Here is the rant meta as promised. I thought about locking it, but if I did, that would go directly against one of the points I make in this long, 5K-word essay, so I shan't. I hope it's not tl;dr, but whatever. I actually have more to say, but I won't (not yet ;) ).
Last Friday I watched the Doctor Who series three finale Last of the Time Lords on the SciFi channel. I'd seen the entire season before this, have written and read fic, and have read much meta, opinions, etc on the fandom's reaction to it, and specifially about Martha's and the Doctor's arc. Though I haven't seen a wealth of previous seasons, they probably have a vague relevance to this post because my focus is more on Martha than anyone else. This will probably be very long, unlinear, featuring shifting tenses and misspelled words, and in some cases, repetitive. Before I go into my thoughts, there are a few things I need to put out there in the spirit of full disclosure.
1.) I am American
2.) I am a Black American
3.) I am a female Black American
4.) I am a twenty-something female Black American
5.) I am a twenty-something female Black American from the South
6.) I am a twenty-something female Black American who is the descendant of slaves (i.e., me and my family have been in this country for a long minute)
I began writing this rant meta on Saturday, and it was pretty much a dump of all the things that were bothering me about Martha’s character and many fans’ reactions to her/how the writers conceived and treated her throughout the show. I started talking, and focusing, on why people were so upset that a medical student would go travel with the Doctor, interrupt her studies, and then fall in love with him almost immediately. The fast development of her feelings is further complicated by the very dramatic exit of Rose Tyler in the last series, and the relationship many perceive as romantic between her and the Doctor. It would be very awkward for the Doctor to develop apparently romantic feelings for another Companion in the next season, so, at best, Martha’s feelings are ill timed and are at worst, will never be requited in any way, shape, or form. It was only after I’d reached the ninth single-spaced page of that rant meta, however, that I realized this was getting way too long and rambling even for me, so I must start over and stop avoiding the very thing that is pissing me off the most. The “how can a medical student fall in love so fast?” is a cover. It just is. In the end, then, it’s not about Martha being a medical student or about Martha not being Rose. Martha, or any medical student for that matter, has been a woman or a man for far longer than she or he has been a medical student; and the fact one is a medical student does not exempt him or her from feeling very human, and often illogical and rash emotions. And love does not keep a timetable and it is indiscriminate of whom and when it strikes, so to fault Martha Jones for falling in love with someone who is emotionally unavailable his hardly her fault (it’s the writers’ and Ten’s). It’s about Martha Jones being a Black woman and having the audacity to fall in love with the White/alien hero of a British television institution, and the very real possibility of the hero loving her back.
Yeah, I said it.
As Torchwood producer Richard Stokes reiterates, “[W]hen Russell reinvented Doctor Who, the new series, he always wanted the Companion to be the audience’s way into the world of Doctor Who. You have this extraordinary science fiction iconic figure of the Doctor and you want a very human companion.” Britain is overwhelmingly White, and for the American audience, the U.S. is still majority White. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think there is a single person of color (PoC) who writes or produces Doctor Who. I’m not mentioning that to say there’s no way a corps of White writers can’t write for Black characters, but there will be missed nuances and unintended messages that people of color will notice. All this to say, there is already a visual disconnect for a huge number of the audience to enter the world of Doctor Who when its door looks nothing like it. Folks can say “people are people” and “I don’t see race/color” as the day is long, but I’m sure everyone noticed when Martha Jones came on the screen that she had way more melanin than your average British person. People of color have just had way more perpetual practice with dealing with that disconnect. Because of this, the writers had to make Martha Jones so very, very “worthy.” I don’t know about the rest of the African/PoC Diaspora, but from childhood I was taught “you have to be twice as good in order to be seen as equal”; and because I’m female, I have to be three times as good. I’m sure, deep down, the writers knew this, too. A naïve, innocent shop girl wouldn’t cut it for Martha Jones. She had to already be competent, intelligent, compassionate, empathetic, independent, quick-witted, reliable-everything that would make it logically impossible for anyone to reject her-including the Doctor. But because the writers took such great care in making her fantastic and badass, they forgot she still needs some personality flaws.
