Donna Noble—The Most Important Woman in the Universe

**Due to recent misinterpretations of some one post from this blog, a disclaimer is now apparently necessary.  If this is your first visit to The Scratched Camera, please read the introductory post and discover, for yourself, that every typed word that follows is unabashedly my opinion and mine alone.  In said introductory post, which, shockingly, I did not simply type up for my own good health, I state that we all read events and characters with our own baggage in mind; no one observes with a perfectly clear lens—hence the name The Scratched Camera.  Therefore, it is completely your will to disagree with any material that follows, just as it is my will to agree and advocate for what is mine.**  ~End, irritating obligatory disclaimer~

Donna Noble—The Most Important Woman in the Universe

            When the Doctor first met Donna in The Runaway Bride, he was puzzled by her sudden and inexplicable materialization onto the TARDIS.  He tells her she isn’t special, isn’t connected, isn’t clever, isn’t important and, therefore, should be incapable of her sudden appearance.  The Doctor is simultaneously correct and incorrect in his assumptions.  Ten, in his depressive state at the very recent loss of Rose, is forgetting his most important rule—in 900 years, he’s never met someone insignificant.  He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s just met the most important woman in the entire universe.

            At the same time, Donna, much like Rose, is unexceptional.  She isn’t particularly smart—unlike her predecessor (or, I suppose, successor, depending on how you look at it), she has no advanced degrees or specific trainings that could be applicable in their travels across the universe.  On first appearances, the job she holds appears to be nothing out of the ordinary (Torchwood would certainly disagree) and her connections all nothing above average (Turn Left and The End of Time would revolt at the very implication).  The Doctor is, of course, incorrect on both of these declarations; he simply doesn’t know it yet.

            Much like the Doctor, as Donna crashes into the TARDIS directly after Ten leaves Rose standing on a beach for the first time, the audience has no idea how important this character will become.  Immediately, she seems very brash and brazen.  She goes beyond the point of cheeky as she angrily assumes the Tenth Doctor has some ulterior motive to ruin her wedding.  Ten, dazed and discombobulated, doesn’t quite know how to respond, except to insist he isn’t from Mars.  Her sudden appearance has forced the Doctor to be jolted from his grievances over Rose far earlier and quicker than he had anticipated. 

            In a sense, this is a marvelous thing.  There’s no need for us to speculate how his distraught mindset would’ve influenced the plot of The Runaway Bride if Donna hadn’t arrived when she had—Turn Left provides a solid answer for that very question.  Without Donna there to stop him, he would’ve not only destroyed himself, but a good chunk of the city in the process. 

            But, at the time, the audience, not to mention the Doctor, sees only a stern and tempestuous woman who seems desperate to return to her wedding.  Upon my first viewing of The Runaway Bride, I won’t deny that I was not necessarily a fan of Donna.  New Who was my first Who viewing experience—Nine and Rose were my first Doctor and Companion.  Therefore, Rose held a special place in my heart, particularly after the dynamic created between her and Ten in series two. 

            At the end of Doomsday, I had the exact same reaction as the Doctor to Donna.  I couldn’t believe we were already introducing another possible Companion; I almost felt affronted on Rose’s part. 

            However, as the events of The Runaway Bride played themselves out, I found I quite enjoyed Donna.  She had a temper, certainly, one that could possibly be reeled in, but I appreciated that Donna didn’t hold any inhibitions toward being completely and utterly herself—she held nothing back and sought to spare no feelings.  There is, of course, the start of an emotional component to Donna here as well, a side of her that won’t truly be put in focus until her return in series four.  We get a taste of her insecurities and sadness as her supposed fiancé Lance declares that he deserves a medal for putting up with her—due to her excessive rantings that apparently resembled a gossip column—always questioning whether Posh is pregnant and the like—and her apparently outrageous and immoral excitement over Pringles and diets.  What can I say?  I really hate that guy.

            I was, however, wary of Donna’s apparent desperation to take that long walk down the aisle, clearly evident as she practically begs Lance to marry her.  This desperation is something I’m firmly against all most female characters displaying, as it portrays women as only capable of wishing to trap themselves a husband without assigning the woman any further depth or ambition.  In essence, it’s a major step backward against the progress we’ve made towards equality—I call it the Bella Complex. 

