~ Ten's final moments ~
So many people have written general reviews of The End of Time and done them far more justice than I ever could. So I only want to focus on one thing, the Tenth Doctor's final moments.
Over the past few days, i've heard them referred to as everything from breathtakingly brilliant to an abomination, and the rising tide of opinion describing Ten as a coward is absolutely infuriating me as it flies in the face of everything the episode was seemingly trying to say.
One of the main reasons I adored the Tenth Doctor was because of his totally shameless humanity. He was arguably the most heartbreakingly human character of the entire series. He relished emotion, saw it as an incredibly important aspect of living - the direct antithesis to everything the Cybermen stood for - and NEVER once viewed it as being synonymous with cowardice. So, with that in mind, how anyone can accuse the Doctor of being a coward and a 'cry baby' in his final moments astounds me. Humans are flawed, fallible, complicated creatures. We feel far too much. At our worst we can be irrational, petrified of death, and capable of behaving like little more than children. And at our best, we just love life. He didn't only admire the latter, he adored all of us, warts and all.
Was The Doctor's last line heroic? Some say no, others yes. He'd already demonstrated ample heroism when he saved Wilf's life at the expense of his own. Then in his last moments, he was simply... human. I LOVE that, because its the very essence of who the Tenth Doctor, through David's sympathetic portrayal, was.
(Its extraordinary that the more alien he became, the more human he became also. Completely paradoxical, but it is what it is. Waters of Mars had him becoming frighteningly, devastatingly alien, seemingly losing his humanity without a companion to guide him. And yet at the same time, he was simply behaving exactly like every human being who's ever had a taste of power and decided they liked it. The more alien he became, the less he was able to escape the dark, ugly, human parts of himself, and that RTD allowed the show to become that complex is something i'll forever love him to itty bitty bits for.)
Now, as for his so called self-indulgence and 'fear' of death? I think final 20 minutes are open to being read in a number of different ways, but I personally didn't see fear. Regret? Maybe. Ten began as a Doctor who loved life. Bounding around the universe with an unflappable grin and not a care in the world, there was nothing he loved more than simply living. I think he lost sight of that somewhere along the way, to the point of acting borderline suicidal more than a few times. He even admitted to having nothing to live for in The Next Doctor which astounded me. (In a children's show!) So, what I saw in that final moment was not necessarily fear of death, but more the realisation that for a good while now, he hadn't truly lived... at least not in the way he had towards the beginning of his life, with utter abandon and sheer joy. "I could do so much more" indeed. That look on his face, both when he's on the floor exclaiming "i'm still alive!" and later when he's about to regenerate, I read them as the realisation finally, truly hitting him of how much he really did love life and damn he didn't want to go. That's quite a tragic epiphany to have when you know you're hours, minutes or seconds away from death.
People are seeing it as self indulgent, pointless and whiny that Ten's last words were "I don't want to go". But when you filter them through the fact that he probably wasn't consciously aware of HOW deeply and desperately he wanted to stay, they take on an unbelievable gravity and completely justify the depth of his grief. Because that's what it was: absolute, crippling grief. Its not a child flailing about immaturely, its a 900 year old Time Lord realising he's wasted a good chunk of this life on melancholy when he should have known better. And now that he might be ready to change, to embrace life again, its about to all be snatched away from him. It would be like Buffy dying at the end of the season 6 finale. Its horrible, its tragic, devastating and cruel. Why should he have to face it with unflappable stoicism?
It's as gut wrenching as anything Joss Whedon ever wrote and RTD should be suitably proud. Because for the children watching, it just plays like a beloved actor and Doctor not wanting to leave. No need for them to be traumatised, they'll just mourn their Doctor and remember that he loved life so much he couldn't bear the thought of its end. But for the rest of us, Russell has woven in layer upon layer of subtly and character complexities that stretch back to The Doctor's first borderline suicidal act in Runaway Bride. I'm not saying any of this was planned back then, or even that it was his intention with this script. But I think it's at least a valid in-hindsight reading that i'm choosing to adopt as my canon.
