PONY COUNTDOWN...2 DAYS TO GO...RTD talks Rose Tyler

[rabid1st]

It has been suggested (quite fairly, I admit) that I am getting people's hopes up when they are almost certain to be left crushed and broken by the piles of manure and bundles of socks that shall rain down on them from the sky on New Year's Day as The End of Time reaches its inevitably dark conclusion.

I will acknowledge that the odds are running at a steady 50/50 for our pony actually arriving as we hope he will. Which is why today's icon is only 1/2 of a Pony! On the one hand, we have all of the peripheral plotlines in place to pull off a pony surprise to delight and amaze. On the other hand, we have Children of Earth, Journey's End and the sad excuse of tradition for RTD to fall back on if he gives us socks.

Let's see if we can be soothed a bit by a few RTD quotes...

"As the Doctor has said himself, what's the point of seeing the whole of the cosmos and all of history if there's no one to share it with, no one to join in with the wonder and awe, no one's hand to hold when it gets terrifying? Underneath all the Doctor's wit and vigour, I think there's quite a lonely man, the last of his kind, wandering inside the only Tardis in existence. He needs companionship."

RAE pipes up to say...

But solving his dilemma of lonliness with an eye opening experience in the finale or a simple acceptance of his fate at this late date...seems a bit slap happy and hard to swallow. He should have started healing in the middle of last season, if you don't mean to give us something really, solidly DIFFERENT. Driving the Doctor to this point only to sweep it all under the carpet again...seems like a huge cop out on storytelling to me.

RTD AGAIN

"In return, the Doctor offers his companions the trip of a lifetime. He changes their lives, mostly for the better," says Davies. "We've seen Donna undergo the biggest change of all. She's discovered the compassion inside her, the intelligence, and the bravery that a Chiswick temp wouldn't normally have the chance to show. At the beginning, Donna was fantastically self-absorbed - superficial, brash, and perceiving herself only in terms of her marital status." Season four's episode, Turn Left, shows "what would have happened if the Doctor hadn't liberated her from that."

RAE...

Well...let's see! Is she liberated? She's back where she started, even planning to marry again. Only, of course, NOW she's sad and doesn't know why. She's "making due"...because she has no other choice.

RTD about Rose and the Doctor

"The Doctor and Rose just complete each other," says Davies. "She had a humdrum life, with horizons no further than the chip shop, and he showed her the universe. She'd been so fiercely loyal to her mum, Jackie, and her boyfriend, Mickey, that she'd rarely looked beyond the confines of her council estate. Life with the Doctor allowed her to unlock all the passion and adventure inside her, though my favourite thing about Rose is that she was never a saint. She always kept a fantastic, ruthless, selfish streak at heart, which helped her to survive and never give up.

"At the same time, the Doctor was damaged and scarred, after the Time War, and Rose taught him compassion again. She took the Doctor from being an introverted loner, who'd run away from any contact with her family, to the man who sat down and had Christmas dinner with Jackie and Mickey. In a way, she healed him, and made the Tenth Doctor out of the Ninth, which forged an incredible bond between them."

But is it love? "It's certainly some sort of love," replies Davies, "but sometimes I think this gets massively overstated. If you look at all the lovey-dovey dialogue between them, over two years and 27 episodes, it amounted to three slight hints and no proper kisses." Hang on, their lips locked twice! "But one was a vortex transfer," insists Davies, "and the other a body swap! Not what I'd call kisses."

RAE...agreeing...

Those weren't what I would call proper kisses either. But what is he hinting at here, by saying we have three slight hints? Certainly, people do overstate the amount of romance RTD put in the show when it comes to actual lines of dialogue...but there is no denying the undercurrent of his writing definitely leads us to the conclusion that the Doctor and Rose love one another and that love is unique in the Doctor's experience so far.

Proof that RTD is cagey...

