Doctor Who: Themes and Portents
So, saw 'The Stolen Earth' and enjoyed it as I'm always up for Magnificent Companion Porn. More on that in a bit, 'cause between this and a comment fadingembers made earlier, it reminded me I still hadn't posted the Second Episode Theory.
Fairly simple theory, really: first episode of the series establishes the characters for the season. The second episode, the on-going theme for that series.
Series 1: The End of the World and Everything After
So, new Who begins and we get 'Rose,' where we meet the new Doctor and the new companion. We already know something's different: the Doctor seems a little manic - nothing new for old-schoolers - but he dresses somberly, almost utilitarian. And he almost seems desperate for companionship, for someone who expresses joy at the universe in all its strange, dangerous glory. So, he invites Rose, who wants a change and can look at it all with new eyes and something balances out, though we don't know what it is yet.
And then comes 'The End of the World.' The Doctor shows Rose the end of her world so she can understand the end of his. It's a sad, sort of fucked up thing to do but the episode ends on a hopeful note - Rose taking him by the hand and offering him the chance to enjoy a meal with a pretty girl. And there we have our theme firmly in place: what happens after the actual Apocalypse? What happens after you've lost everything? You move on.
Nine spends most of his tenure PTSD-ing all over the place, finally ending with a re-tread of his earlier choice to commit genocide in order to save the universe at large. The first time he pushed the button and it damn near killed him. The second time, he can't. It's the wrong choice, because it means a greater tragedy is guaranteed, but it's hard to blame him, too. How many times can you ask one person to commit a heinous sin for the good of all? How many times can he destroy his own soul until there's nothing left?
'Course he gets lucky, in this case, as Time gives him a reprieve, after a fashion. He doesn't escape unscathed - a regeneration occurs - but there's a blessing to it, too. Two apocalypses come and gone and he still walks away.
It should also be noted that we're introduced to the concept of the Doctor-as-fairy-tale for the first time, which will be carried over into subsequent series. In this case, we get to hear the tale of Little Red Riding Hoodie and the Big Bad Wolf, a story of things that perpetuate themselves. It's an ouroboros and, considering the nature of time travel, not the last one we'll see.
Series 2: Personal Apocalypse and the Dangers of Hubris
'New Earth' introduces us to a new Doctor and new status quo. Whereas Nine showed us the end of everything, Ten gives us re-birth. The Earth is new again and The Doctor is healed from so many of the wounds from the Time War. Nine begged for just one good day, Ten sees one his first time out and even creates a - you guessed it - new species. We even get a hint again of another fairy tale at the edges - the Lonely God and the Face of Boe declaring a third, final meeting (since fairy tales always move in threes). Everything seems so much better and shinier: the Doctor's got his ship, his girl and a great, big universe he can't wait to see.
Except, oops, not that simple. 'Tooth and Claw' comes along and we see some of the Doctor's less attractive qualities - the self-involvement, the lack of empathy for those that are not Me and Mine, his rather spectacular ability to sow the seeds of his own destruction. If Nine was dealing with all the Time War fallout, Ten is dealing with everything else that got put on hold. Turns out the regeneration just gave him a chance to move beyond his battle scars. But his personal flaws and dysfunctions? Still there and, in fact, never left. He could just ignore them for a while.
This is a season of mistakes, both personal and external. We lose Mickey through ignorance, the Ood through callousness, and Rose, ultimately, through hubris as the genesis of Torchwood occurs in 'Tooth.' The Doctor even loses the chance to state explicitly what all of his companions mean to him while there's still time, something Sarah Jane calls him out on in 'School Reunion' but that Rose never gets the chance to once she's trapped on the other side of reality. Personal apocalypse for both Doctor and Companion, then.
Series 3: Word-Smithing and the Creation of Worlds
'Smith and Jones' starts and once again, the status quo has changed. Rose is gone, the Doctor has a new suit and we meet Martha Jones, future doctor and present hero. We know the Doctor is still in mourning (and a touch of denial) and though some of the Rose mentions feel gratuitous it does seem some of the lessons from SR have sunk in - he remembers his past companions and he's not afraid anymore to acknowledge them.
Then there's 'The Shakespeare Code,' in which there's another plot to take over the Earth (end of the world again? Must be a Tuesday), only now it's not technology that brings it about, but words. Words as weapons and words as means of salvation. And there we have our theme - how stories can affect the world, can destroy it, can save it and the power a storyteller possesses.* In a nice bit of subtlety, it's Martha - by way of J.K. Rowling - that provides the last bit of wordplay needed to defeat the Carrionites, foreshadowing her own eventual role as storyteller at the end of the series.