Cue Martha Jones falling in love with the Doctor.
There are vast and sundry reasons why this was an incredibly bad move, and many of them, maybe even a majority of them, have nothing to do with race. Setting up love, unrequited or not, but especially unrequited, as a flaw bothers me greatly. While the Companion is the audience’s ticket into the Doctor Who universe, it is the Doctor who gives the cues of how the audience is supposed to accept her. Setting a Companion to be in love with the Doctor who is emotionally unavailable is an incredibly insensitive move, especially when it automatically means she won’t really fully be accepted. However, because the woman chosen to play Martha Jones is a woman of color, and she is playing a Black woman in particular, there are now unique issues and concerns that would never appear of someone White or even of another color had been cast in the role. In fact, I bet if it Martha Jones had been someone other than Black, more people probably would feel sympathy for her instead of irritation and exasperation. In Western society, there is a social hierarchy with White men (especially wealthy and heterosexual White men) at the top and women of color (especially poorer ones) at the bottom. It may be unspoken, but it is there, and anyone who says it isn’t lives in naïveté or willful denial. What is more, there is a Western standard of beauty, and Martha Jones is the direct antithesis of it whereas Rose better fits the mold. Yes, I know the Doctor is an alien, but the people who write for him are not. They operate under these Western biases and standards as they write this show, and they do creep up, even despite the best intentions for them to prevent it. Many people love a good “Cinderella” story, but in Western society, she is rarely, if ever, Black (*waves at Brandy in the Disney version . . . whose prince was Filipino. Note it*).
Also, Rose vis-à-vis the opinion of many fans that she’s the Doctor’s one true love is in many ways irrelevant. I’m willing to buy the Doctor loved her, but I can’t, and I refuse, just flat out, to believe that there can’t be and won’t be anyone one else for him after Rose. It’s not just because I sweat Martha like a fat woman in a sauna wearing gear better suited for Antarctica, but because the Doctor will lead a very lonely existence, even lonelier than the existence he leads now, if he can’t or won’t connect with anyone else. Rather, Rose being the Doctor’s first Companion after the Time War, the first person to whom the Doctor allowed himself to get close is far more important in how that affects Ten’s relationship with his next Companion. Rose is lost to Ten (at least how they wrote it and continued to say throughout series three) as permanently as Gallifrey is, even if Rose is alive and well with her family and new life in the parallel world. Ten would be wary of getting close to anyone again. But here comes Donna, loud, brash, slap-happy, rude and ginger Donna, who disrupts his loneliness (in fact, immediately after he says goodbye to Rose, right?). At the beginning of the episode, Ten was not fond of her, and neither was I, but by the end of their brief, high-pressured adventure, he liked her well enough to ask her to travel with him. She rejects him because he terrifies her, and Ten’s actually hurt by the rejection. But Donna says he needs someone to stop him. She doesn’t really clarify stop him from what, so that’s open to the audience’s interpretation. This all happens before he even meets Martha, and a less time has passed between Rose’s departure and Donna’s arrival. By the time Smith and Jones comes around, the audience expects Ten is more ready to travel with another Companion than in The Runaway Bride, given Donna’s perceptive advice and Ten’s quiet admission she’s right that he does need someone to stop him.
