The real journey's end?
There’s been a very DW-shaped hole in the British press over the last week or two, as new series of “Robin Hood” and “Primeval” kicked off to grace our early Saturday evenings, and several critics complained that they lacked the Doctor’s lightness of touch. That’s probably why there’s been so much good publicity for POTD - we make the most of what
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The way I see it, that's entirely up to interpretation because it would be outside human experience. I think all we can do is look at the text so far and see if it seems to be consistent with that view. I'd describe it as a shift to a new type of being, rather than a death as such but there's absolutely no doubt that the general public and the Press would see it as "Rusty kills Donna."
Donna expresses a wish to be with the Doctor forever - perhaps that's exactly what she's going to get. I find it easy to see Donna and Ten Two as two halves of the same being - Ten Two being maintained as a separate entity simply by the Doctor keeping Donna in a state where her true awareness of her nature is unknown to her.
I think Rusty's atheism comes into play here. If an athiest is going to write an optimistic story (and he's always claimed that is what DW is) then belief in the deus ex machina has to be replaced by faith in humanity. I find it significant that, of all the scripts that he didn't write himself (and that Moff didn't write, because he'd praise those for political reasons) RTD has spoken most highly of TIP/TSP. Those were very specifically about the Doctor and his faith in humanity. RTD had to select a moment that defined each companion in New Who, and for Rose he chose her refusal to leave Sanctuary Base even while she thought the Doctor was dead.
And that is exactly why I felt let down by JE, because I don't want RTD's tenure to end on the note that Daddy Time Lord decides what is good for us and is a miserable, martyred sod as a result. Nor do I want to see a complete reset from the Time War onwards - it's very difficult to claim that any of our actions as humans have a serious moral dimension if the rules can be changed at any moment. Do that too often and you wind up in a universe where everyone might as well do what they like - the Master's world, if you like. But if you finish by affirming that people have a right to determine their destiny, even to the point of making the ultimate sacrifice, then that seems the right conclusion to me. Anything less and you're giving the Doctor the power and the right to do what isn't permitted for humans. And that brings us back to a theist world-view, which doesn't seem to be what RTD accepts.
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Donna in her present state represents all that disturbed me about my years as an evangelical Christian. Being told I was wonderful (I was, constantly) yet not being trusted to know the truth about myself and running up against barriers if I tried to think too independently. It really is a living death and it would bother me enormously to see Donna condemned to that in perpetuity, particularly with her family co-opted as unwilling accessories to the Doctor because the alternative is their daughter's death. There are far too many parallels with toxic religion in that.
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But if you finish by affirming that people have a right to determine their destiny, even to the point of making the ultimate sacrifice, then that seems the right conclusion to me.
I'm with you there. I too disliked the Doctor hijacking Rose's and Donna's agency enough to have written "canon- compliant" fixit stories. I was on the verge of producing a noncompliant story to give Donna's memory back when the Christmas 2009 special set photo spoilers started circulating* and it started looking like she'll get a second chance in the screensource. I'd like to see those things rectified next December, though I haven't any suspicion or preference formed as to how it'd be done.
* Master of unintentional alliteration!
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