Again, we get the role of stories cropping up over and over through the show. 'Gridlock' has a story of hope hidden among its desperate travelers, not to mention another fairy tale allusion (the last meeting of Boe and a warning of things to come: You Are Not Alone). The dream log of John Smith in 'Human Nature' containing the truth of the Doctor within passing fancies (and, notably, it's once more Martha who speaks of truth within fiction). Even 'Blink' to a certain extent, touches on this, with Sally Sparrow trying to follow bedcrumbs left in DVDs and Internet rumors in order to solve a mystery that could end up killing her. It's more time-wimey stuff - she knows what to do because she tells the Doctor what to do in the future so that in the past he can tell her. Ouroboros.
And then we have the end of the season, where the Doctor gets what he wants - a fellow survivor - but it all goes horribly wrong: the Master is mad, the Earth is dying and he's been robbed of his power. But it's here where the power of stories pays off - the Master tries to control the narrative (Harold Saxon Is Your Man) but is defeated when the world finds a better story to believe in. It makes Martha into a legend and the Doctor into a messiah, but it's ultimately about how words can re-shape the world as long as enough people believe them to be true.
At the end, we're left with both loss and gains. The Doctor is left once more as the last of his kind and he loses a full-time companion. But he also gets a promise from Martha - "I'll see you again, Mister" - and Martha herself can leave without regret and a solid belief in her own power.
*As a side note: this is about where I became dead convinced Davies was playing with Fisher's narrative paradigm, which makes a certain amount of sense, considering Davies' own career as a wordsmith himself.
Series 4: Past Mistakes: What You Can Change and What You Can't
Rose is lost, Martha gone, Jack busy and the Doctor's spending a bit of time by his lonesome. We start getting hints of this season's theme in 'Voyage of the Damned' when the Doctor is told baldly that if he could control who gets to live and who gets to die, that would, well, that would make him a bit of monster, wouldn't it? Considering Astrid's resemblance to Rose, we start getting callbacks to those who came before - he can no more save her than he could prevent Rose from slipping away and at the end of the day, he shouldn't be able to.
'Partners in Crime' re-introduces Donna Noble, who's been busy trying to track the Doctor down since she turned him down in 'Runaway Bride.' A series of coincidences - some manufactured and some not - gets the two of them back on the same road and we're off to travel through space and time once more.
We get hints of regrets in the first episode - Donna wishing she had taken the Doctor up on his initial offer, the Doctor admitting he'd bungled things with Martha and Rose floating around the edges of the story - but the theme is solidified in 'Fires of Pompeii.' The Doctor admits he has a sense of what in the past can be changed and what can't (personal hand-waving: I'm assuming that he doesn't actually know what those can be until he's actually become part of the timeline, whereupon the sixth sense kicks in) and hints of an often-fraught struggle to rectify the two. Pompeii's destruction isn't something he *wants* to happen, but is something he is unable to change even if he tried. We see him ask for tacit permission for its end from Donna (echoes of 'World War III' and Harriet Jones) and the choice to fulfill fate, even if the fate itself can't be changed.
And there's the progressively creepier oracle sequence, where the hints of events yet to come bombard both the Doctor and Donna (and again, what of those can be changed and what can't?).
The series continues to see echoes of the past intruding into the present - Martha herself shows up ("I'm bringing you back to Earth"); the Ood return as a reminder of failure ("I owe them one") and then we get 'Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead,' which takes a huge amount of ideas introduced previously and streamlines them: the ouroboros ('Bad Wolf,' Blink'), storytelling-as-power ('Last of the Time Lords'), and the Doctor-as-fairy-tale ('New Earth'). Again, there's no altering River's fate - Future!Doctor knows that the first time they meet will be the last - but there is a chance for him to change his reaction to it, to choose to let the future play out as it will, even given the chance to see into it. No spoilers, in both senses of the word.
And then we get around to final seasonal arc: Old Home Week commences with 'Turn Left' - a small choice that changes everything (and that *can* be fixed) and an old friend finally back in person.
Which leads us into 'The Stolen Earth.' Everything's falling apart, the whole of reality. We meet the Shadow Proclamation for the first time (another echo). We get to see former companions be absolutely magnificent - Jack pulling his team together, Martha doing what needs to be done, Sarah Jane protecting her son and calling on whatever resources she has to save Earth. Even Rose - lost, now found - a far cry from the broken-hearted young woman we left on a beach in Norway. This Rose is harder, but also confident, powerful and a little wise. She still has joy but it's tempered by the knowledge she shouldn't be there, that she *couldn't* be there unless something has gone Dreadfully Wrong with just about everything. The Bad Wolf is her call, but it's also a warning of what's ahead.