At the end of Series Two, when the Doctor left her on Bad Wolf Bay, in a parallel universe, Rose told him that she loved him. Before he'd finished his reply, he was cut off. Will we ever find out what the Doctor was going to say? "Maybe," grins Davies, "in this year's series finale. That conversation on Bad Wolf Bay has yet to be resolved, but it's by no means forgotten."

The Doctor must have missed Rose enormously? "Just wait till you see his face, when he claps eyes on her again! She was always very special to him, but I don't think he realises how much until he learns of her return."

Rose's defining scene?

"A lot of people would choose the Bad Wolf Bay scene, but for me it's the scene in The Satan Pit where Rose thinks that the Doctor is dead, ten miles below the planet's surface, with no means of reaching him, and the whole planet is about to fall into a black hole, the murderous Ood are on the rampage…but still she won't leave. The spaceship is about to depart, but she won't abandon the Doctor. She's both selfish and selfless in the same moment. It's the most beautiful, heart-wrenching performance from Billie."

RAE adds...

You can see here and in the quotes above that RTD admires the fact that Rose never gives up on the Doctor. This scene from The Satan Pit is one of the reasons that I have gone on believing in the Pony! It is out of character for Rose to simply give up on HER Doctor. She's too stubborn for that and both selfless and selfish. She would be selfish with Ten 2...denying him the comfort some fans see her giving him...but she would be completely selfless in trying to return to the war battered and lonely Doctor that she loves. That is just who ROSE TYLER is.

BILLIE PIPER ADDS...

" Sometimes you need someone to shake you and stop you in your tracks and make you look at what's going on around you and make you want to be a better person…Rose and the Doctor teach each other. She's quite closed off from the world, but she could, potentially, be someone brilliant. He shows her how to do that. And equally, she shows him how to be sympathetic, how to have morals and show and express his emotions."

And back to RTD...

"And they love one another...absolutely, unreservedly."

AND...RAE...

So, if I have mislead you all...I am sorry. I can only say I have not mislead you on the proper end of this story. There is a way to have the Doctor always tempered by the extraordinary Donna. And to bring Ten home to the woman who completes him and who he loves unreservedly. SWITCH DOCTORS! Let the new, new, new Doctor get the rest of Ten's regenerations and go on...carrying a bit of Donna with him always...remembering that he IS the Doctor, but no longer burdened by the darkness and pain of the past.

If John Simm is The Master--then Ten 2 can be The Doctor.

PONY!

Comments

[mrs_roy.livejournal.com]

I still think Turn Left is significant, Rose spent all that time with Donna, but she didn't tell her who she was, why she was there, and the Doctor didn't once know of her presence. Like you say it is out of character. We need resolve, before whatever happens to 10 happens, we need to see him with present day Rose, she has to save him one last time.

He can go back to past Rose, but surely that would screw with the timeline some how, its a bit timey wimey, perhaps he will do this and change the timelines for the better, so that he doesn't lose Rose, and they are happy together? I don't think you are misleading anybody Rae, your theory seems to hold weight, and that's gives us hope. I have faith in David Tennant! He wont let us down.

[shaela]

Season four’s episode, Turn Left, shows ‘what would have happened if the Doctor hadn’t liberated her from that.’

This seems completely backwards to me. I thought “Turn Left” showed what would’ve happened if Donna hadn’t saved the Doctor from his own despair after he lost Rose. At the end of the episode, a version of Donna who had never met the Doctor saved the world. And she didn’t need to become the DoctorDonna to do it, either.

But what is he hinting at here, by saying we have three slight hints?

When I first heard the quote, I assumed he was talking about the three times the Doctor almost said the “l” word (“School Reunion,” “The Satan Pit,” and “Doomsday”), and that still seems like the simplest explanation. But at the time, I hoped he was trivializing the “hints” because he planned to have the Doctor say it properly. Now I wonder if was trivializing them (and all the rest of the subtext) so that we’d accept a Ten II/Rose ending. (It’s a lot easier to swallow getting socks for Christmas if you’re expecting socks. Hey, times are hard, my feet are cold, that sort of thing. But if your parents spend months hinting that they’re getting you a pony, socks almost feel like a betrayal.)

