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

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

He wasn't happy to send her away, but he did it. And he was most absolutely unhappy -- I might even go so far as to say "angry" -- when she returned and refused to leave his side. Just for a moment, but it was tense enough that I was worried they'd end up parting on bad terms.

Well, yes, of course he was pissed off. He sent her off so that she'd be safe and she went right into the lion's mouth again. I also notice that he brought up two anti-gravity grips, so I'm sure some part of him was aware that she'd come back to him (as she did in The Parting of the Ways).

It reminds me, actually, of a quote from another show -- "She was curious. That's why Fred didn't put it into containment immediately. How things work. What makes them special. She was always searching for what other people couldn't see. She was just curious. I think I hate her a little for that."

She wanted to know more about an object and it ended up killing her and he hated that, despite adoring her with every fiber of his being.

The Doctor loves Rose's independent streak and her loyalty and love for him, but hates it when those things puts her in danger. It's nothing that I haven't seen in dozens of other love stories. It's quite common, actually.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

It's quite common, actually.

Goodness, really? You amaze me! /sarcasm.

Possibly our mutual confusion stems from the fact that you see DW as a love story and I see it as an adventure with romantic subtexts?

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Goodness, really? You amaze me! /sarcasm.

Well, it didn't seem to be a romantic convention that you were familiar with, so I was giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you just aren't a romance-genre sort of person. My mom hates genre romance (I, on the other hand, am quite likely to read it in between my non-fiction stuff, to lighten everything up a bit).

I mean, if you are familiar with that convention, then I'm not sure why you'd use his anger in that moment as an argument against D/R being a romance. It just... doesn't make much sense to me.

Possibly our mutual confusion stems from the fact that you see DW as a love story and I see it as an adventure with romantic subtexts?

It could, if I saw Doctor Who as a love story. But I agree with you -- it's primarily an adventure story, with the love story mostly existing in grace notes and undertones, with the occasional more obvious exception.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

Well, it didn't seem to be a romantic convention that you were familiar with, so I was giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you just aren't a romance-genre sort of person. My mom hates genre romance (I, on the other hand, am quite likely to read it in between my non-fiction stuff, to lighten everything up a bit).

I'm not, really, but I read a lot of the stuff in my my youth, and still love novels and series that combine romance with plot.

And I wasn't using that moment to argue against D/R, but to demonstrate that the Doctor knew that Rose had to eventually leave him.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

And I wasn't using that moment to argue against D/R, but to demonstrate that the Doctor knew that Rose had to eventually leave him.

Every relationship ends, eventually -- Rose was going to die (or, at the rate he's going, the Doctor was going to run through his last few regenerations and kick the final bucket) at some point. Living dangerous lives, it's inevitable.

But, at the point of Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, we have him asking how long she's going to stay with him and smiling when she says, "forever". Like I said, of course he wanted her stay and was pissed that she wouldn't stay that way -- he didn't want her hurt. The last time they faced the Daleks together, one of them died.

So, again, the evidence, to me, appears to weigh in favor of 'yeah, he knew he'd lose her eventually, but he wanted her with him as long as possible'. Which, again, sounds like love to me. He wants her with him, but not at the cost of her life.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

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.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

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.