Five Things The Doctor's Been Forced To Admit Since Meeting Martha Jones
Over in Doctor Who fandom (which I only sort of watch from the periphery with a vague terror, so I could be all wet) there are hateration wars emerging between the Rose and Martha camps, as are to be expected, and along with those come the Doctor/Martha vs. Doctor/Rose (vs. Doctor/Jack! which merits much more than just a paranthetical, but the sentence sounds better this way, especially with that exclamation point in) shipper warz. And so for fun and profit I wrote a whole bunch of things from a whole bunch of perspectives, and at the end of the day I'm still not even sure how *I* feel about the whole matter.
I have this deep and abiding love for Martha because she's a medical student, and so it's a pretty fair bet my impression of her is colored by my medical fetish and I can't really be objective. Martha hits a lot more of my traditional kinks and fetishes than Rose did, but only in the way, like, I've never been partial to blondes and I like when my girls are a little older than nineteen. (Inappropriate Jena Malone fetish notwithstanding; and anyway I didn't mean that kind of young...) Though the idea of Rose and Martha together is so hot that I even had to try on that OTP, in my femslash100 Rose/Martha thingy.
All of which is to say, when I was warming up to write my Martha-examines-the-Doctor thingy I wrote this as an exercise, to see what I thought the Doctor'd come to realize in this new season. In the remix I wrote, I played with the idea that the Doctor and Rose were soulmates, which is totally one interpretation I can glean from Doomsday, and I believe there's absolutely a way to read the show where the Doctor and Rose are MFEO till the end of time. Whether *I* read the show that way or not is still open to question, and until that time, I'm all about the Doctor boinking Jack, or Martha, or whomever -- until Rusty does something to make me believe that Martha's the Doctor's soulmate, or that the TARDIS is (and most days it's the frontrunner) and I'll reassess my interpretation all over again. Because I even wrote a story where Jack's so in love with the hand he can't see straight, where I'm fully on board and believing Jack's entire life is wrapped around this Doctor whose current face he's never seen. I have never shipped this much in my life and certainly never so many people in love with the same guy at the same time. It could kill a person! It's like Big Love over here!
In other words: David Tennant is absurdly hot, the Doctor is an insanely loveable character, and I have no trouble believing that any sentient creature could fall head over teakettle for this bloke. The Doctor, on the other hand, is an emotionally stunted and cripplingly complicated individual, and I have a hard time believing he could give back to anyone in the manner they'd/we'd want from a Hottie McLoverboy like him. And yet! if Russell sold me on it, I'd be wide open to being sold.
My Martha story definitely came from the place of a Martha/Doctor shipper, but then, I was in Martha POV, and I think you'd have to be a blind squirrel not to see that Martha's in love with the man. Rose was a little more complicated, a little less overt, and I think that's another reason why I gravitate to Martha more. And then this other little thing I wrote is...something else entirely, and I'm not even sure I believe it myself, but I can definitely imagine a place where this would be true...
For posterity, here's Five Things The Doctor's Been Forced To Admit Since Meeting Martha Jones:
1. She's bleeding gorgeous. Not that that's the first thing he notices, far from it, and in fact his standards for beauty are often considered quite strange among the civilized planets in the galaxy, and yet, faced with a callipygian beauty like Martha Jones and he feels it in both his hearts. She's got a backside that makes him want to write symphonies, and perhaps if he gets some downtime he might put pen to it, always fancied writing a symphony, he thinks. But for now he'll be content to admire from afar, and privately take a wee bit of joy in the fact that this was the body he happened to be wearing when she came along.
2. She's clever. A raw, untested kind of clever, the kind they call "book smart." But it doesn't stop her from falling prey to his considerable charms, though he's got to work harder at them. "That get you very far on the other girls?" she asked him, when he showed her the Manfrazzorian Nebula and suggested they take a picnic. "Your little space parlor tricks?"
The next day, he brought her to ancient Rome, where he's pretty sure she invented the emergency tracheotomy a couple centuries early.
3. She's a doctor, for crying out loud. With, he's got to admit, grudgingly, even to himself, a better, or at least more current knowlege of human physigionomy than his own. Though, he still maintains the sonic screwdriver's more effective than most medical tools devised on Earth or any other planet. And then there's Martha.
On Bactriss, she brought a drowned man to life in front of a dozen spectators, and considering the Bactrissites were fish-people it was no small feat. But there she was, performing mouth-to-gill, and when the man lived, the Doctor and Martha were treated to a feast of crustaceans the Bactrisses insisted on calling by name. Loyd the lobster went down particularly well.
4. She knows him just well enough to be dangerous. All because that girl's both shrewd and sensitive, a lethal combination. He hadn't planned to tell her about the Time War, or about Gallifrey, or the others, but then, there it came, spilling out for the first time. Never so vulnerable as he was then, and his only security comes from the fact that Martha has no idea just how vulnerable he was. Big smiles, that's me, says the Doctor. What's done is done. Where shall we go next?
5. He is in love with Rose Tyler. Maybe more now than he was when Rose was here, and wouldn't that be just like him? A man forever in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he is in love with her, and until he can reconcile that he knows he's out of control. And then there's Martha, his doctor. And he takes a little sorrow from the fact that it's this body he's wearing when he met her, because he can't be responsible for what it does, to women, men, everyone, and there's times he wishes he never had to wear it at all.