This scene from The Satan Pit is one of the reasons that I have gone on believing in the Pony!

I wish I could say the same. Unfortunately, for me, that’s the most depressing part of the entire interview. It tells me how different my Rose is from RTD’s. It’s not that I mind the scene from “The Satan Pit,” exactly. But if I had to pick Rose’s defining scene, that wouldn’t be it. It’d be the one from “The Parting of the Ways,” where she tells Jackie and Mickey that she can’t just let things happen. That or the one from “Doomsday,” where she tells the Cult of Skaro that she destroyed the Dalek Emperor. And laughs.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

That is because...I believe...your Rose Tyler is bigger than ours. You see her as going forward forever...or simply settling for what she has (not because it is right, but because her feet are cold). I think that RTD and I see her very much the same. A least, whenever he speaks of Rose he sounds like me. Though, I wouldn't call her selfish so much as...single-minded.

She seems selfless to me a lot of the time. But, while she does care very much for her mother and for Mickey...she is so focused on keeping the Doctor safe that she doesn't notice other people are worried about her (including HIM). She can be dismissive of any agenda beyond her own...and hers is often about him.

Rose keeps coming until you drug her and throw her on the ship...and even then...she kills the bad guy. And the Doctor? He rather trusts in Rose to keep coming...we see it there in The Satan Pit...if he believes in one thing, just one, he believes in her. And we see it in JE when she comes back to him and tells him she was building that dimension cannon. He's not unhappy, because THIS is his Rose.

I don't think she needs to be the Bad Wolf to save him...I think she needs to be all too human, actually. Because I don't think they need to keep traveling on and on together. Other people can travel with him...and he can marry others and he could even come to love someone else...but Rose...? Rose is the only one that can really give him that sense of normal life that is beyond just one more adventure. Rose has the remarkable ability to be both small and grand at the same time.

You could be correct about the "trivializing" to help us accept the Ten2/Rose ending as the only thing he could do...but...it isn't the only thing...and if it WAS the only thing...why would we have all of the rest of the trappings of the episode point to the Doctor doing the wrong things in JE? It makes no sense not to sell us on Ten2/Rose if that's what he wanted us to buy...he has the kiss...he could have made it clear that Rose was going to be okay...he didn't.

So...if we get no pony...we must assume that RTD simply wants us to be aware that everyone is "making due." Socks! They keep your feet warm.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

I think it must be significant as well. It dawns on me that Rose never uses one of those hopper devices in Turn Left. And also...she knows the future...she tells Donna to leave the city and that she's got a raffle ticket. She knows where the Torchwood people are...and mostly...she fades away instead of hopping away. Not to mention...all of those appearances on the televisions, calling to the Doctor.

It seems to me that Rose kept missing the Doctor...and she's in the wrong dimension...and knows it...and beyond that...she's done some seriously advanced things.

I think that he COULD go back to the Doomsday Beach without messing with his own timeline provided Rose was very careful about what she said to him...and that could explain her behavior at the end of JE...she had to convince him to switch places with Ten 2...without flat out telling him...and it is possible that she knows that HER Ten is going to age with her...so she was momentarily confused herself.

It is possible though...that Billie is coming back with her natural hair...which she had at the time she was filming EoT. She did get the hair cut in a Rose Tyler style...but she didn't dye it. So...it would be going brunette and tie in quite nicely with Claire Bloom as Rose. Though, as I've said, that could be Claire Bloom just to the Narrator's right...with her face covered...in the brief flash of uncovered face...that woman has that same swatch of white hair at the top.

Rae
only sure of one thing...the Pony is the proper ending for RTD's years.

[mrs_roy.livejournal.com]

Whats the guarantee though that 10.2/Rose will be happy? We know 10/Rose will be happy, we know they love each other. If that was the case, why have Billie come back, their story would be over and done with.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

Yes!

However, if I was being particularly cynical...I might say that RTD brings Billie back just to say goodbye. And that he will use the woman in white to show us that Rose and Ten 2 had a long and happy life together...except she needed to come and set things right somehow...

