The POV of the Doctor

Warning: this entry has great gobs of spoilers for Doctor Who, though little of it is about plot and most if it is about character. Personally I'd say if you haven't watched it and plan to you should skip it. I wrote this up for my own purposes, but I liked how it turned out so I thought I'd post it in case there's somebody desperately trolling for Doctor Talk, which I sympathize with totally. Here it is.

**

To us, the Doctor is an alien.  To him he's not, though, he's just himself.  He's normal to him, he's himself.His normal is radically different from everybody else, though.  By most people's sense he'd be at the time of a linear hierarchy – but is he?  Does he think so?  I don't believe it.  I think there's a part of him that knows he's more aware, has more knowledge than most people, but I don't think he believes he's superior.  There's an egoism that must go with it, but that's not a flaw, that's part of omnipotence.  If you're going to have separate consciousness on your own and then also have that much knowledge, you have to be aware that you're "greater" than most.  But I think you'd also realize what a burden this is.

But to be the LAST of the Time Lords . . . . well.  And to be the one who killed your own people off to stop a threat to the universe at large?  And to not be entirely sure this was the best choice?  Then to find out that your solution didn't work?

So he's traveling.  He's always traveling, always on his own, sometimes with companions but with a sense of the greater unity of Time Lords, until now.  Now it's just him, completely alone.  Utterly.  And I bet he feels a sense of responsibility, like now he has to bear up all the work the Time Lords would have done as a race.  He's not just the last of the Time Lords, he's THE Time Lord, so he's sort of God as man, only knowing his job is impossible.  He's got to patrol the entire universe himself.  Maybe he wishes he'd died, too, but he couldn't and didn't, and now here he is, left bearing the guilt of surviving and the responsibility of those he had to kill.

Now, enter Rose. At first she's just another human to save, though she seems to intrigue him right off.  She's spunky.  She's smart.  She's assertive.  But still, human.  She can't possibly be that different from anybody else he's traveled with.  She can't be that significant.  Still, she doesn't run from danger, though she's not stupid.  She asks good questions.  She takes stuff in quickly.  She adjusts well.  Also, she keeps showing up.

She reminds him about humanity – also, I think, beyond humanity, which is just about her race, to simply about a love of life.  I think he may have lost some of that in the Time War, but Rose helps him regain some of it.  She reminds him about life.  And I think initially, maybe, attaching to her is his first step towards being able to love his own life again.

The bit where he talks about the turn of the earth, them clinging to the skin of the planet – I think that's his entire mental state.  He's just running.  Going.  He doesn’t have joy in it anymore, it's a job.  And he meets Rose and she's really interested and he's polite and appreciates her, but he's got walls up.  "I'm big.  I've got this weight.  You won't want to be with me, nobody would – it's too painful.  I don't like it.  Why would you?"

Except she's always there, always competent, always Rose.  She helps.  She grounds him.  She takes him to task.  She's a companion the minute she spots the London Eye as the transmitter.  But before that, she accepts him. 

She asks if he's alien, and he says, "Yep.  Is that all right?"  Quick exchange.  And yet!  Here he is, facing the first person to really measure up since the Time War, with someone who intrigues him, and first he's got to make sure his normal is okay.  And it is, which is great, but that moment.  I love that moment.

But he really has forgotten how to live life.  He can't care about Mickey's possible death because he's got to think about the life of "every stupid ape on this planet."  But it's only three eps until he's in the cabinet room at Downing Street afraid to save the world because it risks Rose, so that's why I think he attaches his love of life to "love of Rose."  He can't love himself, but he can love and protect her.

She spots that wheel in the first ep, and it clicks for him.  A companion!  A helper!  Not to be alone!  And then she doubles her worth by not just being clever and interesting, but being useful.  She saves his life, and not just here.  Over and over again, she's going to save his life, but it starts here. 

The whole of series one is the Doctor learning how to live again.  He comes to us having just killed his race to save everyone else, and he has guilt and fear and worry over that, but Rose saves him because she helps him see that all he has to do is live, to love his life, that he can't have the whole of time and space on his head, because it hurts.  He has to let it go. 

 
Everything he says to her at the end of "The Parting of the Ways" is what he needs to hear himself.  When Goddess Rose is standing there in her glory, unable to let go of the power but doomed to die because of it, she's become a mirror of him.  She/the TARDIS become what he has become and shows him he's going to destroy himself – not a physical death, but an emotional death.  The power's going to kill him.  Rather – the GUILT is going to kill him.  He's got to let it go.  And he does.  It's actually so perfect and fitting that he has to change here.  It'd be weird if he didn't.  Because now that chapter of his life is closed.  He's a new man.  Everything is different.  Rose should mourn him, because he'll never be that dark and vulnerable and lonely again.

 

I think when anyone is lonely what they're really pining for is themselves.  We are never alone until we've lost our sense of our own self.   The minute he opens the doors to the TARDIS in "The Christmas Invasion," right from, "Did you miss me?"  he's different.  He loves himself again.  He doesn't even know who he is, but he loves himself.  It's palpable.  Some of it is Tennant's portrayal, but a lot of it is that he's a different Doctor now – not because he changed, but because he found himself again. And now series two is going to be a whole new story.

We've already got a taste of what's to come, and I don't just mean the trailer at the end of TCI.  The legs of the new journey are in place.  I love the hand cutting off bit and the regeneration – it could symbolize so many things.  It could mean his companion – maybe Rose will be less essential to him now.  He still loves her, but now she's not vital to him.  If he had to lose Rose it wouldn't be the death of his race all over again.  It could mean himself – go ahead, cut off my hand, cut off my people, cut off my whole sense of self, but I'll just grow a new one. 

It also makes me wonder about series two, about his new character.  Will he be more invincible?  Definitely he's going to take more risk.  He's got a zest which is really fun.  But more clues: he doesn't give second chances.  He's ruthless in his judgment.  He destroys Harriet Jones with six words, and he doesn't regret it.  He's strong again, whole.  This makes me wonder what sort of enemies he's going to conjure now.

Cool.