Doctor Who: The Unquiet Dead through The Doctor Dances (aka, wow, is the Doctor gone on Rose)

[butterfly]

I can really see the Doctor falling in love with Rose, this time around, all the little steps.

How perfect is it that the song being sung at the beginning of The Empty Child is "It Had to Be You"?

First off, here are the entire lyrics of the song (the part we heard is in bold):
It had to be you, it had to be you;
I wandered around and finally found the somebody who
Could make me be true, could make me be blue;
And even be glad, just to be sad, thinking of you.

Some others I've seen, might never be mean;
Might never be cross, or try to be boss,
But they wouldn't do.
For nobody else gave me the thrill - with all your faults, I love you still.
It had to be you, wonderful you;
It had to be you.

*sigh*

Isn't it perfect? That's the Doctor with Rose. He's been wandering for nine-hundred plus years and now he's finally found this person who gives him this specifically romantic feeling. She's fantastic and brave and beautiful and he's fallen in love with her.

He doesn't want to -- he tries not to care about her in Rose, but she keeps showing up. Being amusing ("are they trying to take over Britain's shops?"), making him show his own vulnerabilities ("I'm the last of the Time Lords, traveling on my own because there's no one left), making him notice someone and watch someone and care. Her wonder at his world gives him so much joy, her spirit and guts make him grin (The Unquiet Dead -- when she sets down the undertaker for kidnapping her), and he looks at her and notices that she's beautiful.

Then comes the Slitheen invasion, where the Doctor has to admit to himself just how much he cares for Rose. And it scares him, because it's introduced a hesitation for him. He can't allow Rose to change him, he decides -- he doesn't "do domestic" and instead manipulates Rose into going away with him again (with full awareness of what he's doing).

And in Dalek, we get the Dalek calling Rose the woman the Doctor loves. And the Doctor can't kill Rose twice. And he takes on Adam solely because Rose wants him there. Just one episode after doing his best not to bend, he compromises. For Rose (he really does compromise for Rose a lot).

And then we get the compare and contrast that is The Long Game and Father's Day -- a companion screws up. But what Adam does and what Rose does are so completely different that it makes so much sense that the Doctor forgives her (it probably helps that Rose doesn't try to shift the blame, but her intentions were also much better than Adam's to begin with). And the fight that the Doctor and Rose have is so powerful, because Rose is very aware that she isn't Adam. That the Doctor isn't going to dump her off home, no matter what he's saying in the middle of the fight. The Doctor is very vulnerable here, despite all his outward Time Lord power.

And then we see him being jealous of Jack in The Doctor Dances, very clearly jealous of how Rose sees Jack as a romantic possibility in a way that she isn't treating the Doctor ("Why is it always the good-looking blokes that disappear?" "I'm making an effort not to be insulted."). The Doctor is the one who opens the door for them to be 'dance partners'. Because, at this point, he's totally gone on her and while she clearly adores him, she's not treating him as a possible romantic partner. And he wants her to. He very clearly would like for her to think of him that way.

Comments

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Thank you.