Rambly Doctor Who Series 1 Thoughts
Jun. 6th, 2006 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
debetesseAs I said to P-C, "Doctor Who makes me want to write textual analysis like nothing else before ever" So I did. I started on this a couple nights ago. And then it was 3 am, and I needed to go to bed. I couldn't get the same momentum going again, and I fear that I'm redundant in a few places, and, being a year behind, I bet most of this has been said, but I needed to say it, so I did, and if you spoil me for anything in The Parting of the Ways or Series 2 before it airs, I will cut you.
That said, there are mild spoilers for The Parting of the Ways and Series 2. Very, very mild. Cast spoilers, mostly. That and the existence and basic nature of the spin-off.
The biggest difference between this Doctor Who and everything I’ve seen of the old stuff can be summed up as “In the old days, they were (apart from the Third Doctor’s UNIT days) living in The Doctor’s World, and the Companions were along for the ride. Now, we live in the Companion’s world.” (There are other differences, including, but not limited to the fact that I’m even able to talk about themes in Series 1) Before, it was the Companions who were holding onto the Doctor for security and stability, or at least a sense of them. And, while the Doctor was more attached to the Companions than he let on (Ok, so the next paragraph needs to be on why The Doctor is the Bad Boyfriend), he wouldn’t have been really Alone Out There without them (It’s entirely possible that what I’ve seen with the Third Doctor signals the beginning of a change in this, as that’s when he really split from the rest of the Time Lords). Now, on the other hand, he is/was Alone Out There. In meeting Rose (and I need to go back and watch Rose again, to see if she got the Classical “ask me three times” thing), he has found something that he needs to hold onto. Yeah, he would keep going if she died/left (he’s thought she died twice so far, I’m pretty sure), but I’m betting he would shut down/in if she left him alone. I think he’s holding onto her hand as much as she’s holding onto his. I have said from the first that this Doctor is very much like Angel (both the shows and the characters), but one of the differences is the unity of character in The Doctor’s gleefulness and his darkness. One of the other differences is that I really, truly, immediately believe in what Rose is to him. There’s some degree of having to sell me on Cordy, Wes, Doyle, Gunn, Fred, etc etc, and they don’t make him happy. They may be all that is standing between him and real darkness at times, but that’s more in their roles, the archetypes and processes they personify in his life, than in the people themselves. Rose, on the other hand, is some archetypes, but she is, in the end, herself, and the connection between them is between two individuals. And Jack (God bless Jack and the BBC for creating him), as a character, is something specific to each of them, but, more than that, the three of them create this synergy, this joy that is bigger than any of the individual connections, and they’re just so perfect it almost aches to watch, because they can’t just stay like that, and it’s not fair that they can’t, and that if we, in our lives that are 1/10 the length of the Doctor’s manage to find a moment like that, can’t hold onto it, either. And you take that synergy, and you add it to everything he lost (through whatever portion of fault was his own), and you get this person who wants nothing more than for every one of the Daleks—these creatures who have, for their entire existence, wanted nothing but for everyone to die—to die. He wants everyone to live: the smart ones who ask why it’s so hot in here, and the beautiful ones who offer him Zhaan-like sympathy on his loss and offer themselves to save everyone else, and the stupid ones who mean well and may yet learn something. And now, I’m betting the house that he’s going to sacrifice himself to save this stupid little race with all the potential in the Universe. Where was I going? Oh, yes. Living in Rose’s World. It all revolves around that: what’s the first thing they do? They go forward and back from her time, and come back, not once, but twice (and Holy Crap, is that a Companion’s family? That’s never happened before) so far, and mapping the dynamics of the TARDIS family with her other family works, and I will get to that.
But first, I promised a paragraph on how The Doctor is the Bad Boyfriend. The boyfriend who takes you away from your family and friends, so they never see you, and who you love very much, but he doesn’t let you have any life of your own, and, any time you think about it, calls you up and sells you this dream of a little out of the way world where this really cool thing is happening Right Exactly Now (which, since when does that matter if you have a TIME MACHINE?), and damned if you don’t want to be there for it, even if it means leaving your entire life behind.
