Tennant as Who
Apr. 29th, 2006 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
green_amberYeh, I liked this one. Not loved it, but definitely the best yet.
Oddly, after two eps where people complained about RTD not being able to plot or pace, this surely was the ep he SHOULD have written - all about character not plot pretty much, and again, to me somehow very redolent of a gay writer. (Wikipedia doesn't say anything about the sexuality of the guy who actually wrote it however..)
Anyway, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
blue_condition also hints at, this ep struck me as really doing some fundamental re examination of the "good Doctor" mythos. (I wonder if this is part of the supposed "Doctor and Rose take a fall" plotline that's meant to be coming, or merely incidental cos they wanted to do a "Sarah Jane and K9 come back" episode?) Anyway in series past, we've always taken it as a given that the Doctor is , essentially, not only the intellectual, but also the moral, superior of humankind. He always fights for what is right, he knows evil when he sees it, he isn't distracted by saving his own life or his own possessions, nor by romance, jealousy or petty emotions of any kind, we thought - the perfect superhero.
Series 1 started to dismantle this. When we saw Eccleston facing the Daleks, (and especialy the DALEK) we saw a kind of madness, a desire for vengeance on these enemies of his race that we didn't associate with the Doctor, that paragon of rational moral action (yes, even when doinmg it in a slightly mad way, like Baker.) Eccleston didn't want to kill the Daleks because they are, rationally, a threat to other life in the Universe : he wanted to kill then because he HATES them and he FEARS them. Not our cosy old Doctor at all.
Now we begin to see that the Doctor not only has his own agendas, but also quite frivolously wrecks lives, by picking up mere mortals, putting them through what is essentially the most exciting kind of whirlwind romance (a one night stand surely, from the perspective of a Time Lord) and dumping them, before he has to watch them wither and age. Not for their sake, but for his.
And although it was very funny, when Tennant ducks out between SJS and Rose, and Mickey crows gleefuly that finally he has his rival caught in the headlights, that's when we suddenly see the Doctor as that weakest and most pitiful of men, the serial Lothario, the academic who shags his students, the man who puffs up his own self esteem by preying on the adoration of women too young or stupid to know better, who can't see his own flaws, only his brilliance, and then dumps them before they get a chance to learn better.
OK, the episode as a whole is not *quite* that hard on the Doctor. Tennant did a good job of following on from Eccleston here, in showing that the post Time War Doctor is not the cocky man-about-universe of Tom Baker's time anymore, but a devastatingly lonely last warrior, continuing to travel and fight for good, beause what else is there to do really? When your entire race - and perhaps a family too - is gone. Perhaps in this loneliness the Doctor has learnt that a companion, mortal or not, really does matter, is not just the latest girlfriend to be dumped in favour of a newer model. Perhaps in that sense Rose is actually right when she says, effectively, that she thought she was special, and Tennant snaps back "As opposed to what?" (In which case SJS did well to forgive her for it, and forgive the Doctor too.)
And as SJS says, she wouldn't have turned down that experience even though she's grieved for its loss ever since.
And there's a lovely sad referential coda too there for the very many 40 something women out there , who like SJS, lived life to the full and then found themselves on the other side of the hill of youth, though, single and childless, and with some, though by no means all, regrets.
But all this makes it harder and harder to believe Tennant when he says, as he did last week, that he is the last moral arbiter, that he is God. I really hope that line wil be deconstructed by the end of the series.
Why, a series 2 Dr Who episode I can write about. Things are looking up.
Oddly, after two eps where people complained about RTD not being able to plot or pace, this surely was the ep he SHOULD have written - all about character not plot pretty much, and again, to me somehow very redolent of a gay writer. (Wikipedia doesn't say anything about the sexuality of the guy who actually wrote it however..)