Maybe Donna set the tone for what the audience expected the new Companion to be. It seems many people were fully prepared (and hoping, for whatever reasons) that Martha Jones would be-asexual, de-sexual (I know that’s not a word, but work with me), or uninterested in Ten. But then preseason press hyping up the kiss/genetic transfer and the bed sharing that occurs in the first two episodes mucked that up, and there still seemed to be a desire for Martha to somehow remain unaffected by all this. Um, why? In a society where people have sex with each other with less provocation (and by society, I mean Western, not just American), I’m amazed that so many people were dismayed and even turned off from Martha because of her “sudden crush” and then “straight shot to love” that happened in the series. Aren’t there so many movies/stories about “love at first sight”? I didn’t know a prerequisite for that was both had to fall in love at first sight. And it wasn’t even love, and I don’t think it was lust. The Doctor amazed her so much, and she wasn’t wrong-the way he looks at her from the time he “first sees her” in the hospital and then after the Leo’s party; the way he singled her out and traveled all the way back through the universe to ask her out on a date (one trip). The way he broke a “strictly forbidden” rule to show off, and had continued showing off up until Gridlock. And he kissed her. Genetic transfer or not, disclaimer or not, that was one hell of a kiss. If he had explained what a “genetic transfer” was and how it would confuse the Judoons before the kiss, I think there would’ve been less confusion for Martha (and the audience); but telling her that excuse after he lures her into his police box and entices her with all of time and space, I’d think he “protests too much”, too. It should’ve meant nothing, but it didn’t, not for either of them.
Basically, given all of that, why would she not develop a more-than-platonic interest in a smart, fascinating, good-looking alien who has been giving her signals that he feels similarly about her. Yeah, she looked a little disappointed when he seemed relieved she didn’t go for aliens, but I think it’s more of “damn, if only I had more than one trip, I would love to get to know this guy” than “woe! he doesn’t love me!”, if that makes sense. Added to that, she gathers there was someone before her, Rose, but she has no idea in what capacity or for how long. It’s all complicated, and she’s mourning, if you can even call it that, a good opportunity with bad timing. I think at this point at the end of Smith and Jones, Martha is perfectly willing to tamp down her the seedlings of her crush and enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime trip through time and space. But considering feelings do not have on-off switches, the execution of that plan wasn’t very successful. And because her feelings don’t stop, but instead intensifies, that ruins her character?
Writers of Doctor Who, why insert overt mutual attraction and UST throughout the series if you intended there would not only be no payoff for it, but you have to work extra hard to undo the dynamic; and the only way to do that is to chip away (or sometimes bludgeon) at the confidence Martha Jones has in Smith and Jones for the next twelve episodes? Why have the Doctor using that attraction as a yo-yo by which to manipulate Martha to travel cheifly, if not solely, on his own terms. To me, it makes perfect sense for Martha to think Ten has some, if not romantic, non-platonic interest in her in S&J. She saw it exactly for what it was (as much as her human experience and her vastly limited interactions with Time Lords would let her), and I think Ten was definitely disconcerted that Martha had called him out on it, so he makes even more of an effort to dissuade her (himself) from the truth. Ten had been just as taken with Martha as she had been with him. It was not one-sided and it was not unrequited fascination, but it was probably “too soon” for Ten, although according to interviews and such, “some time had passed” between Rose’s being trapped and Martha’s entrance into Ten’s life (and the fact Donna was supposed to be that transition Companion to make him ready for the next, right?). The “not that you’re replacing her” was more for his benefit than hers, especially since Martha, at that point, had no reason to think she was replacing anyone. The “never said I was” was honest, and nor do I think it was a deflection/denial of a hope that she was (unlike her “I only go for humans. That was definitely deflection/denial).
And, since Martha Jones is the doorway through which the audience enters Doctor Who, the subtextual message one takes away is, “no matter how gangsta Martha Jones is, she will not be good enough to receive the Doctor’s recognition/love.” Damn, that’s damaging message, especially for that subset of folk who do look more like Martha Jones than Rose Tyler (though technically, she was with Nine, so not quite as applicable) or Donna Noble or Joan Redfern or even Captain Jack Harkness at the end of Last of the Time Lords. All these people got invites to travel as a Companion during the series. Martha never does; she only gets passenger status, like Mickey (another PoC). Even if by The Lazarus Experiment (which is among the most UST episodes of the series) we get Ten essentially saying, “Why yes, Martha Jones, you can travel with me, and you were never just a passenger anyway, something I failed to tell you even though I’d made that decision back in Smith and Jones (yes, he did, and nothing you can say can change my mind about that! :-P)”, the fact Martha has to call him on it is ridiculous: “I can’t go on like this, one more trip, it’s not fair! . . . I don’t want to be just a passenger anymore, someone you take along for a treat! If that’s how you still see me, then I’d rather stay here.” Martha Jones had been gangsta from the beginning, she still had to jump through hoops to get Ten to acknowledge the fact to her face she had never been just a passenger.