So, then, mapping those family dynamics. First, we have Rose. Rose is Rose. Rose is the most active in her UK family and, really, least in her TARDIS family, but Rose is the same (more or less. She does blossom out in the wider Universe.). The Protector: In the UK, this is her mother; in the TARDIS, this is The Doctor. Rose's Mom takes a supremely passive view, while the Doctor's, while not always super-active, does have an active plan behind it. Okay, maybe not a plan, but, at least A Way. Mom’s way of protecting Rose is to ask the Doctor if she is and will be safe. She can’t even ask in person, she does it on the phone. She has nothing but words to offer her daughter for protection. The Doctor can’t be the absolute protector. He has manifestly proven that she is vulnerable in his company, but he does protect her. It’s not his first priority, but it’s up there. He does things. When he says, “I am coming to get you.” When he says, “I'm going to rescue her! I'm going to save Rose Tyler from the middle of the Dalek fleet! And then I'm going to save the Earth! And then, just to finish off, I'm going to wipe every last stinking Dalek out of the sky!!” we believe him. Because he does that. He saves the girl (and, often, the boy) more often than not. Can you imagine Jackie (I just looked up her name) saving the day? In some way other than knowing what has vinegar? The Doctor know what species they are, and how to stop them. Yeah, it takes Jackie to do it, but only because the other help is Mickey. Mickey (God help us all) and his mirror Jack. These guys who want to snog Rose. Now, granted, Jack will snog just about anyone, but they’re both definitely the junior generation, and, really, it’s likely they’re almost as attached to The Protector as Rose (c.f.—Father’s Day). And contrast Jackie thinking Mickey killed Rose with The Doctor’s attitude toward Jack. Better yet, contrast Adam. Mickey certainly doesn’t fit into the new family, and they all know it. He’s not cut out for it: he can’t keep up with Rose, and he totally doesn’t get along with The Doctor. Adam can keep up, but his heart’s all wrong. It’s not just seeing and touching history he wants. He wants mastery over it. Over everything. And that won’t work, either. Jack, well, Jack’s selfish, no doubt about it, but his heart’s better than you might think (I doubt we’ll really know until we get into Torchwood), and damn if that boy can’t keep up: not quite with the Doctor, but the American among Brits is doing a Hell of a lot better than the Brit among Americans did. Besides, it was the Doctor who asked which one of them is it that he wants to dance with?
Next question: Why does the Doctor get to be the Good Guy, while the Daleks are the Big Bad Wolf? Yeah, there’s history at work there. We know who the Daleks are, how they came to be, and what they want, but Good is as Good does, and, you know, the Dalek isn’t wrong when he tells The Doctor that he would have made a good Dalek. What’s the difference? In my book it’s that the Doctor reaches out, tries to find commonality (Bear With Me, is, IMO, the most outstanding example of this tendency), tries to connect, tries to help, until given reason not to. The Daleks fear, and seek to control or elimi—excuse me, exterminate anything Other. In fact, to be contaminated with Rose-ness, despite being given life by it, was an abomination to the Dalek. And, at that point, in that episode, The Doctor has been shutting himself off. Yes, he connects with Rose, but, really, still very much “alone in the Unverse”. And, to a large extent, driven by the emotional baggage of the Time Wars (And, as Yoda says, “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate…” And while the Doctor says that hate is all the Daleks have, we know from experience that they also have fear: they’re scared as Hell of him). At times, though, and increasingly throughout the series, he seems to genuinely feel other things: it’s not just putting on a brave front or falling into a role (which is a good bit of how I read a lot of his behavior in Rose)
Ok. I cannot come up with a next sentence for that paragraph. So, a bit of a leap, into an idea that has not been really explored in-series, but, maybe, should be. The Doctor believed himself to have committed Xenocide. And, really, I wonder how much of his treatment of the Dalek in Dalek is due to his rationalization of those actions. (And I really, really wish we knew WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED!!!11!) And I wonder if Rose’s reaction to the Dalek would have been the same if she knew more of who and what they are. Which leads to the question, should it have been? Say what you want about evaluating individuals on their own merits, had that Dalek not been contaminated with her DNA, it gave no impression of being any different from every other Dalek we’ve met. Yes, it was tortured, but that didn’t change the basic truth of what The Doctor said about it. Should the Doctor feel bad about the Xenocide? (And, what the Hell is with SciFri and Xenocide ethics lately? Actually, I feel this question is even less useful in real terms than that of the Wraith. There is no redeeming value shown in the Daleks. They are unapologetically, eagerly destructive, without exception, which is almost true of the Wraith, but not quite. But that’s an essay for another day.)