We could have had a neat, tidy uplifting ending where the Doctor bravely accepted his own death, capped off by a nice throwaway line that made him seem all heroic and brilliant. And that would have worked fine as a standalone tribute to the 'most popular Doctor of all time'. But what we got was far more appropriate in addressing the fact that Doctor Who is a show that has been going on for 40 years and hopefully 40 more. Not every incarnation should go out stoically. And this Doctor in particular had been visibly falling apart since The Master's death, even since Doomsday. He came across as virtually paralysed in Partners in Crime, an absolute shadow of his former self. For so long he's been incredibly cavalier about his own life. He tossed it aside easily without a second's thought many many times in seasons 3 and 4. But he doesn't do that here. He rants and raves and rails against it. Why? Because before, he didn’t care if he lived or died. Here, finally, he does. And in wanting to live, a part of him must acknowledge that he deserves to live, which means one step closer to self-forgiveness and peace. And that's all I ever wanted for him.
So really, there is an argument to be made that he truly was stoic and heroic and brilliant. It just depends on how you choose to see it. Bottom line, if this Doctor had gone quietly to his death without a fight, it would have been more akin to suicide than sacrifice. Instead, for the man who had nothing to live for, his strength and heroism lay in finally deciding he wanted to live. Choosing life, and deciding that despite everything, despite all he had lost, despite all the overwhelming grief, pain and loneliness, at the end of the day, he still wanted to live. His whole arc has been about him trying to find his way out of the dark. Finding the will to live again was the most heroic thing Russell could have written for him, not to mention one heck of a legacy. The great tragedy was that it happened in the final hour of his life.
It was a beautiful, stunning, emotionally and thematically rich ending that was so, so worthy of David Tennant and the Tenth Doctor. And it affected me so deeply that halfway through Matt Smith's scene I actually had to look away. Another man in the Ten's clothes, jumping around so joyously... it felt utterly brutal, like a complete slap in the face of a man who had just died. Of course, they're both the same man and I'll grow to love him just as much, but in that moment I literally had to look away because I couldn't bare to see it. For television to have that profound an emotional impact is bordering on absurd. It didn't feel like fiction. It felt like a proper loss. Its a moment i'll never forget and Russell, David and everyone else should be unbelievably proud.
♥ ♥ ♥
P.S. I don't think i'm going to manage replying to everyone, but thanks so, so much for all the comments ♥ :)
Over the past few days, i've heard them referred to as everything from breathtakingly brilliant to an abomination, and the rising tide of opinion describing Ten as a coward is absolutely infuriating me as it flies in the face of everything the episode was seemingly trying to say.
One of the main reasons I adored the Tenth Doctor was because of his totally shameless humanity. He was arguably the most heartbreakingly human character of the entire series. He relished emotion, saw it as an incredibly important aspect of living - the direct antithesis to everything the Cybermen stood for - and NEVER once viewed it as being synonymous with cowardice. So, with that in mind, how anyone can accuse the Doctor of being a coward and a 'cry baby' in his final moments astounds me. Humans are flawed, fallible, complicated creatures. We feel far too much. At our worst we can be irrational, petrified of death, and capable of behaving like little more than children. And at our best, we just love life. He didn't only admire the latter, he adored all of us, warts and all.
Was The Doctor's last line heroic? Some say no, others yes. He'd already demonstrated ample heroism when he saved Wilf's life at the expense of his own. Then in his last moments, he was simply... human. I LOVE that, because its the very essence of who the Tenth Doctor, through David's sympathetic portrayal, was.
(Its extraordinary that the more alien he became, the more human he became also. Completely paradoxical, but it is what it is. Waters of Mars had him becoming frighteningly, devastatingly alien, seemingly losing his humanity without a companion to guide him. And yet at the same time, he was simply behaving exactly like every human being who's ever had a taste of power and decided they liked it. The more alien he became, the less he was able to escape the dark, ugly, human parts of himself, and that RTD allowed the show to become that complex is something i'll forever love him to itty bitty bits for.)