            However, even with the loss of her fiancé, she recovers, saving herself from Bella-dom in the process.  Certainly she feels the sadness of the loss—it would feel falsified if she didn’t—but she isn’t laying herself down on any forest floors so despondent that her motivation to live depletes.  While this is just the tip of the Donna insecurity iceberg, it’s a start that ends the episode on a good note, allowing the audience to like Donna, despite that overly forceful temper. 

            It is these insecurities that are her saving grace.  When she returns in series four, her fury is, of course, still evident, but Russell T. Davies downplays it, making her almost passionate, as opposed to irritable.  Davies, the show-runner through series 1-4, laughed off original questions as to whether Catherine Tate would reprise her role as Donna Noble to become a future companion.  He acknowledged that her pushy temperament would grow quite irritating after a while.  Therefore, with her reintroduction to the audience one year later, he added further emotional components and insecurities. 

            Her temper is still in place, thankfully, as I wouldn’t have appreciated Davies’ ridding her character of that completely.  But the temper doesn’t come unaccompanied—we receive some further justification for it.  Noble’s mother is horrible to her—something we saw a bit of in The Runaway Bride, but which becomes a prevalent theme now that the audience witnesses Donna spending an extensive amount of time with her family.  In Partners in Crime, Donna is subjected to periodical ravings from her mother about her lack of drive to find a proper job.  The woman belittles her, scorns her.  In essence, it is made apparent to us that Mrs. Noble doesn’t truly know her daughter—she doesn’t understand, or doesn’t want to know, what Donna truly wants from life.  Her only interest is getting her daughter a permanent job.  While this is, on a surface level, not a horrible fate to push upon one’s daughter, it is clearly not what interests Donna in her heart and would, therefore, serve to only make her unhappy. 

            Donna talks, but her mother never listens.  And she isn’t the only one.  Her previous fiancé was only using her and cared very little for anything that came out of Donna’s mouth.  The various bosses we see her having all care very little for her opinions.  In fact, the only two who seem bothered to pay any attention to Donna’s thoughts are the Doctor and grandpa Wilf.  This frequent feeling of worthlessness and disregard for what Donna wants and what she says leads her to only yell louder, push harder, to demand to be heard. 

            This, in turn, leads us to the temper we’ve been privy to since her introduction.  It excuses any chaffing she may cause as she thrashes about, trying beyond all measure just to be heard, to be understood.  It also saves her from becoming a Triple F—the Fronting Feisty Female.  Where Amy Pond thrashes her temper about in a similar way to Donna Noble, she fails to have any realistic justification for it.  Everyone listens to her, adores her, hangs on her every word.  But when it comes time for her to live up to her brash declarations, she fails to do so, relying instead on the men she’s abused and ripped to shreds to save her. 

            Donna, on the other hand, does a fair bit of saving of her own in her turn as permanent companion in series four.  In Fires of Pompeii, she persuades Ten to save Twelve’s a family to resolve the fact that she can’t manage to save everyone.  Noble assists Ten again in Planet of the Ood to free the Ood from captivity, showing an immense amount of compassion towards the species, despite the fact that they are distinctly alien. 

            But it is Turn Left where we see Donna really start to shine.  The episode paints the audience a picture of what the world would look like, had Donna Noble listened to her mother’s pestering about a proper job and, as a result, failed to meet the Doctor.  We see here that she saved him from their first case together, insisting that he stop before drowning himself and the city in the process.

            Turn Left is one of my favorite episodes of the entire series for many reasons.  It finally explains why Rose has been popping in and out of the Doctor’s reality for the last year.  Rose is also, of course, back in a starring role in this episode, resulting in my two favorite Companions to date sharing screen time together.  Screen time that is decidedly put to very good use, as Rose repeatedly reassures Donna that she is important, that the Doctor thought she was so very important—important enough to invite on the greatest adventure of all time.  Yet Donna holds strong to her insecurities, refusing to believe that anyone could find her important enough to invite on something as extraordinary as Rose’s implications make it out to be. 

            Turn Left shows us the importance one person and one decision can have on the entire universe.  Had Donna listened to her mother—submitted, obeyed her mother—and docilely declared that she would take a permanent job in a field that held very little interest to her, she never would’ve had the opportunity to learn so much about herself.  The message provided by Turn Left is a clear one—an ordinary, every day person—say, one temp worker from Chiswick—can change the world, and it can be as simple as one seemingly insignificant decision. 