I’ve read a lot of comments about how people didn’t understand why Martha felt “second-best” when the Doctor had stopped bringing up Rose at least by Gridlock. It was Martha who was bringing her up, so basically, it was Martha’s fault she felt second-best. Oh, dear. Troublesome, indeed. No, it’s the Doctor’s fault. After all the flirting and UST in the first episode, “Not that you’re replacing her” definitely planted that seed of inferiority, and Ten watered that seed in The Shakespeare Code and Gridlock, so that by Daleks in Manhattan she tells Tallulah, “He had this, Companion a while back, this friend, and ever since then he’s been on his own. But, you know, sometimes I say something or do something and he looks at me and I just sort of think . . . he’s not seeing me. He’s just remembering.” Those seeds of inferiority inside Martha have already taken root. And at this point, it really doesn’t matter if the Doctor sees Rose or Gallifrey (about which she now knows something about), he’s still not seeing Martha. “Sometimes” can feel like “all the time” if there isn’t the proper balance of recognition. And it wasn’t balanced. Ten remained hot and cold with Martha all series long, but his hots were scorching and his colds were frigid. And I don’t mean in a romantic/sexual way, either. Sometimes he’d be so open with her, and other times he’d be so closed, and it was as if Martha was playing roulette to see which Ten would greet her at any given moment.
So, then, why does Martha stick around then? People said Martha was “mooning” over the Doctor, with the connotation being she couldn’t be an effective Companion anymore because she had stronger feelings for him than he did for her. This made her, essentially, an annoying and jealous shrew who clearly wasn’t very bright if she couldn’t figure out the Doctor didn’t like/love her and never would, because he loved Rose instead. She had started off so strong in Smith and Jones, these people said, but her character got less and less the more in love she fell with someone who, in her words, but where no doubt cosigned by these very fans, “didn’t look at her twice.” And what was the basis of this faith and love she has in the Doctor? She met a cute alien and that was it? She was supposed to be smart! She’s a doctor! She’s supposed to be sophisticated and independent, but she isn’t anymore!
What? In what universe is loving a good person such a god-awful thing? Since when was a trainee doctor not allowed to fall in love with someone? Who is brilliant when illogical emotions such as love enters her? A person being there for you, saving your life multiple times and you returning the favor tends to create a pretty deep emotional attachment, y/n? And god forbid Martha occasionally gives into those jealous impulses. But she’s a smart, competent trainee doctor! She’s above that! (Then again, I’m American, and I have the lovely examples of ER and Grey’s Anatomy to taint my expectations. But eek, I could go there again about the treatment of Black women specifically and love, and Grey’s Anatomy in particular was created and written by a Black woman. Will come back to this later, yes.)
