Doctor's Companions; Part 1

[petronia]

Rose:

Rose is really young. One understands this immediately, but the show is meant to appeal to kids too etcetc, so it doesn't become salient until the examples of Martha (in her mid-20s) and Donna (early-30s, I think?). Of course, everyone is young compared to the Doctor. But neither is the Doctor necessarily older, in the sense of more mature. XD; So far so good: but, he could be. There's a fluidity, a circumstantiality to the character that I'm only starting to grok, that goes beyond the obvious Doylesque fact that he's played by a succession of actors into the realm of the conceptual... or does it? (Old-skoolers welcome to weigh in here.)

IMO Rose treated Mickey very poorly, but in a way that's easy to comprehend - personally, I can't look myself in the mirror and say that I would've been more thoughtful and clear-headed about it when I was 19. What was she supposed to have done, anyway, break up with him? The first time she came back and it had been days for her but a year for them? She didn't stop caring about him, precisely. It wasn't like that with the Doctor. Only there was this bright poison that rendered everything else pallid, and she'd never been passionately in love, either, not with a person nor with an idea: not to the extent of having a basis for analogy. If she'd known herself better it would only have made her more ruthless. She was really young. Donna's priorities shifted as well, but she was old enough to understand what she wanted every step of the way.

(This is the sort of emotional note Davies knows how to strike - QaF was nothing but. There's other stuff he doesn't quite have the ear for. XD;)

IDK what the going school of thought is on the regeneration process but it doesn't make sense to me that it would be 100% random. It's too easy to posit that Nine's caustic leather-clad loner pose came about as a result of the War (the things he says about humans, when compared to Ten!). In which case Ten is in some respects a response to circumstances as well; but an odd one, if he's a response to Rose. There's a tension to the Nine/Rose trajectory, discovery and friction and testing of boundaries even as their rapport is immediate (not to mention Jack gets thrown in the TARDIS dynamic), and it all but evaporates in S2. You could say they've gotten comfortable with each other, but it's more than that. Sometimes they act like no one else in the room is entirely real; as if they're encased in a bubble and all the pain in the world awaits outside... I found it frequently irritating. XD; Ever tried watching a self-elected high school cool kids clique of two go about their business. That vibe of teenage innocence on top of it all - a younger teen than Rose actually is - all the intensity massed just this side of sexual. It's tempting to say that about Ten, that he's really young too, but he's not. He was different with Rose. Not that he forgot anything, but some difficult-to-quantify parts of him got packed up and put to a corner, and that allowed him to... who knows. Pat extrapolations aside. I don't have the data to say Rose was the Companion the Doctor loved best (wtf does that even mean in his context anyway), but I find it hard to imagine that he would've had that flavour of relationship with many others. Due as much to context as anything else.

Girls Aloud - Untouchable (Radio Edit)

This may say more about me but the word that keeps coming to mind re: the Ten/Rose attention bubble is "dangerous". XD;; I mean, it does go pear-shaped and "Doomsday" is horribly tragic precisely to the degree that they're so intense about each other. But if not: Rose quite meant it when she said "Forever," and the Doctor didn't doubt her. She's one for making the universe bend to her will, and Jackie's motherly premonition was chilling because correct. Eventually she wouldn't have been exactly Rose, but then the Doctor would no longer be exactly the Doctor... right? Incidentally I watched some more of the Confidentials, including end S3 where one or other of the producers explained that the Doctor and the Master had... gone to Hogwarts school together... =_= I was hashing out the thought process detailed above and thought Oh gawd, like a sort of Marauders-era!Doctor. Which without S2 would have been a mental leap, actually.

Comments

[incandescens]

I've always felt that Rose tried to live up to Nine, but that Ten lived down to Rose, and that really Ten and Rose weren't very good for each other. As you say, they had their own little bubble.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

And Martha lived up to Ten, but she didn't have further to go than Rose, so the difference was in him. Something like that. XD;

[incandescens]

I do wonder if by then Ten had got used to warm snuggly adoration, and only later began to think that perhaps he might need someone a bit more questioning, for his own good.