            Donna finds her way back to the Doctor, with two words as her message “Bad Wolf.”  These two little words result in driving the rest of the series four plot forward, allowing for the two-parter series finale The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End, in which Donna, amongst a crew of vastly more powerful and skilled companions, receives the credit for saving the day. 

            The DoctorDonna comes into existence—just as the Ood predicted—when Donna touches the hand, allowing her to share in the Doctor’s intelligence.  This intelligence equips Donna with the ability to derail Davros’s master plan with the mere pressing of a few buttons. 

            This knowledge comes at an extraordinarily high price.  Donna’s human brain simply isn’t capable of housing the Doctor’s nine centuries of information; to keep the knowledge—and, unfortunately, her memories of him—would be to sign her death certificate.

In her time with the Doctor, she has worked off a few of her insecurities—growing to see herself as having enough to say to be worthy of being heard.  In the events of Journey’s End, she saves the world, catapulting herself into the position of the most important woman in the entire universe.  Species across the galaxies sing the song of Donna Noble but, by some cruel twist of fate, the very occurrence that gave her the ability to save the world, makes it impossible to retain the knowledge that she did. 

            Ten’s loss of Donna is particularly hard because he knows the travesty she suffers from at the hands of others, particularly in the case of her mother.  Generally the people in Donna’s life seem to instinctively count her as inferior or insignificant.  For one shining moment, Donna realized just how very wrong they were, only to have it stripped away from her by force.  His very best friend in the universe will never know how priceless she was. 

            Donna Noble, the girl even the Doctor discredited as having no important connections, special abilities or jobs, gladly proves him wrong on every account.  Without Donna Noble, the Doctor would’ve died before series three even started—all because of her supposedly irrelevant job at HC Clemons.  Without Donna Noble, the world would’ve ended long before she even had the chance to save it in Journey’s End.  Without Donna Noble’s supposedly inadequate connections, Wilfred Mott wouldn’t have known to help Ten save the universe one last time in The End of Time.

            In Turn Left, Wilf tells Donna “you’re not gonna make the world any better by shouting at it.”  Donna stubbornly responds, “I can try.”  To this, I say she doesn’t try.  She succeeds. 

From Bella to Katniss:  Is Donna a good role model?  Donna is pushy—she may be insecure underneath it all, but she knows what she wants and she demands to go after it.  She’s the only person beside Jack Harkness and Wilfred Mott to search for the Doctor and actually manage to find him, a goal she achieves in far less time than Captain Jack, might I add.  She may have a violent temper, but she is unapologetically herself at every turn, never compromising her beliefs or her personality to appeal to a man—or any person, for that matter.  Even when she’s desperate for Lance to marry her, as she begs and pleads for him to just say yes, she never even considers hiding that desperation from him.  Despite the fact that I hate the desperation on display here, I have to admire that she is so open and remorseless about the whole situation.  It shows a strength that others who are equally desperate for a husband—cough, Bella, cough—fail to adhere to.  She’s interested in finding a man, but she doesn’t fall for just any one—a fact Ten and his skinny ‘Martian-ness’ can attest to.  It should be noted that Donna is also the only first New Who companion to not spend the majority of her time head-over-heels in love with the Doctor, a refreshing turn after the frustration and hostility we’ve seen at the hands of Martha towards Rose.  Donna’s not only not in love with the Doctor, she speaks out avidly against it; the very thought of it almost revolts her.

Role Model Rating:  8/10

From Lorelai to Wonder Woman:  Is Donna relatable?  Donna toes the line between seeking a husband and selectively secure as she takes her time to choose a man that actually interests her.  She not only toes the line, she does so successfully, as she goes so far as to promise the Doctor forever, despite knowing she has no interest in dating him—or maybe I should say mating.  The result is a character who is self-assured enough to know what she wants, yet insecure enough to doubt achieving an actual goal.  This middle ground is highly relatable, serving to not isolate either party—the Bellas, who wish only for marriage, or the Katniss’s, who wish only to survive the world.  But perhaps the most relatable factor of Donna’s personality is the deep-seated insecurities that fuel the fire behind her temper.  She’s been told repeatedly—by her mother, of all people—that she’s desperate for attention, yet unworthy of any.  This, of course, only spurs on a deeper insecurity and driven need for attention, resulting in an even louder yelling Donna.  But not all of the shouting Donna does is in vain.  She may shout at the world, but she does, on occasion, save it, to the point where species all across the universe know her name.  Even as she screams, “please, I don’t want to forget, please don’t make me forget,” and the Doctor tears up at the thought of losing his best friend—and worse yet, his best friend losing herself—she continues to be the most important and, more prominently, most average companion on the show to date.  Donna Noble, the woman who changed the world with one decision to turn left, gives us the hope that we can be as extraordinary too. 