But the writer in me wants to know why we would bother creating a woman in white to suggest that the Doctor's life could be saved...if nothing much was going to happen but a garden variety regeneration. The kids have seen this happen twice over...they won't find the idea of teasing us to no point anymore entertaining than we adults would find it.

To then suggest that Ten2/Rose have lived a happy life with the same woman as a device...would be stupid. But...it could be that I have it all wrong and it is possible that what the Master did, making all humans HIM...could be done in reverse...making all Time Lords human or something...still themselves...but human. Then the Master and Ten could age and die normally...but Ten 2...could join with Donna's energy and go on as the Doctor.

Less about choice in that case...and more coincidental.

It is useless for me to theorize HOW at this point...because RTD is just going to go with some cracktastic plot I would never consider. To me, the important thing here is that he and I have the same general attitude about what Doctor Who means...who the Time Lords were...who the Master is...and about Rose Tyler and her Doctor being better together than they are when apart.

Rae

[mrs_roy.livejournal.com]

It just seems crazy to have him go back to the Powell Estates to say Goodbye, unless he was there for some other reason. If he knew the walls to the other universe were open, why not go right to her.

I just want them happy .. nothing more ..

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

My own theory about the Powell Estate scene is that either he or 10.5 return, after a gap of some years and just before a regeneration, to warn Rose somehow not to despair when they part in "Doomsday".

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

So...if we get no pony...we must assume that RTD simply wants us to be aware that everyone is "making due." Socks! They keep your feet warm.

And that's a very downbeat conclusion, isn't it, to such a crazy roller-coaster ride through the impossible? If that's his philosophy, we could watch "East Enders." It's a weird statement from someone who, according to Julie Gardner, hasn't a cynical bone in his body.

RTD must know that whatever else he does in his career, this is probably his chance of a lifetime to make a defining statement (and don't tell me he isn't arrogant enough to do that!)

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to figure out for a while why the "socks" ending would leave me feeling so angry and betrayed. I think it boils down to narrative - it needs to follow certain rules. I don't have problems with tragic endings, per se, and I don't think genre has to be a straightjacket. There's room for a lot of experimentation. But ultimately there has to be coherence and a sense of a journey being completed.

To take a familiar example, consider the last act of Othello. What could be more tragic than that? But imagine a production where Desdemona came back to life after Othello had been made fully aware of Iago's plot and his own mistakes. And then imagine Desdemona forgiving him and offering him a second chance, but instead he says, "No second chances, I'm that kind of man - you may have been chaste so far but Iago showed me that you're from Venice, the city of whores, so you have to die right now because I couldn't bear to live with the fear that you might betray me." And he stabs her, and then emotes about it.

In my book, that is the kind of trick RTD will be pulling if we don't get a proper resolution to this. God damn it, you, you don't write great drama about people making do! How many of Shakespeare's plays would people care about now if he'd done that? Characters have to learn and grow - and every one of Shakespeare's tragic protaganists dies with the awareness of having learned something. And once you've closed the book, you've closed the book. You don't keep saying, ah yes, but...

[mrs_roy.livejournal.com]

one assumes that both he and David want to go out on a positive note, not the same old, I love her, but she's better off without me ..

[keswindhover.livejournal.com]

Perhaps your icon should be be of the back end of a pony. Or are you saving that one for New Year's Day?

[wickedgillie.livejournal.com]

Interjecting briefly to suggest that maybe the reason The Satan Pit is the defining Rose moment for RTD is that it was the last episode Billie filmed as a regular?

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

Okay, I was going to quote something from this...but the whole thing is too brilliant.

That's the writer in you, Cat! Like it is the writer in me that rejected JE from the second it happened.

You don't write drama about people making do (is it do...? I suppose it is). You don't just have your hero give up on life. Yes, he can be defeated by his own arrogance or his mistakes as RTD is suggesting Ten has done by delaying in facing his death. But, really, Ten isn't consumed by arrogance. Arrogance is a flaw in his character, true. But he's a hero and we all know it. To so obviously deny him happiness and then take his life...? That's just really bad writing.

