Finn and Jones

            Several months ago, after the third (or fourth or fifth…) re-watch of Doctor Who, I created a post on Tumblr to draw connections between the Tenth Doctor’s companion Martha Jones and the second significant other of Buffy Summers, Riley Finn.  Suddenly and acutely after that particular viewing of The Stolen Earth, I saw a deep connection between Finn and Jones that I couldn’t believe I had missed previously. 

            There are some obvious connections between the two.  They both served in a military operation and were very valued, leading to several promotions.  They both appeared as students furthering their education beyond the typical Bachelors Degree.  Both are very loyal and trustworthy to their corresponding companion, almost too much so, in fact, as if dogs following their owner, begging to be thrown a bone. 

            But once I dug past the obvious surface layer, I found several issues to compare the two on, particularly in terms of their predecessors and followers.  In terms of comparison from Angel and Rose, Riley and Martha appear to have been solely created to oppose their antecessors.   Angel was mysterious, brooding—depressed from a century’s worth of dirty deeds.  Riley was upbeat, caring, optimistic and trustworthy.  Rose was from a working class family.  She ran on instinct, on her heart and street smarts.  Martha was from a middle to upper middle class family.  She could afford to go through medical school and live on her own.  Logic and intelligence were her primary weapons; she followed her brain.  In essence, the latter of our characters appear to be a sort of antitheses to the former pair. 

            Logically, it makes sense from a writer’s perspective to go in a completely different direction when introducing one character to replace a previous.  In the case of Angel and Riley, Buffy, not to mention the audience, loved Angel so much that his lost was heartbreaking.  It left rather large shoes to fill.  Joss Whedon has even acknowledged that they knew whoever followed Angel would have a rough time of it.  The same could be said for Rose and Martha.  While the audience has had mixed thoughts on Rose since her introduction, the fact that Ten’s thoughts toward Rose were intense cannot be disputed.  He truly suffered at losing her in Doomsday, to the point where he was hesitant to even take Martha on as a full time companion for the first part of series three (“One trip, is all.  As a thank you.”). 

            This hesitation wasn’t just felt by Ten.  Buffy pulled away from Riley for the first chunk of season four.  He continued pushing and she simply kept taking steps backward.  It hadn’t been that long since Angel had left her and she wasn’t sure she was ready to get invested again so soon.  Likewise, Ten kept Martha at arms-length for the bulk of series three.  Some could say that he was ignorant of Martha’s feelings towards him.  However, I personally respect Ten far too much to give him such little credit.  He knew Martha had feelings for him, but he did his best to not acknowledge them in hopes that this would allow her to move on uninhibited.  Unfortunately, he miscalculated just how strongly Martha could cling. 

            And cling she certainly did.  Despite any manifold of mentions of Rose—either brief, blurred or blatant—evident in series three, she continued to hold out, hoping beyond hope that he would eventually open his eyes, look through his amazing hair, and see what was standing right in front of him.  Again, she isn’t alone in her suffering.  While the references to Angel in season four are far fewer in number than the allusions to Rose in series three, Riley still loses his smile every time the name comes up.  He very rarely fights back, in fact most often, he doesn’t even verbally acknowledge it.  That doesn’t stop his face from drooping each time, almost as if he’s being blamed for losing a game he was benched for. 

            Benched, they are.  Martha and Riley, quite simply, are completely themselves for their perspective appearances on Buffy and Doctor Who.  They struggle to understand how two people they haven’t even met can be so incalculably better than they are.  As a member of the audience, though, I have to admit I agree with Ten and Buffy.  For whatever reason, Riley and Martha just fall short of Angel and Rose.  Riley is, perhaps, the dullest brick filled to the brim with Iowa grown corn on the planet.  Martha, though intelligent, seems unattainable, where Rose was down-to-earth, an every day human simply getting by.  Every time we touch base with Martha, she’s doing something more epically brilliant.  Meanwhile, Rose Tyler still has clothing all over her room and looks like a cat has nestled into her hair overnight (if you’ve watched both shows as obsessively as I have over the years, you’ll find this last bit particularly ironic). 