The Daleks are back and though there's a certain sense of repetative-ness to their appearance, I also don't think they're the Darkness that Rose talked about, just a symptom of the cause. And the reactions from everyone were appropriate to their almost bogeyman-like nature - Jack terrified (he got killed by them once before, after all), Martha disbelieving and then twice as determined and Sarah Jane, who's own personal history gives her a special sort of horrific insight into them and their creator (notably, she's more scared for Luke than for herself, which also kind of suits her).
And then there's Donna and the Doctor. Trying to find Earth, failing, falling back, hoping for a sign and a loss on the horizon for Donna. Losing the Doctor? Her family? Planet? Life? We don't know. It could be horrible. It could be wonderful. Knowing this show, probably both.
Random thoughts:
- A good fable against trying to interfere with fixed events - the Dalek that saved Davros. By doing that, it was able to exist at all points in time and see everything. The experience drove it completely mad. And now we have pretty damn good idea why the Doctor never tried to go back and save Gallifrey from the Time War - he would have quite literally lost his mind.
- Harriet Jones. Who is awesome to the end and is still right about needing to stand on their own, even if she was wrong about the Sycorax. And she went out with a bang. Well done. We'll miss her.
- Gwen referencing Owen and Tosh and, as she put it, refusing to go out like them, without a chance to fight. I can occasionally be somewhat apathetic with Gwen, but I kind of loved her in that moment.
- The four-way web-cam, especially when the Doctor finally gets on the line: everyone talking over each other and trying to find out who's who and Jack's Inappropriate Flirting and both Donna and Sarah Jane being interested (which would then make Jack/Sarah Jane totally canon, then! Trufax.) And Rose's subsequent annoyance with Martha and general frustration at being out of the loop.
- The moment the running sequence went on a bit too long between Rose and the Doctor, I just went "Oh, someone's totally going to get shot now." And then it happened and I really wasn't surprised, except to note how completely contrived it was that Rose didn't use her, y'know, Big Fucking GUN to shoot back. Because, uh, GUN.
- To. Be. Continued. With. Great. Emphasis! Although, being caught up on casting spoilers, somewhat less cliff-hanger-ish than it should be. Still, great fun and I look forward to seeing the finale.
In conclusion - if it turns out Donna is fobwatched, she is almost certainly Fobwatched!Romana, Y/Y? (Doctor: "I knew those slaps felt familiar!")
Fairly simple theory, really: first episode of the series establishes the characters for the season. The second episode, the on-going theme for that series.
Series 1: The End of the World and Everything After
So, new Who begins and we get 'Rose,' where we meet the new Doctor and the new companion. We already know something's different: the Doctor seems a little manic - nothing new for old-schoolers - but he dresses somberly, almost utilitarian. And he almost seems desperate for companionship, for someone who expresses joy at the universe in all its strange, dangerous glory. So, he invites Rose, who wants a change and can look at it all with new eyes and something balances out, though we don't know what it is yet.
And then comes 'The End of the World.' The Doctor shows Rose the end of her world so she can understand the end of his. It's a sad, sort of fucked up thing to do but the episode ends on a hopeful note - Rose taking him by the hand and offering him the chance to enjoy a meal with a pretty girl. And there we have our theme firmly in place: what happens after the actual Apocalypse? What happens after you've lost everything? You move on.
Nine spends most of his tenure PTSD-ing all over the place, finally ending with a re-tread of his earlier choice to commit genocide in order to save the universe at large. The first time he pushed the button and it damn near killed him. The second time, he can't. It's the wrong choice, because it means a greater tragedy is guaranteed, but it's hard to blame him, too. How many times can you ask one person to commit a heinous sin for the good of all? How many times can he destroy his own soul until there's nothing left?
'Course he gets lucky, in this case, as Time gives him a reprieve, after a fashion. He doesn't escape unscathed - a regeneration occurs - but there's a blessing to it, too. Two apocalypses come and gone and he still walks away.
It should also be noted that we're introduced to the concept of the Doctor-as-fairy-tale for the first time, which will be carried over into subsequent series. In this case, we get to hear the tale of Little Red Riding Hoodie and the Big Bad Wolf, a story of things that perpetuate themselves. It's an ouroboros and, considering the nature of time travel, not the last one we'll see.
