The Tragedy of Ten; or, the further frustrations of a fan whose favorite season is still S3
Thanks to various comment threads (I love my flist!), I'm thinking about the Tenth Doctor and why I find him particularly frustrating in certain respects, and yet another thing that irks me about the end of season 4. The other jumping-off point for thinking about this is the very end of "Planet of the Dead," but it's not about that, really (no spoilers for the special).
Here's the thing: we're still watching a character who cannot change or grow in any way.
When it looks like growth *might* happen, RTD smacks Ten back down with some external tragedy (the latest of these being what happens to Donna). It's impossible for Ten to ever come to grips with anything; he just circles. That's not to say that DW storylines can never be tragic, but Russell never lets Ten work through his trauma, try to live with it in some way. Instead, Ten just pastes the mask back over it, flirts and grins his way through another adventure--and there's a part of me that loves that character type, that "laughing on purpose at the darkness," but never moving out of it leaves the narrative with nowhere else to go. We either need an external change (fewer tragic plotlines) or an internal change (the Doctor learns how to cope), or else we get the paint-by-numbers ending that we got with "Planet of the Dead."
And as a (crazy) fan of both Martha and S3, I find this particularly frustrating because the end of S4 further hollows out S3. S3, painful as it is, nevertheless works if we can believe what Donna, in "Partners in Crime," says of Martha: "That Martha must have done you some good." And while I was watching S3 for the first time, I thought that's what I was seeing. As I *know* I've said before, if Rose got the Doctor (in Ten) who wanted to pretend that he was whole and healed, Martha got the one who knew that he was broken, who had to be honest about pain and loss and Gallifrey. And Martha helped him do that--sometimes by forcing him to, as with that therapy session at the end of "Gridlock" (never forget that Martha's a doctor), and sometimes just by being there to hold him up as he falls apart, and getting his hearts started again. It's thankless work (though it didn't *have* to be), and there's been tons of argument about whether it was fair to put Martha through that, but it matters. Same with the death of the Master; Ten actually grieves for him, and what is that crazy Viking funeral about if not closure? That's a big part of why I love S3--that sense that the Doctor is changing. There's a line in a song I love, "Christmas Carol" by Nerissa and Katryna Nields: "You fall apart because you're growing / Unfolding slowly toward the light." And I thought that's what I was getting in S3.
Except apparently not. It looked like that, for a while; Ten is completely honest (well, as honest as Ten gets) with Donna, about what happens to companions, about having had a family, about how he feels responsible for what happened to Martha. Even if the Ten-and-Martha relationship remained strained and strange in S4, it was possible to believe that he'd learned from S3, even if he couldn't put it into practice with the person who had taught him. And watching Ten and Donna interact in S4--not just their banter, but the way he praises Donna, looks out for her--is the best thing about the season, for me.
But Russell, oh, he loves his reset button. And it's not just for plots; it's for any possible character growth, as well. What happens to Donna at the end of S4 is sad and painful, no question. The Doctor should be sad about it--though he also knows that Donna is awesome, so perhaps he can take comfort in that as well. But what it does, character-wise, is wipe out the whole of S4 as well as S3, because Ten is right back in that same closed-off emotional state. He's always aloooooone. And he never gets to move past that point. None of the experiences he's had can touch him. It's only possible to "do him some good" in the short term.
The whole thing makes me think of Sandman, actually. What is it that Neil said about the series--that it's a story of someone who must either change or die, and what choice he decides to make? That may be more appropriate than ever, now, as we get closer and closer to the regeneration--but where Dream stubbornly insists that he does not and cannot change, even as he sees change happening all around him, RTD keeps setting up the possibility of change (Sarah Jane's speech to him in "Journey's End" lays out the clear path Ten could take), only to insist on its impossibility because of outside factors. It would be different if I thought that Ten was refusing to change, maybe (though that would bring its own issues). But instead RTD slaps another tragedy on, so Ten can have something *new* to grieve--because otherwise he might have to work through something properly, and that wouldn't be a tragedy. Reset, reset, reset.
And it's particularly odd because the Time War could have been an opportunity to do something else. In "School Reunion," the Doctor suggests that he can't stay with any human forever--that this is the curse of the last Time Lord. We get further hints of that in "The Lazarus Experiment": the only certainty is that if you live long enough, you just end up alone. But that doesn't make the Doctor different; it makes him one of us. The scale is different, sure--but if he no longer has that planet of people who are like him to escape to, even if only in the back of his mind, then he has to deal with mortality and loss...just like a human. Except Russell never lets him deal with it. He runs from it, he ignores it, he declares that he's never going to travel with anyone else--but we've seen this dance before. And it's Ten all over--from the manic babble to the shoes that are great for running--but it doesn't leave the writer with any new tricks, or the audience with anything new to expect.