More importantly, how can the fact she loves the Doctor (whether you approve of it or not) define her character so much that it is the beginning and end of her? Yes, we don’t know Martha fully, but considering it is her first series, and not her last, why should we get everything about her in one go? We still don’t know everything about the Doctor (like, his name), but we’re okay with that? We know Martha is a medical student, which means she’s smart and in the business of healing people, or making people better. We know she tries to make things better, giving how she manages to keep her cool and assure everyone when on the moon while other doctors (trainee or otherwise) are freaking the hell out. We know she likes to keep the peace, as shown how everyone in her family goes to her to mediate the complaints (middle child, mediator, oh, irony). We know she has a tendency to put her feelings on the side to tend to others (and this is even before the introduction of the Doctor. May I show you exhibit A-going to a party she really doesn’t want to attend, but will go to because she loves her family and wants to be there for them; Exhibit B-Annalise being a right bitch and calling Martha a liar but Martha saying “it’s all right” when it really shouldn’t be). These attributes established in Smith and Jones do not go away during the course of the series; but when they are seen through the context of love, particularly romantic love, and particularly directed primarily towards one person, then all of a sudden they become flaws? I think it makes many people uncomfortable to see a Black woman (or any woman of color for that matter) express love that is not maternal (asexual) only or carnal (hypersexual) only because there are very few examples in mass culture showing a Black woman doing so-especially strong, together women of color. And if she does, it as a martyr/sacrifice/seldom returned. Tosh, for example, is rarely shown in a romantic context, and the one time she was, it was with an alien. Huh? Or how about Tish, who is constantly hired to, essentially “stand there and look pretty” even though she clearly has talent (she organized the Lazarus party, remember). Yes, I know women have to deal with sexual harassment, and Saxon/the Master was behind both hires, but hyper-sexualization of Black women is real and salient (Saartjie Baartman/Hottentot Venus/current stereotypes about Black women). And then Francine, whose husband left her for the “Western Standard of Beauty” after 25 years. Don’t think the fact Clive chose a White woman didn’t add salt to the wound, the standard in Britain is the same as in the US. Going back to Grey’s Anatomy; the Black chief of surgery Webber loves White female doctor Ellis Grey but is married to his Black wife Adele who had stayed with him and loved him despite knowing about this affair for years, and finally left last season; or how Miranda Bailey, the only Black woman on the show, is supposedly happily married with a child but we haven’t seen hide nor hair of husband or child since February 2006. Why can we not see this happy stable relationship, especially when everyone else’s is a gory emotional train wreck? Why were Adele and Francine not enough for their husbands? Why is Martha apparently not enough for Ten?
Because Black women are coded as incapable of being romantically loved in Western society, and that message trickles down into individual families and the individual selves of Black women. We are exotic, the forbidden fruit, the women with whom men slum, the Jezebels, the asexual unattractive surrogate mammies/aunties. We are never simply women who have sophisticated and complex feelings, including and especially romantic love. We do the loving, and we love hard, but we are rarely shown worthy of love in return, making do with the scraps of affection we’re given. We toil unseen and unheard for little to no thanks; that is our place. To be recognized is a treat! For a lot of us, we’ve grown so used to the silence our own voices frighten us. If they don’t, and we make our grievances heard, we’re “angry” or “loud” or “paranoid” or “bitches” or “unfeminine” or “crazy.” In the US especially, when folks talk about Black people, they usually specifically mean Black men. When folks talk about feminism or women’s issues, they usually specifically mean White women. Black women, who are both, are invisible in the discourse, and conspicuously so. I doubt it is much different in the UK or other places in the Diaspora.
Can’t be, because that’s what happened with Martha.
Never, not once did she cease to be effective and competent in pulling her weight and sometimes more in the relationship despite the fact she loved him seemingly in vain (and I have pages of examples to show she does, too. Not the least of which she spends a whole year alone telling people to forget about her and think of the Doctor instead. Talk about making yourself inferior.). Never did she intentionally make him feel awkward or demand he love her in return, but highly appreciated any affection he showed her. The only thing Martha wanted, from the beginning and all the way through the series, was for Ten to see and appreciate her, not just her deeds, and to not take her for granted. How dare she, at the end of a series where she put her own emotional needs on the backburner, remove the Doctor’s pot from that really big eye in the front and put it, if not in the back, at least on the side; and put her pot of emotions on that really big eye and turn it on high? Why, before all that is good and holy, should she want the Doctor to say, essentially, “Martha Jones, you are gangsta; but not only that, you are gangsta to me,” instead of that weak little chuckle he gives her after she says, “you know what? I am good”? He tells Donna to be magnificent at the end of The Runaway Bride (with the implication she already is and to claim that magnificence), and he couldn’t even say, “Yes, Martha Jones, you are good”? A little chuckle. Really? Yes, it is all well and good that Martha Jones knows she’s the shit and awesome. She should, but damn all that, she needs to know that the Doctor knows that. She needs to know she’s been appreciated. “Thank you” can get stale, and if the tone and emphasis of a “thank you” doesn’t change throughout the series, then that’s a problem. There is very little difference between the thank you at the end of 42, Family of Blood, or Last of the Time Lords. At the end of the series, Martha had just walked the world alone for a year. She needed more than a thank you and the restatement of the obvious. I’m just sayin’ . . .
