Doctor Who: Did we need Martha?

[butterfly]

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.

Comments

[lcsbanana.livejournal.com]

Well, I managed to leave off studying Ancient Greek for a year and pick it right back up after a week of studying hard. You can learn a language, go years and years without speaking it, and it comes back to you within a couple weeks. Knowledge does not disappear, it goes dormant, as anyone who has ever taken a break from school would know.

(Oh noes! I left class for three months! BACK TO 101 WITH ME.)

[principia-coh.livejournal.com]

Knowledge once thoroughly absorbed is often retained. But rarely perfectly, and in the cases of a lot of activities, it takes a great deal of relearning to come back up to speed.

Case in point, a lot of time is wasted at the beginning of the year in schools here in the US having to reteach what kids have forgotten over their extended summer vacations. Which is one of the reasons there are a lot of people who advocate for year-round schooling.

If you're convinced that Martha somehow magically remembered everything she learned in school despite being away from it for so long, there's not going to be anything I can say to dissuade you. I'll be interested to see if/how they handle it in TW and DW next year.

[gene-lee.livejournal.com]

So, she would have to refresh a bit. People do this all the time. It is not the same as having to relearn everything or being painted as deliberately negligent of one's studies if they happen to be away for a couple months. This is so inconsequential. Why do you feel that any continuance of her career in TW and DW is suddenly this huge plot hurdle when people hit snags like this in real life and yet still move forward?

I seriously doubt the writers hold the same concerns as you.

[principia-coh.livejournal.com]

...or being painted as deliberately negligent of one's studies if they happen to be away for a couple of months.

First of all, that's my opinion, which I'm perfectly entitled to. And note it's not one that I solely slap on Martha - if one of my friends decided to skive off for some unspecified-yet-lengthy amount of time, I'd think they were slacking off too.

Second of all, she wasn't gone for 'a few months.' She was gone for, at an absolute minimum, a year and a half, and probably more like two years.

I seriously doubt the writers hold the same concerns as you.

They may or may not decide to make a big deal out of it. That's why I said I'd be interested to see what they do.

What I'm more hoping they'll get into is Martha's family dynamic with Leo, since everyone else has now been through this big trauma and he hasn't. Are they trying to pretend nothing's happened? Leo doesn't seem daft - one would assume he'd notice everyone's acting rather differently. And what about Annalise? Not that we're invested in her as a character, but are Clive and Francine actually going to get back together or have they just declared a truce?

I'm going to assume they won't get into any of her family stuff during her really short stint on Torchwood, but I guess we'll find out soon enough.