The Doctor, like Mal, has a Way. However, that Way usually involves having a plan. Even more often, it involves having a Sonic Screwdriver (Funny, Jack's Way is a deeply militaristic one, which is a model the Doctor is conversant in, even though it's not really his). He’s always looking for an opening, always considering, always finding an angle. Even in that scene in Bad Wolf—you know, the scene, he’s playing an angle on what he knows about the Daleks. He is always thinking. Now, yes, he’s supposedly smarter than any other 10 people (Time Lord and all that), but compare that to Rose’s actions in Father’s Day, or Adam’s in The Long Game, or Jack’s in Empty Child (and most of those are “good guys”), and you get a real sense of his valuing of directed, thought-out action, so no wonder he took such glee in telling Jackie to do as he says.
I imagine his feelings toward the humans in those cases must be rather like ours toward rather bright 6-year-olds who suddenly start behaving like slightly dim 3-year olds. Let me give an example (other than the one many of you know, but I’m not using). When my brother was about 6, he was out on the playground, and saw a fly. He decided to kill the fly (reasonable) by throwing a rock at it (slightly dim). He failed to notice--or, at least, think out--that the fly was on a window (slightly dim 3-year-old). And that is the story of how my brother broke a window at school. “Don’t throw rocks at windows” seems pretty basic. As does “don’t touch the baby” and “don’t get brain surgery”. And suddenly a lot of the Doctor’s attitudes make much more sense, as does his traditional relationships with his Companions, and even a lot of the dynamics with Rose and Jack (where I maintain that he does maintain a more senior position, despite their obvious affection for each other.)
So, imagine having to spend the rest of your life in a civilization of 6-year-olds. The question of what it is to be alone or not becomes an entirely other one than having to spend the rest of your life never meeting another person from your country. And this metaphor is threatening to become deeply disturbing on a number of levels, but I think it’s a reasonable interpretation of the Doctor’s attitudes at the beginning of Rose. I do think his attitudes, toward her, at least, changed, and I think that happened largely during Dalek. She became more than just a helper, someone to hang out with and take care of; he recognized her (forgive me) humanizing influence in that episode to a degree he hadn’t even in the conversation with Jackie in World War III . He needs Rose, which explains his behavior toward Adam and (especially in the beginning) Jack (Bad Boyfriend!). They threatened to divide her attention, which wasn’t really a concern he seemed to have in bringing new people aboard the TARDIS before. Now, granted, there weren’t any times I can think of that two Companions were together in the way Rose and either of them at least threatened to become (seriously. If one of the Companions fell in smit before, it either meant the smitee was going to die, or the Companion was leaving.), but that the line ran from the Doctor to Rose to Adam is interesting, and his change of heart about Jack between The Doctor Dances and Boom Town seems unexplained, beyond his largess after “everybody lives”, which only seemed to go so far as to bring him aboard and not let him dance with Rose.
When Rose saved her father, the question of whether she had just been using the Doctor became a real and important one, especially to him, and this makes a lot of sense when you think about his recent epiphanies about what she means to him. That was more than a simple “oh, so she is as dim as the rest of them.” It was a fundamental betrayal of his understanding of their relationship. I doubt “you just want me for my time machine” would have been a particularly hurtful truth applied to most of the Companions, but with Rose, it is. It’s interesting to ponder whether, had she lived, tree-girl would have ended up taking some or a lot of that role, as she was brighter than most humans (she knew exactly what holding that lever down would do), and they certainly connected. In fact, in The End of the World, Rose seems downright juvenile in comparison. It’s a reasonable AU with some significant implications to what you think would have happened.
So, what I mean by all of this is that it seems that “alone”, in this series, is a bizarre thing. The Doctor was never really on the best terms with his people, so I wonder how much of his baggage comes from the blame he places on himself, rather than the simple fact of their demise (not that one wouldn’t feel grief and isolation from the death of a family one didn’t get along with.), or from the ripples that affected the other larger races. At some point (after Dalek, but I couldn’t really pin it down beyond that), it seems like, while he is the last of the Time Lords, he doesn’t seem to think of himself as alone. And, while Rose is cutting ties in Boom Town (a passing of the baton from Mickey to Jack, and the completion of the TARDIS family? There’s an obvious parallel between Rose’s dead father and the Doctor’s dead family highlighted in Father’s Day. Did we just need to complete the parallels for her to be ready to sever those cords?), The Doctor’s are becoming firmly entrenched.
