The Blonde Leading the Blind - or, How Rose Tyler Made Me Really Dislike the Doctor
(note: I have re-posted this for the sake of archiving, ie, to avoid the massive wank in the comments of the original. So...)
This has been knocking around in my head for quite a while now, and I think I might just about have got it to say what I want it to. Maybe.
Back at the end of s2, I was really bothered by how the writers gradually changed Rose Tyler from a plucky adventurer into a clingy, desperate, codependent girlfriend. And I hoped and prayed that in s3, they'd give us a companion who was much stronger in herself, much more assertive, and wasn't so easily manipulated by the Doctor. And then, amazingly, with Martha Jones, they did exactly that...and immediately set about shoving it down our throats that the Doctor liked the clingy blonde one much better.
For a long time now I've been trying to put into words exactly why that squicked me out so much, and the quote below just about sums it up:
"Oh, well, for fuck's sake, it's so pathetic...have you any idea how many guys end up with that kind of woman? They want some weedy bimbette who'll look up to them, because their little dicks go limp at the thought of a relationship with an intellectual equal."
- Jenny Dalziel, Quite Ugly One Morning - written by Christopher Brookmyre, and, ironically, read by David Tennant
Women in the room, back me up on this...how many times have you met a guy who's smart, witty, and seemingly emotionally intelligent...and then you meet his girlfriend, who's half his age and giggles like a schoolgirl at everything he says because he's soooooo smart...and you just immediately lose all respect for the guy?
I do not want the Doctor to be that kind of man.
It's like a relationship between a schoolteacher and his student...the power dynamic is disturbingly unequal, and shows that the teacher is so insecure that he needs hero-worship from a little girl to make himself feel important and impressive.
For the record, again, I have never had a problem with 'the Doctor loves Rose.' I would certainly hope he does; he loves all of his companions. It's only when RTD tries to pull the whole 'he's in love with Rose' nonsense that things start to go badly south - especially when you compare the way he treated Rose with the way he treated Martha.
To begin with, Rose is nineteen. Fair enough; the Doctor's had younger companions. But Rose is a girl...and when Sarah Jane and Martha come along, who are both definitely women, and the Doctor treats them as second best to his little blonde shop girl? I get very uncomfortable about what that says about his character. (God forbid Romana should ever reappear; he'd put his tail between his legs and go hide behind the Master)
Second, Rose is nowhere near his intellectual equal. To be fair, it'd be hard to find a human being/non-Time Lord who was, but folks? This is the girl who, in her very first episode, didn't even notice that her own boyfriend had turned into a giant plastic Ken doll. So, not the sharpest tool in the shed, here.
Now, I actually understand why the writers made Rose this way. If she's the character the audience are meant to identify with, then someone who's average and ordinary - an 'everywoman', supposedly - is far easier for more people to relate to. Not everyone's a brilliant medical student, after all. Viewers get annoyed by people who are smarter than they are, so it was especially important (particularly in the new show's first year) to go for a bit of lowest-common-denominator to get the viewing figures up.
The problem this creates is when they then turn around and suddenly try to make average, ordinary Rose 'special'...so special, in fact, that the Doctor loves her above any of his other companions. It doesn't work, either logically or mathematically: "ordinary" =/= "special". They're opposites. You can't have it both ways.
So if Rose clearly doesn't have the 'special' qualities you'd expect in a woman touted as the Doctor's 'soul mate', then why is he so enamored of her? The only remaining answer isn't a very flattering one: hormones.
Women, again - you've seen it in the workplace, right? The co-worker who's not especially bright or competent, but the boss can't stop talking about how wonderful she is and giving her promotions when plenty of other, clearly more qualified women keep getting passed up? It usually only means one thing: the boss wants to shag her.
And that's the whole reason why having the Doctor be remotely 'in love' with Rose just squicks me the hell out. Ever since the series started, we've been shown that the Doctor is better than we are, ie, he is what we humans could become if we improved ourselves: he doesn't use guns; he always tries to negotiate; and he always uses his sense of humor instead of his fists. So now, all of a sudden, we're shown that he's immune to every other unlovely foible of humanity...except for the very human habit of letting his hormones do his thinking for him?
