more Doctor Who musings
Apr. 5th, 2008 01:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
demeter918Because Season 4 is soon upon us! (Like, this SATURDAY)
I was in China for nine days, so when I said that I'd talk about Doctor Who again, I meant in a few weeks time. Seriously, I've gotten terrible at updating this thing. But it's great to have a place to just spill out everything I can about the Doctor and Rose and Martha and Jack and Donna and all the in-betweens. I'm in a small community for Japan, and there's not a whole lot of people who can take all my gushing about this particular series. ;)
Okay, okay, so this is basically me blathering and loving and ranting and raving and loving somethings years after everyone else has seen the series, but eh, what're you gonna do?
Anyways.
After having watched and re-watched seasons 1-3 of New Who, getting acclimatised to David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, weeping always a bit more about the Ninth Doctor and Christopher Eccleston, crying over "Parting of the Ways" and "Doomsday" and "The Last of the Time Lords", I guess it was inevitable that I'd come up with lots and lots of very random thoughts. Inevitable. REALLY.
So.
After all that, the Ninth Doctor is still my favorite.
I love him, love him, love him. Don't get me wrong, Ten is gorgeous and funny and absolutely crazy and I love him too, but like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
princess_dexter said... you'll always remember your first Doctor and he was my first Doctor. Him and that daft old face (hee! I love that description!), big nose and bigger ears, broody Mcbrood, rash but not neglectful, everything about him was endearing... even if he did use the insult, "stupid ape" a tad much.
I still miss Rose. Very much. Season 1 Rose had everything I'd ever wanted in a character and more. She was inquisitive, compassionate, snarky, kind, jealous, curious, horrified, a bit daft herself, loyal, adoring, impatient, patient, and oh, she was fantastic. A bit cliche, that. Season 2 Rose seemed a lot clingier, but since I was so far removed from the season, I felt like it was easier for me to accept and see it as actual character development rather than character rape. I watched the series all in one go rather than episode by episode... which almost always makes it easier for me, personally, to be objective rather than if I'd seen it episode by episode. For one thing, I found myself being rather fond of Martha and I loved Donna. (loved her to bits, actually. ;))
Martha's unrequited love hit one those points in me. Anyone who knows me knows that unrequited love is one of my weaknesses, which is why Season 2 made me feel a bit unbalanced because once Ten came in and Nine left, I actually felt uncertain about whether Ten had loved Rose or not. No, wait. That's not how it exactly is. I know he loves her, loves her lots, but it was so drastically different from the love of Nine that I think it was a bit jarring to see and absorb (can't imagine what it was like to actually go from Season 1 finale to Season 2 premiere and go through School Reunion and The Girl in the Fireplace!). I saw Season 2 immediately after Season 1 and the raw and possessive edge of the Ninth Doctor is a sharp difference from the Tenth Doctor.
Does anyone get what I'm trying to (poorly) get across? I guess, simply put, I was imprinted on the Ninth Doctor style. And a lot of personal preference.
In retrospect, I probably have no one to blame but myself. I wanted so much for the relationship to continue as it did, but that's silly. Even if it's the same person, even if the Doctor, fundamentally, hasn't changed, he still has. He's different from his Ninth self. The Time War still hangs over his head, but not in the same way that it hung over Nine, who came to meet Rose almost literally after the War. In one of the Doctor Who Confidentials, many offer the opinion that the Doctor is "hopelessly in love with Rose". I think he was. I think he really did fall in love with her. She was this bright, beautiful person after the horrors of the Time War and through her, he could again see the beauty of the whole universe through brand new eyes. And this it's a valid point that Rose was a somewhat special case in the case of companions. In all the previous incarnations, none of them had gone through the Time War, which is arguably now the most defining event in the Doctor's life. He's loved all his companions, I'm sure, but I firmly believe he fell in love with Rose Tyler.
