Doctor Who and Romance: Everything dies
Oct. 17th, 2006 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflySo, I'm reading the TWoP recaps of Doctor Who, which I find interesting, partly because Jacob doesn't really recap like anyone else on the site. In a recent season two recap, he said something that struck me -- that they are, in some ways, telling the same story thirteen different ways.
Which is to say -- everything ends. Everything dies. They've said it explicitly several times already -- Sarah Jane in School Reunion says it to the Doctor when he's being tempted by the Headmaster, the Doctor says to the Queen (after she tells him that anyone who own the Koh-I-Noor is fated to die), that anything you own, if you own it long enough, could predict your death, because everything dies. Cassandra dies at the end of New Earth.
And in the first tenth Doctor episode -- no second chances. The old things pass away, so that the new things can come. Nobody gets out unscathed. That's life.
That's the lesson that the Doctor and Rose learn and teach, over and over, in the second season. Rose makes the choice to stay with the Doctor, to never choose to leave, but that doesn't mean that she gets to stay. Everything ends, whether you want it to or not.
Everything changes -- with the death of something old, comes the birth of something new. The ninth Doctor died, but the tenth is here now. Cassandra is dead, but she helped to create a new people. Sarah Jane has said her good-byes to the Doctor, but there's a Smith in the TARDIS again now.
Television is life compressed, cut down and intensified. They can't show us Rose and the Doctor travelling together for fifty years. But they can show us both sides wanting to.
The same kind of thing happened in Buffy -- romance and life compressed. Because every relationship ends. By death or choice or pain. There is no romance that lasts forever, no happiness that is not eventually ended. This is as true in life as it is in television... it's just that television tends to work in a shorter timeframe.
If she stayed with him eighty years, still, one day, the Doctor would lose Rose (or she would lose him again) and it would be forever and it would be impossible to fix. You can't fix life.
Everything ends.
That said, does that make the choice to love and to promise forever any less meaningful? Only if it does so in our world as well. Just because Rose can't stay with the Doctor forever doesn't mean that she shouldn't stay as long as she is able. Just because the Doctor knows that 'forever' can't actually mean 'forever', it doesn't render the words meaningless. Their depth of affection is such that they are willing to live as if they could have forever together, as if they could stay with each other until every sun has burned up every planet and the universe is cold and dark (even here, in forever, everything ends). Rose's choice is no less fool-hardy than anyone else's.
No love affair can last forever -- all are ended, by death or irreconcilable differences.
In the Lord of the Rings, eventually, Aragorn will die and Arwen will stand by his tomb, weeping. Yet, knowing this, she makes the choice to be with him regardless. "If I leave him now, I will regret it forever." Pain comes and love dies. That doesn't make the choice to love any less important or any less true.
Rose loves the Doctor and, loving him, chooses to be with him. She knows that he's lonely and offers her company. She listens and speaks and gives him hugs and affection and trust. Over and over, the choice is presented to her and she chooses to stay.
That choice says a lot about how she feels about him, about Rose as a person. Her choice was the Doctor, always. As they both go on, from this point, they will both remember that. And the choice to stay matters, regardless of whether or not she actually could stay.
Which is to say -- everything ends. Everything dies. They've said it explicitly several times already -- Sarah Jane in School Reunion says it to the Doctor when he's being tempted by the Headmaster, the Doctor says to the Queen (after she tells him that anyone who own the Koh-I-Noor is fated to die), that anything you own, if you own it long enough, could predict your death, because everything dies. Cassandra dies at the end of New Earth.
And in the first tenth Doctor episode -- no second chances. The old things pass away, so that the new things can come. Nobody gets out unscathed. That's life.
That's the lesson that the Doctor and Rose learn and teach, over and over, in the second season. Rose makes the choice to stay with the Doctor, to never choose to leave, but that doesn't mean that she gets to stay. Everything ends, whether you want it to or not.
Everything changes -- with the death of something old, comes the birth of something new. The ninth Doctor died, but the tenth is here now. Cassandra is dead, but she helped to create a new people. Sarah Jane has said her good-byes to the Doctor, but there's a Smith in the TARDIS again now.
Television is life compressed, cut down and intensified. They can't show us Rose and the Doctor travelling together for fifty years. But they can show us both sides wanting to.
The same kind of thing happened in Buffy -- romance and life compressed. Because every relationship ends. By death or choice or pain. There is no romance that lasts forever, no happiness that is not eventually ended. This is as true in life as it is in television... it's just that television tends to work in a shorter timeframe.
If she stayed with him eighty years, still, one day, the Doctor would lose Rose (or she would lose him again) and it would be forever and it would be impossible to fix. You can't fix life.
Everything ends.
That said, does that make the choice to love and to promise forever any less meaningful? Only if it does so in our world as well. Just because Rose can't stay with the Doctor forever doesn't mean that she shouldn't stay as long as she is able. Just because the Doctor knows that 'forever' can't actually mean 'forever', it doesn't render the words meaningless. Their depth of affection is such that they are willing to live as if they could have forever together, as if they could stay with each other until every sun has burned up every planet and the universe is cold and dark (even here, in forever, everything ends). Rose's choice is no less fool-hardy than anyone else's.
No love affair can last forever -- all are ended, by death or irreconcilable differences.
In the Lord of the Rings, eventually, Aragorn will die and Arwen will stand by his tomb, weeping. Yet, knowing this, she makes the choice to be with him regardless. "If I leave him now, I will regret it forever." Pain comes and love dies. That doesn't make the choice to love any less important or any less true.
Rose loves the Doctor and, loving him, chooses to be with him. She knows that he's lonely and offers her company. She listens and speaks and gives him hugs and affection and trust. Over and over, the choice is presented to her and she chooses to stay.
That choice says a lot about how she feels about him, about Rose as a person. Her choice was the Doctor, always. As they both go on, from this point, they will both remember that. And the choice to stay matters, regardless of whether or not she actually could stay.
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Date: 2006-10-24 10:39 am (UTC)