[incandescens]

And yes, it is canon (older-series) that the Doctor and the Master were at the Academy together (as were a few other Time Lords who showed up on occasion). Apparently they were both right little rebels. Also, the Master got higher marks. (DOCTOR (3), somewhat huffily: "I was a late developer.")

(Another of their coterie who's shown up in the past was the Rani -- well, that was her alias, at least. Her particular shtick is that of amoral scientist. Not as generally destructive/corruptive as the Master, more the "let me have my own little planet and get on with my own experiments in peace" type. She was quite scathing about the Master-Doctor feud.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I can never tell what was old canon and what wasn't. XD; It took me ages to clue in that the whole blowing up Gallifrey bit was something the NuWho ppl cooked up, it seemed like... an extreme gesture... for offstage backstory. orz

Haha I can imagine that if one'd been at school with them it'd be like "oh ffs".

[incandescens]

ffs?

(sorry, this may just not be a Britishism)

[bladderwrack.livejournal.com]

ffs -> for fuck's sake :-)

[bladderwrack.livejournal.com]

...or so I've always assumed? Wait I am doubting now

p.s. sorry for spamming yr comments Sabina

[petronia.livejournal.com]

No prob XDD

[incandescens]

Ah! Yes, that would make sense. Thanks. :)

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

Rose is really young

Loli earthgirl lol

I found it frequently irritating.

Others have expressed exactly these sentiments ahaha. The word "smug" gets used a lot for S2 Ten/Rose, which I never felt at all although of course when it's pointed out I can see it. RE: the attention bubble is dangerous--that's what Queen Victoria scolds them for, innit, in the ep where they're being all joycore at each other while people are getting mauled by werewolves or whatever. I mean, dangerous in the sense that it makes them wholly self-centered on their little world of two. And I get that, but at the same time I really like the "two against the world" trope, esp. when you factor in one person being damaged and finding healing in the other. Not to say I buy that latter part IRL--because in my own experience when you're effed up you have to sort yourself out, not attach your sorting to another person--but I loff it as a fantasy in stories. Like unicorns. And I suppose I feel like Ten and Rose have earned (?) the right (?) to be the way they are. If being too into each other causes them to screw up from time to time, the sum of good they're doing in the universe will still outweigh the bad. I don't worry much about what they might've turned into because I do trust Rose's moral compass and/or impulses (maybe I give her too much credit in that respect, after all she's not A KIRIN orz).

I find it hard to imagine that he would've had that flavour of relationship with many others

No, because in OldWho they never wrote them like that (in OldWho hugging wasn't even allowed! although there was a bit of similar vibe with Four and Romana II, cf. the episode where they go frolicking in Paris, note the actors were also in lurve IRL at the time), and now RTD's gone I doubt we'll see the like for a while.

The other thing the Rose-h8ers gnash about is her "specialness," again in part because it's anti-OldWho for one companion to be in some sense elevated (?) over others in relation to the Doctor. I mean, the system was such that you-the-viewer would have your favorites, but the writers didn't write the Doctor to show blatant partiality.

tl;dr can blab ad nauseam about OTP, don't worry I'll have nothing to say about the others.

ALSO XD; re: living up to and down to, I don't perceive it so much in vertical terms, with the implicit value judgments attached. More like, Rose was living to the tune of Nine, and Ten was living to the tune of Rose. Or maybe in terms of orbits: Rose orbited Nine, Ten and Rose orbited each other, and [insert S4 ending spoiler here]. I've written about this before but I like it because it's sort of a feminist reversal of the paradigm, that the Doctor should live according to his companion as much as the other way around.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Loli earthgirl lol

THE STATUTORINESS OF IT ALL. F'REALS. Although like all my other irritations re this series and its characters it's an ambivalent one, cos who am I kidding, if dude offered me a ride I'd be like HELL YEAH, forget packing I can buy travel toiletries when we stop on Callisto.

