butterfly | Doctor Who: Did we need Martha?

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dw: series 3

Doctor Who: Did we need Martha?

Because Russell T Davies seemed to feel that the show needed to have a character who would fall in (unrequited) love with the Doctor, thus illustrating the difference between Rose and everyone else. Did it?

In some superficial ways, Martha is quite a lot like Rose -- pretty, clever Londoner girls, both of them. They even get some echo dialogue in the early episodes. The show puts them in comparable situations frequently. There are both parallels to draw and contrasts to mark.

Mostly, though, there's the Doctor.

I wasn't surprised about Martha's emotional arc. And, though it was heavy-handed at times ("He had to fall in love with a human... and it wasn't me."), I actually do agree with RTD that it was necessary. In order to establish someone as One Thing, you need to establish someone else as Other Thing. And, in this particular context, he wanted to make a distinction between one character and the entire history and future of characters to come.

Yes -- Martha was, in part, all about how special Rose was. Which sucks if you hate Rose. If you hate Rose Tyler, then a series of television that is basically saying, "Yeah, that blonde chick? One of a kind," is pretty much guaranteed to piss you off (and, of course, to the person desperately missing Rose, having episode after episode point out how irreplaceable she was is hardly going to help in the process of getting over her).

But... as the show makes very, very clear -- Rose isn't special in the ultimate 'best person ever' way. She's special in the 'best person for this one specific character/relationship' way. The Doctor writes out that she's 'perfect Rose' and, to him, she is. Now, was Rose actually portrayed as a 'perfect' character?

*bursts out laughing*

She could be petty and jealous. She wandered off. She had a tendency to throw herself into dangerous situations for personal reasons. She nearly destroyed the world because she couldn't listen to instructions. Rose Tyler was flawed.

In a lot of ways, Martha is a 'better' person. Higher class (which matters to some people). More education. Better at staying put and following instructions. Tends to do the right thing. Not so apt to get into trouble. Again, not a perfect person (she, too, had the flaw of 'jealousy'), but from an objective standpoint, probably a better bet to make. But, as they say, the heart has reasons that reason cannot know.

Now, Martha is not the first time that New Who made the distinction between Rose and Other Companions. In fact, every time that the Doctor took on someone else, it was made clear that the Doctor and Rose were a unit and other folk were nice but not necessary (something that Jack took much more easily than Mickey). Rose is the person who invites Adam and Jack on board and is also clearly the impetus for the Doctor inviting Sarah Jane on board.

There are two pre-S3 examples of the difference between Rose and Everyone Else. The first is in The Parting of the Ways, when the Doctor sends Rose home, keeps her out of danger, while everyone else is involved in the fighting (made very clear when he calls her over to help him with the wiring and takes her out of the 'active fighter' count). The second is in School Reunion and the conversation in the street that ends with the Doctor telling Rose that she won't be left behind and very nearly telling her that he loves her ("Imagine watching that happen to someone you-").

And SR, of course, has Sarah Jane -- who serves as our stand-in for Old School Companions. The Doctor very clearly has both admiration and affection for Sarah Jane (just as he does for Martha), but he's utterly thrown by the notion that he was her 'life' and that she couldn't move on without him (we see this echoed when Martha says that the Doctor is 'everything' to her, while she's basically a side-note to him -- a fun, smart, lovable side-note, but a side-note nonetheless). And both Sarah Jane and Martha have to choose to say good-bye to the Doctor in order to start getting over him.

Back when S3 was first airing, I pondered the notion that RTD was using Martha to 'ramp down' from the idea of the Doctor as a sexual/romantic person. Grace was the ramp up, a person that the Doctor was interested in who liked him not his life; Rose was the bridge (the apex; the climax; the transformation), someone he adored who adored both him and the life he offered; and Martha was someone who liked the life he offered, thought he was attractive, but didn't seem to know or like him very much as a person. Going right from Grace and Rose to a Doctor/companion relationship that was completely lacking in romance/sexuality would either be a bit of a harsh break or possibly lead to confusion. So, in order to make his divisions clear, RTD put in an intermediary position where the Doctor was clearly still a sexual/romantic figure ('lost prince') but had no interest in pursuing sex or romance (and I find it so fascinating that both of the 'unsuitable' choices were doctors -- it may show that the Doctor needs someone who complements him, not someone who echoes him).