Relatability Rating:  10/10

Tenth Doctor—I Didn’t Want Him to Go

**Due to recent misinterpretations of some one post from this blog, a disclaimer is now apparently necessary.  If this is your first visit to The Scratched Camera, please read the introductory post and discover, for yourself, that every typed word that follows is unabashedly my opinion and mine alone.  In said introductory post, which, shockingly, I did not simply type up for my own good health, I state that we all read events and characters with our own baggage in mind; no one observes with a perfectly clear lens—hence the name The Scratched Camera.  Therefore, it is completely your will to disagree with any material that follows, just as it is my will to agree and advocate for what is mine.**  ~End, irritating obligatory disclaimer~

Tenth Doctor—I Didn’t Want Him to Go

            In my limited New Who viewing experiences, I have noticed a trend with the regeneration of the Doctor.  Generally speaking, the new incarnation of the same man with a different face and personality will be notably the opposite of his predecessor.  In the case of Nine and Ten, one has no hair and the other has great hair is a very serious, somber man who suffers from PTSD due to his actions in the Time War; the other, while still feeling the sharp sting of his double genocide, has allowed his close companionship with Rose Tyler to lighten the burden, freeing him to become a completely different man. 

            The Tenth Doctor is animated, witty, chatty, brazen—although, the British and me, who am I kidding? would call him cheeky.  Typically, he’s relatively buoyant.  However, it should be noted, not every aspect of previous incarnations magically disappear with regeneration—Ten still holds a bit of Nine’s anger below his skin, if only tightly-lidded.  He will give anyone a chance, firmly believing that everyone is important and has the potential to pave their own path.  However, if you make the mistake of betraying him once, all his mercy is gone and he is suddenly almost as unforgiving as Nine was at his default setting.  Harriet Jones, Prime Minister can attest to this—six words was all it took Ten to destroy her political career.

            Ten has Rose Tyler to thank for his new empathetic abilities.   His new persona was born out of his love for Rose; you can see her influence all over him.  David Tennant, in an interview about The Christmas Invasion, stated that there was a line in the original script that indicated his new southern English accent was the result of an imprint from his time with Rose, and his developing affection for her. 

Nine’s accent—a distinctly thicker Northern English brogue—had been just one of several barriers that had existed between him and his companion, most of which are rectified with this new incarnation.  If we can accept that it was Davies’ intention for the Doctor’s accent to change due to Rose’s influence, we can then carry this over into other aspects of the regeneration.  Several times Mickey and Jackie make a point of commenting on Nine’s age in comparison to Rose.  This is not an irrational complaint—the age difference between Eccleston and Piper is eighteen years, placing him distinctly in a fatherly type position as opposed to the romantic vibe the characters seemed to be projecting.  Tennant and Piper, on the other hand, have eleven years between them; while this is still a decently steep age difference, Ten’s vivacious personality allows him to feel much younger than Nine. 

I find it interesting that, despite the fact that the Doctor is literally hundreds of years old, both Smith and Jackie immediately comment on the age constraint, a criticism that only becomes more frequent after they learn the truth about his age.  Truthfully, he’s several hundred years too old for her—not to mention the fact that he will never truly age or die, or so we thought at the time.  However, as soon as Tennant enters the scene, the age issue is no longer an issue at all.  I think the sudden approval of those surrounding the pair makes an interesting statement on society’s expectations for age in a relationship, not to mention society’s superficiality, as I believe the sudden wave of approval was certainly tied to the fact that David Tennant is distinctly more attractive than Eccleston, but that’s another argument for another post. 