Series 2: Personal Apocalypse and the Dangers of Hubris
'New Earth' introduces us to a new Doctor and new status quo. Whereas Nine showed us the end of everything, Ten gives us re-birth. The Earth is new again and The Doctor is healed from so many of the wounds from the Time War. Nine begged for just one good day, Ten sees one his first time out and even creates a - you guessed it - new species. We even get a hint again of another fairy tale at the edges - the Lonely God and the Face of Boe declaring a third, final meeting (since fairy tales always move in threes). Everything seems so much better and shinier: the Doctor's got his ship, his girl and a great, big universe he can't wait to see.
Except, oops, not that simple. 'Tooth and Claw' comes along and we see some of the Doctor's less attractive qualities - the self-involvement, the lack of empathy for those that are not Me and Mine, his rather spectacular ability to sow the seeds of his own destruction. If Nine was dealing with all the Time War fallout, Ten is dealing with everything else that got put on hold. Turns out the regeneration just gave him a chance to move beyond his battle scars. But his personal flaws and dysfunctions? Still there and, in fact, never left. He could just ignore them for a while.
This is a season of mistakes, both personal and external. We lose Mickey through ignorance, the Ood through callousness, and Rose, ultimately, through hubris as the genesis of Torchwood occurs in 'Tooth.' The Doctor even loses the chance to state explicitly what all of his companions mean to him while there's still time, something Sarah Jane calls him out on in 'School Reunion' but that Rose never gets the chance to once she's trapped on the other side of reality. Personal apocalypse for both Doctor and Companion, then.
Series 3: Word-Smithing and the Creation of Worlds
'Smith and Jones' starts and once again, the status quo has changed. Rose is gone, the Doctor has a new suit and we meet Martha Jones, future doctor and present hero. We know the Doctor is still in mourning (and a touch of denial) and though some of the Rose mentions feel gratuitous it does seem some of the lessons from SR have sunk in - he remembers his past companions and he's not afraid anymore to acknowledge them.
Then there's 'The Shakespeare Code,' in which there's another plot to take over the Earth (end of the world again? Must be a Tuesday), only now it's not technology that brings it about, but words. Words as weapons and words as means of salvation. And there we have our theme - how stories can affect the world, can destroy it, can save it and the power a storyteller possesses.* In a nice bit of subtlety, it's Martha - by way of J.K. Rowling - that provides the last bit of wordplay needed to defeat the Carrionites, foreshadowing her own eventual role as storyteller at the end of the series.
Again, we get the role of stories cropping up over and over through the show. 'Gridlock' has a story of hope hidden among its desperate travelers, not to mention another fairy tale allusion (the last meeting of Boe and a warning of things to come: You Are Not Alone). The dream log of John Smith in 'Human Nature' containing the truth of the Doctor within passing fancies (and, notably, it's once more Martha who speaks of truth within fiction). Even 'Blink' to a certain extent, touches on this, with Sally Sparrow trying to follow bedcrumbs left in DVDs and Internet rumors in order to solve a mystery that could end up killing her. It's more time-wimey stuff - she knows what to do because she tells the Doctor what to do in the future so that in the past he can tell her. Ouroboros.
And then we have the end of the season, where the Doctor gets what he wants - a fellow survivor - but it all goes horribly wrong: the Master is mad, the Earth is dying and he's been robbed of his power. But it's here where the power of stories pays off - the Master tries to control the narrative (Harold Saxon Is Your Man) but is defeated when the world finds a better story to believe in. It makes Martha into a legend and the Doctor into a messiah, but it's ultimately about how words can re-shape the world as long as enough people believe them to be true.
At the end, we're left with both loss and gains. The Doctor is left once more as the last of his kind and he loses a full-time companion. But he also gets a promise from Martha - "I'll see you again, Mister" - and Martha herself can leave without regret and a solid belief in her own power.
*As a side note: this is about where I became dead convinced Davies was playing with Fisher's narrative paradigm, which makes a certain amount of sense, considering Davies' own career as a wordsmith himself.
Series 4: Past Mistakes: What You Can Change and What You Can't
Rose is lost, Martha gone, Jack busy and the Doctor's spending a bit of time by his lonesome. We start getting hints of this season's theme in 'Voyage of the Damned' when the Doctor is told baldly that if he could control who gets to live and who gets to die, that would, well, that would make him a bit of monster, wouldn't it? Considering Astrid's resemblance to Rose, we start getting callbacks to those who came before - he can no more save her than he could prevent Rose from slipping away and at the end of the day, he shouldn't be able to.
'Partners in Crime' re-introduces Donna Noble, who's been busy trying to track the Doctor down since she turned him down in 'Runaway Bride.' A series of coincidences - some manufactured and some not - gets the two of them back on the same road and we're off to travel through space and time once more.
