less homework = more fangirling

[ladymercury_10]

Everyone keeps telling me it is NO GOOD that I never finished RTD Who, and especially that I never watched any Ninth Doctor episodes.  So last night, light_frost and I watched "Rose" and "The End of the World."  (Since we don't live in the same state, this really means we were on GChat while we were watching them.  She had seen them before, incidentally.)  

Man, I thought Ten was sad, but Nine goes and hangs out at, like, the launching of the Titanic, and his idea of an impressive vacation is taking Rose to see the world blow up.  Rose and Mickey were cute, even though they seemed like they were kind of talking past each other most of the time.  And they looked so young!  Also, weirdly, the special effects were super cheesy, but "Rose" was a much creepier episode to me than many more straightforwardly creepy episodes.  I am not sure if I am more susceptible to cheesy-scary than proper-scary, or if I am just getting more susceptible to being scared by Doctor Who in general. :P

Also in fannish news, I have been trying to get in some more library comics-reading before finals/winter break, so I just finished Robin: Year One, Batgirl: Death Wish, and Batgirl: Year One.  Which, Batgirl: Year One was amazing, and pretty much everything I would want from a comic.  The art was magical, and I really liked the story and how Babs and Dick were written.  It has a lot of mythology references, and allusions to Barbara's future as Oracle and such, and other cool stuff.  It makes me so sad that it's out of print. :(

Did everybody see that fandom_stocking moved to DreamWidth this year?  I haven't finished making my stocking yet, but I am very excited to do so.  Who all is participating?  I want to know where your stockings are. :D

Comments

[giallarhorn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think Martha mentions it off handed sometime in her run as well (or at the least, someone mentions it). Or asks if he has a death wish.

Yeah, that whole bit was a little over dramatic given everything that had already happened in the episode XD His whole not wanting to go thing was very much of a lot of what he had been through up until that point, though. Which was a pretty giant roller coaster ride, tbh, but Ten's pretty unique among all three so far in of how emotional he was, and by extent, how human he had become upon Nine's regeneration and how attached he was to his 'life'. No spoilers, but conditions of Nine's regeneration sort of lent themselves to creating an incarnation who did interact with the companions (and others around them) a lot more and in a way, it was the probably the closest canonical point we got where he actually wanted desperately to be human, and got incredibly close to that point over the course of his run. Like, Ten even had romantic relationships of large enough impact and he's very distinctly human in how he recognizes social cues and habits and I think it gives him a sort of anchor to hold onto in the aftermath of the Time War. It's kind of reflected even in the companions- he's in love with Rose, negligent to Martha, and fantastic with Donna, but the point is that he loses all of his relationships in the end. Even when the Master blips up for a little and there's another Time Lord for a tiny bit, the Master also leaves in the end, leaving Ten alone again- in a sense, the only remainder to connect him to everyone around him, since with the regeneration, it would be just like dying since those connections would in a sense, be very much dead and gone and with them, the tethers to everyone he had lost over the years, even though he ultimately realizes that he's slowly losing himself due to being so human. Which is a bit of why Eleven had turned out the way he did- looking back at Ten with that level of humanity and seeing what it did to him and how everyone did leave him, just steps so far away from it as to prevent it from happening again.

SORRY THAT KIND OF GOT REALLY LONG AGAIN.

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

But doesn't he always lose everyone? Like, don't his companions leave because they're human, even if he's not being too human? Or are you saying that since everyone leaves him, he may as well keep himself?

[giallarhorn.livejournal.com]

Well, kind of. Rose he lost due to extenuating circumstances, Donna didn't really have a choice in the matter and Martha was the only one who actually chose to leave. Both Rose and Donna expressed a desire to travel with him forever, and the matter of their leaving wasn't of their own free will (for the most part), and that's just counting the main companions. It's a bit of the latter, I suppose- if basically a majority of people you've liked, loved, respected, gotten along with, etc. and etc. have died, killed, removed or otherwise positioned in a point where the relationship is now null, then in a way, you're the only thing that's still around that remembers those relationships, so to speak. So yeah, it's a bit of keeping himself, but in context for the relationships that he had, if that makes any sense at all.

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

No, but I mean the Doctor has always lost his companions for one reason or another, even if they're just hanging out somewhere else after having left on friendly terms. And he had some people die before, too, or get their memories erased. So if these things were happening to his companions even before the Time War and whatall, I don't get why he would attribute those things to having happened to Rose and Donna because of him acting too human? Or are you just saying that since some of them can't come back or remember him, he has to stay as much himself (and so non-human) as he can so that he can remember them as well as is possible?

[giallarhorn.livejournal.com]

It's not that he attributes responsibility of the actual actions and things that happened to them to him being human, but the aftermath of the events and how he subsequently dealt with the losses that'd be linked to him being too human, hence Eleven. But the second is more or less the vein I'm getting at, since once he regenerates, it's implied that it'll be unlikely that he'll reengage on his old relationships with the same regard if at all, so Ten tries to hold onto those relationships through staying Ten.

Or you could just see it as the show being meta on itself and indicating that RTD's era was ending and with it, the characters and relationships and etc.

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

I think I sort of get it now.

[giallarhorn.livejournal.com]

Haha, sorry for being confusing. Easy breakdown would be something like

Nine+things leading to regen->super human things->Ten
Ten->Tragedy/Angst/Tragedy/Sadness/Loss
Loss->I don't want to go become another person I like this person (A)
A->look what the emotional wreck I ended up dying as that's no good too emotional step back->Eleven

Though I don't know if that's actually easier to understand.

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

No, that's good! You've gotta love flowcharts. :D Thanks!

(I'm actually really being serious. I once made a flowchart the size of a card table to analyze my postgrad options. I think my mom thought I was absolutely terminally geeky at that point, haha. I don't know why it was that big, either, because I wasn't trying to choose between that many things. :P )

[giallarhorn.livejournal.com]

I totally agree! Flowcharts are seriously the best diagrams ever :D

Haha, you had to factor in each individual variable and possibility and option and pros and cons and where this would lead you and where this might lead you XD