As you say...once you've closed the book, you've closed the book.

When I try to explain to a non-writer...or even a writer that doesn't understand the innerworkings of storytelling...they just think I'm a person who likes happy endings. Your choice of Othello is a great one here. I love Othello and it isn't happy at all. I love Gone With The Wind as it stands...with no happy ending tacked on...because Scarlett is a tragic heroine, consumed by her fatal flaws. I don't mind the Omega Man dying.

But the Doctor? No...if you say that he has never had a life...and you say that he can't let go of one person who he loves so much...and if you have her return to him twice over against impossible odds...then...he doesn't just walk away from her. He especially doesn't do that so he can go on suffering and living a travesty of a life until he dies his oh, so predictable death. That's not actually drama at all...that's just standing writing to keep yourself busy. We've all seen fic like that...it rambles around and goes nowhere.

Maybe it isn't the writer is the both of us that is so outraged by a story gone wrong from a place of infinite promise...maybe it's the librarian. Because I would like to have Doctor Who be a series I can point to and say, "Now, that is a great story...from beginning to end."

Book Two...is going to be written by another guy, and we will see how it goes. But Book One...from RTD...could be a masterpiece. It would be such a shame to have it marred by a trite and uninspired ending.

Rae

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

That could be. But that set of stories...perhaps because they were filmed last...contain some of the real clues about what RTD is saying about the Doctor and Rose.

Rose is willing to leave home and be "stuck with him." The Doctor when he hears Rose suggest that they will "find a planet, get a job, live a life" doesn't protest that and say HE wants to keep traveling...but instead says, "I'd have to buy a house, a proper house with doors and carpets." Ten comes very close to saying "Tell Rose I love her" and Rose is certainly willing to die...simply so that her beloved will not be alone.

This last bit is what RTD is talking about and what I cling to when people tell me Rose will simply fall in love with Ten 2. She's too selfish for that. <<--to use RTD's word for it. She wouldn't see that Ten 2 is lonely, too, and might need her. She would think only of Ten...and her need to be there for him. She doesn't ever listen to HIM about HIS need to keep her safe. That's the stubborn selfishness that RTD means. Rose never considers that other people might love her...and want her to have a happy, safe life...she just keeps selflessly going after what she knows is right.

She was going to die in that scene in The Satan Pit...there were crazed Ood closing in and the whole planet was going to fall into a black hole and there was no way that the Doctor would escape...but...she believed in him...as he believed in her...and she was willing to die, just so that he wouldn't be down there in the cold, all alone.

No...a woman who loves like that...doesn't let the man she loves suffer the way that Ten is suffering now. She keeps watching him. She keeps trying to help. She stands by him even when HE wants her to go and have a happy life.

Rae

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

Or worse...I loved her...but now I'm a new man and I don't. Which is, I believe, why the Ten2/Rose people are saying, "This is the best we can ever have." And, well, if it was ever presented as an answer...I might have accepted it...but now...at this stage...it would only be the ending because RTD wrote it that way...it would have nothing to do with a proper ending. Because THAT is not a proper ending...it is a tacked on mistake that RTD didn't bother correcting.

[wickedgillie.livejournal.com]

I don't just believe in Ponies. I also believe in narrative economy. You don't show a gun in the first scene and not use it in some way before the last. Why keep bringing up Rose Tyler again and again if that story is already over? And I don't just mean in the actual text but in all of the meta from RTD and David, the BBC proper. Rose is significant in ways that no other companion has been or likely ever will be again. I have have have to believe that RTD is going to give us a proper ending to HIS story, and that is resolving/requiting the love of Ten/Rose and Ten's desires to know a normal life, just for once, and to learn that he can live a lifetime with someone without abandoning them out of his own selfish fears, and that yes, they will die, and it will hurt like a mofo, but he will be richer for having kept the faith. THIS is what is going to heal Ten so he can properly be Eleven.