Now, as for his so called self-indulgence and 'fear' of death? I think final 20 minutes are open to being read in a number of different ways, but I personally didn't see fear. Regret? Maybe. Ten began as a Doctor who loved life. Bounding around the universe with an unflappable grin and not a care in the world, there was nothing he loved more than simply living. I think he lost sight of that somewhere along the way, to the point of acting borderline suicidal more than a few times. He even admitted to having nothing to live for in The Next Doctor which astounded me. (In a children's show!) So, what I saw in that final moment was not necessarily fear of death, but more the realisation that for a good while now, he hadn't truly lived... at least not in the way he had towards the beginning of his life, with utter abandon and sheer joy. "I could do so much more" indeed. That look on his face, both when he's on the floor exclaiming "i'm still alive!" and later when he's about to regenerate, I read them as the realisation finally, truly hitting him of how much he really did love life and damn he didn't want to go. That's quite a tragic epiphany to have when you know you're hours, minutes or seconds away from death.
People are seeing it as self indulgent, pointless and whiny that Ten's last words were "I don't want to go". But when you filter them through the fact that he probably wasn't consciously aware of HOW deeply and desperately he wanted to stay, they take on an unbelievable gravity and completely justify the depth of his grief. Because that's what it was: absolute, crippling grief. Its not a child flailing about immaturely, its a 900 year old Time Lord realising he's wasted a good chunk of this life on melancholy when he should have known better. And now that he might be ready to change, to embrace life again, its about to all be snatched away from him. It would be like Buffy dying at the end of the season 6 finale. Its horrible, its tragic, devastating and cruel. Why should he have to face it with unflappable stoicism?
It's as gut wrenching as anything Joss Whedon ever wrote and RTD should be suitably proud. Because for the children watching, it just plays like a beloved actor and Doctor not wanting to leave. No need for them to be traumatised, they'll just mourn their Doctor and remember that he loved life so much he couldn't bear the thought of its end. But for the rest of us, Russell has woven in layer upon layer of subtly and character complexities that stretch back to The Doctor's first borderline suicidal act in Runaway Bride. I'm not saying any of this was planned back then, or even that it was his intention with this script. But I think it's at least a valid in-hindsight reading that i'm choosing to adopt as my canon.
We could have had a neat, tidy uplifting ending where the Doctor bravely accepted his own death, capped off by a nice throwaway line that made him seem all heroic and brilliant. And that would have worked fine as a standalone tribute to the 'most popular Doctor of all time'. But what we got was far more appropriate in addressing the fact that Doctor Who is a show that has been going on for 40 years and hopefully 40 more. Not every incarnation should go out stoically. And this Doctor in particular had been visibly falling apart since The Master's death, even since Doomsday. He came across as virtually paralysed in Partners in Crime, an absolute shadow of his former self. For so long he's been incredibly cavalier about his own life. He tossed it aside easily without a second's thought many many times in seasons 3 and 4. But he doesn't do that here. He rants and raves and rails against it. Why? Because before, he didn’t care if he lived or died. Here, finally, he does. And in wanting to live, a part of him must acknowledge that he deserves to live, which means one step closer to self-forgiveness and peace. And that's all I ever wanted for him.
So really, there is an argument to be made that he truly was stoic and heroic and brilliant. It just depends on how you choose to see it. Bottom line, if this Doctor had gone quietly to his death without a fight, it would have been more akin to suicide than sacrifice. Instead, for the man who had nothing to live for, his strength and heroism lay in finally deciding he wanted to live. Choosing life, and deciding that despite everything, despite all he had lost, despite all the overwhelming grief, pain and loneliness, at the end of the day, he still wanted to live. His whole arc has been about him trying to find his way out of the dark. Finding the will to live again was the most heroic thing Russell could have written for him, not to mention one heck of a legacy. The great tragedy was that it happened in the final hour of his life.
It was a beautiful, stunning, emotionally and thematically rich ending that was so, so worthy of David Tennant and the Tenth Doctor. And it affected me so deeply that halfway through Matt Smith's scene I actually had to look away. Another man in the Ten's clothes, jumping around so joyously... it felt utterly brutal, like a complete slap in the face of a man who had just died. Of course, they're both the same man and I'll grow to love him just as much, but in that moment I literally had to look away because I couldn't bare to see it. For television to have that profound an emotional impact is bordering on absurd. It didn't feel like fiction. It felt like a proper loss. Its a moment i'll never forget and Russell, David and everyone else should be unbelievably proud.
♥ ♥ ♥
P.S. I don't think i'm going to manage replying to everyone, but thanks so, so much for all the comments ♥ :)