Here's the thing: we're still watching a character who cannot change or grow in any way.
When it looks like growth *might* happen, RTD smacks Ten back down with some external tragedy (the latest of these being what happens to Donna). It's impossible for Ten to ever come to grips with anything; he just circles. That's not to say that DW storylines can never be tragic, but Russell never lets Ten work through his trauma, try to live with it in some way. Instead, Ten just pastes the mask back over it, flirts and grins his way through another adventure--and there's a part of me that loves that character type, that "laughing on purpose at the darkness," but never moving out of it leaves the narrative with nowhere else to go. We either need an external change (fewer tragic plotlines) or an internal change (the Doctor learns how to cope), or else we get the paint-by-numbers ending that we got with "Planet of the Dead."
And as a (crazy) fan of both Martha and S3, I find this particularly frustrating because the end of S4 further hollows out S3. S3, painful as it is, nevertheless works if we can believe what Donna, in "Partners in Crime," says of Martha: "That Martha must have done you some good." And while I was watching S3 for the first time, I thought that's what I was seeing. As I *know* I've said before, if Rose got the Doctor (in Ten) who wanted to pretend that he was whole and healed, Martha got the one who knew that he was broken, who had to be honest about pain and loss and Gallifrey. And Martha helped him do that--sometimes by forcing him to, as with that therapy session at the end of "Gridlock" (never forget that Martha's a doctor), and sometimes just by being there to hold him up as he falls apart, and getting his hearts started again. It's thankless work (though it didn't *have* to be), and there's been tons of argument about whether it was fair to put Martha through that, but it matters. Same with the death of the Master; Ten actually grieves for him, and what is that crazy Viking funeral about if not closure? That's a big part of why I love S3--that sense that the Doctor is changing. There's a line in a song I love, "Christmas Carol" by Nerissa and Katryna Nields: "You fall apart because you're growing / Unfolding slowly toward the light." And I thought that's what I was getting in S3.
Except apparently not. It looked like that, for a while; Ten is completely honest (well, as honest as Ten gets) with Donna, about what happens to companions, about having had a family, about how he feels responsible for what happened to Martha. Even if the Ten-and-Martha relationship remained strained and strange in S4, it was possible to believe that he'd learned from S3, even if he couldn't put it into practice with the person who had taught him. And watching Ten and Donna interact in S4--not just their banter, but the way he praises Donna, looks out for her--is the best thing about the season, for me.
But Russell, oh, he loves his reset button. And it's not just for plots; it's for any possible character growth, as well. What happens to Donna at the end of S4 is sad and painful, no question. The Doctor should be sad about it--though he also knows that Donna is awesome, so perhaps he can take comfort in that as well. But what it does, character-wise, is wipe out the whole of S4 as well as S3, because Ten is right back in that same closed-off emotional state. He's always aloooooone. And he never gets to move past that point. None of the experiences he's had can touch him. It's only possible to "do him some good" in the short term.
The whole thing makes me think of Sandman, actually. What is it that Neil said about the series--that it's a story of someone who must either change or die, and what choice he decides to make? That may be more appropriate than ever, now, as we get closer and closer to the regeneration--but where Dream stubbornly insists that he does not and cannot change, even as he sees change happening all around him, RTD keeps setting up the possibility of change (Sarah Jane's speech to him in "Journey's End" lays out the clear path Ten could take), only to insist on its impossibility because of outside factors. It would be different if I thought that Ten was refusing to change, maybe (though that would bring its own issues). But instead RTD slaps another tragedy on, so Ten can have something *new* to grieve--because otherwise he might have to work through something properly, and that wouldn't be a tragedy. Reset, reset, reset.
And it's particularly odd because the Time War could have been an opportunity to do something else. In "School Reunion," the Doctor suggests that he can't stay with any human forever--that this is the curse of the last Time Lord. We get further hints of that in "The Lazarus Experiment": the only certainty is that if you live long enough, you just end up alone. But that doesn't make the Doctor different; it makes him one of us. The scale is different, sure--but if he no longer has that planet of people who are like him to escape to, even if only in the back of his mind, then he has to deal with mortality and loss...just like a human. Except Russell never lets him deal with it. He runs from it, he ignores it, he declares that he's never going to travel with anyone else--but we've seen this dance before. And it's Ten all over--from the manic babble to the shoes that are great for running--but it doesn't leave the writer with any new tricks, or the audience with anything new to expect.