[wickedgillie.livejournal.com]

And you've summed up why The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit are easily two of my favourite episodes of Who ever.

[shaela]

Hm. I think this particular disagreement has more to do with the way we see the scene in question than it does with the way we see Rose.

Because I couldn’t agree more with what you’re saying about Rose. She’s stubborn. She’s single-minded. She “keeps coming until you drug her and throw her on the ship… and even then… she kills the bad guy.” And if that’s what I’d seen in that scene, it would be one of my favorite ones in the series.

Unfortunately, what I saw was Rose saying, “I’m gonna wait for the Doctor.” That seemed… out of character, to me. If Rose was the type to wait for the Doctor, they would never have survived “Rose,” much less all the episodes that came after it. I think the only way I’d be okay with it is if RTD was foreshadowing that the Doctor would ultimately find a way back to Rose. (And I don’t mean in “The Satan Pit.”)

And I didn’t mean to say that I thought Rose would settle for what she has, post-“Journey’s End.” When I said, “My feet are cold,” that’s what I meant—me, not Rose. And even for me, settling for socks doesn’t equal shipping Ten II/Rose. (There’s a difference between a pair of warm, fluffy socks and a slap in the face.) It just means accepting that my show ended with “The Parting of the Ways” (or maybe “The Christmas Invasion”), and that if I want any more, I’ll have to write it myself.

I’m not sure what you mean when you say that I see Rose as “going forward forever.” Could you clarify?

But if what you mean is that I think Rose will keep travelling and having adventures, you’re right. And that is one of the differences between your Rose and mine. I think Rose fell in love with the adventure long before she fell in love with the Doctor.

In fact, I think the disagreement might go deeper than that. It sounds like you see Rose primarily in terms of her relationship with the Doctor. And I’m exactly the opposite—I see the Doctor primarily in terms of his relationship with Rose.

I really was watching The Adventures of Rose Tyler (and Her Companion, the Doctor).

But it sounds like we’re still on the same page when it comes to “Journey’s End.”

P.S. I think you mean “making do.”

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

Yes, the difference could be as simple as this...

In fact, I think the disagreement might go deeper than that. It sounds like you see Rose primarily in terms of her relationship with the Doctor. And I’m exactly the opposite—I see the Doctor primarily in terms of his relationship with Rose.

I really was watching The Adventures of Rose Tyler (and Her Companion, the Doctor).

As you have said, you are not Old School and both RTD and I are. So we see Rose in light of how she influences the Doctor. In that scene of her "waiting around" in the Satan Pit...what I see is a person who loves the Doctor so much that even if he is dead...she can't give up on him...she can't leave him. To me, that is what defines Rose and it would be the exact reason why she wouldn't simply go on with her own adventure with Ten 2.

And, yes, Cat just recently convinced me that I do mean, "making do"...I hadn't given much thought to what I mean...and it makes little grammatical sense to me this way. But, I am willing to bow to the more grammatically minded on this one...since DUE doesn't makes much sense at all.

Rae
who obviously doesn't make do very often.

[shaela]

I know. I almost wish that RTD had written the first season differently. If the series is about the Doctor, season one is almost a bait and switch. I’ll quote what I said about “Rose” in my first journal entry about Doctor Who:

It’s the first episode of the series, and she’s the first character that we meet. First episodes are important — they lay the foundation for the series. And that episode is completely focused on her.

We meet the Doctor when she does. In fact, we only see him when he’s with her. She’s the one who identifies the transmitter. She’s the one who destroys the Nestene Consciousness. At the end of the episode, she tells him, “You’d be dead if it wasn’t for me,” and she’s right.

The truth is, if I’d started with “New Earth,” I don’t think I would’ve made it to “Tooth and Claw,” much less “Journey’s End.” (It’s hard to overstate how much I hated “New Earth.”)

But I loved season one so much that I can’t really regret it.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

But, paradoxically, I am on the same page as you about that opening. I think that while I believe the story is about the Doctor...Rose is too important to it to be dismissed or fobbed off on a surrogate.

