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.

Comments

[katesutton.livejournal.com]

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.

YES. karenor and I were talking about it the other day and she said it very well also: she wasn't a paragon or a goddess but she was good and he loved her. Does there have to be any reason more than that? She took his hand when he didn't have anyone else and she never let go until the end. And he didn't want her to let go, either, despite the pain he knew it would bring him. They ended up completing each other beautifully, in a way I'm not sure he'll experience again.

Also...I realize new Who has opened up a whole new world in allowing the Doctor to experience romantic love. But I don't see the need or the attraction in every relationship thereafter having that potential. There are so many other things to explore. Neither do I think that admitting the Doctor does feel these emotions means that he felt them for all or even many of his previous companions. There were external reasons for not permitting romantic attachments between the Doctor and companions then, but still. They are what they are.

[tijsmans.livejournal.com]

I love how you keep coming back to the relationship between the Doctor and Rose, how you try to analyze it and explain it. And you're absolutely right if you ask me: Rose was special. Not that she was special in like, the most atypical person that ever walked the face of the earth, no, she was just ordinary like anyone of us, but for the Doctor, she was different. There was a click, a connection - there was chemistry. Both with Nine and Ten, and it was there from the very beginning, like you pointed out excellently. And I don't want to keep comparing the relationship between the Doctor and Rose with the one between him and Martha, but the way I see it, it's not the same chemistry. It's not the same sparks, it's not the same enthusiasm. Not from him, but not from her either. Though Martha clearly has feelings for him, it's not like she'd give up everything, not like Rose would've. It's not (yet?) the same devotion.

It's not like the Doctor could only have had those emotions for Rose. The fact is, that he did. He did have those emotions for her, he loved her, and it was his first. And it will take some time for him to get over them. Will he ever really fall in love again? Possibly. But not yet.

You made me miss Rose so hard.

[honorh.livejournal.com]

I'm completely with you. I think it might've been a function of how wounded he was after the Time War, too--as I put it in "Seed Pearls", he felt like perhaps he needed to fall hard for someone, just to get his hearts started again. Rose was someone he could love like that, and the closeness and intimacy of their bond was a function both of who they were and where they were in their respective lives. The love they shared made them both better.

[mrv3000.livejournal.com]

I could pretty much cut-and-paste and do a *nodnodnod* to it all. :D

But especially how they fit each other. Might be blasphemy to say, but I really don't think Rose was the best *companion* ever. There were quite a few that out-shone her in that whole "Doctor's assistant" department. And Rose did wander off a lot. ;) However, the Doctor didn't fall in love based on a checklist of being a good companion. I fully believe he's got a mental checklist for the people he *travels* with - witness the dumping off of Adam and the inferred probation period with Jack ("You'd better be.") But this thing with Rose was something beyond the normal Doctor-and-companion adventures. And there were just so many times it was pointed out that it was something beyond the norm.

[-sophieg.livejournal.com]

Every post you make about Rose and the Doctor make so much sense to me. (Which I must admit is extremely comforting, there seems to be so little love for Rose and Rose/Doctor in the fandom these days!)

The Doctor flirts with everyone and everything and he also loves people very easily but it was different with Rose, how I interpret it anyway. A person can't control who they fall for, sometimes these things just happen.

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.

Awesome stuff :-)

[threerings.livejournal.com]

Beautiful. Wonderful. Rock on.

[goldy-dollar.livejournal.com]

I think I'm a little in love with you for this post. :D

I agree. I agree SO much. The Doctor didn't fall in Rose because she was perfect, he fell in love with her because she was Rose, and he was at a time in his life where it was possible.

I'm definitely adding this to my memories. I pretty much just want to copy and paste the whole thing back to you. GREAT use of canon to prove your points. You're right; it was all in the text.

this would be why I asked ;-)

[miladyhawke.livejournal.com]

I wish I had something intelligent to say, but all I can do is whimper at how lovely and true this is. Wonderful use of canon, and as always, so beautifully put *adds to memories*

Nine-hundred years of phone-box travel and he finally meets someone he doesn't have to be 'the Doctor' with.

I keep hearing that she was in 'awe' of him, but no, this is exactly it: she fell in love with the man underneath the mantel of 'The Doctor'.

[shaela]

Sheer poetry. All of it, not just the sonnet at the end. Though I do like the sonnet, and I think it fits the Doctor and Rose. :-) (The poem I usually associate with them is a lot more depressing.)

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

YES. karenor and I were talking about it the other day and she said it very well also: she wasn't a paragon or a goddess but she was good and he loved her. Does there have to be any reason more than that?

Exactly. She was a good person -- not perfect, but good, and he fell in love with her. That's enough for me.

She took his hand when he didn't have anyone else and she never let go until the end. And he didn't want her to let go, either, despite the pain he knew it would bring him. They ended up completing each other beautifully, in a way I'm not sure he'll experience again.

I can't imagine him finding anyone like Rose again. Her acceptance and grace and kindness and bravery were only refined and purified over the time they spent together and I can't picturing him letting anyone that far into himself again.