Well, this has taken me about 3 days to write, and, if I don’t post it soon, it’ll be Friday, when all sorts of shit will go down, and I’ll have to revise. So, there may be an addendum, but I wanted to get this up.
That said, there are mild spoilers for The Parting of the Ways and Series 2. Very, very mild. Cast spoilers, mostly. That and the existence and basic nature of the spin-off.
The biggest difference between this Doctor Who and everything I’ve seen of the old stuff can be summed up as “In the old days, they were (apart from the Third Doctor’s UNIT days) living in The Doctor’s World, and the Companions were along for the ride. Now, we live in the Companion’s world.” (There are other differences, including, but not limited to the fact that I’m even able to talk about themes in Series 1) Before, it was the Companions who were holding onto the Doctor for security and stability, or at least a sense of them. And, while the Doctor was more attached to the Companions than he let on (Ok, so the next paragraph needs to be on why The Doctor is the Bad Boyfriend), he wouldn’t have been really Alone Out There without them (It’s entirely possible that what I’ve seen with the Third Doctor signals the beginning of a change in this, as that’s when he really split from the rest of the Time Lords). Now, on the other hand, he is/was Alone Out There. In meeting Rose (and I need to go back and watch Rose again, to see if she got the Classical “ask me three times” thing), he has found something that he needs to hold onto. Yeah, he would keep going if she died/left (he’s thought she died twice so far, I’m pretty sure), but I’m betting he would shut down/in if she left him alone. I think he’s holding onto her hand as much as she’s holding onto his. I have said from the first that this Doctor is very much like Angel (both the shows and the characters), but one of the differences is the unity of character in The Doctor’s gleefulness and his darkness. One of the other differences is that I really, truly, immediately believe in what Rose is to him. There’s some degree of having to sell me on Cordy, Wes, Doyle, Gunn, Fred, etc etc, and they don’t make him happy. They may be all that is standing between him and real darkness at times, but that’s more in their roles, the archetypes and processes they personify in his life, than in the people themselves. Rose, on the other hand, is some archetypes, but she is, in the end, herself, and the connection between them is between two individuals. And Jack (God bless Jack and the BBC for creating him), as a character, is something specific to each of them, but, more than that, the three of them create this synergy, this joy that is bigger than any of the individual connections, and they’re just so perfect it almost aches to watch, because they can’t just stay like that, and it’s not fair that they can’t, and that if we, in our lives that are 1/10 the length of the Doctor’s manage to find a moment like that, can’t hold onto it, either. And you take that synergy, and you add it to everything he lost (through whatever portion of fault was his own), and you get this person who wants nothing more than for every one of the Daleks—these creatures who have, for their entire existence, wanted nothing but for everyone to die—to die. He wants everyone to live: the smart ones who ask why it’s so hot in here, and the beautiful ones who offer him Zhaan-like sympathy on his loss and offer themselves to save everyone else, and the stupid ones who mean well and may yet learn something. And now, I’m betting the house that he’s going to sacrifice himself to save this stupid little race with all the potential in the Universe. Where was I going? Oh, yes. Living in Rose’s World. It all revolves around that: what’s the first thing they do? They go forward and back from her time, and come back, not once, but twice (and Holy Crap, is that a Companion’s family? That’s never happened before) so far, and mapping the dynamics of the TARDIS family with her other family works, and I will get to that.
But first, I promised a paragraph on how The Doctor is the Bad Boyfriend. The boyfriend who takes you away from your family and friends, so they never see you, and who you love very much, but he doesn’t let you have any life of your own, and, any time you think about it, calls you up and sells you this dream of a little out of the way world where this really cool thing is happening Right Exactly Now (which, since when does that matter if you have a TIME MACHINE?), and damned if you don’t want to be there for it, even if it means leaving your entire life behind.