That may be the main difference between the two. Besides, you know, not-ginger-and-rude. I don't doubt for a millisecond (or even a nanosecond) that Ten loved Rose. But I don't think he needed her in the same way Nine had and that made all the difference in the world. To her at least. That was another crucial point. For me, it felt like the first two episodes (New Earth and Tooth and Claw) was Ten and Rose trying to pick up where they'd left off and it'd worked, it really worked, but the Tenth Doctor is different. He's different from the Ninth Doctor. He treats people differently, he has a different outlook, he's less prone to mercy, he's far more open and in a way, he's far more closed. He changed. And going on the way they did before didn't really quite work. That's when School Reunion and The Girl in the Fireplace figure in.
It seemed, to me then, quite natural for Rose to start clinging. This was the reaction of a twenty-year old girl (or perhaps she was still nineteen... that thought made me my heart twinge a little. That she spent a year in relative time and never celebrated a birthday with Nine) to a massive, massive change that she hadn't expected or really understood. She'd watched him literally morph into this unfamiliar man in front of her, he acted different, he spoke differently, he probably even smelled like a whole new person. But he called himself the Doctor. That's hard on a girl who was falling in love a bit herself. That's why the first four episodes of the season actually worked for me in terms of Rose's characterization. She was still getting used to the New New Doctor and the first two episodes was like this giddy ride with the new Doctor and then Sarah Jane appeared and Rose was thrown for a loop. She's faced with the first inkling that the Doctor had other people before her. She even questions him about it and that might also be the first time we get it blatantly, none-of-this-metaphor-crap, I-am-being-a-jealous-would-be-girlfriend.
People can scoff all the want, but Rose is human, a twenty-first century human at that. After losing the old Doctor, her old Doctor, to flames and singing, is it any surprise that she clings to him in the beginning of Series 2? And we find them in a reverse situation with Reinette. She wasn't the one bringing pretty boys and would-be boyfriends aboard. He was. (Well, not boyfriends)
I loved how human she was in being jealous of Sarah Jane and Reinette. It made her seem so real and not this ethereal creature that some make her to be. I think she was much steadier by the middle of Series 2. She showed a sense of jealousy, but it wasn't the same as Reinette, wasn't the same as Sarah Jane. By the time The Idiot Lantern and Fear Her rolled around, Ten and Rose had once again settled into this semi-comfortable relationship that was just as indefinable as the Nine and Rose relationship was. Adjustment period! Over!
If Rose had continued onto Series 3, I would hope she gave the Doctor a proper arse-kicking after Human Nature and Family of Blood. Then I could cheer and applaud as she and Martha high-fived each other. Yeah. I would have killed to see that. ARGH! Let me stop blathering about Rose since that's all I seem to do in my posts about Doctor Who!
I loved Series 3, mostly because there were some truly fantastic episodes and locales. There was something special about the two-parter of Human Nature and Family of Blood. Can you imagine what it was like for Martha? Three months spent there, scrubbing floors and treated like a third-class citizen because of her gender, her race, everything. This was the way things were back then and for them it was as natural as breathing, but for Martha? Wow. In terms of shit taken, she took a lot more shit than Rose had thrown at her. For one thing, Martha's kept on the constant know that the Doctor is thinking of someone else. For another, she keeps getting trapped, for months at a time. For Blink to happen after that... Whew. If I'd been Martha, I might have ended up kicking him in the nuts. If he had nuts. Which, for all we know, he might not. Ha.
Also, Last of the Time Lords? Who didn't cry when the Doctor broke down over the Master's body. I did. I cried like a silly baby and the last three episodes of that season just bowled me over.
Overall, there was something to love about (and cry over) the three series. There were highlights, incredible episodes, not-so-incredible, and even episodes that didn't really include the Doctor his companions. Personally, I adored Blink. I'll probably never forget how Blink made me desperately wish that Sally Sparrow could have joined as a Companion. (Seriously, did anyone else think she would have made a fantastic companion?) That episode was wonderfully creepy, intensely confusing. I know it's been explored before, but I loved the reiteration of the non-linear life, where things that happened to others with Doctor might not have happened to him yet, not with the Doctor we follow, but nevertheless, it's the same Doctor. It makes my head just spin and I love the spinning sensation and how it's like I'm kindasorta experiencing the hurtle through space at tens of thousands of miles an hour. (Uh, I really got off topic with this bit.)
