CHAOSVERSE BOOK CLUB: WEEK TEN

[lorelaisquared]

The very lovely Earlgreytea68 is away this weekend so she asked me to put some thoughts together for her Chaosverse Book Club this week.

Comments

[earlgreytea68]

I like what you note about how exhausted the Doctor is. It calls to mind when he finally lets himself fall heavily to sleep, after Rose comes back, and he sleeps for so very long.

A detail I love in this chapter: the stepping-stool under the TARDIS console. And the fact that the TARDIS doesn't lock the Doctor's bedroom door. So, does the TARDIS want Brem to discover what his father's hiding? Is the TARDIS complicit in the whole brewing mess?

You know, the Doctor thinks Brem is going to hate him for destroying their race. That's why he hides it for so long, he doesn't want Brem to know what he's capable of. Whereas Brem forgives him for it *immediately.* He genuinely does. All the other issues Brem has with his dad, he never again worries about his father's committing genocide. The Doctor really does underestimate how much Brem adores him--something Rose constantly points out to him.

I think the Doctor was in a lose-lose situation. I think if he put his foot down and refused to let Brem help, and they never got Rose back, Brem would never have forgiven him. I honestly think the path the Doctor chose did less damage to his relationship with Brem in the end, because they found a way to talk it through and fix it. Brem is stubborn, I have a harder time believing he'd forgive his father for not letting him help, for denying him an entire childhood without his mother. I think, as much as Brem was affected by having the world on his shoulders at such a young age, I think he knows deep down that he couldn't have had it any other way. It's not really his father he's angry at, his father's standing in for the fact that it's the *universe* he's angry at. I think this is a fact Rose recognizes much more than Brem or the Doctor do, however.

Ha! Because I wrote Sarah Jane's line, I think she means this: At one point, when Brem is a baby, Rose thinks that she likes to imagine that Brem is how the Doctor would have turned out if he'd had a happy, loving childhood. And I think that's what Sarah Jane means. Brem is very much like the Doctor, they started with the same basic tough, stubborn fabric of their being. They think the same way and they *feel* the same way and they see the world and themselves the same way. But the Doctor was a bit of an outcast, never felt at home, and eventually came to develop an enormous guilt complex and weird optimism-pessimism fight. Brem, however, especially at this point, is still fresh, still without disappointment, still secure in his place as the most beloved little boy in the universe. Brem's never had a setback, he's got no guilt complex to contend with, because he's never failed and never experienced guilt. He is optimism and determination all the way, uncomplicated. He is exactly the way his father would have turned out, if his father had had a totally different life.

[lorelaisquared]

I think the sleeping goes to show that even Time Lords need more sleep when they're stressed and worried. The Doctor of course puts it off as long as he can for the sake of his children but he's clearly reaching his breaking point here. If they hadn't rescued Rose soon after this I think he eventually would have collapsed.

I think maybe the TARDIS sees the solution that the Doctor is in denial about and so she gives things a little push.

Oh that's an interesting point about how the Doctor underestimates Brem's adoration. Also, I wonder how much of Brem's abilty to forgive the Doctor for the genocide comes down to how alike they are and how if faced with the same circumstances, Brem would do the same thing. Perhaps, even at 4, he knows this.

Oh yes! Your point that Brem is angry at the universe and not his father is a very good one. What happened to Rose really wasn't anyone's fault, it was a tragic occurrence, so there's no one to blame and instead Brem sort of plants it on his father. I guess when you look at the big picture its not even just that he held this responsibility on his shoulders that he's upset about, it's that he lost his mother at all, and in so doing, he lost a great deal of his youth and childhood!

I find your reflections on Brem and the Doctor fascinating. What I take from that is that by NATURE they are almost identical, but by NURTURE they are very different just by the pure fact that they've grown up under such vastly different circumstances.