Doctor Who: Blues and Reds (heros and such)

[butterfly]

I am, currently, thinking about color symbolism. sockkpuppett gave us a refresher on color meaning and reminded me of something about blue: it's associated with helplessness/ineffectuality. Blue is the color worn by people who don't get to make their own choices. Conversely, red is associated with power.

Throughout all of S1, Rose wears something red at some point in every episode. In S2, she wears blue much more frequently (and the episode where red is most dominant for her is TSP/TIP two-parter, where she really does take charge and have power). In S4, she wears a blue jacket over a red shirt. She has power, but the Doctor (noticably, not the Doctor currently wearing blue) makes the initial decision for her about going back to Pete's World (also, Jackie wears blue frequently in both DD and JE).

And the Doctor starts wearing that blue suit in S3 (it's worth noting that he traditionally pairs it with red trainers and either a red tie or shirt -- like the S4 Rose color combo). Specifically, he wears it in Smith and Jones (in the bit where he would have died without Martha, not the part where he's our Last Time Lord offering her a trip in time and space), the Daleks two-parter (which... Daleks... also, he volunteers for suicide in this one, too), the beginning of the Lazarus Experiment (which has our first major Mr. Saxon mentions), and the episode 42 (where he gets possessed by a sun and must trust Martha to save him and can't quit emotionally get there).

He wears the brown suit in The Shakespeare Code and Gridlock, which are the episodes that cement Martha's faith in him. He wears the brown in Human Nature/Family of Blood, which is the whole Lonely God thing at its most glaring in S3. He wears the brown suit in Blink when giving Sally her instructions on tape. He wears the brown in Utopia/TSotD/LotTL (he has a plan)... until the end of the episode, where he changes into blue just in time for Jack and Martha to leave him. He wears the blue at the very beginning of VotD (naturally) and that episode... doesn't go so well for him.

Martha has her awesome red jacket, which she pairs with a red/purple shirt (early on), and then with a blue shirt briefly (fun moment of compare/contrast: Martha in SotD and Rose/Ten II in JE) and then with a white shirt at the very end of LotTL, when she walks away from the TARDIS and the Doctor. Martha does not wear red as consistently in her 'hero' season as Rose does in S1, but she wears it a whole lot. Also like Rose, she doesn't wear as much red once she's left her season as primary heroine.

Donna wears a dark red shirt in PiC, but in The Fires of Pompeii, she starts out in this swirly bluish number that actually reminds me a bit of the Doctor's tie in that same episode. And when she picks up some cloth to wrap around herself, it isn't our heroine power red (of course, we may need to ask ourselves if her hair gets to count), but purple (which, as I was reminded, stands for transformation) and she ends up in purple for the rest of the episode. In Planet of the Ood, the Doctor has gone to blue (and this is an episode where he mostly just watches things happen), while Donna appears to be wearing a very dark blue. In the Sontaran Stratagem, she and the Doctor are once again both in blue, though very different shades. Both of them continue to wear blue into The Doctor's Daughter (while Jenny did live, he doesn't know about it -- as far as he knows, he was helpless to save her). We do get to see Donna in red for a brief time in The Unicorn and the Wasp, before she changes into a gold-brown number that matches the Doctor. The Doctor wears blue in SitL/FotD (where he encounters a certainty in his future that he gets to have no control over, plus, there's the handcuffing) and Donna wears a bit of purple and a bit of blue. Donna's nightclothes in her fake reality in FotD are blue. She gets to wear red when she first notices that things are odd. She was originally wearing red when she made the choice that eventually led to meeting the Doctor (though the Time Beetle gets to switch that choice). She wears purple when she finds out about the Doctor's death and runs into Rose that first time in Turn Left. She wears blue to get fired. And another fun compare and contrast. She wears purple when she goes back in time to change her choice back. And then she and the Doctor are very matchy with the beiges and browns in The Stolen Earth.

Martha wears a red shirt under her jacket in TDD, but we never get a full shot of it (compare to Rose in Doomsday).

And, at the close of Journey's End, the Doctor strips off his brown suit jacket and is dripping wet in the light of the TARDIS, very distinctively blue-toned.

Comments

[arabian.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this was planned quite to the letter, but I do wonder that there may have been some slight (if only sub-) conscious choice in the colors. I do rather think that the Blue suit made an appearance in s3 for a reason -- having to do with losing/missing Rose, but who knows if we'll ever find out. Still, it was fun reading all of the breakdowns, and I add one more relevant one: Rose wears blue in AoG/Doomsday, the episode where she tries over and over to make a choice to stay with the Doctor, but it's taken away from her (by him, by fate, etc.)

Also, off-topic, but I know you were on vacation. I wrote up the rewatch-review for "Dalek," and awesomely, the writer of the episode (Rob Shearman) dropped in and added a lot of insight into the working of the episode. And as always, I love hearing your thoughts.

[voldything.livejournal.com]

Oh, brilliant!!

