‘The Girl In The Fireplace’
I’m sure I’m not the only one who is angry at Steven Moffat. He wrote a beautiful and wonderful episode, which could of possibly been one of the best Doctor Who episodes I’ve seen. And then he did something which I feel is practically a crime to Doctor Who itself! I mean, WHAT WAS HE THINKING??
He left them behind!! He left Rose and Mickey on an abandoned spaceship in the middle of nowhere 3000 years in their future with no way to work the TARDIS. And he didn’t even think! He went off to save some woman he’d known for hardly a few hours, knowing he was going to leave Rose and Mickey behind! And he didn’t even think to save them, or warn them or even care about them! He basically chose Reinette over Rose!? How, when and why would the Doctor EVER do this??
Well, I’ve listened to the commentary on this episode, I think it provides some very interesting insight into what was going on in that episode in terms of character arcs. Steven Moffat envisions the Doctor as not asexual, but deliberately celibate. That is, he's in love with Rose, and attracted to Rose, but chooses not to act on it. This episode is about him remembering that girls exist, and that they're fun. Which, hopefully, portends some action on the Rose front. Eventually.
He also sees the Doctor as pretty clueless on the girl front, due to long celibacy. He would have brought Reinette abroad and genuinely expected her and Rose to get along. Rose would have killed him. He would have not understood why. This is because he does love both of them, and he doesn't get this whole human only loving one person thing. Mickey would have to explain it to him. (I almost wish he had have brought her on board…)
He does love Rose, very much indeed, but he falls in love with Reinette as well - even if he doesn't quite realise it until the very end of the episode. He doesn't love her more than Rose, but he goes to save her because he lives in the moment; it's just him being his normal impulsive self, and not stopping to think about these silly consequence thingies. He didn't mean to leave Rose and Mickey stranded on a spaceship in the fifty-first century.
Also, I expected Rose to be a bit of a bitch to Mickey. But it turns out Moffat had not read the script for School Reunion at the time of writing. He recons it by deciding they had adventures in between the episodes, or at least Mickey did something very nice for Rose. Mickey and Rose are having sex, or at least Noel Clarke thinks they are. Or, at the very least, Mickey would like to be.
The Doctor and Madame du Pompadour, on the other hand, did not dance - horizontally, anyway. She picked up the dancing metaphor from his mind (remember ‘the doctor dances‘), and she's flirting with him, and he's flirting with her, and the allusion is deliberate, but all that actually happened was actual dancing and drinking and having a good time. She is not the type to sleep with someone on a first date, according to Moffat, although she wouldn't have slapped the Doctor if he'd kissed her.
(thanx to
sixth_light for the post about the commentry, you saved me from insanity!)