And after watching the finale again, you know what? I’m glad Martha told him exactly why she was leaving. The first part of her reason is no less valid, but that second part was about her. Not about her being a doctor or taking care of other people. She’s leaving because she has to take care of herself. The fact people think that part of her exit diminished her value is mind-boggling to me. In that short speech, she told him exactly how he treated her, more than the “second-best” thing. Martha loved Ten independent of how he felt about her, and yet throughout the entire series, the root of Martha’s angst isn’t the fact he doesn’t love her back, it’s the fact he doesn’t see her, not consistently anyway. I think we’ve all felt like that in some way, but in movies and books and television shows, the heroine rarely the woman of color. Always the bridesmaid, always in the background, always the support, always second fiddle, but Martha put herself in front of Ten and made him see her, and after she was done, she puts him on a leash gives him her phone, calls him Mister, and leaves with her head held high and a swell of triumphant music behind her. Also, Ten notably mopes around the TARDIS the same way he does after Rose leaves. The audience sees Martha did mean something to him, after all.
Yet I felt empty. The music, Martha’s smile . . . I’m not feeling the same way she’s feeling. In fact, I feel like Ten looks-disappointed as hell and mourning the missed opportunity. If Martha is my stand-in for my relationship to the Doctor, there is no way I can believe she is satisfied with that exit. There’s no way I should be. Once again, Martha Jones has to be her own cheerleader. The spin is she’s self-actualized because she knows she’s not second-best and she doesn’t need Ten’s validation. She doesn’t need Ten’s validation, but she would like his affirmation of her and what she meant to him. That she mattered. In many ways, she still doesn’t know if she mattered to Ten; if she made a difference for the better in him, and THAT is what bothers me. She does need to know that explicitly; and since Martha is our proxy, we need to know that. Otherwise, she is no better than a servant-doing the work and receiving no acknowledgment and just perfunctory thanks in return; like she’s been a maid in 1913 the entire series.
And not only that, knowing Martha’s in a relationship when she reappears again smacks of “consolation prize”. We don’t know who it is, but according to interviews and spoilers, and the beginning of the last scene of LotTL, we know it’s not Jack, who is the only other person who, based on who we’ve seen, is gangsta enough for Martha Jones (and in many ways more so than the Doctor), and it’s not Owen or Ianto. The producers have said Martha’s not bisexual, so no women for her. The most likely candidate is Tom Milligan “Oh, she’s cute with Tom Milligan!” *eye twitch* We know absolutely nothing about Tom Milligan other than he is attractive and he dies for the Resistance. “That means he’s honorable!” is the likely retort. Yet from thirteen episodes, where Martha Jones has displayed this same quality and more the entire series, her character is defined as “mooning”? Simply put, Tom Milligan or anyone we haven’t even met yet is a throwaway character with whom the audience has not invested, which means he is perfect for Martha to have. We in the West are coded for the hero and heroine to, if not fall in love with each other, at the very least look upon each other as equals. Not only that, if they do not do this with each other, they do it with characters who are on the same level as gangsta as they are. Diverting her romantic attention away from Ten will now mean Martha is the asexual/de-sexual being in relation to the hero that makes her non-threatening, and only then is Ten (the audience) comfortable with interacting with her as that equal. Having her settle for less than she deserves (unless the writers surprise the hell out of me) “is more palatable” than Martha get Ten’s love/recognition while she loves him. (And it presents the implication that Martha’s feelings are fickle. Problematic, yes.) Do I hope things will be different in the next series? Of course, but I can’t hold my breath. Martha Jones: Three times as good and gets less for her efforts. What a message.