[episode review] Doctor Who 3x13 Last of the Time Lords
This is an episode review done in response to a challenge on scifiland.
Doctor Who 3x13: Last of the Time Lords
Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Martha Jones
Lately, I've been on a Doctor/Master kick, which is one of the reasons I decided to type up this review. However, I'm a terrible multishipper these days, and another reason I want to type up this little blurb about one of my favorite episodes (though I will have to write a fuller, much longer review later in the interest of time) is the fact that I also have shipped Doctor/Rose for a very time and I came into the Doctor Who fandom during the lull between S2 and S3, so the lack of Rose really threw me for a loop. I suffered a lot because of it, actually, simply because Doctor/Rose was my first really vested OTP when I was beginning to actually get into fandom and shipping and the like, and having your first OTP be something that the show repeatedly reminds you of in very painful ways is a difficult thing. In fact, I think that may be one of the reasons I'm a multishipper now.
In any case, my first viewing of LotTL was during a time when I hated the Master for a bunch of personal reasons. I didn't climb aboard that ship until a very long time and a lot of context and EoT later. However, I guess LotTL left such a lasting impact with me because in spite of my initial lack of any love for the Master, he was always a very, very well-written character. He had this ability to get under my skin, and even when I truly believed that I wanted to hate him, I could feel every ounce of the Doctor's grief when he let his own life apparently slip away. Further, Lucy fascinated me because there were so many things implied about their relationship but so few things said. Further, the Master's choosing of a blonde wife with a very passive, apparently weak personality was chock full of implications for just how much he'd noticed over the eighteen months (the approximate duration of the New Series in linear time, to that date, in canon). Still, me ranting about the Doctor and the Master happens often enough, so in this very brief blurb, I want to explain something else this episode helped me do.
In spite of the fact that a great number of my Doctor/Rose shipping friends hated Martha due to the resulting shipper war that occurred back then (and apparently still has skirmishes from time to time, for some reason), I could never bring myself to hate Martha the way I was "supposed to". I always felt compassion for her, and I believed that more of us had been in Martha's shoes--in love with someone who was a very good friend but who couldn't or wouldn't see us that way--than in Rose's shoes who had someone who adored her without all those particular sorts of complications. Whether you ship Doctor/Rose or not, I do no understand how a person could lack any compassion for Martha and her plight. That said, I had a little bit of trouble pitying her very much when she practically broke out into hives when Rose was mentioned.
However, LotTL finally cemented the fact that I was allowed to forgive her her flaws, just as I had forgiven Rose hers long ago, because she showed herself to be so truly badass and heroic in the end that I must say that I respect her as much if not more than all of the other companions. My favorite changes from day to day, but there's something about Martha and what she overcame and how she grew and what she learned that resonated with me. More than anyone else, knowing the Doctor fashioned her from a doctor into a soldier and a weapon, which on some level is tragic, but on another level is beautiful. Martha may have had more book smarts than any of the Doctor's other New Series companions to start, but we got to see her come of age, and I thought that it was brilliant and the more I contemplate it, the more I like it.
I guess I still have some issue with the fact that she "fell in love" with the Doctor pretty much the moment she met him, but I think that says something both to how she viewed love and the fact that she was very compassionate. I think that that compassion grew and stayed the same, but that she grew in what she knew love to be. Even after a year away from him, fighting in a world that would likely have never been damaged at all had it not been for the Doctor, she still is able to say with absolutely certainty that she loves him, but I think that her outlook and the true meaning of that have changed. She is able to swallow her jealousy and to realize all the reasons the Doctor should be loved but also to realize what she needs to do to be independent, to not need his validation to be who she is, because she's already gotten all the validation from him that she actually needs.
The way she says goodbye breaks my heart for the Doctor--he really needed someone then, he needed to not be alone--but there's some level at which the fact that she was able to walk away in spite of that fact bespeak the way that she grew up and leanred to take care of herself. She couldn't fix the Doctor, and even if she felt things she couldn't control, she realized that she needed to walk away and live a life of her own, to truly realize the value that she knew she had without living in another woman's shadow. Martha's story is so very human, and yet she too got to be the girl who saved the world... and so, somehow, this episode even retrospectively helped me cope with all my issues with her character. She's flawed, but human and lovely.