[thunderemerald.livejournal.com]

This. Is. Fascinating. Now I have to rewatch everything again...

[spookysen.livejournal.com]

Dude, very cool. :D

[principia-coh.livejournal.com]

The planning scheme for which color suit David wears in any given week, from the mouth of Russell T Davies: if it's set in the future, he wears the blue suit, in the past he wears the brown suit, and in the present(ish) it can be either - but for the confrontations with the Master RTD specifically dictated that he be in the brown suit.

The "white" shirt he wears almost all the time (and it'd be all the time if Louise Page had her way) is actually light blue. The brown suit itself has blue elements to it, and when he's in the brown suit and not wearing the light blue shirt, he's almost always wearing a darker blue shirt.

I'm willing to go with the whole he-picked-blue-in-S3-because-it's-the-universal-color-of-mourning thing (as established back in Revelation of the Daleks), but I would say the rest of it is reading a bit too much into things. :)

[shield-wolf.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to go with the whole he-picked-blue-in-S3-because-it's-the-universal-color-of-mourning thing (as established back in Revelation of the Daleks)

So, that's the origin of this concept, which I thought I remembered encountering at least once somewhere and also considered a reasonable interpretation of the predominant S3 suit color at the time. Very interesting!

In addition, it sounds as though the blue (moving towards the viewer/ future) and red (moving away from the viewer/ past) of Doppler shifts -- so blatantly utilized in the opening credits sequence -- may come into play here as well, at least if one assumes that brown is a stand-in for red where the suits are concerned.

Of course, this also raises the troubling question of whether brown-suit!Ten is being shown as trapped in the past, with all the unfortunate implications for his psyche this may imply, but perhaps that's beyond the scope of this particular discussion....

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

The planning scheme for which color suit David wears in any given week, from the mouth of Russell T Davies: if it's set in the future, he wears the blue suit, in the past he wears the brown suit, and in the present(ish) it can be either - but for the confrontations with the Master RTD specifically dictated that he be in the brown suit.

Love Russell to bits and pieces, but he's... not 100% correct there. The Doctor wears blue in the Daleks two-parter, which is definitely set in the past. He wears the brown in "Gridlock", which is definitely set in the future. The whole past-future thing may have been Russell's intentions, but somebody made different choices at least a couple of times.

[principia-coh.livejournal.com]

The whole past-future thing may have been Russell's intentions, but somebody made different choices at least a couple of times.

The commentary in which he cites that decision is after Gridlock (and I think after DiM/EotD as well)... between those eps and Louise Page's apparent attempts to always put David in the brown regardless, that was the decree he made.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

That's interesting, because it seems to imply that the intentional meaning of having Ten II in blue and Ten I in brown has to do with the future versus the past (Ten II, with Rose, gets to look towards the future and something new, while Ten I gets trapped in his past life of always traveling).

[shionthekid.livejournal.com]

A very interesting explanation for apparel choices; guessing at least part of it was unconscious, but it'd be pretty cool if someone had a plan (they certainly did for Blue and Rose at the end of JE - that can't have been coincidence).

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. They definitely did the matching clothes on purpose (to which I will say again: Adorable! So very adorable!). I definitely think that the red/blue used for Rose and Martha has significance, but it may or may not have been the conscious reasoning behind why they chose those colors.

[fiery-twilight.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is incredibly fascinating! I love that there are so many interesting tidbits to discover in the world of Who. :)

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

It really is the kind of show that rewards rewatching.

[omphalos.livejournal.com]

she ends up in purple for the rest of the episode - I've wondered about this one a lot as purple was a hugely significant colour in Ancient Rome, and she was making a bit of a faux pas by wearing it, and yet no one called her on it. Assuming it was deliberate and not blatantly bad research, were they saying that Donna had the right to 'don the purple'?

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

It possibly explains (along with the psychic paper) why the family so readily accepted her and the Doctor as being authority figures!

[le-brouillard.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. What do you think will happen now that the blue suit is with Ten II? Do you think it will be brown all the way or has he got multiples?

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Well, it depends on whether or not the Doctor in the recent 'Music of the Spheres' mini-special was canonical and set post-"Journey's End". Because if he was, then either the Doctor has copies of his suits or Ten II has his own TARDIS already.

My theory is that he has multiple copies of each of the suits.

[pluckyyounggirl.livejournal.com]

I think I read somewhere that they're actually making entirely new brown suits now, because the old ones are so worn out, which will be somewhat different from the old ones. I'm not sure if they'll replace the blue ones, or the old brown ones (nooooooo!), or if they'll just be added to the rotation, though.

Speaking of red hair

[jic]

I wonder if they shifted the tone of the power color for Donna. Even though she doesn't wear much red, is there a consistent nearly-red power color for her? Maybe the gold or brown? Not because her red hair "counts" per se, but because red-heads tend to look ghastly in red, and who wants your heroine to look ghastly in her power color?