            Nine was a project for Rose.  He was so miserable after the Time War, having developed a particular hatred for himself due to his necessary actions.  Tyler, being naturally a very compassionate individual, puts the Doctor back in touch with the race he truly cares for, reminding him of his inherent affection for humans.  By the time Nine regenerates at the close of series one, the Doctor is a bit more at peace with himself, however his sass would never quite fade, following him straight into Ten’s first big speech in The Christmas Invasion. 

            Series one and, therefore, by association, the Ninth Doctor were my first Doctor Who experiences.  I won’t deny that there were times I had to push through the somewhat lagging first series, at times forcing myself to watch.  However, I was fortunate enough to have a close friend who insisted I not only watch series one, but reassured me it would pay off in the end. 

            She had, of course, been correct.  I don’t think you can truly appreciate the complexities of Ten—particularly in terms of his relationship with Rose—without first viewing Nine’s reign on the TARDIS. 

            While I won’t deny that I teared up at Eccleston’s “you were fantastic and…you know what?  So was I,” I was beyond eager for Tennant to make his entrance.  I had been introduced to him almost eight years prior to my initial viewing of Doctor Who, when he played Barty Crouch Jr.—and, in the process, added yet another name to my rather long list of attractive villains I’m unashamedly a fan of—in Goblet of Fire.  However, I was still measurably wary; his few seconds in The Parting of the Ways—which is ironically the title of the chapter Crouch Jr. receives his Dementer’s Kiss in Goblet of Fire—wasn’t enough to give me much of an indication as to how the regeneration process could change things for his adventures with Rose. 

            I patiently sat through The Christmas Invasion, in which Tennant spends the bulk of his time in a comatose state.  Another friend, one which I got hooked on Doctor Who—because, let’s be honest, that’s just what we Doctor Who fans do—and actually very much enjoyed Nine, was gingerly (get it?) distrustful of Ten.  I assured her the Christmas special would persuade her.  I remember distinctly receiving a message from her while she viewed The Christmas Invasion for the first time, which read “how is he supposed to convince me in this episode if all he does is sleep through it?”  I responded with a simple “just you wait.”

            I was, of course, anticipating Ten’s big speech towards the end of the Christmas episode to win her over—and Tennant didn’t disappoint.  I clearly remember my own first viewing of the scene, my mouth agape and rough chuckles escaping my mouth, creating a most certainly unattractive visual.  I didn’t care in the slightest as he threw out a quote from The Lion King, much to Rose’s—not to mention my—delight. 

            A Doctor well versed in the foray of popular human culture wasn’t something I was familiar with—although I’m told Four and Five excel at it as well.  I had expected a certain level of sass—although, I won’t deny that Ten took this to new levels with a blatant charisma that Nine, as much as I have grown to like him, just wasn’t capable of.  His ability to turn one question—“Am I…ginger?”—into a conversation that was inherently flirtatious impressed me.  This was a Doctor I could see claiming as mine. 

            The questions Ten asks as he continues to delay the Sycorax are marvelous, especially to someone like me who had no background knowledge on what it meant to regenerate.  He wants to know what sort of man he is now—well, rude and not ginger, obviously.  He has the memories of all his previous selves, but he knows he isn’t the same man he was as Nine, who certainly never had the moxy to ask if he was sexy before blatantly winking at Rose. 

            Through series two, Ten and Rose grow very close, largely in part to the newly extended version of the list of their commonalities.  They grow further reliant on each other as the series progresses, eventually reaching the point where they both simply accept that Rose will be with him forever, despite Ten’s continued protestations and reminders that forever for her will not be forever for him. 

            This integration has cataclysmic consequences, all of which come raining down upon both of them at the end of series two.  Due to frequent trips in and out of a parallel universe, Rose is forced through a vortex with the rest of her family and lands in Pete’s World, where she will supposedly reside for the rest of her life. 

            The separation is strenuous on Ten’s sense of self.  While his personality will always hold a gregarious gob quality to it, he will never again be as ecstatic or optimistic about humans, or races in general, in his post-Rose reality.  He certainly never proceeds to an Eleven-like disregard for the preservation of a species, but he only becomes progressively less forgiving from this point forward. 

            Add the Doctor’s loss of the Master at the end of series three and the result is a distinct melancholy.  The Face of Boe had assured Ten he was not alone in this world—a fact which had eventually proven true, only to have his status as the last of his kind reaffirmed once again as the Master dies in his arms, refusing to regenerate. 