I was this close to comparing Ten/Rose to Eli and Oscar in Let The Right One In. XD; It just says more about me, that I associate this dynamic with vampire stories first and foremost... but more on this in next part (I don't think you'll have nothing to say XD it's not so much me taking poss. charas/pairings in turn as I have Thoughts and they're more easily organized this way).

If Ten consciously or unconsciously or whatev molded himself to orbit Rose then as events fell out he really screwed himself, I'd bet REAL MONEY that he holds the current title for Doctor Least Able To Handle Loneliness. (When did the moral compass thing first come up - I remember Donna telling him in Runaway Bride that he needed someone to put the brakes on, or maybe just that she didn't want to be the one to do it.) That's what makes Ten/Rose interesting to me, actually - while it was happening they were alternately adorable and annoying, but I had to see Ten removed from Rose to start picking apart how he ticks and the actual significance of that relationship going forward.

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

I love the statutoriness of it all! /dies Vampires ahaha surely someone's written that AU.

then as events fell out he really screwed himself

I suppose so, in terms of putting all his eggs in one basket, but by my lights it was still a worthwhile thing to do. Separation/death was bound to come sooner or later (it happened to be sooner), he knew that, in "School Reunion" they cover the core problem of Mayfly/December in so many words, but the pain then is part of the happiness now, tis better to have loved and lost, yadda yadda. Again though I'm viewing this after years and years of OldWho in which the Doctor was self-contained, never dependent, never that emotionally invested in anybody, so (being schmoe who values ~DEEP FEELING~ and all) I was glad to see him invest, even though he lost it all when the recession hit.

Lonely Ten is RTD's thesis--at some point he said something to the effect of one of his goals in NuWho was to "examine the emotional consequences of the Doctor's life" or some such, which is to say, to show that it would in fact be crushingly lonely. No such theme in OldWho that I recall, but the premise of OldWho is that the Doctor is a renegade by choice, not LAST OF HIS KINDDDDD etc. That bit really is significant.

The moral compass thing, I think Donna's the first one to comment on it explicitly, but you can see it in operation right from S1. "Dalek" is the instance I always think of. And that scene with the jam jar in "Fear Her" ahaha.

When are you going to finish S4? Or have you, and you're just being amazingly silent about the ending?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

This works for me when it's a quietly protective seme kinda deal not when dude is actually just EMOTIONALLY IMMATURE

See, that's the thing, I had no point of comparison. XD; I watched the S1/S2 Christmas special on the telly and was completely at sea. Then I started S1 knowing only what I'd managed to retain from said episode. The whole thing smelled of fanbait but I had to see Nine and Ten interact with a number of companions/old nemeses/randoms and hear out the backstory before I got a sense of the core parameters from which the "fans" were riffing. On the bright side, I'm not offended by Rose's spechulness. XD I mean, so she's special! The next questions are "why" and "how", those are interesting avenues to pursue! In the grand scheme of things it's not like the show ends there if that's what ppl were worried about.

I would watch the older series but ffs I'm still 1/3 way through Trek TOS, there's a limit on the number I can handle of TV shows old enough to be my mom.

Still on S4E6, it depends on correspondences between my sister's schedule and mine. XD; I've a vague sense of what happens, though, it's been impossible to sidestep (not to mention the show itself has been like O HAI REMEMBER ROSE SHE'S STALKING THIS SHIT LIKE CEILING CAT).

[comment discontinued cos we're actually gonna watch the show ahaha]

lol I luv the internets

[petronia.livejournal.com]

...And now I am reading Diane Duane's Doctor Who fanfic, as linked in a fandom_wank thread by... Diane Duane.

P.S.

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

I lied, there is verticality involved, but that's where the "vast unknowable being x mere human maiden" moe kicks in and my brain shuts down.

RE: the Doctor's age, in OldWho I think you could make a case for him being a perpetual teenager--never outgrew his rebellious stage, went around stealing TARDISes and dodging the law. XD; But NuWho PTSD!Doctor is different.