The leftward and other blatherings of Span (now with Snaps!)

Sunday, September 10, 2006

A new lease on life - Part III

And here we go, another post that indulges my new new Dr Who obssession.

Part the Third - The Doctor Finds His Heart(s)?
The burgeoning love interest side of the Doctor has been at times uncomfortable (for me anyway). Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this the first time that Mr Fancy Tardis has been portrayed as possibly being a sexual being - someone who might be physically attracted to others and want to act on it at some vague future point. There's certainly been an awfully lot of hugging in this series, if you ask me.

Also that the companionship between Doctor and assistant could be more akin to an unrequited soapie-type relationship (Moonlighting anyone?) than the usual platonic jolly good chaps (and chapettes). We even had Rose and Sarah Jane competing for the affections and attention of the Tennant incarnation (with K9 mercifully in only a bit-part). Gotta love the Who You Know competition between them - "Daleks!" "Met the Emperor!" etc.

Now Rose is my all-time favourite companion to date. I am going to cry buckets when she goes and I believe that may be quite soon. I do not want to know what happens in advance, thanks all the same. If the Doctor was going to fall for anyone I can see why it would be her - spunky, smart but not in a ridiculous way, and she's a chav! I hear she can sing a little as well.

But it all sits a little uncomfortably for me - this series, more than the Eccleston one, has investigated what happens to the companions after the Doctor has moved on without them, through Rose, Sarah Jane and Micky (or was it Ricky, I forget already), not to mention poor run-down K9. If the Doctor were to have an icky-boy-and-girl-germs-mingling relationship with Rose then it throws things out of whack a fair bit. He's never done it before, and what would it bode for the future if he did? Would he spend the rest of the Tennant incarnation being a grump after she goes/dies, refusing to find love again, and making all sorts of crap judgement calls as a result? Will he go on the piss and try calling her in the middle of the night when he's drunk just to tell her he's really over her this time? Or will he stoically soldier on, as a good Timelord ought to?

In short - is there anyway out of this plot direction, other than a sharp swerve away sometime very soon, that doesn't tend towards Doctor Who becoming more like The OC In Space/Time?

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Others in the A New Lease on Life series:

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rather than repeat myself, I went back and dug up the blog I wrote on this exact subject back in May:

http://www.xanga.com/Ghetsuhm/489179796/item.html

"Annnyway, the sexual tension by and large works. But when you do that, you give yourself what I call the Moonlighting Problem. In an ongoing series, there comes a point where your audience demands that the relationship develop. It has to GO somewhere. And if your choice is to have that relationship become sexual, often you end up, well, like Moonlighting. Without the sexual tension, the show more or less immediately jumps the shark."

Span said...

Good lord, you and I must be secretly psychically connected ;-) Thanks for the link.

Anonymous said...

Heh, I did think it was kind of weird... But yeah, since I wrote that, I've seen the last episodes of that series. I don't want to ruin that for you, though, so I'll just hush now.

Rich said...

Do you think that with the Daleks and Cybermen pouring through the fabric of spacetime they may have jumped the shark a little bit?

Span said...

Well Mr Stupid had unfortunately pre-warned me about the Daleks vs Cybermen (sic) scenario by texting me some weeks back that it was like Al Pacino vs Robert De Niro, both playing baddies. Yes folks, Mr Stupid has been very bad and has watched ahead.

I think they boxed themselves in in terms of what could possibly deal with the cybermen, so they needed a bigger baddie to do it for them. Disappointing? Yes.