So yes, Martha Jones, you are good.
Doctor Who 3x13: Last of the Time Lords
Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Martha Jones
Lately, I've been on a Doctor/Master kick, which is one of the reasons I decided to type up this review. However, I'm a terrible multishipper these days, and another reason I want to type up this little blurb about one of my favorite episodes (though I will have to write a fuller, much longer review later in the interest of time) is the fact that I also have shipped Doctor/Rose for a very time and I came into the Doctor Who fandom during the lull between S2 and S3, so the lack of Rose really threw me for a loop. I suffered a lot because of it, actually, simply because Doctor/Rose was my first really vested OTP when I was beginning to actually get into fandom and shipping and the like, and having your first OTP be something that the show repeatedly reminds you of in very painful ways is a difficult thing. In fact, I think that may be one of the reasons I'm a multishipper now.
In any case, my first viewing of LotTL was during a time when I hated the Master for a bunch of personal reasons. I didn't climb aboard that ship until a very long time and a lot of context and EoT later. However, I guess LotTL left such a lasting impact with me because in spite of my initial lack of any love for the Master, he was always a very, very well-written character. He had this ability to get under my skin, and even when I truly believed that I wanted to hate him, I could feel every ounce of the Doctor's grief when he let his own life apparently slip away. Further, Lucy fascinated me because there were so many things implied about their relationship but so few things said. Further, the Master's choosing of a blonde wife with a very passive, apparently weak personality was chock full of implications for just how much he'd noticed over the eighteen months (the approximate duration of the New Series in linear time, to that date, in canon). Still, me ranting about the Doctor and the Master happens often enough, so in this very brief blurb, I want to explain something else this episode helped me do.
In spite of the fact that a great number of my Doctor/Rose shipping friends hated Martha due to the resulting shipper war that occurred back then (and apparently still has skirmishes from time to time, for some reason), I could never bring myself to hate Martha the way I was "supposed to". I always felt compassion for her, and I believed that more of us had been in Martha's shoes--in love with someone who was a very good friend but who couldn't or wouldn't see us that way--than in Rose's shoes who had someone who adored her without all those particular sorts of complications. Whether you ship Doctor/Rose or not, I do no understand how a person could lack any compassion for Martha and her plight. That said, I had a little bit of trouble pitying her very much when she practically broke out into hives when Rose was mentioned.
However, LotTL finally cemented the fact that I was allowed to forgive her her flaws, just as I had forgiven Rose hers long ago, because she showed herself to be so truly badass and heroic in the end that I must say that I respect her as much if not more than all of the other companions. My favorite changes from day to day, but there's something about Martha and what she overcame and how she grew and what she learned that resonated with me. More than anyone else, knowing the Doctor fashioned her from a doctor into a soldier and a weapon, which on some level is tragic, but on another level is beautiful. Martha may have had more book smarts than any of the Doctor's other New Series companions to start, but we got to see her come of age, and I thought that it was brilliant and the more I contemplate it, the more I like it.
I guess I still have some issue with the fact that she "fell in love" with the Doctor pretty much the moment she met him, but I think that says something both to how she viewed love and the fact that she was very compassionate. I think that that compassion grew and stayed the same, but that she grew in what she knew love to be. Even after a year away from him, fighting in a world that would likely have never been damaged at all had it not been for the Doctor, she still is able to say with absolutely certainty that she loves him, but I think that her outlook and the true meaning of that have changed. She is able to swallow her jealousy and to realize all the reasons the Doctor should be loved but also to realize what she needs to do to be independent, to not need his validation to be who she is, because she's already gotten all the validation from him that she actually needs.
The way she says goodbye breaks my heart for the Doctor--he really needed someone then, he needed to not be alone--but there's some level at which the fact that she was able to walk away in spite of that fact bespeak the way that she grew up and leanred to take care of herself. She couldn't fix the Doctor, and even if she felt things she couldn't control, she realized that she needed to walk away and live a life of her own, to truly realize the value that she knew she had without living in another woman's shadow. Martha's story is so very human, and yet she too got to be the girl who saved the world... and so, somehow, this episode even retrospectively helped me cope with all my issues with her character. She's flawed, but human and lovely.
So yes, Martha Jones, you are good.