Do they play basketball in the U.K., or is U.S. idiom that universal?

[scarfman]

Edit 10/6/07 Obviously they play basketball in the U.K., when that's what Torchwood Three is doing in the Hub in the opening of Cyberwoman.

I had a new thought this morning about the Doctor's relationship with Rose. Now, I'm of the but-they're-all-special school of thought. I don't believe that Rose was the Doctor's one true love, though there's no doubt that he believes it, and shall for some time, perhaps for the rest of his life. I've written before that what the Doctor mistakes for the overwhelming loss of Rose is actually overwhelming because he lost not just Rose but her whole family, which in his mind and hearts was tantamount to losing his family and planet all over again. Certainly Rose's loss has traumatized the Doctor in a way no previous companion's loss has done. Contemplating Martha's gripe at the beginning of Gridlock, I've identified yet another factor why this is so.

Every new girl in the TARDIS from Vicki, perhaps Barbara, forward has been, in terms of dramatic ecological niche and also in the Doctor's mind (as you can tell from the incarnations who have trouble with names), a replacement of the one who came immediately before. Except Rose, because in her case there wasn't a girl immediately before. There hadn't been one for two incarnations.* Perhaps Grace turned him down because she picked up on his rebound vibe (or perhaps only because she recognized she was on the rebound herself). And then the Time War and its attendant trauma intervened. Rose was the first woman to approach the Doctor while his slate was clean (aside of course from the PTSD; I mean girl-wise) since he and Susan left Gallifrey (depending on whether Gallifreyan family customs allow for marrying for love, perhaps the first ever).

Rose is the only one of the Doctor's girl companions who wasn't a rebound girl.

I wonder if that isn't grounds for admitting that maybe Rose was the one true love of the Doctor, or anyway the only true love we know about.

* Obviously I'm excluding tie-in continuity here, but that's perfectly fair for the present argument since screen continuity is obliged to leave it out by the BBC's charter.

Comments

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

Also: I have a lot of trouble sometimes with the 'true love' aspect, because I've always thought of the Doctor as something of a serial pet-adopter. He takes them in, they hang out with him, sometimes they go their separate ways and sometimes they die. And he loves them all. (And there's room there for a 'rebound' pet; if you've gone a long time without one, you might very well be extremely attached to the next.)

With respect to physical love, who knows what cats and dogs are feeling when we pet them and interact with them on their own terms, using their own body language? A kiss is true love to Rose; to the Doctor, it's just being affectionate with humans in a way they understand.

[scarfman]

I don't believe the Doctor looks on his human companions as pets, any more than he does his Gallifreyan companions. Alan Dean Foster once wrote that beings who keep zoos oughtn't be kept in them, and I get the same vibe from the Doctor. He can be pretty snobbish, but at heart(s) he believes that intelligence/sapience is a binary condition; cf. his response to the Eternals' attitude toward "ephemerals".

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't think he's keeping them; I can remember a book-canon instance where someone (Ace, I think) wanted to leave and he effectively forced her to stay. It's more like someone who is putting out food for stray cats and being friendly to them. They're not 'owned', they come and go as they please. Maybe pets is the wrong word.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

Er, and I meant that that book with Ace was the only instance I could think of where he forces someone to stay.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Which is, I gather, more in-character for the 8th Doctor than most any other.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

It was the 7th, and there were some dark angsty plotlines going on.