Women and Their Stories in Doctor Who

[fauxkaren]

So, I ended up getting into a really great discussion with therealycats about RTD's Women in Doctor Who vs Moffat's Women in Doctor Who over in this post and while replying to her comments, I realized that I was basically writing the meta that I'd been toying around with writing, so I edited my comments together to create this post. If you want to see my

Comments

[fauxkaren]

I think Rose was completely in character in "The Stolen Earth". Rose has always had a slight tendency towards pettiness, but I think the main reason it fits her character is because well, Rose is FRUSTRATED. She spent however long, jumping through however many universe, trying to find the Doctor. And she's SO CLOSE to him. She can see him! But she can't talk to him. When she sees all the people up on the screen who can talk to the Doctor, she recognizes all of them except for Martha. So yeah, it makes sense to me that Rose is like "Um, who is she? Why does she get to talk to the Doctor while I am stuck here unable to communicate?" I agree that I would have liked it better if Rose had been more obvious with her choice in "Journey's End", but I don't think your scenario would have made sense for her character. Rose loved the Doctor and wanted to be with him, and I think that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. She was intrigued by the idea of Cloen, but she basically knew him for 5 minutes so for her to be like "I am choosing this guy. You can go shave your back now, original Doctor," would have been completely out of character. The way things ended in "Journey's End" wasn't perfect and ideal, but neither is life. Relationships are messy and complicated, and Rose's ending was the best she could hope for and still remain true to her character.

I don't think Donna's ending was a happy, neat little package, and yes, it would be nice to see how the differences in her relationship with her mother has changed her as a person. But that would have been a bit TOO pat, you know? I don't think that there's anything wrong with Donna wanting to get married, and I do think that it is a change from The Runaway Bride where Donna was so desperate and begging this guy who wasn't all that into her to marry her. In End of Time we see her with a man who seems to genuinely love and respect her. So it's not a total reset to the exact person she was. She's still herself, but I do think that she was growing and changing and with the freedom that the lottery money will bring her, who knows what she could become?

I disagree a lot about River, but clearly we're reading scenes very differently, and it's kind of pointless to have this discussion if we're coming at it from such different points of view.