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
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And that's a *really* good question. I'm not sure I have an answer. Because I also feel, like you, that Nine's arc is about letting go of some of that grief and guilt. But I wonder how much of that is possible because of his sacrifice at the end of "Parting of the Ways." Or two sacrifices--because he also chooses to die instead of defeating the Daleks at the cost of killing so many. It's that first act of sacrifice in particular that undoes a lot of Nine's guilt, I think: getting to be the "coward" instead of the killer. So I don't know if we could even get that arc without his "death," in a way. And I do think that Russell is trying, with Ten, to write a tragedy in which the lead doesn't die, which keeps requiring a reset; paradoxically, Nine's death *means* that he can move on and change.
And what's sort of heartbreaking about Ten, too, is how much he really *isn't* over that grief and guilt, as much as he tries to pretend he is--or maybe even thinks he is--in S2. That might explain his hypersensitivity to guns and soldiers--he talks about how war destroys you in "The Doctor's Daughter," how you never really get free of it. Or as he says at the very end of S2, he was on the front lines--"and someday I might even come to terms with that." I guess that's why I thought the Master's death might do that, finally, let Ten grieve for his planet--to finish what Nine started. (I definitely don't want to *discount* Nine's arc at all, in saying that Ten isn't fully over this.)
If there is a difference here that's specific to Ten and not just to RTD, I think it's that Ten is such a pretender. I don't think Nine had the option of hiding behind an eccentric personality to the same extent that Ten does.
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