RTD appears to believe that Martha was a necessary character to show the difference between Rose and the rest of the Doctor's companions. In balance, though I think her part could have been more strongly written, I agree.

ETA: In the end, I think the real problem with Martha is that they only had a six-episode story to tell with her (Smith & Jones through Gridlock and Utopia through Last of the Time Lords). She would have worked better if she hadn't stayed the whole season.

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Thanks.

And, yeah, I think that all of the traditional arguments against Doctor/Rose have been covered.

I leave you with a silly icon to alleviate the serious business around here.

Hee! Thank you for that.

I can't remember off the top of my head, sadly. But you could look it up, by googling "Doctor Who season 6B" or somesuch.

Though, amusingly enough, when I polled my journal a while back, more people picked 'Nine/Rose' than 'Ten/Rose' as a pairing that they shipped.

Ten/Rose is definitely more public right now, though.

principia_coh is, of course, more than capable of defending her own points, but I would like to point out that Martha did make the choice in The Lazarus Experiment to be 'more than a passenger' with an undetermined departure time. No, she didn't realize how much time she would lose due to unforeseeable events, but that's really the point -- she decided that she could be away from her studies for an unknown period of time. She made no reference to continuing her studies on the TARDIS (though she did, as you point out, mention that she's a student in FoB) nor did she show any interest in the medicines of the various places and times that the Doctor took her.

By your reasoning, any student on a summer break between semisters or takes a year off for traveling are screwed, right?

Actually, a portion of the first few days/weeks back into a school year does tend to be review-based, for the very reasons that

principia_coh stated. People forget things over summer break.

Thanks! I'll check that out. Jamie was totally adorable, though I admit to having a soft spot for a man in a kilt (this is part of my love for David Tennant as well).

But it's not a loss. It is knowledge at her level of training that can be easily recouped. That is how studies often work.

And why would you dismiss that her stating that she is training to be a doctor in FOB--after her arrangement in Lazurus and after she has been stuck for two months in 1918--as not valid enough evidence of her priorities verses the writers not showing her among alien medicines. That is ridiculous. Your putting weight on a non-existant element verses what is canon.

Seriously, given the immediate strife they often encountered in their adventures--and the lack of alien planets shown--when did she even have time to poke around some lab besides what she did in Lazarus.?

Hmm yeah, maybe it's partly that Ten/Rose shippers are a lot more active with fan fic and such? Perhaps because that was the last pairing we saw, and it's BP and DT that people would generally wish to see reunited when discussing the Doctor/Rose. Even with videos, it's easier to vid Ten/Rose as there's references to DT's Doctor missing Rose in season 3

Still I'd love a really active comm for Nine/Rose for OTP squeeing and such *g* I defriended

time_and_chips a while ago, and I've not found a great alternative. I'm interested in comms for discussion only to be honest, but there's so much fic being produced in DW fandom that it tends to overwhelm the comms I find

Alright, I've lost the will to wade through all the comments. But I find it incredibly interesting that the argument is essentially thus:

"I think RTD did X because he wanted Y."

"You're right, but I hate RTD and I think he's doing Doctor Who wrong and if you agree with the canon RTD has presented, you're doing Doctor Who wrong, too."

"But...say for the sake of argument, we accept the actual show as canon.."

"No, WRONG. I hate RTD."

*boggle*

Oh, and I think it was a very interesting essay and you've brought up some good points that I'll be musing on. I'm interested to see where the show is going with all of this.

I guess for me the 'holding pattern' with Rose felt natural because at that point I was comfortable with where their relationship was at. And from that point, nothing really changed until the 'storm' came around (AoG/Doomsday).