Anyway, as
blue_condition also hints at, this ep struck me as really doing some fundamental re examination of the "good Doctor" mythos. (I wonder if this is part of the supposed "Doctor and Rose take a fall" plotline that's meant to be coming, or merely incidental cos they wanted to do a "Sarah Jane and K9 come back" episode?) Anyway in series past, we've always taken it as a given that the Doctor is , essentially, not only the intellectual, but also the moral, superior of humankind. He always fights for what is right, he knows evil when he sees it, he isn't distracted by saving his own life or his own possessions, nor by romance, jealousy or petty emotions of any kind, we thought - the perfect superhero.Series 1 started to dismantle this. When we saw Eccleston facing the Daleks, (and especialy the DALEK) we saw a kind of madness, a desire for vengeance on these enemies of his race that we didn't associate with the Doctor, that paragon of rational moral action (yes, even when doinmg it in a slightly mad way, like Baker.) Eccleston didn't want to kill the Daleks because they are, rationally, a threat to other life in the Universe : he wanted to kill then because he HATES them and he FEARS them. Not our cosy old Doctor at all.
Now we begin to see that the Doctor not only has his own agendas, but also quite frivolously wrecks lives, by picking up mere mortals, putting them through what is essentially the most exciting kind of whirlwind romance (a one night stand surely, from the perspective of a Time Lord) and dumping them, before he has to watch them wither and age. Not for their sake, but for his.
And although it was very funny, when Tennant ducks out between SJS and Rose, and Mickey crows gleefuly that finally he has his rival caught in the headlights, that's when we suddenly see the Doctor as that weakest and most pitiful of men, the serial Lothario, the academic who shags his students, the man who puffs up his own self esteem by preying on the adoration of women too young or stupid to know better, who can't see his own flaws, only his brilliance, and then dumps them before they get a chance to learn better.
OK, the episode as a whole is not *quite* that hard on the Doctor. Tennant did a good job of following on from Eccleston here, in showing that the post Time War Doctor is not the cocky man-about-universe of Tom Baker's time anymore, but a devastatingly lonely last warrior, continuing to travel and fight for good, beause what else is there to do really? When your entire race - and perhaps a family too - is gone. Perhaps in this loneliness the Doctor has learnt that a companion, mortal or not, really does matter, is not just the latest girlfriend to be dumped in favour of a newer model. Perhaps in that sense Rose is actually right when she says, effectively, that she thought she was special, and Tennant snaps back "As opposed to what?" (In which case SJS did well to forgive her for it, and forgive the Doctor too.)
And as SJS says, she wouldn't have turned down that experience even though she's grieved for its loss ever since.
And there's a lovely sad referential coda too there for the very many 40 something women out there , who like SJS, lived life to the full and then found themselves on the other side of the hill of youth, though, single and childless, and with some, though by no means all, regrets.
But all this makes it harder and harder to believe Tennant when he says, as he did last week, that he is the last moral arbiter, that he is God. I really hope that line wil be deconstructed by the end of the series.
Why, a series 2 Dr Who episode I can write about. Things are looking up.
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-29 11:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-29 11:04 pm (UTC)I didn't think your analysis was that far way from mine.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-29 11:08 pm (UTC)I've got a vague feeling Sarah Jane has encountered other companions before, in "The Five Doctors", but I think everyone concerned would rather pretend that never happened. Or that the Timelords wiped memories. Or something ;)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-30 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-30 09:29 pm (UTC)Mickey was SO Xander this time didn't you think??
no subject
Date: 2006-04-30 10:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-30 11:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-01 10:33 am (UTC)So straight writers always do plot rather than character, and this is how you tell?
.....
no subject
Date: 2006-05-01 10:55 pm (UTC)Except that, by and large, that's not what happens with the Doctor's companions. Sarah Jane is very much the exception here, in that he left her. Most of the time, it's the other way around. Liz, Jo, Leela, Romana, Nyssa, Tegan, they all left the Doctor, as did many others. And sometimes (as when Jo left), he was actually very upset when they moved on.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-01 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-01 11:56 pm (UTC)I don't think the real story is that the Doctor dumps his companions before they wither and die. The real story, from what we've seen, is that for the most part, they outgrow him. Either they want a proper grown-up relationship, which the Doctor can never give them (Jo, Leela), or they want to do something important in their own right (Liz, Romana, Nyssa). So, by focussing on Sarah Jane, one of the few companions who hadn't moved on in her own mind when she left the TARDIS, School Reunion tells a story about the Doctor's relationship with his companions which is, taken generally, a lie.