prof_pangaea (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
prof_pangaea) wrote2010-03-26 02:29 pm
prof_pangaea) wrote2010-03-26 02:29 pm
Entry tags:
obvious things that have been stuck in my brain so i decided to type them out
random whovian thoughts:
donna is the companion that ten never gets over. i mean, End of Time takes place at least a few years after the events of JE, and yet seeing her through a window and a short conversation about her with wilf is enough to drive him to tears. obvs the initial tears are linked to adelaide's death, but that is also linked to his loneliness and inability let a new companion into his life precisely because of how much he can't deal with what happened to donna. SitL/FotD tells us that he's still not got over it years and years later, because he's talked about it with river. more telling even than the tears is the fact that when wilf says, "you need her, doctor!" he nods, almost says something ("I need --"), stops himself, and then has to flee from the scene. because i think he was thinking, "i do need her, i bet if i tried i could fix her, and then we could be together again", and that scared him, because the last time he thought he could do anything he made someone kill herself.
god, ten was fucked up.
meanwhile, russell seems to really like stories where characters set up their own downfall in some way. this is usually only implicit in doctor who, so we watch s2 and think, "does he realise he wrote a story about how rose and the doctor create the very circumstances that lead to their being separated?", or we watch s3 and think, "when he wrote the master coming in and taking over the power vacuum that ten left when he deposed harriet jones, did he actually do that on purpose?" because these things don't get addressed directly by characters, they just happen. but when RTD wrote children of earth it is explicitly stated that jack created the circumstances that lead to the ianto's and stephen's deaths. he gave the 456 those initial sixteen children or whatever back in 1965, and the other characters are like, "why the fuck did you do that?? you're the reason they're back!" so i do think that we (the adult audience) are supposed to watch doctor who and go, wow, ten and rose, you guys really fucked yourselves by acting like arrogant jerks to queen victoria, didn't you? he just doesn't have another character come in and say that, because he's writing it for the childrens, and doesn't want to freak them out. it is telling that he originally had a line in The Sound of Drums or Last of the Time Lords where the master explicitly says that he was able to rise so easily to power because the doctor deposed harriet jones, but ended up cutting it (this info from a panel at chicago TARDIS a couple years ago, if i recall correctly).
it's weird because he can't stop himself from trying to make the stories darker and more complex than he thinks is appropriate for the audience, so he compromises and tries to shellac everything with a distracting layer of glee and fun, which... doesn't always quite work. until waters of mars happens, of course, and it's like watching all those previous years without the protective layering and it's rather scary. but also quite good. which i suppose points towards children's television as possibly not the best place for him to work, in general. maybe he's fine if he doesn't write it himself, since SJA always strikes a very good balance between some quite dark or serious storylines but always keeping it appropriate for The Kids.
donna is the companion that ten never gets over. i mean, End of Time takes place at least a few years after the events of JE, and yet seeing her through a window and a short conversation about her with wilf is enough to drive him to tears. obvs the initial tears are linked to adelaide's death, but that is also linked to his loneliness and inability let a new companion into his life precisely because of how much he can't deal with what happened to donna. SitL/FotD tells us that he's still not got over it years and years later, because he's talked about it with river. more telling even than the tears is the fact that when wilf says, "you need her, doctor!" he nods, almost says something ("I need --"), stops himself, and then has to flee from the scene. because i think he was thinking, "i do need her, i bet if i tried i could fix her, and then we could be together again", and that scared him, because the last time he thought he could do anything he made someone kill herself.
god, ten was fucked up.
meanwhile, russell seems to really like stories where characters set up their own downfall in some way. this is usually only implicit in doctor who, so we watch s2 and think, "does he realise he wrote a story about how rose and the doctor create the very circumstances that lead to their being separated?", or we watch s3 and think, "when he wrote the master coming in and taking over the power vacuum that ten left when he deposed harriet jones, did he actually do that on purpose?" because these things don't get addressed directly by characters, they just happen. but when RTD wrote children of earth it is explicitly stated that jack created the circumstances that lead to the ianto's and stephen's deaths. he gave the 456 those initial sixteen children or whatever back in 1965, and the other characters are like, "why the fuck did you do that?? you're the reason they're back!" so i do think that we (the adult audience) are supposed to watch doctor who and go, wow, ten and rose, you guys really fucked yourselves by acting like arrogant jerks to queen victoria, didn't you? he just doesn't have another character come in and say that, because he's writing it for the childrens, and doesn't want to freak them out. it is telling that he originally had a line in The Sound of Drums or Last of the Time Lords where the master explicitly says that he was able to rise so easily to power because the doctor deposed harriet jones, but ended up cutting it (this info from a panel at chicago TARDIS a couple years ago, if i recall correctly).
it's weird because he can't stop himself from trying to make the stories darker and more complex than he thinks is appropriate for the audience, so he compromises and tries to shellac everything with a distracting layer of glee and fun, which... doesn't always quite work. until waters of mars happens, of course, and it's like watching all those previous years without the protective layering and it's rather scary. but also quite good. which i suppose points towards children's television as possibly not the best place for him to work, in general. maybe he's fine if he doesn't write it himself, since SJA always strikes a very good balance between some quite dark or serious storylines but always keeping it appropriate for The Kids.
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The really unfortunate part, and the reason I started getting irritated was it makes it seem like the Doctor can't learn. He keeps going on about how lonely he is, and how only he can make the big decisions, and then keeps pushing everyone away, and making mistakes because he has no perspective outside of what he wants that minute. He doesn't let anyone in enough to let anyone call him on shit. Sarah Jane even *tried* to call him on it in Journey's End, and he still manged to shut everyone out before the end of the episode. And then wandered off alone into the specials until he went extra crazy in Water of Mars.
Hopefully Eleven will have learned from Ten's mistakes, finally?
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I read a study once, long ago in college, which concluded there's actually more people than you'd think who haven't actively tried to hurt themselves who do try to hurt themselves just after beginning seeking treatment for mental disorder than you might logically think. The writer of the study seems to think that people would begin to a bit of hope and then be so terrified of loosing that bit of hope, it backfires. I look at end of season 4 and...yeah, I think of that study.
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it is what disappointed me most with EoT -- he never learns, he never finds peace, he just dies. it actually really upset me when i watched it. three had to die to learn not to fear death, and to throw off the last bits of his exile, but we see him accepting that before he does actually die. and ten doesn't. :(
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