carmen_lj | About shipping in 3 x 14 (Reply)

So, it's totally Chibnall's fault (and maybe a bit the actors) I don't think 42 is Teh Awesome. Because, really, I should have loved it, but, sadly, the secondary/tertiary characters are some of the most tedious the show's managed in three years. And when it's generally so damn good at them, making them so mind-numbingly uninteresting is somewhat Not Living Up To My Actually Quite Realistic For A Change Expectations.

More importantly, however, I have, after the second watch, had a total epiphany: 42 is actually all about the Doctor's One True Love for ~~Babs~~ ~~Jamie~~ Romana and is filled with moments where he misses her/wishes she was there/can't notice Martha's awesomeness at all.

Here are ten entirely convincing reasons why:

There is a sun in it. Gallifrey totally had a sun. It probably blew up. And falling into the sun is a bit like blowing it up, in that they both kill people who are nearby. Thus totally reminding the Doctor about that time he probably killed Romana along with the rest of his people and his planet.
The sun tries to possess him. Which is a bit like that time Romana got possessed by, um pumpkins...or spiders. Probably spiders. Anyway, that emo at the end? That was totally the Doctor feeling sad abut the fact that Romana was well-good at coping with possession and he was rubbish, yo. He misses her awesomeness like that.
Also, it reminded him of that other time he got possessed. By Zagreus. And when Romana said (and I paraphrase only slightly) "You have to bugger off to this non-universe where time doesn't work right, cause, heh, if you stay, you'll destroy this one. BTW, don't come back. Bye now." Big sacrifice on Romana's part, obv, as Eight was quite good with teh sex, but she's prepared to make that sort of sacrifice to prove their OTP love.
Which, in turn, obviously reminded him of other universes in general and that time Romana said bye-bye now because he'd fought like crazy-mad for his own freedom but was going to happily toss her back to the Time Lords without a word of protest like the bit of a git he was, and only realised later, probably when throwing her room out, what a total prat he'd been about that.
Martha fell a long way. Which was a bit like the Doctor falling off the Pharos Project back when he was Teh Invinicible Tommy B. And his last thought before he regenerated was of Romana (and that's CANON, dude!) so that reminded him of that, and is also partly why he was well emo at the end.
...I can't have run out already?....Er, because the Captain did a bad sneaky thing, that was a bit like when the Doctor and Romana found out about bad drugs smuggling by another, totally different ship, and he had to hold her hand and skip through a projector thingummie.
That question about The Beatles reminded him of Liverpool, which reminded him of England, which is a really, really small place on the whole universal scale thing. So thinking of Liverpool is just like thinking of Cambridge, and his best memory of Cambridge is that time he went punting with Romana, thus EMO!
Martha being trapped in the escape pod was a bit like that time he was trapped on the TARDIS and Romana had to go solve the plot while he did fuck all for four episodes. So he wasn't seeing Martha at all as it fell away, but thinking about how great it was when he could sit around and let Romana show off and how great she is generally. And that "I save you" was obviously being shouted to Romana as guilt for sort of getting her killed.
Martha totally had hot!chemistry with the dude who doesn't have a name cause the secondary characters were cack and I don't give a toss what it was, which reminded the Doctor of when Romana had hot!chemistry with Duggan when she was meant to be concentrating wholly on him because they were running around Paris falling in love, thank you very much.
Martha wore shoes. Which is a lot like Romana wearing shoes.