            Series three also carries the weight of Martha’s unrequited affections for the Doctor—feelings he can clearly see, but does not return and, therefore, decides it would be better to instead mention Rose repeatedly attempt to ignore them in the hopes that it will not become an issue.  He is, of course, incorrect, resulting in Martha’s exit at the end of the series, adding more misery to the Doctor’s growing heap. 

            If the pain caused by Rose’s expeditious exodus from the Doctor’s life was a 10/10 on his scale of emotional turmoil, the horrendous ordeal of his loss of DonnaNoble could easily ring in an eight.  While there is no romantic inclination between Donna and the Doctor, (thank god.  Martha made me beyond tired of that scheme) he does still consider her his closest friend—someone he could rely on in a world full of people with ulterior motives and hidden agendas. 

            It wasn’t just the fact that he lost Donna that plagued him.  It was the manner in which he lost her—forced to rid her of all her best memories, in which she starred as the most important woman in the whole universe—that truly bothered him.  He saw a beautifully brilliant potential in Donna that everyone else—her grandfather excluded—seemed eager to neglect, or worse yet—scorn. 

            The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End two-parter, while ravishingly riveting in terms of reunions, holds a hidden heartbreak in its depths.  Everyone gets an almost happy ending—Rose spends her life with the wrong Doctor, Donna is content but never happy as she fails to see her full potential, and the Doctor settles his companions into less than ideal arrangements—particularly from his point-of-view (that look of pain as Rose and Weird-Hand-Doctor (otherwise known as TenToo) share the kiss they never really got to experience kills me every time)—while simultaneously resolving himself to a life of reclusion once more.  As if his lack of anything remotely close to a happy ending isn’t enough, there is the turmoil he experiences on his path towards there, as he is forced to witness the soldiers he has morphed his companions into—Jack and Martha with their bombs, Rose with her gun and Donna with her Time Lord Lady brain and technological fighting power.  As Davros oh-so elatedly points out to him, he has created in them the very thing he hates most—a human with a gun and no common sense.  Although this is not strictly true, you can see the pain the revelation that anything remotely close to this has happened registers on his expression immediately. 

            After this round of losses, Ten only goes further off the deep-end.  The Doctor we are exposed to in the bulk of the specials that take place between series four and five is barely even recognizable as Ten.  By The Waters of Mars, gone are his joking comments and sarcastic attitude.  Certainly, in the start of the episode, his excessive excitement is still in place as he realizes just who he’s talking to.  But, by the end of the special, when he has decided he is above the laws of time and, therefore, has the authority to decide who should die and who should live, I ache for the Ten I fell for—the Doctor who (get it?) naively enjoyed his adventures with Rose Tyler in series two. 

            His disastrous decision-making, which leads to Adelaide Brooke’s suicide, is not excusable, however neither is it beyond understanding.  Everything and everyone he has ever cared about in his Tenth (Eleventh?  Damn War Doctor) incarnation has been taken from him.  And now, on top of all of his loss, he’s being told it is his time to regenerate. 

            In regards to his regeneration, he refuses to go down without a fight—an approach that fails to shock me, as that is generally his default procedure.  He puts off his reunion with the Ood, specifically because he knows that will be the end of this face—the face and the personality he quite prefers to the roulette that is regeneration. 

            As he continues to fight, he continues to lose.  The End of Time reintroduces both the Master and a general population of Time Lords, in the process potentially ridding the Doctor of the perpetual loneliness that has occupied him since series three; although he isn’t necessarily elated at their renewed presence.  And he’s correct to be wary; just as he and the Master begin to understand each other, they must eliminate the Time Lords who, in turn, take the Doctor’s eternal enemy with them, stripping him once again of all that could potentially hold a connection for him in the world. 

            Regardless of this final loss, he is alive and intact, if a bit injured.  For the smallest of moments, he allows himself to feel joy at the prospect that he had survived the ordeal.  The Ood were wrong, he assures himself, as he smiles that bright smile. 

            Tap, tap-tap-tap.  Wilf knocks.  All along the audience had assumed it was the Master’s drumbeat that would be Ten’s undoing, not the polite request from an elderly man for a door to be opened.  But the second the knock comes, Ten’s relief drops instantly.  Tears are back in his eyes as he turns towards Wilf’s precarious position and quickly explains the predicament, through technobabble that will undeniably bewilder Wilfred. 

