new intimacy between them (I'm not saying they were shagging, mind, although... well, actually if I were going to make any arguments for off-camera shagging they would come later in the season, so yeah, not saying they were shagging). Suddenly everything is new, and when they go somewhere, it isn't just Rose who's seeing it for the first time, it's the Doctor too, in his own way. They've defeated the Daleks, they've saved the universe, and they survived. Together. Naturally, they're going to be a bit proud of themselves, and they're going to be finding a lot of joy in one another. As such, I have never blamed them for their attitude in T&C and their role in the creation of Torchwood. They were in love, they felt like they were old hat at this saving-the-universe bit, and really. Queen Victoria? How cool is that?! In a way, I don't think the queen was necessarily ever real to them; subconsciously she remained a figure from a book, come to life for a bit of a frolic. Not saying that their attitude was especially responsible or respectful, but it was completely understandable. And they're not entirely to blame; if you follow some theories of time travel and its effects or even DW's own "wibbly-wobbly" concept, Torchwood and Doomsday were probably always meant to happen. After all, in the parallel universe there was no Doctor and no Rose to piss off Queen Victoria, but there was still a Torchwood.
- The Doctor is seriously, seriously attractive in this episode. No, really. This particular form of his outfit is my ABSOLUTE favorite, and any other time I see it in the series I automatically go "OMG TOOTH & CLAW SUIT!!!! GUH." And possibly flail just a little. Hot.
Right, that brings us to School Reunion and Girl in the Fireplace. Keep in mind, I am a diehard Doctor/Rose shipper. I fell for Nine/Rose straightaway, and Ten/Rose pretty much cemented Doctor/Rose as my all-time, will-never-be-surpassed, always-and-EVER OTP.
As such, my first reaction to both SR and GitF was a resounding "WHAT THE FRAK?" except possibly even more colorful and with more ranting about the Doctor being mean to Rose and what were the writers thinking.
I made an effort to go back and find the awesome after making some realizations:
(1) Sarah Jane Smith is Freaking Awesome. After watching her last classic serial (The Hand of Fear) and realizing what a disservice Rusty & Co had done her by making it appear that she'd been harboring a Martha-like crush on the Doctor and expected him to return for her when in reality they really were just very good friends (and I'm a compulsive shipper! I'd see the subtext if it were there!) and she was all packed and announcing she was leaving when the Doctor got his summons to Gallifrey and got all distracted, I saw more fully what sort of point Rusty was trying to make about Doctor/Rose beyond "you wither, and you die."
(B) Steven Moffatt wrote Girl in the Fireplace. Therefore, it must be made of awesome. This is a fact; he also wrote the episodes that officially made me 100% in love with DW (The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, which I unfortunately did not have time to rave about here) and my favorite episode of S3 (Blink). He also wrote the series Coupling, which never fails to make me laugh out loud, and starred my current choice for Eleven, if DT ever insists on breaking my heart and leaving, Jack Davenport. So, as I said, if Steven wrote it, it must be made of awesome. I just have to look hard enough to find the awesome.
(III) Despite all the distractions - Time Lord angst, old companions, French courtesans - SR and GitF are, at their cores, all about Doctor/Rose. (This is KEY!)
When we left off in Tooth & Claw, the Doctor and Rose were still very firmly entrenched in their honeymoon period, as I mentioned earlier. I am fully convinced that most of the five tie-in novels I've read or listened to (The Stone Rose, The Feast of the Drowned, The Resurrection Casket, The Art of Destruction, and The Nightmare of Black Island) take place between T&C and SR. This is not just because Mickey figures in all of the ones that include modern-day London but not as a traveling companion (although that's a big clue, all things considered), but also because of how the Doctor and Rose act with each other (very honeymoony).
Even at the beginning of SR, we still see some of the honeymoon period effects in the easy way the Doctor teases Rose about being a dinner lady and the equally easy way she gives him hell over it. They are, in that scene, very much a well-functioning, deeply affectionate unit. TheDoctorandRose.
Of course, Sarah Jane's arrival and Mickey's elevated angsting about being "the tin dog" throw somewhat of a wrench into this well-functioning unit. The Doctor, quite in-character, is overjoyed to see Sarah again. Tennant's adorable fanboyishness shining through aside, the Doctor is naturally wildly proud of Sarah Jane for having made herself into a crack investigator. Even if he was never in love with her, he did love her - I think he loves all of his companions, or else they'd never get to stick around long.
At any rate, Sarah Jane showing up and both the reactions of the Doctor and Rose show us some interesting things about the Doctor/Rose relationship. Rose finally is forced to at least partially face, for real this time, what she might be risking aside from life and limb by traveling with the Doctor. RTD's Sarah Jane was abandoned by the Doctor and wasted years of her life waiting for him. Granted, this isn't really how it went and not really how the Doctor sees it, but it's the facts as they are presented to Rose by Sarah. It's like throwing cold water over Rose's head - puts quite a damper on the whole frolicking through space and time thing when suddenly you're worried you might get dropped off in Aberdeen and left behind if the Doctor sees something shinier than you.
And then she gets Lesson One on The Downsides to Being an Essentially-Immortal Alien: "I don't age. I regenerate. But humans decay. You wither and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone who you--"
The implication is, of course, that he was going to finish that with "love," which is supported by the heavy implication that the words to follow "Rose Tyler..." in Doomsday were "I love you." The Doctor is telling Rose that yes, he loves her. He feels for her what she feels for him, but he's got to angst about it a bit more than she does because, as he continues, she can spend the rest of her life with him (and it's telling in and of itself that he says she can, all things considered), but he can't with her, because she'll die on him (all my theories on Rose being as immortal as Jack aside *cough*). Poor Rose is now also forced to face up to the idea that as much fun as they're having now, someday, loving her might hurt the Doctor more than she would ever want to think about. Not to mention the fact that for him to continue on traveling with her despite inevitable pain later kind of implies some serious attachment there, which might be a little bit of a shock despite the honeymoon phase, which is by nature a bit on the giddy, personal-space-obliterating surface side.