Rose is the reason the show succeeded. She is our entry point, as you note. But, also, she is the entry to Ten as the Doctor as well. If Billie had gone with Chris, I do not believe anyone would have stayed around to learn about Ten. Ten works because of that thematic line of love that Rose carries along to him.

And RTD never cuts the cord on that love. He had every opportunity to do so in S4...but he decided to remain true to his original pairing of Rose/Doctor. We, also, know that RTD came up with this story at the end of S3. So...he brings up Rose and Jack there in Utopia...and then launches into the final push toward some end. This end coming. And he has made it very clear that we are still in Season 4 as far as he is concerned. So...when he says that we will learn about the Doctor's feelings for Rose at the end of Series 4...he doesn't mean at JE...because that is NOT the end.

Rae
who also loved S1...and Rose...but only as a part of the Doctor's continuing story...which is one reason why his going to her until she dies...is rather important to me...even if he comes back afterward. That would be ideal...switching Doctors is the next best thing. But I've always been prepared to go on in some from without Rose...eventually. Just not like JE...that won't do.

[catsfiction.livejournal.com]

I think what confuses people about Rose and makes them accuse her of selfishness is that she is a person of faith. Atheism is not lack of faith. It can be a shining faith in humanity. Read Richard Dawkins and Philip Pullman and their expression of the sheer beauty of the universe can take your breath away.

TIP is the story of two people's complete, defining love for one another as the bedrock of their existence. They don't simply complete one another, they give each other meaning. Rose's refusal to leave Sanctuary Base (and have you ever stopped to think about the significance of that name?) is paralleled by the Doctor saying, "I believe in her!"

It's interesting to contrast the icon I used before of Ten alone and suffering inside his space helmet, filled with the dying cries of humans, with Ten in the pit of darkness, helmet off, eyes bright with hope and faith in TSP. "Even though I go through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil because thou art with me." In fact, all the orange spacesuit stories have been pivotal to Ten's development. In 42 we saw him almost pleading with Martha to give him what Rose could have done without stopping to think about it (not that Martha was useless to him - she probably saved his life). But we saw Ten first burning up, then literally freezing, and the whole thing was like a horrible dark version of TSP. He said, "I'm scared." And we saw the first signs of the Master's return.

People often complain about Rose's selfishness - she was bratty to demand he didn't change in TSE, or to build the dimension cannon to get back to him (this ignores the plot, because in fact she didn't just build it for that). But in any case I think part of loving someone is that it makes you selfish on their behalf. It protects them. Ten actually needs protection from his own unselfishness. The place he's in now is the result of a long series of decisions taken with the best of motives in mind - and once he realises he can't keep to his absurdly high standards he will abandon himself.

Another interesting point - in a sense, The Master is the equivalent of 10.5 for Rose. He is the "socks" partner - the one many fans want to see him end up with, the one we can tell ourselves is "good enough" if we don't look too carefully. But if Ten shacked up with the Master, the relationship would be based on the past, and everything they have lost. Even if the Master wasn't batshit crazy, it would be very unhealthy.

[catsfiction.livejournal.com]

The last shot of them in the TARDIS together in TSP has always seemed bigger to me than it's official significance. It feels like the end of the whole story, not just one. You have such a sense of these people going on together to be "the stuff of legend" - which is precisely what Julie Gardner calls them in her S2 DVD set notes - "Together, they truly are the stuff of legend." So, why exchange a legend for two sad old men in a greasy spoon just making do?

No - I truly believe David and Billie knew where their story ended when they filmed that, and it was their way of telling us. And don't forget, they'd already filmed "Doomsday" by that point.x

[catsfiction.livejournal.com]

Do you think Ten actually wants to be human? I suspect that, freed from the duty to represent his people, he would find it a massive relief. He loves humans anyway, and the enormity of his powers frightens him - he is exhausted by the effort of keeping them under control.

Also, that would explain why he feels so strongly that he's going to die, rather than regenerate.