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

[therru.livejournal.com]

OK, here is how I think. I think the Doctor probably loved all of his companions, in his own way, and that way may be quite different to how "love" is perceived in our human 20th-21st century western-world cultural context. I like to think that he didn't grieve so much (at least outwardly) for the other companions when they/he left, because being a Time Lord he would feel that they would always be accessible to him, and in an obscure way with him, for the whole of their life spans, even if he wouldn't actually spend any more time in their physical presence. That's why goodbyes were more or less meaningless to him, and he never got the hang of them. Time is not so finite and closed off to him as it is to us, with our short life spans and our linear, finite timelines. All of time (and space) was open to him, if he wished.

So when Gallifrey was destroyed, and all the history of the Time Lords with it, he lost not only his people and home planet, but also the link to all that lost time, something that he hadn't really experienced before, or at least not on that scale. The loss of Gallifrey was final and absolute, and that is what made him so broken and lost at the beginning of series one. Rose was certainly the first person to come along and get close to him after that loss, and perhaps his reaction to her is more human than anything that had passed before -- since that kind of loss and the finality of it is something we as humans all have to deal with in our lives, we cling more, miss people more, get devastated when we lose them. But to the Doctor that experience is new, in a way. Not completely, because he did take it harder when his companions died rather than just left, like Adric, perhaps because it was the end of their timelines and it made the loss of them more final for him. But still, it impacts him more now than it did before. Does this make any sense to you? I'm not sure I'm conveying what I think in a very clear way...

[scarfman]

I get what you're saying and it's a good point I've not seen before.