Shallow End

[scarfman]

I wrote this up as a comment on a post on my flist about the Doctor Who 'ship wars, but having articulated it I ought to put it here too.

This week I'm working on the perspective that everything in 21st century Doctor Who has zero depth and is to be taken solely at face value (where "face value" sometimes naturally means "backed up by encultured assumption"). Just like 20th century Doctor Who. Near as I can work it out so far this means that

• Time Lords have sex and this results in nuclear families
• the Doctor has had sex and a nuclear family
• the Doctor and Rose slowly fell in love over the course of her travels and were just at the point of professing it when they were seperated
• Sarah Jane fell for the Doctor but he only loved her like any other companion and never realized till she came back and told him
• Martha fell for the Doctor but he only loved her like any other companion and never realized till she walked out and told him
• Jack fell for the Doctor but he only loved Jack like any other companion and realizes Jack loves him but that's just, y'know, Jack, who's like that with everyone

I'll let you know how that works out.

Though I still say Sarah Jane never sat around thirty years pining for the Doctor. You don't give up investigative journalism in the 70s and then happen to take it up again thirty years later for the one case when you'll happen to run into the man who broke your spirit, not unless you're more psychic than Sarah Jane's ever been painted.

Comments

[alawston.livejournal.com]

And let's not forget that the presence of K9 in both the Five Doctors AND School Reunion effectively renders K9 and Company 'canon'. And rubbish as it is, at least she's pro-active in that as well. And her behaviour in The Five Doctors is far from heartbroken.

[pedanther]

Although, oddly enough, "School Reunion" seems to treat "The Five Doctors" as non-canon, since Sarah Jane says she hasn't seen the Doctor since "Hand of Fear".

Unless that just means that all the companions had their memories wiped after "The Five Doctors" to avoid cross-time entanglements.

[scarfman]

The memory wipe is a possibility. But it's also obvious in the last scene of The Five Doctors that Sarah Jane didn't realize that Doctor Five was another Doctor. Same with the Doctor; he says "half a dozen" in School Reunion as if to dismiss the events of The Five Doctors because he knows she doesn't realize she met a later incarnation.

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

Looking at it from a writers' perspective, it's a tall order bringing 30 years of backstory into a narrative for a new audience. I think they've always gone for two parallel narratives. It works on the shallow level, but you can read more into it if you know your stuff and you're so inclined.

I started listening to Big Finish audios a while back and was flabbergasted to see how little emotion the Doctor does express about anything personal, though. I mean, he once rescued Romana from the Daleks after 20 years of captivity, and they hardly mentioned it. Just on with the show.....

[scarfman]

That it was Romana is very suggestive: That's just how Time Lords are.

[elliptic-eye.livejournal.com]

Though I still say Sarah Jane never sat around thirty years pining for the Doctor.

After watching the ending of Hand of Fear—which incidentally looked to me like both parties expected to be pretty permanent—I just don't see how anybody could. I really can't figure out why they felt Sarah Jane would be a good choice for this arc, unless it was as simple as her being the most recognizable of the classic companions and Elisabeth Sladen being available.

[scarfman]

Sarah Jane is the only companion besides Rose that the Doctor had ever tried to dump (where Susan is a different case because he believed, not without grounds, that she wanted to go). She's the only one who could have given Rose the impression that the Doctor abandons them, and the story RTD appears to have wanted to tell requires Sarah Jane for that reason. All the others have left of their own choice, or died.

Except maybe Peri who, depending on if you believe the end of Ultimate Foe instead of the end of Mindwarp, may have been left with marrying Yrcanos only as the best option of a pack of poor options, when she realized the Doctor wasn't coming back for her. (Assuming the Doctor didn't come back for her, after he returned Mel to his future self. Many fans assume he didn't have time to do either, on the grounds that he was still wearing the same tie and waistcoat at the beginning of Time and the Rani as at the end of The Ultimate Foe, but it's an assumption.)

[elliptic-eye.livejournal.com]

She's the only one who could have given Rose the impression that the Doctor abandons them

I disagree. Tegan would have worked just as well (character-wise, far better). Yes, she chose to leave, but it would be far easier to spin the Doctor's just letting her go--with head wound and post-traumatic stress and complete lack of resources and all--without sticking around/coming back to check on her as abandonment than his answering the call at the end of HoF. Not just that, but more likely to be construed by the companion as such.

Peri, for the reasons you already gave.

Ace, if they wanted, since we never find out where she gets off, though a romantic pining would not have been particularly believable. I don't see where the romantic element was essential, anyway; it's really the "why didn't you come back?" that Rose is hung up on, and rightly so. But in Hand of Fear we don't see Sarah being set up with and particular expectation that he will come back.

[scarfman]

I certainly won't concede Tegan. Tegan is my example when I want to argue supporting the embarrassing accidental racism in Season 2007, to wit, "The only other companion to walk out on the Doctor because she couldn't take it any more was white, and was argued with." Tegan was not abandoned; Tegan jumped ship, over strenuous objection.

In any case, if you're going to extrapolate feelings of abandonment this way you could do it for anyone the Doctor didn't return to their doorstep on the hour they first left ... which pretty much means everyone but Ben and Polly. You can say Russell had to work for it with Sarah Jane, but you've worked as harder or harder for all your examples.

[dave-iii.livejournal.com]

My problem is with the Doctor-- on any level-- wanting to have a sexual relationship with a human. In spite of cosmetic similarities, Gallifreyans (of whom Time Lords are examples, but they do not represent the entire body of the population) are not human, as the Doctor himself has said. It's like Humans' relationship with dogs or cats: sure, you can form strong, life-altering relationships with them, but build-a-family pair-bonding? I just can't buy it.

Now, a case may be made for the Doctor going a bit funny in the head since the Time War, but that's not really a sympathetic kind of "funny in the head", that's a lock-up-your-children-and-don't-look-him-in-the-eye kind of thing.

The Doctor having a sexual drive, that I have no problem with; Susan's very existence is evidence of his desire to have a family. But to look to a human for that? Sorry, can't accept it.

This is, of course, only my two cents, YMMV.

[scarfman]

The flaw I see in that argument is that Susan left the TARDIS for an Earthman: the very first departure of a companion from the TARDIS was on account of a cross-species romance. Leela's too was on account of a Time Lord-human pairbonding. It may be bad reallife science but it's demonstrably unremarkable in the universe where Doctor Who is set.

On the other hand, if the Doctor is half-human, neither Susan's romance with David nor the Doctor's with Rose were cross-species.

[scythethewicked.livejournal.com]

I don't think Sarah Jane gave up journalism for thirty years just because the guy she loved left her. Right before Sarah Jane Adventures debuted on CBBC, for the SJA website that had a list of Sarah Jane's accomplishments as a journalist, a lot of which mentioned things she did in the eighties (including a news story about a jewelry heist that took place in Attack of the Cybermen).