Anyways. I've been blathering. I'm not saying much new! I'm kinda glad I got into Doctor Who now, since I didn't have those years and months to wait for Series 4 where... da da dum! Rose comes back! =) So sue me. I'm very eager to see what's going to happen and just how they're going to explain her reappearance and... is she going to stay on for the fifth series or is she just going to do the specials? Questions, questions, questions.
Plus.
DONNA. FOURTH SERIES. WIN.
Hands down? Father's Day. That particular episode was the episode that really showcased the difference and relationship between the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler. They were both fantastic and music that plays as Pete runs toward the car? Heartbreaking. Utterly heartbreaking. I think that was probably one of the strongest episodes I've seen in the New Who. No other episode has come close to my love for this particular one. It's a lot of personal preferences in play.
Physically, everything about it was perfect for me. Emotionally, it hit most every button I have. I remember watching it for the first time and sobbing during the show and afterwards because it was just so strong and the fact there was just so much self-sacrifice in it. The Doctor wanted Rose to still have her father so he tried to think of another way to fix things and ended up dying for it. Pete knew he was the only way to end the paradox and threw himself in front of that fateful car so that Rose could live on. We got a beautiful little mini-story in it for 2 AM, a street corner in the middle of nowhere, and waiting for a taxi. How perfect is that? We have a realistic view of what it might have been really like for Jackie and Pete rather than the romanticised version that Jackie gave Rose. Rose got to see that her once-idolised father wasn't perfect or even close to it, but he was still her daddy, he was still her protector, and he saved the world for her. Even if no one ever knows about it.
Another favorite episode is The Parting of the Ways. It's one of those episodes that kind of draws you in and you don't realize what it's going to do to you until you finish watching it and you realize that your heart is breaking, just a bit, and you're crying about a person who's not really dead. I loved this episode so much because it really pushed Rose and the Doctor to the forefront. Rose almost died for the Doctor and the Doctor did 'die' for Rose. This is the sort of stuff that's in my dreams, something that's almost perfect storytelling. I don't care if it's not realistic or per the Doctor philosophy or anything like that. I'm not so concerned about the deux ex machina plot (though I guess I should be).
For me, The Parting of the Ways was almost perfect, from beginning to end.
Annnnnddddddd... I'm kinda beat. I'll blather more some other day.
I was in China for nine days, so when I said that I'd talk about Doctor Who again, I meant in a few weeks time. Seriously, I've gotten terrible at updating this thing. But it's great to have a place to just spill out everything I can about the Doctor and Rose and Martha and Jack and Donna and all the in-betweens. I'm in a small community for Japan, and there's not a whole lot of people who can take all my gushing about this particular series. ;)
Okay, okay, so this is basically me blathering and loving and ranting and raving and loving somethings years after everyone else has seen the series, but eh, what're you gonna do?
Anyways.
After having watched and re-watched seasons 1-3 of New Who, getting acclimatised to David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, weeping always a bit more about the Ninth Doctor and Christopher Eccleston, crying over "Parting of the Ways" and "Doomsday" and "The Last of the Time Lords", I guess it was inevitable that I'd come up with lots and lots of very random thoughts. Inevitable. REALLY.
So.
After all that, the Ninth Doctor is still my favorite.
I love him, love him, love him. Don't get me wrong, Ten is gorgeous and funny and absolutely crazy and I love him too, but like
princess_dexter said... you'll always remember your first Doctor and he was my first Doctor. Him and that daft old face (hee! I love that description!), big nose and bigger ears, broody Mcbrood, rash but not neglectful, everything about him was endearing... even if he did use the insult, "stupid ape" a tad much. I still miss Rose. Very much. Season 1 Rose had everything I'd ever wanted in a character and more. She was inquisitive, compassionate, snarky, kind, jealous, curious, horrified, a bit daft herself, loyal, adoring, impatient, patient, and oh, she was fantastic. A bit cliche, that. Season 2 Rose seemed a lot clingier, but since I was so far removed from the season, I felt like it was easier for me to accept and see it as actual character development rather than character rape. I watched the series all in one go rather than episode by episode... which almost always makes it easier for me, personally, to be objective rather than if I'd seen it episode by episode. For one thing, I found myself being rather fond of Martha and I loved Donna. (loved her to bits, actually. ;))
Martha's unrequited love hit one those points in me. Anyone who knows me knows that unrequited love is one of my weaknesses, which is why Season 2 made me feel a bit unbalanced because once Ten came in and Nine left, I actually felt uncertain about whether Ten had loved Rose or not. No, wait. That's not how it exactly is. I know he loves her, loves her lots, but it was so drastically different from the love of Nine that I think it was a bit jarring to see and absorb (can't imagine what it was like to actually go from Season 1 finale to Season 2 premiere and go through School Reunion and The Girl in the Fireplace!). I saw Season 2 immediately after Season 1 and the raw and possessive edge of the Ninth Doctor is a sharp difference from the Tenth Doctor.