With Martha, I was very uncomfortable with where they were at when the 'holding pattern' took place, which is unsurprising because unrequited love is known to be quite awkward at times. What biffed me was that her emotional 'holding pattern' lasted throughout the entire series with few breaks in between until she finally 'gets it' in LotTL. I'd hoped for more development, but like some poster said, maybe we'll see development when she returns.

To me, DW's main underlying theme is change and this has been the most difficult one yet. They were askin' for it though when they decided to introduce romantic subtext '^^.
-Tierra

If she acts like someone actually interested in medicine on Torchwood, I would be thrilled. So far, she hasn't done much that anyone with a CPR course couldn't handle (I mean, I can diagnose a concussion and the best treatment for it and I only had high school Health). The most involved thing she's done was the 'bones of the hand' speech, which anyone with a good memory and a course in Anatomy could pull off.

I think we might have to come to a draw on this topic. The preceptions on Rose's storyarc will ultimately be opinion. I can respect that.

But I don't understand the reasoning on why you put weight on a non-existing element versus the several examples seen in the canon of the show, in particular Martha's interest/use of medicine. Martha stated from the beginning, even well into FoB, that she was pursing her studies to become a doctor. She wants to become a doctor. Period. And even if you choose not to consider her using her basic knowledge of CPR and treating a concussion, you still have her utilizing the more complex knowledge in the Lazarus Labs. It's what moved that plot forward.

But you're going to ignore all that and argue the platform that because she didn't have medical jargon shooting out of her mouth at every opportunity or wasn't performing an alien autopsy on poor Boe or whoever, that suddenly it must be the writers trying to tell you that "OMG. She has no interest in medicine!", despite the fact they continually tell and show you that she has an interest in medicine.

Once again, I was not arguing against Ten and Rose being in love. I was attempting to point out that Ten's lapses into Deep Lonely Oncoming Storm Darkness weren't new to season 3.

However, I'm not particularly fond of having words put into my mouth, or arguing with a brick wall, so I shall bow out of this discussion while I still have a measure of patience.

Have I ever said she was going to completely forget everything she's learned? No. Am I basing what I've said on a lifetime's experience of watching classmates have to relearn material after extended time away from studies either over the summer, or because of illness-related absences and stuff? Yes.

You're right that she had no idea what was going to happen when she went off with the Doctor. As in she had no idea what was going to happen. The choice is either that she made the conscious (or subconscious, take your pick) decision to ditch her studies for however long it struck her fancy to do so and try to pick back up where she left off whenever she returned, or that she didn't even contemplate the notion that there might actually be consequences to her actions.

Look, I could argue with your lot until I'm blue in the face. Clearly anyone speaking in the least bit negatively of Saint Martha is just going to get dumped on, so I don't even know why I'm bothering.

If you believe the Doctor has lost the love of his life and could never again bond with a companion and is now the loneliest angstiest emo Time Lord in the cosmos and the show will never again be as good as it was with That One Companion, why do you continue to watch it?

I've never said he isn't going to bond again with a companion, or that he's never bonded with a companion before - unless you mean the royal 'you,' in which case I'd agree that there are some people that seem to have that mindset for whatever reason.

Following a link from who_daily...

And I didn't say someone following a voluntarily publicized link in a 'newsletter' is hounding anyone. I've simply cited examples of stuff I've seen happen to other folks in their personal journals.

I don't mind debate, but debate is not taking the most extreme hyperbolization of whatever the other person's said, or deliberately taking their statements out of context, and using that as a basis to start an argument.

If you don't feel like going into the debate, you're welcome to stay in your own corner of fandom where I promise not to bother you.

And by this you're well ahead of the people I was referring to, who spend a lot of time publicly attacking people who have chosen to go into 'their own corner of fandom' to avoid having abuse heaped upon them. They complain about having to hear about Rose, but then when the people who want to talk about Rose take their ball and go elsewhere to play, they then complain because the people who want to talk about Rose did feck off, versus sticking around for the bullying.