            And then there is, of course, the issue of those who follow Riley and Martha.  I like Angel—well, at least, I like him when compared to Riley—but he can’t hold a candle to Spike in terms of intensity.  Joss Whedon has stated that he intended Riley to be the antithesis of Angel.  I disagree.  If anyone is the opposite of brooding, depressed vampire Angel, it has to be eccentric, fun-loving Spike.  Buffy may not have been Spike’s biggest fan upon his arrival, but the audience loved him from the second he compared the crucifixion to Woodstock.  By season four, this loyalty hasn’t faded in the slightest.  In the case of Donna Noble, she’s so strikingly different from both Rose and Martha that it almost takes your breath away.  Rose would tell the Doctor when he was doing something wrong; Donna would scream it at him until he listened.  Martha would sink into a deep pout as she watched John Smith fall in love with Nurse Redfern instead of her.  Queue Donna’s roll of eyes and muttered disbelief about how he’s just a piece of celery in a suit. 

            The severe contrasts of Donna and Spike wouldn’t be a factor at all, if the writers themselves hadn’t placed the idea in the mind of the audience.  Donna has an hour long special with Ten directly between his losing of Rose and his finding of Martha.  In that one hour alone she shocks me with how incredibly sassy she is that I just can’t help but love her.  But she isn’t just sassy—that’s Amy Pond’s job.  She aches, she hurts and she’s heartbroken.  She thought she had found love, only to have a Hans (Frozen, anyone?) caliber dumping delivered to her.  We discover the tip of the iceberg in terms to Donna’s severe insecurities in this episode—it humanizes her, makes her consistent chiding of the Doctor not only acceptable, but understandable. 

            In the case of Buffy and Riley, the writers really doom their relationship before they even start it.  Something Blue, perhaps one of the best episodes of television ever, has, shockingly enough, one of Willow’s spells going wonky.  In the process, Spike and Buffy end up thinking they need to be engaged.  They spend the next thirty minutes alternating between arguing, making out and making up.  Upon first watching this episode, I was deeply confused.  This shouldn’t make sense—they shouldn’t make sense.  But they did.  They had an explosive chemistry that Riley couldn’t come close to matching.  In thirty minutes, the Riley and Buffy ship sunk.  Unfortunately, it took the next year for it to truly sink (and the Doctor thought the Titanic 2.0 took forever to sink…) a process that was almost painful to watch. 

            The writers spent that year treading ground, attempting to find Riley a new niche he could thrive in.  Suddenly being the “normal” guy wasn’t enough of a trademark; he didn’t seem normal, he felt boring.  They tried to make him edgy, give him a drinking problem (and by that I mean allowing vampires to suck the life out of him.  I suppose struggling with alcohol wouldn’t have been edgy enough to suit the writers).  But, even then, it wasn’t enough.  Xander, who is notorious for hating any dude who looks twice at Buffy, didn’t even feel threatened by gentle Riley.  In the end, he couldn’t live up to the pure force that was Buffy.  In short, he couldn’t keep up with her.  Spike called that from day one of their relationship.  It just took everyone else a year to catch up to him. 

            But not Riley.  Riley knew Buffy never felt as strongly for him as he did for her.  He never doubted it; just as Martha knew her feelings were unrequited.  As such, they make the decision to leave on their own terms.  Both Riley and Martha acknowledge that their situations are just too unhealthy.  They know they have to move on—literally move on, leave the situation entirely—in order to move past it.  Choosing to do so is honestly my favorite part about both of their characters.  They go out on their own terms; they refuse to be someone’s second or third choice and, by leaving when they do, it earns them far more respect than they ever earned from their previous clinging. 

In truth, I feel sorry for these two. Perhaps they wouldn’t be so criticized if they had been placed better. If Martha hadn’t come between two of Ten’s more popular companions, would she have been better received? Or, at the very least, less ignored? If Riley hadn’t been basically chosen to receive all the dislike of the audience after Angel left, would he earn some merit on his own? I suppose we’ll never know.