Doctor Who: Why not fall in love with everyone?

[butterfly]

In the interest of clarification, I do think that Rose was special. I think that she fulfilled something in the Doctor that no one ever had before. I think that the depth of love and need and caring that went into their relationship was unique.

This does not mean that I think that the Doctor loved Rose more than everyone else he's ever met, but I do think that he loved her in a specifically romantic way that he'd never quite allowed himself to feel before (and even with Rose, he went into it fighting the emotion).

Romance is not the most important thing in the universe. I feel odd, having to say that, because I really do feel that it's one of those clear and obvious things.

Love, in all of its complex and varied forms, might very well be that most important thing. And romance is a facet of love (not the whole of it, but a sparkling and lovely part). And I think that the Doctor loved Rose in more ways than the romantic -- she fulfilled him emotionally, delighted him with her curious nature, awed him with her strength and grace, and made him happy and joyful. None of those things are intrinsically romantic. I never found 'plus one' romantic (cute, but not romantic), I don't use the terms 'hand-porn' or 'hug-porn', and the TARDIS key is more interesting to me in Father's Day than when he gives it to her in Aliens in London.

The Doctor flirts with everything. Trees, french courtesans, girls named Lynda, Jacks who have been determined harmless, etc. The Doctor has a naturally flirtatious manner. And it isn't just Nine and Ten -- I've watched some of the older episodes and he has the same light-hearted and teasing nature in many of them. Plus, the Doctor has always been a charismatic figure, drawing people toward himself.

In that respect, his relationship with Rose was very similar to his relationship with other people -- she felt the draw of his charisma and enjoyed the bounce of his flirty nature.

The thing that makes his relationship with Rose different first occurs in their third episode. She comes out, all dressed up, and he looks at her and sees beauty. The thing that's different about the Doctor and Rose is that he actually falls in love with her, the whole shebang, very much including sexual attraction. He realizes that he thinks she's beautiful in episode 3. By episode 5, choosing the world over her feels like an impossible task. In episode 6, the Dalek calls her 'the woman he loves' and he's left mute and helpless over it. In episode 8, he so wants to make her happy that he risks destroying the world (and even when the world is in the process of being destroyed, gets himself killed trying to find a way out that doesn't involve her losing her dad again). In episodes 9-10, we see his jealousy over Captain Jack and he actually goes so far as to stake a claim on Rose via dancing at the end of the episodes. In episode 11, he watches Rose with her old boyfriend, eaten up by jealousy and fighting what he wants. In episode 12, he thinks he's lost her and completely shuts down. In episode 13, he saves Rose by sending her away and then... and then she returns and becomes more than the girl he'd fallen in love with -- Rose Tyler becomes a God. Time and space in her head and he is in awe of her.

And now he knows that Rose loves him back.

Once she's come to realize that it's still him in there, we can see that her love for him is unaffected by his change in form (it never bothered me, how quickly she adjusted once she knew it was really him -- rather, that spoke to how truly she accepted and loved him, alien as he was). And S2 is about commitment and partnership, not about longing. It's about what love can mean, even if you always lose it in the end. It's about the reality of love, not the yearning (as S1 was). It's about the Doctor looking at Rose and saying, "You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of mine with you," and then, this season, saying that living forever only means being alone.

I do long for Rose Tyler to return to the show -- the Doctor's grief is a primary part of why (though my own creeps in) -- but if she doesn't, it doesn't invalidate the Doctor's specific love for her, Rose Tyler. It doesn't mean that he shouldn't have fallen in love with her (which, again, is something that's played with over and over in S2 -- is the love worth the pain, with each character giving us a slightly different answer -- and, right now, the Doctor is far more Queen Victoria than he is Sarah Jane Smith).

Why Rose Tyler? The Doctor tells us his reasons. I mean, I could do a long list of all the reasons why, starting with analysing what 'the best' means in The Long Game, through "You never even thought about it," in The Parting of the Ways, "Rose would care," in New Earth, the whole "I believe in her" speech in The Satan Pit, and that her name still keeps him fighting, even now, but it's all there, in the canon. It's not subtext -- it's text.

Why Rose Tyler? Because she was clever, brave, and kind at the exact moment that the Doctor needed someone to be those things for him. Because he was alien and she accepted it. Because she gave him new eyes to see the universe with and someone to hold his hand -- not just to run with, not just in the middle of danger, but in the quiet and soft moments when a touch of the hands meant connection and trust. Because she never gave up and she never abandoned him (even in The Christmas Invasion, when she's terrified about him not being him anymore, she won't leave him). Because she came back for him, against all odds, held time and space in her mind and wanted to protect him from the dangers of the universe. Because they fit each other, became true partners.

Was Rose Tyler the only person that the Doctor could have fallen in love with? No. But she was the person that he did fall in love with. Nine-hundred years of phone-box travel and he finally meets someone he doesn't have to be 'the Doctor' with. He can just be himself and she can be herself, and they can just be happy together, giggles and grins and saving the universe.

And so, the answer to the question, for me, is not a list of reasons after all. "Why not fall in love with everyone?" Because he didn't. He fell in love with her. She was a kindred spirit, she was beautiful and brave, and he fell in love with her, enough to be willing to watch her grow old with him, if she wanted (and was able). Enough to want forever with her, even while he knows that the only forever he can get is the forever that will exist after she's gone.

Shakespeare's sonnet 116 is, to me, the perfect encapsulation of the Doctor and Rose, and how they loved each other.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.