Well, no, that's not what I'm saying, because I also said that I actively read Doctor/Romana fic and Doctor/Ace fic and Doctor/Jo fic and whatever and 90% of it isn't crap. I used to be pretty heavily involved with Lord of the Rings/Silmarillion fandom, and you had this situation where 90% of LotR fics sucked, but the Sil fics were 90% brilliant. So, obviously, most people didn't get a very good opinion of LotR writers. So that's pretty much what you see here. I'm not twisting your point, I'm making a different one.

I'm sorry, what?

Your point seems to rest on Rose being the Doctor's One and Only True Love. Certainly, there's textual evidence that both Nine and Ten love Rose. One can argue if it's romantic or not.

You can argue that Rose is Ten's True Love. (I will disagree, but that's not the point.) However, Rose is not The Doctor's True Love - not all of him. All relationships the Doctor has with humans are, by definition, transitory. How well would Rose do with One or Six? Presenting her as the epitome of all companions downgrades everything else.

Two loved Jaime. Four loved Romana and Sarah Jane. ~~Five loved Turlough~~. Seven loved Ace. Eight loved Fitz and Charley. (All of these may or may not be romantic. That's up to interpretation.)

Rose's arc is not better because it's romantic(ish) in nature. There is much more to a companion - and to life - than their romantic love. Martha's lack of romantic love from the Doctor doesn't make her any less Special than Rose.

Your point seems to rest on Rose being the Doctor's One and Only True Love. Certainly, there's textual evidence that both Nine and Ten love Rose. One can argue if it's romantic or not.

My point about what I believe to be RTD's intentions with Martha's arc?

I hate to be rude, but did you actually read my post? I'll quote from it, since you seem to have skipped everything that wasn't the title.

But... as the show makes very, very clear -- Rose isn't special in the ultimate 'best person ever' way. She's special in the 'best person for this one specific character/relationship' way.

At no time do I attempt to argue that Rose is the better person because the Doctor loves her. Mostly because I don't believe that and partly because it's irrelevant to the question at hand, which was what I believed to be RTD's intentions with Martha's arc and whether or not Martha was necessary to accomplish the goals that RTD appears to have.

All relationships the Doctor has with humans are, by definition, transitory.

All relationships that humans have with humans are, by definition, transitory. All the relationships that the Doctor had with other Time Lords were transitory (though a large part of that was because he hated his people and spent as much time away from home as possible!).

Everything ends. Mortality isn't a special trait that only humans have. The Doctor doesn't live forever -- even he will die someday. Should someone dying from cancer be barred from falling in love with a healthy person? Sometimes, something is all the more precious because it is transitory. As the Doctor said, some people live more in twenty years than others do in eighty (paraphrased).

Yeah, that about sums the whole thing up.

Oh, and I think it was a very interesting essay and you've brought up some good points that I'll be musing on. I'm interested to see where the show is going with all of this.

Thanks -- so am I.

Look, I could argue with your lot until I'm blue in the face. Clearly anyone speaking in the least bit negatively of Saint Martha is just going to get dumped on, so I don't even know why I'm bothering.

I suspect for the same reason that I bother -- for the faint, distant hope that, one day, they'll reply to the actual words that I said and not the extremist version that they're morphing it to in their heads.

Given that my entire last comment was about my personal opinion of a scene and said absolutely nothing about what I believed you thought... I'm baffled.

Given that I also agree that Ten had bouts of darkness prior to S3 and have never claimed otherwise... still baffled. But, you know, feel free to believe what you like about me.

I'm not saying that the Doctor was necessarily a father figure to Rose, but it is certainly what she was looking for when she started travelling with him. The quest for such figure is prominent throughout both series' and ends nicely with the fact that Pete actually rescues her from the void.

Well, that's a point of view. It's completely different from my point of view, but... well, there you go.

Is part of Rose's 'damage' that she lost her father at a young age? Of course. But that doesn't mean that she's looking for another. She has a desire to see and know her own father, Peter Alan Tyler, not reinvent him in someone else.

Maybe someone (not me, because it sounds kind of boring) should go through Teaspoon and see what the numbers actually are.