Also...I realize new Who has opened up a whole new world in allowing the Doctor to experience romantic love. But I don't see the need or the attraction in every relationship thereafter having that potential. There are so many other things to explore. Neither do I think that admitting the Doctor does feel these emotions means that he felt them for all or even many of his previous companions. There were external reasons for not permitting romantic attachments between the Doctor and companions then, but still. They are what they are.

Indeed! It's all right for someone to have one great love, the one love that changes everything. It's okay for the Doctor to fall in love with one person, just one person, and stay faithful to her in his heart.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

I love how you keep coming back to the relationship between the Doctor and Rose, how you try to analyze it and explain it.

It's definitely the cornerstone of why I love the series. Even with Rose gone, it's the Doctor's love for her that motivates a fair bit of my love for him.

And you're absolutely right if you ask me: Rose was special. Not that she was special in like, the most atypical person that ever walked the face of the earth, no, she was just ordinary like anyone of us, but for the Doctor, she was different. There was a click, a connection - there was chemistry. Both with Nine and Ten, and it was there from the very beginning, like you pointed out excellently.

Exactly. She just fit into his life and his heart with great ease. They were a matched pair -- and the chemistry the actors shared was very impressive, too.

And I don't want to keep comparing the relationship between the Doctor and Rose with the one between him and Martha, but the way I see it, it's not the same chemistry. It's not the same sparks, it's not the same enthusiasm. Not from him, but not from her either. Though Martha clearly has feelings for him, it's not like she'd give up everything, not like Rose would've. It's not (yet?) the same devotion.

Right. They recently had that moment in 42 where we see Martha actively missing the life that she'd given up. Just while she was panicking and afraid to die, but she still missed it. Rose, while regretting the hurt that her leaving caused the people she loved, never regretted her choice. "I wouldn't have missed it for the world," she says in Dalek, when she's trapped away from the Doctor and about to die.

It's not like the Doctor could only have had those emotions for Rose. The fact is, that he did. He did have those emotions for her, he loved her, and it was his first. And it will take some time for him to get over them. Will he ever really fall in love again? Possibly. But not yet.

Exactly. It took him nine-hundred years to find her. It'll take him more than a couple of months to get over her.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. He was intensely wounded by the war. He needed someone. And he's very lucky that he found Rose, because she really was just the sort of person that he needed.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Right!

The Doctor said, "I've travelled with a lot of people, but you're setting new records for jeopardy-friendly." Rose pretty much never stayed where he put her -- she was too much like him, curious and fearless.

Martha is much better at doing what she's told than Rose ever was.

Mind you, that's probably part of why I like Rose better.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

The Doctor flirts with everyone and everything and he also loves people very easily but it was different with Rose, how I interpret it anyway. A person can't control who they fall for, sometimes these things just happen.

Right. When you find that kind of love, the kind that shifts your entire world, you don't have any sort of control over it. Rose changed the Doctor's world just as much as he changed hers. Equal power.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And that's a very cute icon.

[mrv3000.livejournal.com]

Rose pretty much never stayed where he put her -- she was too much like him, curious and fearless.

And in another moment of not completely connecting the dots - yes! So true. I mean, I've even joked quite a bit about the Doctor having the tendency to disappear/wander off in the middle of things. And also knew that Rose wandered off herself. Just never put the two together that they shared that same quality. (Yes, it's a bit like me saying "OMG, 1+1=2!" Heh.)

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

Beautiful post. And now I hope they either bring them back together, or move on from the romantic plot completely, at least for a while.

"Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust. Tonight I feel that my love for you has more density in this world than I do, myself: as though it could linger on after me and surround you, keep you, hold you.”

(From the Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger)

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

I love all the ways that she was his complete match. I love the way he looked at her, which we saw a little taste of this week with Joan -- she protests that he drew her as too beautiful and but he tells her that that is how he sees her.

Objectively, Rose isn't perfect.

To the Doctor, though, she is.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

And yeah, the love story is definitely all there in the canon. *insert squee over Human Nature* He absolutely and completely adores her.

Re: this would be why I asked ;-)

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I keep hearing that she was in 'awe' of him, but no, this is exactly it: she fell in love with the man underneath the mantel of 'The Doctor'.

Indeed. We've seen much more 'awe' from Martha than we ever saw from Rose. Rose knew the Doctor, as much as anyone could, and loved him for who he was. And he loved her back, for who she was.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Incidentally, what poem is it that you associate with them?

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

And I share your hopes.

That's a rather lovely quote -- I've never actually read that book. I don't read all that much non-fannish fiction, when I think about it. I tend more toward non-fiction. But, from that quote, TTW sounds like an interesting read.

[mrv3000.livejournal.com]

Yes! *Loved* that little bit of insight we got with Human Nature. I mean, I'd already seen it like this - that the Doctor views things *very* differently than the rest of the universe, but it's nice to get this idea shown in John Smith form as well.

[shaela]

This season? It’s a poem by Emily Dickinson:

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

Though the sixth Sonnet from the Portuguese is a close runner-up.