So, then, mapping those family dynamics. First, we have Rose. Rose is Rose. Rose is the most active in her UK family and, really, least in her TARDIS family, but Rose is the same (more or less. She does blossom out in the wider Universe.). The Protector: In the UK, this is her mother; in the TARDIS, this is The Doctor. Rose's Mom takes a supremely passive view, while the Doctor's, while not always super-active, does have an active plan behind it. Okay, maybe not a plan, but, at least A Way. Mom’s way of protecting Rose is to ask the Doctor if she is and will be safe. She can’t even ask in person, she does it on the phone. She has nothing but words to offer her daughter for protection. The Doctor can’t be the absolute protector. He has manifestly proven that she is vulnerable in his company, but he does protect her. It’s not his first priority, but it’s up there. He does things. When he says, “I am coming to get you.” When he says, “I'm going to rescue her! I'm going to save Rose Tyler from the middle of the Dalek fleet! And then I'm going to save the Earth! And then, just to finish off, I'm going to wipe every last stinking Dalek out of the sky!!” we believe him. Because he does that. He saves the girl (and, often, the boy) more often than not. Can you imagine Jackie (I just looked up her name) saving the day? In some way other than knowing what has vinegar? The Doctor know what species they are, and how to stop them. Yeah, it takes Jackie to do it, but only because the other help is Mickey. Mickey (God help us all) and his mirror Jack. These guys who want to snog Rose. Now, granted, Jack will snog just about anyone, but they’re both definitely the junior generation, and, really, it’s likely they’re almost as attached to The Protector as Rose (c.f.—Father’s Day). And contrast Jackie thinking Mickey killed Rose with The Doctor’s attitude toward Jack. Better yet, contrast Adam. Mickey certainly doesn’t fit into the new family, and they all know it. He’s not cut out for it: he can’t keep up with Rose, and he totally doesn’t get along with The Doctor. Adam can keep up, but his heart’s all wrong. It’s not just seeing and touching history he wants. He wants mastery over it. Over everything. And that won’t work, either. Jack, well, Jack’s selfish, no doubt about it, but his heart’s better than you might think (I doubt we’ll really know until we get into Torchwood), and damn if that boy can’t keep up: not quite with the Doctor, but the American among Brits is doing a Hell of a lot better than the Brit among Americans did. Besides, it was the Doctor who asked which one of them is it that he wants to dance with?
Next question: Why does the Doctor get to be the Good Guy, while the Daleks are the Big Bad Wolf? Yeah, there’s history at work there. We know who the Daleks are, how they came to be, and what they want, but Good is as Good does, and, you know, the Dalek isn’t wrong when he tells The Doctor that he would have made a good Dalek. What’s the difference? In my book it’s that the Doctor reaches out, tries to find commonality (Bear With Me, is, IMO, the most outstanding example of this tendency), tries to connect, tries to help, until given reason not to. The Daleks fear, and seek to control or elimi—excuse me, exterminate anything Other. In fact, to be contaminated with Rose-ness, despite being given life by it, was an abomination to the Dalek. And, at that point, in that episode, The Doctor has been shutting himself off. Yes, he connects with Rose, but, really, still very much “alone in the Unverse”. And, to a large extent, driven by the emotional baggage of the Time Wars (And, as Yoda says, “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate…” And while the Doctor says that hate is all the Daleks have, we know from experience that they also have fear: they’re scared as Hell of him). At times, though, and increasingly throughout the series, he seems to genuinely feel other things: it’s not just putting on a brave front or falling into a role (which is a good bit of how I read a lot of his behavior in Rose)
Ok. I cannot come up with a next sentence for that paragraph. So, a bit of a leap, into an idea that has not been really explored in-series, but, maybe, should be. The Doctor believed himself to have committed Xenocide. And, really, I wonder how much of his treatment of the Dalek in Dalek is due to his rationalization of those actions. (And I really, really wish we knew WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED!!!11!) And I wonder if Rose’s reaction to the Dalek would have been the same if she knew more of who and what they are. Which leads to the question, should it have been? Say what you want about evaluating individuals on their own merits, had that Dalek not been contaminated with her DNA, it gave no impression of being any different from every other Dalek we’ve met. Yes, it was tortured, but that didn’t change the basic truth of what The Doctor said about it. Should the Doctor feel bad about the Xenocide? (And, what the Hell is with SciFri and Xenocide ethics lately? Actually, I feel this question is even less useful in real terms than that of the Wraith. There is no redeeming value shown in the Daleks. They are unapologetically, eagerly destructive, without exception, which is almost true of the Wraith, but not quite. But that’s an essay for another day.)