Because, from my experience in 30+ fandoms, not once have I ever encountered a situation where only one pairing had the majority of the crappy fic. Now, maybe DW is this bizarre fandom where none of the normal rules apply, but I suspect not. Maybe every single Romana fan is wonderfully articulate and a fantastic writer, but since I've yet to meet any character who lacks their fans who can't spell, I also doubt that (also, I've actually met Romana fans who were quite the opposite).

And, as I mentioned, from my glances at the other DW pairings that I find intriguing (Doctor/Master; Doctor/Jack; Doctor/Jack/Rose), I found the percentages to be similar.

Yeah,

time_and_chips really isn't worth the effort anymore. Sadly, I can't think of a community that's more exclusively for Nine/Rose shippers.

And why would you dismiss that her stating that she is training to be a doctor in FOB--after her arrangement in Lazurus and after she has been stuck for two months in 1918--as not valid enough evidence of her priorities verses the writers not showing her among alien medicines. That is ridiculous. Your putting weight on a non-existant element verses what is canon.

I felt like I was told who Martha was far often than I was shown it. And that's just bad storytelling.

I hate to be rude, but did you actually read my post? I'll quote from it, since you seem to have skipped everything that wasn't the title.

I read your post, and strongly disagree with it. I also read the comments from

lizbee and

parrotfish, and your responses to them. Did you happen to actually read my comment?

I disagree with your assertion that Rose is the best person for the Doctor, and that the Doctor didn't love Martha/Sarah Jane. I also disagree that Martha was only used for the unrequited love arc.

But... as the show makes very, very clear -- Rose isn't special in the ultimate 'best person ever' way. She's special in the 'best person for this one specific character/relationship' way.

As I pointed out, this is obviously not the case. You don't seem to make the distinction between the tenth Doctor and all of the Doctor. Even with Ten, we are told, rather than shown, how wonderful she is.

At no time do I attempt to argue that Rose is the better person because the Doctor loves her.

No, but you do argue that Rose is the better - and more needed - character. You imply that RTD needed Rose (requited love), but not Martha (unrequited love). Yes, the storyline about love could have been condensed to six episodes. However, how much could Rose's storyline have been condensed? Was every episode with Rose important, while not every episode with Martha was? If not, than why is love the only difference you discuss?

'Unrequited love' is hardly all Martha is (and certainly not the only way she is different than Rose). You seem to think that the "love" theme is the most important thing in the show, as it's all you discuss, while I'm quite sure there were other reasons for creating and using Martha's character. (I quote: "Yes -- Martha was, in part, all about how special Rose was.")

If it was all about unrequited love, which is the only theme you discuss in any detail, why is RTD bringing her on to Torchwood & back to Who next season? If it's not all about unrequited love, why does that make Rose special?

To also paraphrase the Doctor, his companions can spend the rest of their lives with him. He can't spend the rest of his live(s) with them. If Rose is the best person for him ever, that rather dooms the Doctor, doesn't it? Unless, of course, Rose isn't the best person for him in all possible ways, and he can love others. Love is transitory (and I am well aware that that does not just apply to the Doctor, thank you) and just because he loved Rose, it doesn't make Martha any less important.

And SR, of course, has Sarah Jane -- who serves as our stand-in for Old School Companions. The Doctor very clearly has both admiration and affection for Sarah Jane (just as he does for Martha)... the Doctor is 'everything' to her, while she's basically a side-note to him

In my comment, I discussed love for Old School companions. Admiration and affection, yes, in all cases. He loves them all.

If you're going to compare Sarah Jane and Martha, Four states in canon that Sarah Jane is his best friend. Hardly a sidenote.

You argue that Rose is important because the Doctor loves her. (No, this is not a misreading of your post. You point out that it's set up as Rose and Everyone Else, and the only differentiating factor you give is love.) This is true of all his companions. He even loves Martha, although not romantically.

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Doctor Who: Did we need Martha?

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The Holding Pattern

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Re: Also...

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