Ugh.
(Incidentally, all this lends credence to my theory that Four had the biggest cock of all the Doctors, metaphorically speaking at least: not only was he confident enough to travel with Romana - a woman who was his intellectual equal, and in many ways his superior; and for once, actually close to his own freakin' age - he traveled with two of her. Good on ya, Four!)
Anyway, all that leads me to the most unsettling reason the Doctor preferring Rose over Martha freaks me out: their different choices when it comes to the Doctor vs family.
For the past three thousand years or so, women have traditionally been expected to sacrifice their own identities and desires to accomodate the men in their lives. We've gradually come to realize how unhealthy this expectation is, as each new generation comes along with fresh ideas...unless someone unthinkingly reinforces the old stereotypes at them in their tv programs.
In The Sound of Drums, the Doctor tells Martha not to talk to her family on her cell phone because it might be a trap from the Master, and Martha basically tells him to go get stuffed. Martha chooses her family over the Doctor. By contrast, back in Doomsday, Rose is determined to give up everything - her family, her home, her own mother, her entire identity - just to cling to 'the man she loves'.
...and that's the kind of behavior the Doctor prefers in a woman?
I do NOT want the Doctor to be the sort of man who would have a giggling, emotionally needy, easily-manipulated girl-child as his 'soul mate' rather than a mature, educated, assertive woman with half an ounce of self-esteem. I absolutely can't invest in a character like that, or cheer for him, or even care whether or not he falls off the edge of a cliff.
For what it's worth, the production team have gone to great lengths in the Confidentials and commentaries to assure us that this is not the case: they tell us that the Doctor is simply blinded by his grief for Rose and can't see Martha for the wonderful companion she obviously is. The problem with this is that a) they're saying it in the Confidentials and commentaries, and not in the actual scripts, and b) the younger kids watching at home? Are nowhere near wordly or experienced enough in the politics of sexual relationships to automatically understand this.
(By the way, if you think the kids aren't getting the message that 'the Doctor won't love you unless you're blonde and curvaceous''? Look at this reaction from the littlest Fear Factor forecaster - scroll down to the eleventh photo/paragraph. Sorry, sweetie, bad luck there; you're not blonde and curvy...better bleach your hair and act like you're not as smart as a man, otherwise no man will ever see you as a worthwhile human being.)
Anyway, the important point here is that to the younger viewers, the Doctor is the hero, so naturally everything he does must be absolutely right. Right? Unless you have another character acknowledge the fact that he's made a mistake - or more importantly, have the Doctor himself acknowledge that he's made a mistake, as he did in 'The Parting of the Ways' - then the kids are going to automatically assume that the Doctor is our absolute moral compass for the show. So of course Harriet Jones was a naughty bad PM who deserved to be deposed (whether or not she brought about a Golden Age, and whether or not the Doctor's deposing her left room for Harold Saxon to slip in), of course the evil ickle Racnoss babies all deserved to die, and of course the smarter black girl isn't as good as the curvy blonde. Right?
Right?
EDIT: Okay, I wrote this way before Partners in Crime aired, and we did see some (very small) acknowledgement there. I just really want to see him acknowledge it to Martha when she comes back in the later episodes, is all.
EDIT EDIT: Okay, having seen two episodes of s4 and the awesomeness that is Donna Noble, I am somewhat slightly hopeful of an improvement in this area. Donna is definitely all woman, and 'buddies' or not, I personally think it's no mistake that people keep thinking they're married - Donna would be perfect for him. But I am also profoundly worried that the writers will still fuck it up big time, especially since St Rose of Tyler is coming back in a few episodes' time (and is STILL getting mentioned EVERY FREAKING EPISODE, TWO SEASONS AFTER SHE LEFT). Having Rose come back along with all the other companions would give Rusty an easy opportunity to reinforce how much the Doctor loves his Mary Sue better than everyone else, and just...ick. You're actually starting to make some progress here, RTD, and I really hope you don't turn the Doctor back into the creepy insecure borderline-pedophilic git we saw all throughout s3.
Q
please for everyone to be civil and kind and excellent to one another in the comments, yes?