The Doctor, like Mal, has a Way. However, that Way usually involves having a plan. Even more often, it involves having a Sonic Screwdriver (Funny, Jack's Way is a deeply militaristic one, which is a model the Doctor is conversant in, even though it's not really his). He’s always looking for an opening, always considering, always finding an angle. Even in that scene in Bad Wolf—you know, the scene, he’s playing an angle on what he knows about the Daleks. He is always thinking. Now, yes, he’s supposedly smarter than any other 10 people (Time Lord and all that), but compare that to Rose’s actions in Father’s Day, or Adam’s in The Long Game, or Jack’s in Empty Child (and most of those are “good guys”), and you get a real sense of his valuing of directed, thought-out action, so no wonder he took such glee in telling Jackie to do as he says.
I imagine his feelings toward the humans in those cases must be rather like ours toward rather bright 6-year-olds who suddenly start behaving like slightly dim 3-year olds. Let me give an example (other than the one many of you know, but I’m not using). When my brother was about 6, he was out on the playground, and saw a fly. He decided to kill the fly (reasonable) by throwing a rock at it (slightly dim). He failed to notice--or, at least, think out--that the fly was on a window (slightly dim 3-year-old). And that is the story of how my brother broke a window at school. “Don’t throw rocks at windows” seems pretty basic. As does “don’t touch the baby” and “don’t get brain surgery”. And suddenly a lot of the Doctor’s attitudes make much more sense, as does his traditional relationships with his Companions, and even a lot of the dynamics with Rose and Jack (where I maintain that he does maintain a more senior position, despite their obvious affection for each other.)
So, imagine having to spend the rest of your life in a civilization of 6-year-olds. The question of what it is to be alone or not becomes an entirely other one than having to spend the rest of your life never meeting another person from your country. And this metaphor is threatening to become deeply disturbing on a number of levels, but I think it’s a reasonable interpretation of the Doctor’s attitudes at the beginning of Rose. I do think his attitudes, toward her, at least, changed, and I think that happened largely during Dalek. She became more than just a helper, someone to hang out with and take care of; he recognized her (forgive me) humanizing influence in that episode to a degree he hadn’t even in the conversation with Jackie in World War III . He needs Rose, which explains his behavior toward Adam and (especially in the beginning) Jack (Bad Boyfriend!). They threatened to divide her attention, which wasn’t really a concern he seemed to have in bringing new people aboard the TARDIS before. Now, granted, there weren’t any times I can think of that two Companions were together in the way Rose and either of them at least threatened to become (seriously. If one of the Companions fell in smit before, it either meant the smitee was going to die, or the Companion was leaving.), but that the line ran from the Doctor to Rose to Adam is interesting, and his change of heart about Jack between The Doctor Dances and Boom Town seems unexplained, beyond his largess after “everybody lives”, which only seemed to go so far as to bring him aboard and not let him dance with Rose.
When Rose saved her father, the question of whether she had just been using the Doctor became a real and important one, especially to him, and this makes a lot of sense when you think about his recent epiphanies about what she means to him. That was more than a simple “oh, so she is as dim as the rest of them.” It was a fundamental betrayal of his understanding of their relationship. I doubt “you just want me for my time machine” would have been a particularly hurtful truth applied to most of the Companions, but with Rose, it is. It’s interesting to ponder whether, had she lived, tree-girl would have ended up taking some or a lot of that role, as she was brighter than most humans (she knew exactly what holding that lever down would do), and they certainly connected. In fact, in The End of the World, Rose seems downright juvenile in comparison. It’s a reasonable AU with some significant implications to what you think would have happened.
So, what I mean by all of this is that it seems that “alone”, in this series, is a bizarre thing. The Doctor was never really on the best terms with his people, so I wonder how much of his baggage comes from the blame he places on himself, rather than the simple fact of their demise (not that one wouldn’t feel grief and isolation from the death of a family one didn’t get along with.), or from the ripples that affected the other larger races. At some point (after Dalek, but I couldn’t really pin it down beyond that), it seems like, while he is the last of the Time Lords, he doesn’t seem to think of himself as alone. And, while Rose is cutting ties in Boom Town (a passing of the baton from Mickey to Jack, and the completion of the TARDIS family? There’s an obvious parallel between Rose’s dead father and the Doctor’s dead family highlighted in Father’s Day. Did we just need to complete the parallels for her to be ready to sever those cords?), The Doctor’s are becoming firmly entrenched.
Well, this has taken me about 3 days to write, and, if I don’t post it soon, it’ll be Friday, when all sorts of shit will go down, and I’ll have to revise. So, there may be an addendum, but I wanted to get this up.