Does anyone get what I'm trying to (poorly) get across? I guess, simply put, I was imprinted on the Ninth Doctor style. And a lot of personal preference.
In retrospect, I probably have no one to blame but myself. I wanted so much for the relationship to continue as it did, but that's silly. Even if it's the same person, even if the Doctor, fundamentally, hasn't changed, he still has. He's different from his Ninth self. The Time War still hangs over his head, but not in the same way that it hung over Nine, who came to meet Rose almost literally after the War. In one of the Doctor Who Confidentials, many offer the opinion that the Doctor is "hopelessly in love with Rose". I think he was. I think he really did fall in love with her. She was this bright, beautiful person after the horrors of the Time War and through her, he could again see the beauty of the whole universe through brand new eyes. And this it's a valid point that Rose was a somewhat special case in the case of companions. In all the previous incarnations, none of them had gone through the Time War, which is arguably now the most defining event in the Doctor's life. He's loved all his companions, I'm sure, but I firmly believe he fell in love with Rose Tyler.
That may be the main difference between the two. Besides, you know, not-ginger-and-rude. I don't doubt for a millisecond (or even a nanosecond) that Ten loved Rose. But I don't think he needed her in the same way Nine had and that made all the difference in the world. To her at least. That was another crucial point. For me, it felt like the first two episodes (New Earth and Tooth and Claw) was Ten and Rose trying to pick up where they'd left off and it'd worked, it really worked, but the Tenth Doctor is different. He's different from the Ninth Doctor. He treats people differently, he has a different outlook, he's less prone to mercy, he's far more open and in a way, he's far more closed. He changed. And going on the way they did before didn't really quite work. That's when School Reunion and The Girl in the Fireplace figure in.
It seemed, to me then, quite natural for Rose to start clinging. This was the reaction of a twenty-year old girl (or perhaps she was still nineteen... that thought made me my heart twinge a little. That she spent a year in relative time and never celebrated a birthday with Nine) to a massive, massive change that she hadn't expected or really understood. She'd watched him literally morph into this unfamiliar man in front of her, he acted different, he spoke differently, he probably even smelled like a whole new person. But he called himself the Doctor. That's hard on a girl who was falling in love a bit herself. That's why the first four episodes of the season actually worked for me in terms of Rose's characterization. She was still getting used to the New New Doctor and the first two episodes was like this giddy ride with the new Doctor and then Sarah Jane appeared and Rose was thrown for a loop. She's faced with the first inkling that the Doctor had other people before her. She even questions him about it and that might also be the first time we get it blatantly, none-of-this-metaphor-crap, I-am-being-a-jealous-would-be-girlfriend.
People can scoff all the want, but Rose is human, a twenty-first century human at that. After losing the old Doctor, her old Doctor, to flames and singing, is it any surprise that she clings to him in the beginning of Series 2? And we find them in a reverse situation with Reinette. She wasn't the one bringing pretty boys and would-be boyfriends aboard. He was. (Well, not boyfriends)
I loved how human she was in being jealous of Sarah Jane and Reinette. It made her seem so real and not this ethereal creature that some make her to be. I think she was much steadier by the middle of Series 2. She showed a sense of jealousy, but it wasn't the same as Reinette, wasn't the same as Sarah Jane. By the time The Idiot Lantern and Fear Her rolled around, Ten and Rose had once again settled into this semi-comfortable relationship that was just as indefinable as the Nine and Rose relationship was. Adjustment period! Over!