            But he gets the gist—trapped and dead are now his labels.  However, Mott knows the Doctor far too well to think he will simply allow him to retain his fatal position.  We see one final display of the new Ten I’m not-so fond of, as he vindictively curses that he could’ve done more—so much more, if given the chance.  He damns Wilfred as insignificant—unimportant—when in comparison to himself, the Lord of Time. 

Had he allowed Wilf to die in his place, I strongly believe Ten wouldn’t have continued to hold the title of most popular New Who Doctor.  But, alas, finally the expletives escaping his mouth crash upon his ears.  Ten’s eyes drift to Wilfred as he reminds himself that this—a meager human being—is more important than him.  He has other lives, other chances; Wilfred Mott, grandfather and sole support system of his very best friend in the entire universe, does not.  No one, he reaffirms, is unimportant—especially not Wilfred Mott.

            Wilfred tries, of course. He pleads, begs, the Doctor to allow him to take his place—insists that he’s had his time.  No, the Doctor persists, he’s had his.  Before Mott can protest again, the Doctor gives him his final warning, enters the chamber and absorbs the radiation in the grandfather’s place. 

            His fight still isn’t concluded.  My Ten is back as he continues to evade the strong pull of regeneration, visiting each of his companions one last time—giving Donna a wedding present, saving Mickey and Martha, negotiating a date for Jack, and, finally, stopping in for one last look at the girl who worked at a shop—the girl who saved his life far more times than he can count.  He sees her, groans in pain as he asks her what year it is.  The disappointment on his face as he realizes he’s failed—he’s come too soon—breaks my heart.  She doesn’t recognize him and it devastates him.  The Doctor shakes it off, insisting on cherishing this one last reward as he gives her one last Rose-smile and tells her he feels certain she’ll have a great year.  One great year, indeed. 

From Gary King to Nicholas Angel:  Is Ten a good role model?  Ten is not perfect, as demonstrated by his destructive viewpoints towards the end of his time.  He is, however, a much better role model and example than Nine,—or Eleven, for that matter—who, upon our first introduction, seems very angry and aloof.  Ten, directly after the cooling influence of Rose, has become far more compassionate—firmly believing that all people and races are equal and important.  Preservation of people and races is, therefore, a high priority for Ten, one he never really loses sight of, even in the darker period of his later days.  This value and respect for all forms of life is an exceptional example to set, one I think more people could use an exposure to.  However, this does not mean he allows anyone and everyone to walk over him—he is no pushover and could never be described as gullible.  He has faith in all who surround him, until they betray him, at which time, that Nine deep sense of right and wrong and desire to extract punishment exposes itself once again.  This combination creates an exceptional mixture and sets an extraordinary example of how to toe a particularly pressing line successfully.  Everyone is important, but none are beyond retribution—“no second chances.  I’m that sort of a man.”  And an exceptional one at that.

Role Model Rating:  9/10

From Peter Parker to Spider-Man:  Is Ten relatable? Ten is social—always talking, always joking, always with a smile on his face, even if it’s a facade.  This automatically inclines us to like him—a fact proven as he is consistently voted the most popular Doctor, topping Four as the previous favorite.  To me, his popularity isn’t based purely on his Rose-smile and his cheeky remarks.  Above all, he suffers.  This makes him relatable—seeing a brilliant man like the Doctor suffer from hardships and loss just like we do humanizes him, despite his alien origins.  Sarah Jane counters his argument that he is the loneliest man in the universe by stating the fact that he has the biggest family in the universe.  But, at the end of the day, his family leaves; they each have a life to get back to.  Eventually, the annual family Christmas party must come to an end and we must split ways once again for another chunk of time. The case of his more permanent sense of loss isn’t beyond our reach either. We may not lose as intensely as the Doctor does, but we each have lost someone—either through death, betrayal or some other form of injustice.  Ten’s holier-than-time mentality towards his end deducts from his resonance as relatable, but it cannot steal all of his credit.  As he continues to grasp at straws to prove he can control at least one thing in his life, he discovers it is akin to grabbing at smoke—his grasps for control in a virtually uncontrollable reality is, at its very core, powerfully familiar to those stuck travelling through every day life, the slow way, sans a Police Public Call Box. 

Relatability Rating:  7/10 

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.