"I wonder what my next regeneration will look like," he said to Martha, between spaceports.
"Nothing'll change, really," she said. "You'll still be you, flyin' about the galaxy, pining over Rose..."
He'd changed the subject, but he saw how she looked at him, the way her face fell.
I have this deep and abiding love for Martha because she's a medical student, and so it's a pretty fair bet my impression of her is colored by my medical fetish and I can't really be objective. Martha hits a lot more of my traditional kinks and fetishes than Rose did, but only in the way, like, I've never been partial to blondes and I like when my girls are a little older than nineteen. (Inappropriate Jena Malone fetish notwithstanding; and anyway I didn't mean that kind of young...) Though the idea of Rose and Martha together is so hot that I even had to try on that OTP, in my femslash100 Rose/Martha thingy.
All of which is to say, when I was warming up to write my Martha-examines-the-Doctor thingy I wrote this as an exercise, to see what I thought the Doctor'd come to realize in this new season. In the remix I wrote, I played with the idea that the Doctor and Rose were soulmates, which is totally one interpretation I can glean from Doomsday, and I believe there's absolutely a way to read the show where the Doctor and Rose are MFEO till the end of time. Whether *I* read the show that way or not is still open to question, and until that time, I'm all about the Doctor boinking Jack, or Martha, or whomever -- until Rusty does something to make me believe that Martha's the Doctor's soulmate, or that the TARDIS is (and most days it's the frontrunner) and I'll reassess my interpretation all over again. Because I even wrote a story where Jack's so in love with the hand he can't see straight, where I'm fully on board and believing Jack's entire life is wrapped around this Doctor whose current face he's never seen. I have never shipped this much in my life and certainly never so many people in love with the same guy at the same time. It could kill a person! It's like Big Love over here!
In other words: David Tennant is absurdly hot, the Doctor is an insanely loveable character, and I have no trouble believing that any sentient creature could fall head over teakettle for this bloke. The Doctor, on the other hand, is an emotionally stunted and cripplingly complicated individual, and I have a hard time believing he could give back to anyone in the manner they'd/we'd want from a Hottie McLoverboy like him. And yet! if Russell sold me on it, I'd be wide open to being sold.
My Martha story definitely came from the place of a Martha/Doctor shipper, but then, I was in Martha POV, and I think you'd have to be a blind squirrel not to see that Martha's in love with the man. Rose was a little more complicated, a little less overt, and I think that's another reason why I gravitate to Martha more. And then this other little thing I wrote is...something else entirely, and I'm not even sure I believe it myself, but I can definitely imagine a place where this would be true...
For posterity, here's Five Things The Doctor's Been Forced To Admit Since Meeting Martha Jones:
1. She's bleeding gorgeous. Not that that's the first thing he notices, far from it, and in fact his standards for beauty are often considered quite strange among the civilized planets in the galaxy, and yet, faced with a callipygian beauty like Martha Jones and he feels it in both his hearts. She's got a backside that makes him want to write symphonies, and perhaps if he gets some downtime he might put pen to it, always fancied writing a symphony, he thinks. But for now he'll be content to admire from afar, and privately take a wee bit of joy in the fact that this was the body he happened to be wearing when she came along.
2. She's clever. A raw, untested kind of clever, the kind they call "book smart." But it doesn't stop her from falling prey to his considerable charms, though he's got to work harder at them. "That get you very far on the other girls?" she asked him, when he showed her the Manfrazzorian Nebula and suggested they take a picnic. "Your little space parlor tricks?"
The next day, he brought her to ancient Rome, where he's pretty sure she invented the emergency tracheotomy a couple centuries early.
3. She's a doctor, for crying out loud. With, he's got to admit, grudgingly, even to himself, a better, or at least more current knowlege of human physigionomy than his own. Though, he still maintains the sonic screwdriver's more effective than most medical tools devised on Earth or any other planet. And then there's Martha.
On Bactriss, she brought a drowned man to life in front of a dozen spectators, and considering the Bactrissites were fish-people it was no small feat. But there she was, performing mouth-to-gill, and when the man lived, the Doctor and Martha were treated to a feast of crustaceans the Bactrisses insisted on calling by name. Loyd the lobster went down particularly well.
4. She knows him just well enough to be dangerous. All because that girl's both shrewd and sensitive, a lethal combination. He hadn't planned to tell her about the Time War, or about Gallifrey, or the others, but then, there it came, spilling out for the first time. Never so vulnerable as he was then, and his only security comes from the fact that Martha has no idea just how vulnerable he was. Big smiles, that's me, says the Doctor. What's done is done. Where shall we go next?
5. He is in love with Rose Tyler. Maybe more now than he was when Rose was here, and wouldn't that be just like him? A man forever in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he is in love with her, and until he can reconcile that he knows he's out of control. And then there's Martha, his doctor. And he takes a little sorrow from the fact that it's this body he's wearing when he met her, because he can't be responsible for what it does, to women, men, everyone, and there's times he wishes he never had to wear it at all.
"I wonder what my next regeneration will look like," he said to Martha, between spaceports.
"Nothing'll change, really," she said. "You'll still be you, flyin' about the galaxy, pining over Rose..."
He'd changed the subject, but he saw how she looked at him, the way her face fell.