[coneyislandbaby]

Actually, in this universe, according to the other relationship ending we've been given, a couple of months is the standard mourning time for the love of your life and moving on. It happened with Ianto after all. It was - at best - two months between Cyberwoman and They Keep Killing Suzie. Therefore, it should only actually take a couple of months when she isn't dead.

At least I bet a lot of people think that.

I wouldn't be opposed to it, given the precedent of Ianto and Lisa though. Not sure I would buy his moving on to love, but moving on from mourning? Definitely.

[rjrog77.livejournal.com]

I agree with you; that has the Doctor summed up to a tee, a heartbreakingly appropriate poem.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

I always just took that as evidence that Ianto was as unstable and fucked up as everyone else at Torchwood. Hmm.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Oh, ED. I love her work.

That really does fit the Doctor this year, yeah.

Oh, and EBB's does fit quite well, yes.

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore -
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

[blackcat-1.livejournal.com]

Hello Butterfly! I’m blackcat from Teaspoon. I have been reading your LJ, and it’s great to see others out there with the same thoughts as me on the Doctor/Rose relationship. I posted an essay on Teaspoon a few weeks ago regarding my thoughts on the importance of Rose within the DW canon and the potential significance she could have in the future (whether BP returns, or not). Having watched Human Nature, I’m even more convinced of one of my theories (I’m pretty sure I have identified a big revelation for the series finale concerning one of the characters in Human Nature and I can’t believe no one else seems to have picked up on it on the forums…).
I’ve also read your thread on Rose and Mickey’s relationship. I love it and am in complete agreement. I covered this too in my essay, but with slightly less analysis, however, drawing the same conclusions as you. Keep up the good work!
P.S. Don’t know if I’m allowed to promote other people’s work on here, but it’s too good not to. If you haven’t read her work before, you should visit Kalleah’s LJ. She has written two amazing Doctor/Rose epics within the same continuity (The Process of Becoming) and they currently fit with the canon. Well worth a read.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Hello! It's nice to meet you.

Thanks for the recs -- I love reading new idea about the things that I love. And I shall look up your essay on Teaspoon.

[naye]

This? Is beautiful. I'm amazed by how you manage to capture the essence of their relationship. It's so simple, but so impossible at the same time - really seeing it for what it is, I mean. Just reading this makes me feel that bittersweet mix of happiness and heartbreak, at all that was between them, and all that could never be. So. Um. Just - thanks for writing this, and sharing it. I think it's something I needed to read.

[sundaydriver.livejournal.com]

Sorry for the late comment to this post. I just wanted to say that I love how you are able to pick out exactly what it was that made the Doctor and Rose so special together and why their love is still important now, even without Rose physically there.

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.

This just encapsulates why I adore Rose so much and why she was so perfect for the Doctor. They fit together in a way that is almost hard to describe, because it just was.

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 that's why my heart breaks so much for the Doctor in the third series. Because he doesn't have that person anymore who understood him so completely, who accepted him for what and who he was and didn't want to change him. Isn't that what everyone wants in life? *sniff*

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm glad that you enjoyed the read. I really, really adored their relationship and find that, as time passes, I only miss Rose more.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And don't worry about lateness -- I don't mind reading new thoughts on something that I mentioned a while back.

This just encapsulates why I adore Rose so much and why she was so perfect for the Doctor. They fit together in a way that is almost hard to describe, because it just was.

They really, really do. RTD did an amazingly tough and brave thing when he decided to bring Doctor Who back with a love story at the center of it, but he's really been pulling it off very well. Because love has something about it that can't ever be fully explained. There's always something inexplicable and almost mystic about it. The Time Lord and the Shop Girl -- it shouldn't make any sense, but it does because all that surface stuff only covered the fact that their hearts were very similar.

And that's why my heart breaks so much for the Doctor in the third series. Because he doesn't have that person anymore who understood him so completely, who accepted him for what and who he was and didn't want to change him. Isn't that what everyone wants in life?

Exactly, yes. He found his match -- he managed to find someone who was completely suited to him and to his life, someone who made him happy and gave him joy and wonder. And he lost her, after spending such a brief time with her (and even shorter a time knowing that she loved him).

[sundaydriver.livejournal.com]

It does amaze me how far RTD and the other writers and producers of Dr. Who have gone with this love story. Typically, I think science fiction tends to be seen as not a place for romance or epic loves. I believe a lot of fans would rather focus on the fights between good and evil, the futuristic toys/weapons and getting lost in another universe. I don't mind those things either, but I also believe that love and romantic relationships can be a part of the genre as well. I believe that, depending on the characters and the proper plot, you can have true love be the core of a continuing story, without taking away from the fantastical elements that so many fans appreciate. And that's what the new Dr. Who has done so well. It wouldn't make sense to me to not have the Doctor and Rose love each other and have that love be such a powerful force throughout their story. It's that love, gained through sacrifice and courage, that has defined who the Doctor is now and who he will be in the future.