Comments | tempestsarekind: also, so as not to keep clogging up other people's comment threads

tempestsarekind

also, so as not to keep clogging up other people's comment threads

Dec 15, 2007 18:51

I've thought about this quite a bit in the last few days (because my brain has totally gone on vacation from school, despite the batch of papers that needs grading), and basically, it boils down to this:

( Yeah, because *that's* what this journal needs. More Doctor-Martha meta )

doctor who, tenth doctor, martha jones

Comments 10

skirmish_of_wit December 16 2007, 01:35:09 UTC

Okay, I haven't read this yet and have been avoiding casting spoilers for S4... is it secret, is it safe for spoiler-weenies like me?

tempestsarekind December 16 2007, 01:52:49 UTC

Hee. I seem to have given up on not reading spoilers for this show. But yes, it's totally safe--it's about the very end of S3, and why I'm still not happy about it.

skirmish_of_wit December 16 2007, 02:29:42 UTC

I totally agree. I really love Martha -- and at the end of S3 it's no wonder, after her year on her own, she realizes that she needs to BE on her own. She needs more than to be yoked into an inherently and irreversibly unequal relationship with the Doctor, because he won't let anyone close enough to move on an equal footing with him. On one level he can't -- what with being Last of the Time Lords and all -- but really it's just as much that he refuses to, after Rose. But he left Rose hanging, too, because it seems perfectly obvious from that last holographic goodbye that he wasn't ever going to say that he loved her, and that's what the tear was really about: poor isolated Doctor, always alone.

This is what drives me crazy about the whole "Rose would have known" thing, too -- maybe my recall of S1&2 is faulty, but what I remember is Rose doing stupid things like threatening the fabric of the time-space continuum by saving her father. Rose was the plucky but not terribly bright Everywoman; Martha's actually smart and caring and a ( ... )

tempestsarekind December 16 2007, 02:52:45 UTC

Nothing would make me happier about this show than to be able to look back on S3 after next season and see it as a (perhaps painful) puzzle piece in their relationship, and in the Doctor's own process. When I watch the first half of S3, it seems so plain to me that it was really heading toward a good relationship, after some initial denial. And yet. So I would love it if the Doctor learns how to let himself connect to people again ( ... )

stoplookingup December 16 2007, 01:57:45 UTC

Yes yes yes yes yes. And to all the fans who say, but the Doctor's always been like that -- your answer is perfect. In this iteration of DW, we see that he's NOT always like that. There are times when he's quite insightful and thoughtful, and you don't get the sense that when he's selfish and thoughtless, he's alien. You get the sense that it's just forced drama, designed to make the series edgier by creating conflict (which ends up being more irritating and unlikable than edgy). Or worse, just uneven writing.

I can't tell you how many times the exact thoughts you express have been in my mind -- sometimes forcing me to write fic that addresses them. And judging from a lot of other people's fics, you and I aren't the only ones.

tempestsarekind December 16 2007, 02:14:38 UTC

Honestly, I think it's uneven writing more than anything else. One second he's carrying Martha through the hospital and talking to her sweetly even though she can't hear him, and then other times he doesn't even stop to think about whether she's okay. I might even be less upset if I got the sense that the Doctor had done something wrong, that he knew he'd done something wrong, and we were *meant* to know he'd done something wrong. At least then there might be some resolution coming down the pike. But instead I get the sense that the Cardiff team thinks that the Doctor behaved as well to her as one could expect, and the only bad thing is that Martha happened to meet the Doctor at a time when he couldn't return her romantic feelings for him. And that's *so* not what I even care about ( ... )

stoplookingup December 16 2007, 02:51:55 UTC

Uneven writing, yes, but I think at least semi-intentionally uneven. I think the writers set out with two goals that are somewhat in conflict: First, to create sexy, irresistible Doctor -- a seductive figure who knows how to connect with people and draw them in. Second, to create dark, edgy, alone, last of his kind Doctor -- a closed-off, damaged figure who doesn't let people in. There's no sense of evolution from one to the other. I think maybe we're meant to believe that he's really the latter, but the loneliness is killing him, so he resorts to being the former in order to fill that empty hole inside. (That's me, handwaving an explanation.)

tempestsarekind December 16 2007, 03:07:44 UTC

I hadn't really thought of it that way, but that makes a lot of sense. They're trying to do "new and flirty" and "broken and lonely" at the same time--but it starts to feel like they don't *really* want to own up to "broken and lonely," and actually have some kind of recognition of his behavior. They have the Doctor treat people in disturbing ways (like with Jack), but then they back off of it with an offhand invitation and then distract us with "hey look Face of Boe!"

There might only be so long you could watch the show if they started taking this conflict in the Doctor seriously, at least not without being really depressed, but then there would be the possibility of having him move *out* of it, instead of just oscillating wildly between the two. I don't know, maybe they will in S4.

Thread 6