We get hints of regrets in the first episode - Donna wishing she had taken the Doctor up on his initial offer, the Doctor admitting he'd bungled things with Martha and Rose floating around the edges of the story - but the theme is solidified in 'Fires of Pompeii.' The Doctor admits he has a sense of what in the past can be changed and what can't (personal hand-waving: I'm assuming that he doesn't actually know what those can be until he's actually become part of the timeline, whereupon the sixth sense kicks in) and hints of an often-fraught struggle to rectify the two. Pompeii's destruction isn't something he *wants* to happen, but is something he is unable to change even if he tried. We see him ask for tacit permission for its end from Donna (echoes of 'World War III' and Harriet Jones) and the choice to fulfill fate, even if the fate itself can't be changed.
And there's the progressively creepier oracle sequence, where the hints of events yet to come bombard both the Doctor and Donna (and again, what of those can be changed and what can't?).
The series continues to see echoes of the past intruding into the present - Martha herself shows up ("I'm bringing you back to Earth"); the Ood return as a reminder of failure ("I owe them one") and then we get 'Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead,' which takes a huge amount of ideas introduced previously and streamlines them: the ouroboros ('Bad Wolf,' Blink'), storytelling-as-power ('Last of the Time Lords'), and the Doctor-as-fairy-tale ('New Earth'). Again, there's no altering River's fate - Future!Doctor knows that the first time they meet will be the last - but there is a chance for him to change his reaction to it, to choose to let the future play out as it will, even given the chance to see into it. No spoilers, in both senses of the word.
And then we get around to final seasonal arc: Old Home Week commences with 'Turn Left' - a small choice that changes everything (and that *can* be fixed) and an old friend finally back in person.
Which leads us into 'The Stolen Earth.' Everything's falling apart, the whole of reality. We meet the Shadow Proclamation for the first time (another echo). We get to see former companions be absolutely magnificent - Jack pulling his team together, Martha doing what needs to be done, Sarah Jane protecting her son and calling on whatever resources she has to save Earth. Even Rose - lost, now found - a far cry from the broken-hearted young woman we left on a beach in Norway. This Rose is harder, but also confident, powerful and a little wise. She still has joy but it's tempered by the knowledge she shouldn't be there, that she *couldn't* be there unless something has gone Dreadfully Wrong with just about everything. The Bad Wolf is her call, but it's also a warning of what's ahead.
The Daleks are back and though there's a certain sense of repetative-ness to their appearance, I also don't think they're the Darkness that Rose talked about, just a symptom of the cause. And the reactions from everyone were appropriate to their almost bogeyman-like nature - Jack terrified (he got killed by them once before, after all), Martha disbelieving and then twice as determined and Sarah Jane, who's own personal history gives her a special sort of horrific insight into them and their creator (notably, she's more scared for Luke than for herself, which also kind of suits her).
And then there's Donna and the Doctor. Trying to find Earth, failing, falling back, hoping for a sign and a loss on the horizon for Donna. Losing the Doctor? Her family? Planet? Life? We don't know. It could be horrible. It could be wonderful. Knowing this show, probably both.
Random thoughts:
- A good fable against trying to interfere with fixed events - the Dalek that saved Davros. By doing that, it was able to exist at all points in time and see everything. The experience drove it completely mad. And now we have pretty damn good idea why the Doctor never tried to go back and save Gallifrey from the Time War - he would have quite literally lost his mind.
- Harriet Jones. Who is awesome to the end and is still right about needing to stand on their own, even if she was wrong about the Sycorax. And she went out with a bang. Well done. We'll miss her.
- Gwen referencing Owen and Tosh and, as she put it, refusing to go out like them, without a chance to fight. I can occasionally be somewhat apathetic with Gwen, but I kind of loved her in that moment.
- The four-way web-cam, especially when the Doctor finally gets on the line: everyone talking over each other and trying to find out who's who and Jack's Inappropriate Flirting and both Donna and Sarah Jane being interested (which would then make Jack/Sarah Jane totally canon, then! Trufax.) And Rose's subsequent annoyance with Martha and general frustration at being out of the loop.
- The moment the running sequence went on a bit too long between Rose and the Doctor, I just went "Oh, someone's totally going to get shot now." And then it happened and I really wasn't surprised, except to note how completely contrived it was that Rose didn't use her, y'know, Big Fucking GUN to shoot back. Because, uh, GUN.
- To. Be. Continued. With. Great. Emphasis! Although, being caught up on casting spoilers, somewhat less cliff-hanger-ish than it should be. Still, great fun and I look forward to seeing the finale.
In conclusion - if it turns out Donna is fobwatched, she is almost certainly Fobwatched!Romana, Y/Y? (Doctor: "I knew those slaps felt familiar!")