If Rose had continued onto Series 3, I would hope she gave the Doctor a proper arse-kicking after Human Nature and Family of Blood. Then I could cheer and applaud as she and Martha high-fived each other. Yeah. I would have killed to see that. ARGH! Let me stop blathering about Rose since that's all I seem to do in my posts about Doctor Who!
I loved Series 3, mostly because there were some truly fantastic episodes and locales. There was something special about the two-parter of Human Nature and Family of Blood. Can you imagine what it was like for Martha? Three months spent there, scrubbing floors and treated like a third-class citizen because of her gender, her race, everything. This was the way things were back then and for them it was as natural as breathing, but for Martha? Wow. In terms of shit taken, she took a lot more shit than Rose had thrown at her. For one thing, Martha's kept on the constant know that the Doctor is thinking of someone else. For another, she keeps getting trapped, for months at a time. For Blink to happen after that... Whew. If I'd been Martha, I might have ended up kicking him in the nuts. If he had nuts. Which, for all we know, he might not. Ha.
Also, Last of the Time Lords? Who didn't cry when the Doctor broke down over the Master's body. I did. I cried like a silly baby and the last three episodes of that season just bowled me over.
Overall, there was something to love about (and cry over) the three series. There were highlights, incredible episodes, not-so-incredible, and even episodes that didn't really include the Doctor his companions. Personally, I adored Blink. I'll probably never forget how Blink made me desperately wish that Sally Sparrow could have joined as a Companion. (Seriously, did anyone else think she would have made a fantastic companion?) That episode was wonderfully creepy, intensely confusing. I know it's been explored before, but I loved the reiteration of the non-linear life, where things that happened to others with Doctor might not have happened to him yet, not with the Doctor we follow, but nevertheless, it's the same Doctor. It makes my head just spin and I love the spinning sensation and how it's like I'm kindasorta experiencing the hurtle through space at tens of thousands of miles an hour. (Uh, I really got off topic with this bit.)
Anyways. I've been blathering. I'm not saying much new! I'm kinda glad I got into Doctor Who now, since I didn't have those years and months to wait for Series 4 where... da da dum! Rose comes back! =) So sue me. I'm very eager to see what's going to happen and just how they're going to explain her reappearance and... is she going to stay on for the fifth series or is she just going to do the specials? Questions, questions, questions.
Plus.
DONNA. FOURTH SERIES. WIN.
Hands down? Father's Day. That particular episode was the episode that really showcased the difference and relationship between the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler. They were both fantastic and music that plays as Pete runs toward the car? Heartbreaking. Utterly heartbreaking. I think that was probably one of the strongest episodes I've seen in the New Who. No other episode has come close to my love for this particular one. It's a lot of personal preferences in play.
Physically, everything about it was perfect for me. Emotionally, it hit most every button I have. I remember watching it for the first time and sobbing during the show and afterwards because it was just so strong and the fact there was just so much self-sacrifice in it. The Doctor wanted Rose to still have her father so he tried to think of another way to fix things and ended up dying for it. Pete knew he was the only way to end the paradox and threw himself in front of that fateful car so that Rose could live on. We got a beautiful little mini-story in it for 2 AM, a street corner in the middle of nowhere, and waiting for a taxi. How perfect is that? We have a realistic view of what it might have been really like for Jackie and Pete rather than the romanticised version that Jackie gave Rose. Rose got to see that her once-idolised father wasn't perfect or even close to it, but he was still her daddy, he was still her protector, and he saved the world for her. Even if no one ever knows about it.
Another favorite episode is The Parting of the Ways. It's one of those episodes that kind of draws you in and you don't realize what it's going to do to you until you finish watching it and you realize that your heart is breaking, just a bit, and you're crying about a person who's not really dead. I loved this episode so much because it really pushed Rose and the Doctor to the forefront. Rose almost died for the Doctor and the Doctor did 'die' for Rose. This is the sort of stuff that's in my dreams, something that's almost perfect storytelling. I don't care if it's not realistic or per the Doctor philosophy or anything like that. I'm not so concerned about the deux ex machina plot (though I guess I should be).
For me, The Parting of the Ways was almost perfect, from beginning to end.
Annnnnddddddd... I'm kinda beat. I'll blather more some other day.