But the main point, the main reason that SR really is all about Doctor/Rose is this: when she asks if he'll leave her behind, he says no. Emphatically, specifically. Without hesitating. "No. Not to you."
Finally, we end SR with the Doctor making adjustments to his rules because Rose thinks he should - he offers Sarah Jane a chance to come back aboard the TARDIS, and it's clear that this is largely due to urging on Rose's part.
And in the end, Sarah Jane sums up what we the viewers, and Rose herself, were supposed to learn in this episode: "Some things are worth getting your heart broken for." It isn't going to be easy to be in love with the Doctor or have him be in love with you back. But it's worth it, it's absolutely worth every single moment.
Even the ones when you're strapped to a table and he's off having banana daiquiris with drunken Frenchmen and their mistresses.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Girl in the Fireplace is absolutely All About Doctor/Rose.
I know, I know. "But what about that Reinette girl? Isn't it All About Her?" Well, yes. Sort of.
But this is where the Awesome kicks in, at least for me: if SR was meant to show us and Rose what Doctor/Rose is going to be like/could be like for Rose, then GitF is intended to do exactly that for the Doctor. In SR, he broaches the subject of the relative finger-snap-shortness of a human lifespan. In GitF, he (accidentally, I suppose) illustrates it.
To Rose, everything happens in the space of a few hours - I would say no longer than a single twenty-four hour period, but most likely even less than that. Reinette's entire life passes by in that time. She lives, she loves, she dies. And it doesn't even take long enough for Rose to need a nap.
The Doctor falls for Reinette, yes. But (a) she's actually similar to Rose in a number of very important ways having to do with courage and a desire to live a better life than the one she was born with and (b) Reinette has a slight advantage thanks to the short time in which the Doctor experiences everything, in that he never has the chance to over-think, never has the chance to come to think of her as so indispensible to his continued happiness that taking the risk of upsetting a balance by introducing snogging and/or shagging into the equation would be intolerable. Not to mention, she successfully knocks him off-kilter, first by surprise!snogging and second by surprise!mind-reading.
What I realised, once I went into the episode looking at it through the lens of "What Awesome Thing is Steven Moffatt trying to tell me with this story" is that Ten/Reinette is essentially a super-fast-forwarded version of Doctor/Rose.
They meet, she surprises him with her ability to handle Alien Stuff and her ability to worm her way into his hearts. He saves her life, she saves his (because really, he'd have died if he were stuck on the slow path). He wants to show her the universe, she wants to see it. This could all be the Doctor and Rose rather than the Doctor and Reinette I'm describing here. And when Reinette dies before the Doctor is ready, we are shown the slightest hint of what it will be like for him when Rose dies. Because he'll never be ready to lose her, but she's human. And in a space of time that, for him, is practically the blink of an eye, she will die. She will be lost to him.
Besides, if that parallel isn't enough for you or doesn't fly for you for whatever reason, there's always this one simple fact:
He goes back to Rose. He prioritizes Rose.
Yes, he was the one who jumped through the mirror in the first place in order to save Reinette. But that's what the Doctor does. He's a Time Lord, and Time Lords preserve timelines. He's the Doctor, and the Doctor saves people. Rose knows that. The Doctor knows that she knows that. I don't think it's a decision he made lightly, but in the end he chose what he had to choose.
And he was thinking of her. The first thing we see the Doctor doing after saving Reinette isn't having banana daiquiris or dancing (literally or euphamistically) with Reinette or exploring the palace. No, instead, the first thing we see him doing is standing at a window, staring out at the stars and, if the editing of Rose doing the same fading into him is any indication, thinking of Rose.
The first thing we see the Doctor doing after his trip through the fireplace (his offer to Reinette is absolutely a part of that trip, lol) isn't stroking the TARDIS, or shaking Mickey's hand, or checking up on the spaceship. It's hugging Rose - looks like one of their better hugs, too, all tight and clinging and grinny.
And yes, he shuts Rose out at the end (although honestly, if Mickey hadn't dragged her away I think she'd have gotten it out of him, possibly leading to enjoy-it-while-you-can snogging and/or shagging, but that's beside the point). But really, considering that right on the heels of seeing Sarah Jane again he's been given an object lesson in the fleeting nature of human life, is it any wonder he'd want to distance himself just a tad from Rose?
Having been thus educated on just how emotionally dangerous for both the Doctor and Rose their relationship is going to be, they can decide whether or not it is worth the risk. And so can we. And that's very important. To truly understand how wonderful the honeymoon period really was, or how wonderful the post-Mickey happy time is, or how absolutely devestating Army of Ghosts/Doomsday is, one has to understand just how much they're risking, just how much they're taking on by loving each other. Just how much they stand to lose if/when they are torn apart.
And that, my friends, is how I came to actually love School Reunion and Girl in the Fireplace. Maybe not as much as I love some of the more obviously D/R episodes... but still. They are really quite excellent, and serve a very important purpose in the overall D/R story. And I wouldn't want to go without them.
... I'm starting to think that after all that verbosity and tl;dr-ing, I might owe you guys a picspam. Hmm.